​Last week was really busy. Almost all of our weeknights were filled up, and then over the weekend some of my sisters-in-law were in town (one from out of state, one from overseas and one from the Caribbean) and there was an open house in our backyard. I usually like to get the Frugal Accomplishments post up on Monday, but we were busy yesterday as well.  

1. Shopping: I didn't keep very good track of grocery shopping this week. I know we spent $10.85 on snacks at Aldi. On Wednesday I went to Walmart and spent $16.99. I didn't have time to do a video haul, but I did snap a picture:

Almost all of the items I bought at Walmart are for Trim Healthy Mama recipes. I would like to start on their "plan" sometime in November/December, working my way up by doing a few recipes/meals per week. There are some parts of THM that I'm not a fan of (mostly buying low-fat and low-carb grocery items... why can't we just eat stuff the way God intended??) but it gets results and that's what I'm looking for. This little experiment will prove entertaining/interesting to those of you who think it's impossible to eat "healthy" for $10.00/person/week. I have a lot of theories regarding special diets and saving money, so now I'll get to put them into practice (for better or worse!).

We also spent between $50-$60 on food for the open house. We had a whole bag of frozen hamburger patties (12 patties) and 10-20 hotdogs left, as well as three bags each of hamburger and hotdog buns. We also had an extra package of celery hearts left. Total cost for extra open house food (I'll count this as groceries) was $13.98, minus the celery hearts which I somehow lost the reciept for. So we'll say $2.00 on the celery.

So between the Aldi snacks ($10.85), THM ingredients ($16.99) and open house overbuying/leftovers ($15.98), I was overbudget this week by a whopping $23.82. However, even with this week's massive overspending, we've only spent $84.58 for the month of August- a paltry $4.58 more than I had planned. That's pretty impressive in my opinion! Frugal food techniques really work, even when you have colossal planning failures ($10.00+ spent on pre-packaged snacks... REALLY?!) and buy specialty diet ingredients that you don't really need. 

2: Garden: Harvested and froze bell peppers. Most of my garden this year was for fresh eating, so I am not doing a lot of canning or freezing this year. I also focused more on plants for medicinal and decorative use; flowers, herbs, gourds, etc. I'm really looking forward to autumn decorating when everything is ready to pick!

3. Cooking: Made yogurt in my new Instant Pot! For those of you who haven't watched my Amazon Unboxing from a few weeks ago, I ordered a second (larger) Instant Pot to do food prep and make yogurt and cheese in. I tried the yogurt function for the very first time last week and it worked great. It cut my hands-on yogurt making time probably in half. One tip I learned from a fellow Youtuber is to cool the pot of milk in a sink of cold water instead of waiting for it to cool down on the stove. I'm not sure why I'd never thought to do that before, except my yogurt pot was always filled to the brim with milk (it was a little too small) and had a handle that would have a hard time fitting in the sink. The IP insert was easily tall enough so that the cold water wouldn't splash into the milk, and it also didn't have a cumbersome handle. 

The second time-saving aspect of IP yogurt is washing the dishes. My prevoius method involved heating milk on the stove in a pan first, then putting it into a separate yogurt incubator and putting that in the fridge. If you use an incubator with an insert that can double as a storage container, that's awesome. However, my incubator was limited to a 2-quart capacity, plus the pan had a handle and rivets and a lid that were annoying to fit into the sink and wash. The Instant Pot insert is quick and easy to wash. 

In addition to making yogurt, I also cooked a frozen rooster in the Instant Pot to use for meals, and then made broth from the carcass. Some meals we had this week were tacos, grilled backstrap and potatoes (yum!), taco bowls, and chicken and fried rice. It goes without saying that we had several (like, a whole weekend's worth) of potluck meals with relatives being home and then having open house leftovers. 

4. Collected cans on a walk.

So again, another week short on frugal accomplishments. But I have an excuse!! There are a lot of frugal accomplishments I've been hiding from you guys due to a special project that we have been working on all year. I'll have a blog post coming soon with lots of juicy details. ;)

Til next time, 
Bethany

​1. Shopping: It was a relatively no-spend grocery week at our house. We did end up spending $5.00 on a vegetable tray because somebody (might have been me *cough*) completely forgot about a church potluck. Oops! Good thing church is across the road from Kroger.

Some meals we had this week were breakfast for lunch, mac 'n' cheese w/ salad, leftovers, fajitas and sweet corn (yum!), pasta salad, BLT wraps, hash, hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, and cereal (that's a meal, right?) as well as some potluck meals.

2. Garden: Harvested plums, peppers, sage, calendula and lavender from the garden/orchard. I was able to get three pints of canned plums. I dried the herbs and froze the peppers. 

In addition to harvesting, I'm also working on cleaning out and preparing the garden for next Spring. It's kind of early to be transplanting and all that, but I want to get everything done before the end of September. I completely removed an overgrown sage plant and replanted just a portion of it in the chicken pasture (where it wouldn't be a nuisance). I also cleaned out my porch pots. This year I planted lettuce and sweet corn in the porch pot. The lettuce worked out great, but the sweet corn not so much.

I dug up and transplanted thyme and chives into the corn pot, and replanted the lettuce pot with more lettuce and some cilantro. I'm hoping to have fresh lettuce in October/November if everything works out.

3. Helped Hubs frame a painting that we bought in the Dominican Republic. It had been lying around for almost seven months, so I was happy to finally get it up on the wall. We used Hubs' tools and some scrap lumber. Hubs showed me how to use our table saw! 

4. And... another frugal accomplishment by my wonderful husband! We have been talking about building a vegetable stand for some time now- something to put out by the road where I can sell strawberries and other "farmers market" type items without actually being at a farmers market. A couple of weeks ago we saw a super cute lemonade stand at my friend Esther's house. Hubs really liked it and thought the design would work well not only for vegetables but also for parties or other community-type events. Next weekend my in-laws are hosting an open house, so Hubs decided to make one to use before then. It turned out perfect!

​Most of the stand is built with pallet wood and/or scrap lumber. There are some structural parts that he used new wood on. Total cost for the lemonade / vegetable stand was $11.00; $10.00 for four new 2'x4's, plus $1.00 for screws and nails (Hubs thought it was more like $0.30, but guessed more just to be safe). 

I asked Hubs how long it took him to build. He kinda rolled his eyes and said, "You don't want to know how long it took." In the end, he said it took "a day". Half the time was spent looking for just the right pallet wood and then tearing apart those pallets. Another large chunk of time was spent making plans for the structure and figuring out how to best use the scraps and bits. Hubs said that the actual construction time was only 10% of the total working time. 

So $11.00 and "about a day" later, we had ourselves a cute little lemonade stand! We are so excited to use it for events and roadside produce sales. :)

5. Collected cans on various walks.

6. Made updated autumn planner sheets on Microsoft Word.

So that is about it for frugal accomplishments this week. Again, I've spent a lot of time in August cleaning, organizing and reading. Help me out here- do you have any frugal accomplishments of your own to add to my paltry list?

1. Shopping: We went to Aldi this week and spent $24.64 after a $0.50 discount from returned bottles and a $0.25 Ibotta rebate. I did make a haul for Youtube, but haven't got it edited yet. So you will all have to be satisfied with a picture:

Some meals we had this week were macaroni and cheese, scrambled egg burritos, ham and cheese sandwiches, taco bowls, leftovers and more leftovers. Hubs was gone for three lunches this week so I just had smoothies or eggs for those meals. We also did a fair amount of potlucks and eating out this week. 

2. Garden: harvested bell peppers, cucumbers and herbs from the garden. We might have been eating sweet corn right now, had the raccoons not gotten in and decimated my patch. After this incident we put up a short electric fence around the corn, but one night it got turned off and they got in again. Thankfully there are still a few ears left, but I'm still waiting for them to grow to full size.

As a side note, I also picked some wild elderberries to make cough syrup with.

3. Cooking: this week I canned nine pints of dill pickles and two pints of plums. Our plum tree was badly rotted in the center, and a strong wind blew it over last week. Thankfully the plums were almost ripe, so I picked them and brought them inside to ripen gradually. This week I will probably can or freeze the rest of them. Apart from the canning, I also made cheese and popsicles with leftover smoothie "batter".

4. Collected cans on various walks. 

5. I bought a tank top and pair of bed sheets (needed for a project) at our local thrift store. The shirt was $1.50 (50% off) and the sheets were $6.00. Usually I don't shop at our local thrift store because it's expensive. However, I had JUST purchased a brand new set of sheets at Walmart for $25.00 when the thought occurred to me that I could get away with using thrift store sheets. Even though they weren't half off, the used sheets saved me $19.00. Normally I would never spend $1.50 on a used tank top either, but it was a specialty shirt that I will use heavily for the next couple months. ;)

6. I did a lot of organizing and de-cluttering last week. Isn't it amazing how cleaning will reveal treasures that you didn't know you had? One of the tasks on my to-do list was to clean out my herb collection. I found over 36 medicinal herbs (dried), several tinctures and a salve. Most of these were homegrown, foraged or otherwise made by me for pennies on the dollar. I moved them from a high, hard-to-reach cupboard down to a more easy-to-access one. Some of the older herbs I replaced with new herbs of the same variety. There were enough extras of some herbs to start a separate collection for animal use. My goal for this project was to make the herbs more accessible and usable, which I think was accomplished.

Mixed in with my herbs were a ton of non-medicinal loose-leaf teas that I had forgotten about. Yay! I will really enjoy those this winter, now that I'm aware of their presence. I also found an envelope with cash in it that we had saved for a previous vacation. THAT'S an exciting find.

6. Downloaded some free audio books from Amazon. If you are homeschooling or enjoy classic (out-of-copyright) fiction, you can almost always download the free ebook on Amazon. For those who don't know, you can get a free Kindle app for your phone or device, and then read the book from there instead of buying a Kindle.

Amazon is the parent company of Audible, producer of audio books. I love audio books because they save me a massive amount of time. I can "read" while I'm on my daily walk, doing animal chores, gardening, cleaning or washing dishes. The only problem: even though the Audible app is free, most of their high-quality audio books are VERY expensive- like, $15.00 or more per book. However, if you "buy" a free classic fiction ebook on Amazon, sometimes you can order the audio version between $0.00 and $2.99 as an add-on purchase. 

The books I downloaded to my phone were Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, and The Man Who Knew Too Much by G.K. Chesterton. Both are fiction works. I may or may not listen to the first (after reading the description I realized I had already seen a movie of the story), but I really like Chesterton's non-fiction and am interested to see what his fiction is like. The Man Who Knew Too Much is a collection of eight detective short stories, with a total listening time of six hours. For productivity reasons I favor non-fiction over fiction, but I feel like there is less time wasted with audio books because I can do something with my hands while listening to the story.

Note: obviously if an audio book is not free on Amazon/Audible, you can most likely borrow it for free from your local library. Several weeks ago I figured out how to put CD audio books onto my phone, but it does take a lot more time and you don't get to keep the book.

7. Lastly, I sold three dozen eggs and three bars of soap. This will help a LOT with my hobby farm expenses.

​
YouTube Videos:

I only uploaded two videos this week.

1. Amazon Unboxing (a "haul" of some non-food items I ordered!)
2. How to Make Dill Pickles

The longer I put up Youtube videos, the more I realize what people will actually watch. There is far less interest in DIY or tutorial videos than there is for "here's what I bought" videos.

Because of this strange phenomenon, I've decided to start doing Amazon hauls (infrequent as they are) along with the grocery store and garage sale hauls. Most of my Amazon purchases are well thought out, researched and "slept on"- sometimes for months- before I actually buy. I explain my Amazon rules in the video, as well as my thoughts on Amazon Prime.

For those of you who are interested, I've set up an affiliate links page for my Amazon purchases. If you like the same things that I do, and you're interested in passively supporting my blog/Youtube channel, buy through those links! Another way you can support my work is by purchasing my books and leaving a review on Amazon. I'm not desperate for money, but I AM desperate for reviews! So if you have already purchased/downloaded a book, thank you SO MUCH and I would really appreciate it if you could leave an honest review for other future readers.

Til next time,
​-Bethany

Hooray for another awesome week of frugality!
​
1. Shopping: This week I went to our local Spartan Nash "village" store for couponing. You can see a picture of that haul below my Youtube video. I passed up several coupon deals because they were still too expensive to be worth buying (this is a frugal accomplishment in itself!).

Then we went to the Dollar Tree. I forgot how much I loved the Dollar Tree! You can see what we bought in the video below:

I did end up going to Kroger on Sunday and purchasing some grapes (on sale for $0.88/lb.) and also a can of orange juice concentrate. Total spent on groceries this week was $11.12.

2. Gardening: harvested cucumbers and cut flowers from the garden. I also saved some calendula seeds to plant next year.

3. Cooking: This week was definitely a "cook to pad out the grocery supply" week. I made cheese, bread, mayo and cooked a batch of boiled eggs in my Instant Pot (affiliate link). I also used last week's Free Friday juice and some bulk gelatin powder to make jello snacks. Fun fact: you can still use months-old cabbage if it has started to get mold spots on the outer leaves. Just wash well and cut off the moldy part. The inside will most likely be pristine!

Lastly, I used my new Dollar Tree popsicle molds to make some chocolate/banana popsicles. The molds worked out great, and the recipe wasn't too bad, either. In the end, my recipe was basically a fruit smoothie with cocoa powder, poured into popsicle molds. I really like this idea because it retains the health benefits of smoothies without sacrificing the "treat" quality of ice cream. From here on out, I think I'll just pour half of my regular fruit smoothie into the molds. This will make my smoothie last for five days (one day for liquid smoothie, four days for popsicles) and I'll only have to wash the blender once.

​Some meals we had this week were: bean burritos, leftovers, turkey wraps, tacos, cabbage/sausage/potato hash, grilled potatoes & venison and tomato cheese sandwiches. Wednesday evening was date night, and Tuesday we ate dinner "out" at our local county fair. On Thursday my mom brought over some potluck leftovers and we had those for dinner.

Are You Really Eating for $10.00 per Week if You Eat Out?

I like to be transparent with you guys about how often my husband and I eat out. It's something we really enjoy and can afford to do. However, I can imagine many pointed fingers accusing us of not "really" living on a budget because we eat out. Recently I was browsing a grocery forum where people were sharing their budget. One lady posted a low-ish budget. Another forum member asked if her if she was "supplementing" with takeout a few nights per week- as if she wasn't being honest about their spending. Sometimes people like this are just curious, but other times they are looking for excuses to justify their higher spending ("she only cooks six nights per week and I cook SEVEN!"). Oh dear, mommy wars at their finest. 

Are Hubs and I being two-faced about our grocery spending? The reality is that most of my homemade dinners cost less than $0.75 per person. Breakfasts are far cheaper. If we really couldn't afford to eat out, it would be a simple matter of exchanging restaurant date night with an "extravagant" $3.00-4.00 in-home date night. Some great in-home date night ideas are grilling out (we currently do this every Friday, and it's just as cheap as my other meals!), homemade or frozen pizza, or some other favorite meal.

​By pushing two meals per week out of the "grocery" budget and into the "eating out" budget, we're only shaving a few dollars off of grocery spending. So eating out is NOT how we spend so little on groceries. It has more to do with the things I already mentioned in this post: shopping sales, buying reduced produce, using coupons, gardening and making grocery items like yogurt and popsicles from scratch. As you can see, we aren't even spending the full $20.00 every week, so there would be plenty of grocery money left for an in-home date night and the occasional sack lunch for the road instead of McDonalds.

Many "newbies" at frugality have a simplified idea that cooking meals at home will solve all of their grocery budget problems. They start cooking at home more, but it's a lot of work and they are still spending twice as much as other ladies on the grocery forums. In order to REALLY save, you have to figure out which meals are cheapest for your area, and then find out how to get the cheapest ingredients for those cheapest meals. This is also a lot of work for people who are still learning, but it can reduce the grocery bill by another 25%. Making excuses will lower your grocery bill by approximately 0%.

4. Collected cans to recycle on various walks.

5. Line dried four loads of laundry.

6. Made a shoe organizer for our mud room. The organizer started out as an old (free) TV stand. It's kind of ugly and was inefficient for storing shoes, so we made some grid shelving for the bottom section. This works very well for holding different pairs of shoes as opposed to just having a pile of mismatched shoes shoved in the bottom. I'm also going to put up a little curtain on the front of the TV stand so you can't even see the storage, but that is a picture for another time.

7. Used coupons for toothpaste and toilet paper. These are both items that we prefer to buy name-brand, which make them suitable for couponing. I like Scott toilet paper because I think it gives the most value per roll. A lot of people like thick, paper-towel/kleenex-like toilet paper, but I really don't. In addition to being extremely wasteful,  I don't like the lint fuzz it leaves all over. I can't speak for anyone else, but in my experience I use the same amount of sheets whether the toilet paper is thin or whether it's thick and fluffy. And what's more likely to plug up the toilet? Not Scott. Anyhow, that is my preferred brand and I was able to use a $2.00 off coupon at Walmart, bringing the price down to $0.61 per roll. I marked the date inside the last roll I put out, so now I can estimate how much money we spend per year wiping our tushies*. Because I'm a nerd like that.

Secondly, toothpaste. I could use the el-cheapo $0.88 Aim toothpaste all day long, but Hubs requested that we buy something else. Anything else, as long as it wasn't the el-cheapo stuff. So I used a $1.50 off coupon on a three-pack of Colgate toothpaste, also at Walmart. This brought the price down to $1.02 for an 8 oz. tube, thereby making the Colgate toothpaste CHEAPER than Aim by about $0.03 per oz. Total savings: $0.72 by couponing for toothpaste, while simultaneously fulfilling brand preferences. What a deal.

I think I am going to continue to use coupons for things like toothpaste, toilet paper, deodorant, etc. in order to save money. This will be especially helpful for the name-brand items that we like.

8. Made a table arrangement with (almost) free flowers from the garden. I have been wanting to do this ALL summer and just never got around to it! By a stroke of luck, I had sunflowers, delphinium and bells of Ireland blooming all at the same time, and they made a lovely arrangement. The only thing I paid for was the bells of Ireland seeds ($2.50 for a packet). I plan on saving some of those seeds from this year so next year's plants will be truly free.

9. Cleaned out my bottle collection (I like making sodas and other drinks) from beneath the sink and found some that could be recycled. I added these to the pop cans I collect while on walks.

10. Cut up several pairs of jeans to use for a braided rug.

11. Made laundry soap.

Whew! I think that's it. I had such a fun week making and doing frugal things. 

Til next time,
-Bethany

*Have I heard of reusable toilet paper, AKA "family cloth"? Yes. Will I ever use it? I hope not. 

​Goats

​Both goats are doing great. Adi is growing a shiny new coat of hair, presumably for winter already. She is currently giving about 1 1/3 cups of milk per milking; just over one pint per day. I am going to continue milking through the month of August, and then start milking once a day for the first 1-2 weeks in September. After that I'll dry her off until breeding in early/mid October.

​Chickens

I have good news and bad news from the chicken department. The good news is that none of the hens or roosters died. Another good point is that my broody hen finally hatched out her chick. The bad news is that the chick died a few days later. :( We never did figure it out, as the chick didn't drown and wasn't attacked by a predator. Our best guess is that it died of heat or got stepped on by the goat. That was kind of sad, because I thought the broody hen would take better care of her chick without my assistance.

​The chickens are laying between 6-9 eggs per day, and I am feeding the the same $0.66/day in feed. If I weren't selling any of the eggs, my cost per dozen would be $1.06. This month, egg sales paid for feed costs with an additional $7.00 profit. So all of the eggs we ate were free.


Ducks

​I finally got around to butchering my two remaining male ducks. Hubs helped. This was a huge burden off my shoulders! I had forgotten a few key points on how to do it, so the processing took a LOT longer than it should have. I did freeze the body and drumsticks separately because they are best cooked at different temperatures (something I learned from my first duck). I still have two roosters to go, but those are easy enough to do on my own.

My one remaining female duck is recovering from some kind of foot infection (it's not bumble foot/staph) and is currently not laying eggs.


Strawberries

For those who don't know, I put in a 300-plant strawberry patch this spring in order to sell strawberries at a roadside stand next year. This income will hopefully replace the need for farmers markets. Not much is going on with the strawberry patch. We set up a sprinkler system earlier in the month that can be easily moved around to wherever it's needed. Ideally I'd have put in drip irrigation, but for the amount of plants we have I don't think it would make sense financially. Plus the patch is not established yet, and it would be a pain to till/weed around the hoses.

Besides watering once a week or so, I've also been tilling between the rows and weeding between individual plants. Actually, Hubs has been tilling and I have been weeding. We till once every 3-4 weeks (it takes about 30 minutes) and I weed after everything has been tilled. The first weeding sessions didn't take all too long because the plants were smaller. I could use a hoe for most of the weeds, and then just hand weed right up close to the strawberry plants. Now that the plants are bigger and sending out runners, the hoe is counter-productive and almost everything must be done by hand. After the last tilling, it took me between 5-10 hours (a week's worth of afternoons) to weed the whole patch.

​There are a few empty spots in the patch where plants died. I am going to fill in these spots with strawberry plants from my old garden patch, which I'll probably till and reseed with a cover crop this fall.


Other Garden-Related Items

This year I tried to use some of my garden space to save money on hobby farm expenses. I grew a patch of mangel beets for animal fodder, and also grew some new herbs to use in soaps and other products to sell. As far as I can tell, both the herbs and beets were a success. The seed packets (all of which were from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds) only cost a few dollars and paid for themselves in the first year. I am saving seed from the calendula so I won't have to buy it again.


Book of the Month: The Bio-Integrated Farm

I read one farm-related book this month on permaculture; The Bio-Integrated Farm (affiliate link) by Shawn Jadrnicek. I was almost surprised to see it available through the interloan system already, since it was just published in March of last year. Borrowing from the library was a good frugal move because the book costs $25.00- used- on Amazon. Unfortunately I had to return the information-packed book before I finished it, but nonetheless I picked up a few great ideas for my chickens in particular. A lot of the information on ponds and greenhouses was fascinating to read about, but far beyond my budget and mechanical ability to implement.
​

Summer Goals

There are a few more things on my hobby farm to-do list before the summer is over. I'd like to use up all of my freezer fat to make soap and also butcher those two roosters. In the garden department, I'd like to till my old strawberry patch and move some of my old herbs (sage, 2016 lavender plant and thyme) into raised beds. Lastly, I'd like to make some revisions to my farmers market book (affiliate link) and re-release it.


Profit & Loss

Expenses:
Shelled corn- $22.00
Layer mash- $22.00
Total expenses: $44.00

Income: 
Books- $10.80
Eggs- $27.00 
Babysitting- $25.00
Total income: $62.80

Net profit: $18.80
Year-to-date net profit: $137.69

So, I cheated on income this month. Instead of doing a farmers market, I just threw in some babysitting money and pretended that was "farm" income. It was a lot easier than actually doing a farmers market. 

My original plan this year was to do one day of market per month in order to support the hobby farm. Ideally, I would net $40.00 each time and this would more than pay for farm expenses. However, my June market was a complete bust, and I actually lost money after working 10+ hours. It was very discouraging and made me re-think doing any more markets this year. In addition, there are some big changes coming for us in October and I decided it would be wise to spend my free time preparing for those instead of earning a few more dollars for the homestead.

I thought I would be drastically behind this month without the babysitting subsidy, but before the month was over I sold several dozen more eggs than anticipated. In addition, I received some royalties from my farmers market book (which is the one I count toward "farm income"). So in the end, I would have *almost* broke even without the babysitting money. But I left it in there because an $18.00 net profit looks good on the books. :)

That's about it for this month! Hope you guys had a great July.
-Bethany