Savings,blessings,and flops.

I had wanted to make these posts weekly. I have been unable to do so because of problems with the blogger app. I then figured out how to blog using the website on my phone instead. Ultimately my husband just decided to get internet only from Comcast. Hopefully posting will become more regular again.

This will be a lengthy post on things we have done over the past month to save funds.

My husband cut his and the kids hair. (Rumor has it another cut will be taking place tomorrow night...my son wants to shave his hair off for the summer!)

I watched the electric meter like a hawk and when I saw we were quickly approaching the budgeted amount, I did my best to make adjustments to keep us from going over. I am pleased to say we will be right at budget. I am going to experiment and try to come in under budget next month. I will keep you posted on how it goes.

I found out I had a 5.00 reward at Petco from past purchases. It was about to expire and I don't shop there regularly because their prices can be high. I was in the area and stopped in. They had canned cat food on clearance  for .70 (good deal coming from them) I purchased 8 cans and only paid .29 out of pocket.  The kitten only needs half a can at night so it should last a while.

We frequent the local libraries alot and get movies. We have also started getting Dvd sets from there and are watching Ncis and The Mentalist from their beginning seasons.  Otherwise we watch antenna tv.  We watch the ME TV channel alot and H and I so we see alot of classic shows like Rawhide with Clint Eastwood and a bunch of other westerns.  I also like Mama's Family and Mash.

I found some jewelry on sale for 2.00 left over from mother's day and I purchased two sets to put away for birthday gifts. One for my daughter and one for her best friend. Both have November birthdays. Not pictured are some neat journal sets in Frozen and Minions. I paid a dollar a piece and put them away for frugal gift giving as well. I purchased like 5 or 6 of those.

I really wanted to purchase a new table but I finally with encouragement from a friend, drove to get our old table from an outside storage area and it was covered in yuck but we used peroxide,Dawn, and vinegar to scrub it down. It's just as good as it was before.

I stopped thrifting  and yard saling the last couple weeks.

This blanket was a beautiful  unexpected blessing. A king size quilt that someone gifted to me because she knew I was looking for one. She found it at a yard sale and only paid 5.00. I tried to pay her for it but she refused. What a huge savings though. I looked at some on clearance and they were still 60.00.

My husband was given a box of stuff a customer didn't want from an attic clean out. This was my favorite piece. I loved cabbage patch dolls when I was a kid. I washed the pillow and dried it. (It had still been in its wrapper.  My husband kept some other cool things that I will show when I share our living room photos. Each kid picked something they liked too.

I cashed out a 5.00 gift card to Walmart from Swagbucks and have been working diligently to earn more.

We are also breeding our own meal worms so we won't have to spend any more money to feed the lizards. We hope to plant and grow our own collard greens to feed them too.

Flops included a little food waste including some apples and peanut butter dough for home made candy we tried to make.  There was another almost huge flop or mistake we began to make but I hope to tell you about that and the lessons learned from it tomorrow.

I almost forgot, I was cleaning the lizard cages and we use sale papers as substrate for one of them. I got to looking at the paper we were gonna use and it was full of coupons that I could actually use. So I clipped them.

I have not done that in forever.  We are getting ready to take a road trip on Friday so I have purchased all the snacks I could think of as well as refilled all medications. Cleaning of the house is being done today. School is over for my daughter....we survived PRE K and the graduation!

Praying God's provision and blessings for you this day!

Crafty moves

Late last week a friend and I got together and we made some teacher gifts for the end of the year. MY DAUGHTER GRADUATES PRE K ON TUESDAY THE 24TH (shouting with excitement!)

For my son school does not get out until the 3rd or 4th of June but we are taking him out a week early for vacation. We are planning a very special road trip.  

Those are the reasons teacher gifts needed to be finished now.

Here is a picture of what we did.

Here are some other items we made.

From the first picture the Harry Potter notebook is something my son had and never used but he knows his teacher is a fanatic...so we glued a sparkly ribbon inside to be used like a book mark. She will also receive one of the pop tab bracelets I made along with home made chocolate candy.

Other teachers are receiving home made bulletin boards...made from burlap and broken jewelry trinkets. Teachers aids are receiving home made candy along with butterfly notebooks someone left behind.

We mostly used what we had with the exception of the burlap which was 5.97 (i still have enough burlap to make a couple boards!) and foam board which was .74 . Everything else I had on hand. Oh and I also purchased a homemade pair of button earrings made by Hooyah Creations..with the Florida Gators for $4.00.  All the note cards I already had on hand from a gift I was given several months ago.

The middle bulletin board photo is for my prayer/office corner...I decorated it using a broken necklace from my mother's things. And a heart from a piece of jewelry my husband bought me that broke.

We also made my daughter a tiny one to hang in her room. That is the one with the owl fabric. We cut up and old shirt and I glued on a pair of my mom's old earrings. Pearls from something my mother in law had given me before she passed, and the sparkly butterfly is from a ring I no longer wear. (It's a gift for her graduation)

All said in done we are blessing about 10 people. I am super excited to get it out of the house. 

What have you been up to?

A Simple Redo

I got this idea from Judy at Sew Blessed Maw a while back (she is so creative I wish I could sew) and just finally got around to doing this project.

I made the original wreath a couple years ago and it was alot of work to wrap all that yarn around the wreath.  That day also brings back good memories with old friends.  I did not want to throw it out but we move alot (as you all know) and it had gotten dirty and I just wanted to bring some new life to it.

Here is the original

I went to the dollar tree and purchased these items from the craft section

I added everything to the wreath except the bird which will be used for something different. It turned out like this and hangs on our laundry room door.

I went back to the dollar tree and saw they have big butterflies so I may later add one right in the center but I didn't make that move yet. Have you crafted anything lately?

Tea Time

Well the blogger app has not been working for me so now I am just trying to use the regular website from my cell phone. I have really been wanting to share our "goings on" with you all.

A couple weeks ago we found some fantastic hats for tea parties at a local yard sale. I had wanted to host a tea party here at the house with my daughter but I had to put it off.

I am glad I did because on Tuesday my daughter's school hosted one in honor of Mother's Day.

So I......

Put on my tea party hat and enjoyed tea time as I hope you do too!

It was Mad Hatter (SP?) themed. It was tons of fun we had iced tea,popcorn, and a special cookie. I took lots of pictures using a selfie stick I bought at the dollar tree. Hope everyone is having a great week!

Braces and Puffle fights

I mentioned that my son would be getting braces soon and today was the day.

He decided to stay home and I was fine with saving the gas of taking him to school and picking him up in just two hours. (OH and did I mention that means I didn't have to get out of bed till 8 a.m.)

I love his smile.

He was very brave and daddy prayed with him on the phone before the dental folks got started.

I still love his smile.

They only could do the top for now we need six months for his jaw line to begin correcting and for his bite to open up so braces can go on his bottom teeth to make room for the teeth that have no space to come in.

On the way home each kid got a strawberry banana smoothie from McDonald's.

And then we had a Puffle fight. These are characters created by Disney for some online game called Club Penguin. My son used to like it and play it a couple years ago. We purchased these guys for 2.00 a couple weeks ago at a yard sale. A Puffle fight is like a snowball fight.(only in FL we don't get snow so we improvised.) We had fun. And a couple rules no direct face shots and we cleared the the room of spillable and breakable things.

Now I have given my son ibuprofen for tenderness and we are settling down for a while.  Hope everyone is having a great Friday!!!!

(I originally wrote this past Friday but the blogger app must have a bug because it will not publish any post. I had to come to the library to log in and edit this one.)