A Few Frugal Happenings

I try to work at being frugal as much as I can but I always forget to keep track.  When I do keep track I usually find myself trying even harder or I realize some of the things we do that are frugal that I don’t think about. A few frugal things from the past few days –

1. We trimmed one of our trees instead of hiring it out. Trimming trees means lots of clean up work but it sure saves money to do it yourself if you can!

   

2. Mom gave me a bunch of green peppers from her garden. I chopped them all up and froze them. They will taste so good in casseroles and Sloppy Joe’s and such later.
3. We took advantage of Menard’s 11% off sale. You get a 11% rebate on all purchases, even those that are on sale! That’s when we bought our decorative fence supplies.
4. Drew found fish sticks on sale at the local grocery store – he loves fish sticks! I hate to buy them at regular price as they are so expensive. I then made some homemade tartar sauce to go with them. It tastes so much better than what you can buy in the store and I can make just the amount we will eat!
5. I was wanting a star to hang on the chicken coop but wasn’t really wanting to buy one. Then I had a “duh” moment – I used twigs off the branches we trimmed off the tree and made my own primitive star using twigs and twine. Perfect! I just might have to make a couple more!
6. We built our privacy fence ourselves. I can’t imagine what labor costs would be. Joe always does these things himself so we’ve never had to pay for labor. Between what his dad taught him and what he learned working construction for a local company years ago he can pretty much do anything except electrical. That he won’t tackle.
7. When I want fresh flowers in the house I go outside and pick what I want. This year I planted a lot of zinnias from seed. They come in so many colors and are so easy to grow and the more you cut them the more they bloom!

   

8. Joe’s been drinking lots of sun tea. So easy to make and so frugal.
9. We had a friend drop off some homegrown sweetcorn. That along with some fresh green beans from Mom’s garden made for a yummy supper alongside hamburgers from the freezer.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. I’m slowly working on building up my pantry. I put it on hold while we’ve been busy working outside and I thought this week was going to be really busy but plans have changed. (I’m very thankful!) Next week is Ragbrai – The Register’s Great Ride Across Iowa – and we will be having 20 plus people camping out in our yard Thursday night. There will be an extra 20,000 plus people in our little town of 2,000. Needless to say I will not be going to town on Thursday. But more about that later. For now I can relax the rest of this week and keep being frugal!