1. Groceries: I bought a frozen lasagna and boxed pasta dinner at Walmart for about $7.50 total. We returned $17.30 worth of cans, so I didn't figure the grocery costs into our normal monthly budget. Since we will be very busy during the next three months, I spent time perusing Walmart's website for boxed, canned and frozen meals to see how they might fit into our regular menu. For two people, the frozen meals were most expensive at $5.00-9.00. Boxed meals were about $2.00 (but, of course, don't include meat) and canned meals (including meat) also cost about $2.00. While packaged meals aren't all that healthy OR frugal, I'll be working in the strawberry patch and on our new-to-us house and won't have as much time to spend on regular household tasks. What time I do have will probably be spent in our vegetable garden or sleeping. Last year June was exhausting for me, and that was without the house. Some disposable diapers, paper plates and already-prepared meals are a small price to pay for an extra hour or two every day during such a busy time. The premade meals, even at $2.00-8.00 each, cost the same or less than fast food, and we won't have to drive anywhere to get dinner on. 

As our budget is now, I spend about $2.00 per meal (lunch and dinner). The packaged food will probably put us a little over budget. I am hoping that I'll be able to replicate some of the store-bought meals at home though, and save money that way. Some of them are only frozen vegetables with meat and rice. "I just can't bring myself to pay $8.00 for that!" I complained to my brother, while standing in the frozen food aisle at Walmart. "I can cook some rice in the Instant Pot and dump a few cans in for a lot less than $8.00." So, that could also be a solution.

2. Cooking: I made bread in the bread machine. I'm still working on spending less time in the kitchen (while still making food from scratch, on a budget). This week I spent between 30 minutes and 60 minutes per day cooking (plus a similar amount of time washing dishes every night). Doing all of the cooking tasks at once has cut down the time, I believe, by a bit.

3. Gardening: I planted sweet potato slips and green onions in dirt (they were previously in water). I didn't get a chance to plant anything in the garden this week, but I did spend several afternoons peeling straw off of my strawberry patch. We put it on way too thick last year (we just rolled several big round bales' worth out onto the rows) so it was a real task to pick off all of the extra. The good news is that I have plenty of straw to use now.

4. Thrifting: I bought a cardigan and lightweight hoodie for myself at $1.10 each. We found a pair of jeans for Hubs that cost just $3.00 (we don't usually find his size, so that was a great deal!), a glass candlestick for $0.50, a plate for $0.30 and a square basket for $0.45. I use square baskets for organizing like items on shelves.

5. Music: I used a Prime credit to buy a classical music album for $0.09. Recently I've been trying to decide how I want to collect music for my own use, future home school use, etc. Tape and CD players are becoming more expensive and hard-to-find as people move toward digital music; not only that, but CDs are easily scratched up and then they're worthless. It's possible to listen to music for free on the internet, but Pandora doesn't let you pick the songs, and both Youtube and Pandora have commercials. Premium or subscription services don't provide enough value for the cost (commercial-free Youtube is $12.00/mo., Spotify is $10.00). I know that the music I'm looking for (generic kids' tunes, classical music, etc.) is cheap enough to just buy, but it's hard to do that when I know I can probably get it for free somewhere... if I'm willing to listen to enough commercials. But I don't want to waste brain waves on commercials. If any of you have tips on how/where to get free downloadable music, let me know!

6. Books: I ordered a book from the library interloan system.

7. Shower curtain: I replaced three broken shower curtain rings.

I think that's about it for this week. 

Til next time,
-Bethany 

Even though it's still cold out (in the 40's today), I'm getting so excited for spring.

1. Groceries: We didn't buy any groceries this week. As the warmer months draw near, I'll be shopping less and harvesting more. I'm hoping to add fruits and vegetables to the eggs I already collect from our homestead.

2. Cooking: I cooked and froze the beef I bought on sale last week. I also made cookies! Lately I've been working hard to do most of my cooking once a day. That means I'll look at the day's meals, and see if there is anything I can do to cook both meals at once. Then I try to do all of that within an hour. I set the timer and try to work like mad! Of course, I let Princess help me, so there are plenty of interruptions. Even with the interruptions, I've been keeping that batch-cooking time to around an hour. I still spend about 15 minutes per meal actually putting everything together, if it's not something I can prepare in advance.

I would say that I spent about an hour and 45 minutes, per day, this week on cooking. My goal is to get that number down to an hour (except on Wednesday, which is cooking day, and Friday afternoon, when I bake things for fun).

3. Homestead: I gathered plenty of eggs this week from our chickens. I also foraged some Kentucky Coffee Tree beans. I cleaned them, soaked them for 24 hours (this was because I tried planting some of them) and roasted the rest of the beans at 300 degrees F for three hours. I think most of the beans exploded, but only a few landed at the bottom of the oven. A majority stayed in the pan. Then I used our Vitamix dry container to grind the beans into a powder. It turned out great!

I think that's all for now. How was your week?

Til next time,
-Bethany

I love this time of year. The weather is starting to warm up, gardening and yard-sale season is near. We submitted the house blueprints for building permits this week, so that's super exciting as well!

1. Groceries: We spent 37.03 at Kroger and an unspecified amount at Walmart... I'm thinking it was around $5.00. We bought a bag of potatoes, a Reese's bar and probably something else that I don't remember. 😕 So we'll call this week's total $42.03. My goal was to spend just $90.00 in March; right now we're at $87.51. I think that calls for a spending freeze! At Kroger I got 80/20 ground beef on sale for $2.00/lb, cheese on sale for $2.00/lb., and grapes for $1.00/lb. Those were some great prices for our area, so I was happy to sacrifice the next few weeks' grocery money.

2. Cooking: I made yogurt (with starter from a previous batch), cooked a bag of chicken thighs and made broth with the bones. I also made a number of bird suet patties from ground beef fat that I saved in the freezer. Our little girl loves watching the birds eat!

3. Gardening: most of the seeds I planted last week have germinated! All of the tomato seeds were a great success. The chives have also all germinated. The hot pepper seeds, eggplant and all but one pumpkin-on-a-stick seeds have not germinated yet, but those could take at least another week. 

4. ​Crafts: I painted the rest of my mismatched jar lids. 

​5. Thrifting: I went to TWO thrift stores this week! At the first store I bought two T-shirts for myself at $0.50 each and a dress for $3.50. The dress had a small tear, but I looked up the brand website and similar dresses sell for around $100.00 each. So I thought that was a steal! I also bought a plate for $0.79 (not a great deal, but it had sentimental value), a candlestick for $0.50 and a basket for Princess' books at $1.50. The basket wasn't cheap, but square baskets never are at thrift stores. It keeps the books contained, which frees up more of my time to do fun things.

The second store was a bit higher priced, but I did find a $2.00 cardigan for Princess to wear with her (free) Easter dress. But the BEST deal was a bunch of all-in-one diapers (BumGenius Freetime) diapers for $2.00 each. I bought ALL of them! LOL! Even though we're pretty much done with cloth diapers for Princess, I hope we're not done having babies. For the next baby I had considered buying more all-in-ones (they're less work than the other kinds). Not only that, but it's nice to have extras that you can loan out or give away to others who are interested in using cloth. Some of the diapers need minor repairs, but those won't be a big deal because I'm rehabbing some of our other diapers already (see below). I can always sell the diapers if I end up not using them.

6. Sewing: I worked on replacing the elastics in some used Fuzzibunz diapers. It was a surprisingly easy project—I just had to buy the proper sized elastic, which cost less than $2.00. One of my sisters-in-law is due with her first baby this summer, and she said she was interested in using cloth. I thought it would be nice to have some that she can try out while she's here (they live out of the country) and even take home if she likes them.  

7. Toddler exercise: I brought a little plastic playhouse/gym inside for our daughter to play on when it's cold outside. I noticed that she enjoys climbing all over the furniture, so I thought the playhouse slide would be a better outlet for her energy. So far it's been great! Not only that, but it was free, left by the previous renters. 

8. Cans: I picked up over $5.00 worth of cans to recycle while on walks. This time of year, the roads are LITTERED with cans! It's like a gold mine out there! 

That's all, folks!
Til next time,
-Bethany

1. ​Groceries: We spent $45.48 on groceries this week. I went to Walmart and stocked up on things like beans and dairy.

2. ​Cooking: I made granola this week. And cookies! I used the granola with some homemade yogurt and frozen berries to make parfaits for the fridge. I noticed that the granola got soggy, so next time I'll just keep that separate until serving.
​
3. Gardening: I started the first seeds of the year!! On Saturday I planted chives, tomatoes and pepper seeds.

4. Crafts: I needed a jar for toothpicks, so I used an old glass coconut oil jar from my stash of cleaned, reusable jars. I was proud of myself for finding a suitable container, but the lid was an ugly gold color. I used some chalk board paint (that we already had) to paint the lid. After the paint dried, I used a chalk marker to write on the lid. I really liked the final result:

​I think I will do this with all of my other reusable jar lids. I have some pickle jar lids that I think would really benefit. It's nice to at least have jars that match in color, if they don't match in size. Of course I don't paint regular canning jar lids, but I think it will be great for things like salsa or pizza sauce jars.

I also finished painting four new peg dolls for Princess. I started these before Thanksgiving (hoping to use them for decorations), but here we are, four months later. Oh well; I guess better late than never.

I think my painting skills are improving. I learned this time that the lightest colors should go on first. It's SO hard to paint light colors over dark ones! You can see how the white collar on my pilgrim looks kind of... thick. That's because it needed 123,345,456 layers in order to look okay.

5. Time management: I unsubscribed to several blogs. I found myself spending hours of mental energy coming up with counterpoints and arguments to political posts (thinly veiled as "personal finance"). Of course, I never actually comment my carefully thought-out replies, which is why reading those blogs is a complete waste of time and energy. 

Many personal finance blogs are written by women who work outside the home. There's nothing wrong with that, but a career leaves little time for the kind of frugality that I'm interested in. Homemaking blogs provide more usable content to me, plus almost none of them have a "housewives are victims" mentality, which is something I can't stand. I am going to be careful in the future to avoid time-sucking blogs and only follow sites that provide usable content.

6. Shed makeover: Hubs and I refurbished my old goat shed for resale. The shed itself was free- in fact, Hubs got paid $250.00 to move it from the previous owner's place! He dug a box of leftover vinyl out of our backyard*, so that was free as well.  We ended up putting new doors on ($20.00-$30.00) and I painted the doors with leftover paint. It was a long day, but I think the finished product was worth it:

I think that's about it for this week!

​Til next time,
-Bethany

*Are we country people the only ones who have random junk in the backyard??  

Hi everyone! I did a terrible job recording frugal accomplishments last week (as in, I didn't write down a single one). That being said, I thought I'd pop in here with a few things anyway.

We didn't buy any groceries again this week. Hubs was gone over the weekend to an event, so Princess and I chilled out at home. I attempted two days of potty training. I think she was starting to "get" it, but I'm not sure. For now she's back in diapers. She's still young yet, I just thought I'd check in to see if she's ready or not. Some tries were successful, many more were not. I figured out that she pees about every two hours, which means that her cloth diapers really only hold one pee (the reason for this being that she "floods" the diaper and it can't absorb fast enough). I was hoping that the weekend would be a little more successful, but it left me with more questions than answers.

One accomplishment wasn't really mine, but I had a part in it! Last weekend we were helping remodel my sister's new-to-her house. She was getting a new stove, and asked "Do you think there's enough room in the dumpster for this old stove?" she asked. "It came with the house."
"Dumpster!" I cried incredulously. "I cooked a frozen pizza in that thing. It still works! You're not going to toss a working oven, are you?"
"Well, what else am I supposed to do with it?" she asked. I looked again at the stove. It was true that it was very grimy and dirty, and the door handle was cracked and a small corner had broken off somehow. It would be perfect for a place like... deer camp.
"There's someone out there who would love this working stove," I said. "Sell it on Craigslist. Or Facebook Marketplace. All of the cool kids are using Facebook Marketplace." Of course, she had never sold anything on Craigslist and I had never sold anything on Marketplace (which tells you how cool I am). While she went with Hubs to the hardware store, I used my mad photography skills to snap some pictures and list it on Marketplace. The stove didn't sell that day, but this last weekend she relisted it and it sold for $60.00. Selling the stove freed up space in the dumpster and added $60.00 to her house remodel fund.

My sister is not the only one working on a house remodel. My in-laws are currently remodeling one of their rental houses to move into. After that, Hubs and I will be remodeling their old house and moving into it! So I am pretty excited, but between all of the remodeling going on there will be less time for frugal accomplishments. Of course I'll be busy with our house, but I also want to help my sister and in-laws with their projects as well. I'm hoping to pull off regular posts and/or Youtube videos, but if it's a little quiet around here, now you'll know why.

Since there's still snow flying, I'm taking every opportunity to devour more good non-fiction books. I wish I could quantify the amount of money saved by reading, but I can't. So it probably doesn't count as a frugal accomplishment.

I think that's about it! 
Til next time,
-Bethany