​Wow, despite the Thanksgiving holiday (weekend) and the busy-ness that went along with it, I actually did a lot of frugal things last week. Note: affiliate link coming up! Please use it if you like free groceries!
 
1. Groceries: We spent a lot on groceries this week. I spent $9.11 on food items early in the week as part of a Walmart pickup (I LOVE Walmart’s grocery pickup program, by the way). These were technically free because I got $10.00 off my first order! You can get $10.00 off too with the link above. The only drawback to grocery pickup is that, to my knowledge, you can't use coupons, plus you can't purchase things by the pound (for example, turkey- all of the turkeys are the same price, regardless of weight). This is because you pay for your order ahead of time. But if you don't use coupons and aren't including meat or bulk produce in your order, seriously. There is no reason not to try Walmart grocery pickup. You park in a special spot by the side of the building, and a friendly lady fills your car with groceries. With a baby, this is perfect for me. Or for anyone who hates going into Walmart but loves their low prices. I checked the clock, and it took five minutes from when I parked to when I pulled out of the parking lot.

Later in the week we went back to Walmart to pick up some things for Thanksgiving ($34.63). I also bought two turkeys ($12.95) to can or freeze and eat later in the year. Total spent on groceries this week was $56.69.
 
I could have saved some money on Thanksgiving by making things from scratch instead of buying them. We had two meals to contribute to. For my parent’s Thanksgiving, we brought grape “salad” (really just grapes and cool whip) and pies. I made the grape salad ($7.00 or so for ingredients) and we bought the pies at Walmart. For Hubs’ family Thanksgiving, we brought mixed veggies ($5.00 or so) and more grape salad. I also made a flopped pumpkin roll that we ended up eating after all of the celebrations were over.
 
2. Free food: We got a LOT of free food this week! First off, my Walmart pickup order came with a welcome bag that had some canned stuff and snack items in it (see picture above). In addition to the free food, our welcome bag also had coupons for two free iced coffee drinks. Hubs was really excited about that. Usually he is not so excited about my coupon adventures, but this time he offered to go and hunt down the freebies with the help of a Walmart associate. LOL!
 
Second, my sister was home for the weekend and she brought us a whole haul of free food! Sis works at a camp and sometimes brings home extra camp food for the rest of us. Some of these treasures included cheese, avocados, dried cranberries and a big bag of pecan halves. It was probably over $40.00 worth of food.

​ 
3. Cloth diapers: time for the weekly diaper update! I promise one of these days I am just going to do a massive cloth diaper post with all of the frugal things I tried and a rundown of every dollar I spent.
 
A) We cloth diapered three days last week. We were not at home Thursday through Sunday, so I used disposables on those days. I am still using disposables at night too because they are a little more absorbent and we have some size 2's that Baby is about to grow out of. The three days that we did cloth diaper went very well. I realized that I needed a bigger wet bag for the dirty diapers.
 
B) Used a $10.00 Swagbucks gift card to buy a set of large wet bags at 50% off. I spent $10.00 out of pocket for two large wet bags. These are essentially laundry bags for dirty diapers.
 
C) Bought some hemp diaper inserts at 20% off thanks to Black Friday sales. These will be for overnight diapering when Baby grows out of her size 2 disposables. I wanted the Thirsties brand because they have a lot of good reviews on Amazon. Walmart’s price was $14.00 for a pair of inserts. Amazon was selling a pair for $9.00. Nicki’s Diapers had the best price at $7.00 for two. I knew that shipping would bump the price up a bit, but Nicki’s was offering free shipping on orders of $10.00 or more. So I just order two sets instead of one, bringing my total spent to $14.00. Half the price of Walmart! It will be good to have so many inserts; that way I won’t have to do laundry as often.
 
4. Line dried 3 loads of laundry.
 
5. Canned 7 quarts of potatoes (a 10lb. bag). My actual savings from this activity was only $2.00 or $3.00. However, I was able to cut up the potatoes all at once (I did cubes) which will save me time in the future. Next time I want to use potatoes for soup, they will be all cut up, cooked and ready to go. I consider this convenience the main benefit and the savings were a bonus. I’m not sure if I will do this again or not.
 
6. Bought a gift using an old gift card I had and Ebates. My total cost out of pocket was $5.00.
 
7. Made a memory shadow box for Baby Girl. I had saved some things from the hospital to use (wrist bands, hat, bassinet card) as well as some pictures we had printed at Walmart. I think the shadow box was $0.50 at a garage sale. Total cost was $1.50 ($1.00 for the pictures). Overall I thought it turned out really well.
 
8. Lastly, we spent the weekend out of town and got a free hotel room upgrade! The sheets on our hotel bed had not been changed, so Hubs called the front desk and they upgraded us to a Jacuzzi room for free. Yay! And yes, I am one of those people who collects the hotel soap and shampoo and brings it all home. No shame.
 
Did you do anything frugal last week? Black Friday finds or otherwise?

Another great deal this week was Aldi butter on sale for $2.29 a pound. Last year Kroger had butter on sale for $2.00/lb, but so far I haven't seen it lower than $2.50 (this week it was "on sale" for $3.00/lb.). So I bought 10 pounds at Aldi, which put me over budget by a couple of dollars this week. That's okay though, as butter prices can climb as high as $3-4/lb. during other times of the year. 

​I also decided to dry my cheap onions and celery. I need more space in the freezer, and I'd rather use that valuable freezer space for things like meat or fruit. Cheap vegetables like carrots, potatoes and onions can be dried or canned. Like I said before, normally I don't preserve purchased vegetables, but these were so cheap they were almost free.

Also as a side note: I reuse lids when I'm canning something as cheap as potatoes. If the jar unseals for some reason, I've lost less than $0.40. But if I'm canning meat or something more expensive, I always use new lids. It's not worth saving $0.10 at the risk of wasting $1.00!

Total spent on groceries this week was $35.24. It's hard to stay under budget when there are so many awesome sales and deals going on.

3. Cloth diapers: My Thirsties AIO diaper, pocket diapers and bamboo inserts arrived this week! I am going to do a full post on my cloth diapering adventures soon, but until then I'll share just one frugal project I've been working on: fitted diapers!

A fitted diaper is just a prefold that has been shaped like a diaper. You use it the same way as you would flats or prefolds (that is, with a cover), but the bulk has been moved around a little. This is very easy to do with a regular old prefold. Right now I'm trying a few different designs to see what works best. You can see how much better the prefold fits Baby Girl now:

Converting my prefolds was a real game-changer. It just takes too much time for me to fold and then try to fasten everything together, only to have the whole thing soaked in less than two hours. With less bulk I can add doublers, which make all the difference in Baby Girl's case. 

4. Line-dried one load of laundry. I've started line drying indoors again. Our indoor line consists of screw-in hooks on either side of our bedroom wall. On laundry day, I string up the line and hang the clothes on the line, which runs over our bed. When I'm done hanging everything, I make sure to turn on the ceiling fan to improve the airflow.

One nice benefit of line drying indoors is that it acts as a temporary humidifier. This is nice because our heated indoor air is so dry in the winter. I put a hygrometer (measures moisture) in our bedroom, and on laundry day the humidity went from 45% to 55%. So not only does indoor line drying save money, but it also improves the air quality for us. So when my diapers aren't diapering, they can function as little humidifiers.

5. Used a gift card and Ebates to purchase a gift.

6. Got a $10.00 gift card from Amazon by using Swagbucks (and Ebates)! November is a great time of year to start doing Swagbucks if you haven't already. Most of my big online shopping sprees are done during this time. In addition, I've noticed that Swagbucks put out several high-value codes per day last week, as opposed to their usual $0.02 daily afternoon codes. It did take me a year to earn that $10.00 gift card, but... it will buy another two cloth diapers for Baby Girl. :)

So that's it for this week! I'm pretty excited about sharing next week's accomplishments as I have several projects in the works already.

Til next time,
Bethany

​I waited a long time to post the October update because we made some big changes recently.

Goats

I didn't feed any hay in October thanks to the warm weather/pasture growth. Last week as I was feeding the goats, baby in a front pack, I noticed that Barry's hooves were in bad need of clipping. Ugh. I had put off clipping them while I was pregnant, not wanting to deal with his bulk, have him kick me, etc. But now that I had the baby, there was even less of a chance that I'd get it done. I'd have to get my husband out to help me lift him onto the stand, and then we'd have to have someone else watch the baby. Furthermore, there were 100 other things I'd rather be doing with my baby-free minutes than clipping goat hooves. I realized then that I didn't have enough time/energy to devote to the goats' care beyond basic feeding chores. 

The choice to sell was spur-of-the-moment... kind of. For the past year or so I noticed that Adi's milk supply was declining to where it was just enough for Hubs and I, and it only lasted four-five months. She was still paying her way though, and not a lot of work to keep, so my plan was to keep her for the rest of her life and then re-evaluate getting new goats when she died. I seriously considered selling Barry this fall, but just never got around to it. 

Before baby was born, it was easy to do stuff outside. Now that she is here, I can still do stuff... in 15 minute increments, with her strapped to my chest or hanging out in a stroller nearby. I can still do things, but it's a lot harder. And it makes me think twice about everything I do. I realized last week that it would be better to sell both goats NOW before I spend more money on feed and hay. I also won't have to deal with kidding in the spring, selling goat babies, milking, washing jars, etc. Furthermore, we can be a little more free to travel if animal chores are only once a day year-round. I always dreaded pawning off my milking chores onto friends or family. Last year Adi kidded while we were in the Dominican Republic. Not anymore!

The new owner has her own goat dairy and I'm confident she will take great care of my goats. Also, not having the goats will free up the time I do have, so I can focus on caring for my chickens and strawberry patch. 


Poultry

My only expense this month was the purchase of two new ducks at $15.00 each. I'm 100% that one of them is female... not sure about the other one. As far as I know, neither of them is laying eggs yet. They should start laying soon, though. Right now I am only getting two chicken eggs per day. Obviously this is *just* enough for our own use with not an egg to spare/sell. I upped their daily feed ration by two pounds to see if it increases production, but so far I haven't noticed a difference.


Garden

We mostly finished up garden work in October. I dug up/harvested all of the remaining edibles and Hubs tilled up my annual beds. Because I had so many unused raised beds this year, I think I will eliminate growing space in front and just let that go into grass to be mowed. Corn will grow where my old strawberry patch used to be.

I had a free hour one Saturday to clean out the chicken coop. I put all of the dried up chicken poo on my raised beds. Some of the poop came off in "sheets", which was really convenient actually. Usually I do lasagna composting with my raised beds (carbon layer alternated with nitrogen layer), but this year I'm just going to dump the chicken manure on and leave it at that. I bed the chicken coop with pine sawdust, so the rotted mixture of wood (carbon) and manure (nitrogen) should provide the same effect as layering carbon and nitrogen materials. Plus I don't have time for layering this year.

Strawberries

We tilled in between the strawberry rows one last time. I'm hoping to get the rows covered with straw sometime in late November/early December. I was also hoping to go through and weed the patch one last time before it got cold, but that just didn't happen. Oh well.

We used leaves fallen from the property to cover some of the strawberries. This was nice because they were free.


Profit & Loss

Income: 
$4.00- Eggs
$270.00- Goats and goat tattoo kit
Total income: $254.00

Expenses: $30.00- Ducks

Net profit: $244.00
Year-to-date net profit: $325.36

Since we sold the goats, I won't be buying hay or restocking the goat feed this month (November). The chickens are set for a while in regards to feed. November should have a really boring report!

Til next time,
-Bethany

1. Groceries: We spent $34.54 at Aldi this week. There were some sales that I wanted to take advantage of, plus we had to restock on sour cream, tortillas, milk, and... snack items. Total spent on snack items was $14.53.  Husbands and kids always get blamed for snack purchases, but in reality $10.00 of the snack spending was mine. I bought a canister of nuts, bar of $2.00 85% dark chocolate and box of protein bars. Those are much more expensive than less-healthy Hubby snacks. So, I take the blame and responsibility for reducing snack spending.

2. Cooking: I cut leftover homemade bread into cubes for stuffing, made taco seasoning, and cooked and froze sweet potatoes. Aldi sweet potatoes were $0.99 for a 3lb. bag last week, which was a smashing deal. I got some extra for the freezer. I also picked the last of the green tomatoes out of the garden and put them in an egg carton to ripen.

Meals we had this week were: Egg & bean burritos, oatmeal, sausage & rice, buffalo chicken pasta, turkey soup, egg & sausage tortillas, leftovers and a couple potluck meals.

3. Cloth diapers: So, my cloth diaper adventure really needs a whole post for itself. But I did do some frugal things this week in regards to increasing/improving my stash:

I used some baby shower gift cards to buy one diaper cover and one AIO diaper. Walmart had several Thirsties brand diapers and covers on sale for a good price, so I bought one Duo Wrap size 2 for $8.25 and one all-in-one (AIO) diaper for $12.36. I also bought some other things, which (after more cloth diaper research) I've decided to return. My order was over $35 and thus qualified for free shipping, plus I used Ebates to save another $0.87 or so.

I also made a gusset pattern for the Econobum covers that I'm reviving.

Right now, my stash includes the following:

-12 cotton prefolds
-1 Thirsties diaper cover
-3 Econobum covers (need work)
-1 Thirsties AIO diaper
-1 set Boingo clips
-3 Snappi clips
-1 wet bag
-1 pail liner
​-12 Thirsties cloth wipes

Some of the stash was given to me and some of it I bought. So far I've spent $18.74. I've also spent an additional $15.48 on cloth diaper sewing supplies- snaps and Babyville PUL fabric. I am waiting for another trip to Joanns to purchase the snap pliers for $12.00 with a coupon.

Last week I started trying out different prefold folds and covers. I thought the prefolds would last as long as our disposables have, but apparently not. They will last longer than an hour, but no longer than two hours before becoming absolutely SOAKED. It appears I have a "heavy wetter" on my hands (or the prefolds I have are too small). After doing some internet searches, I discovered why people like bamboo or hemp inserts: they're 40% more absorbent than cotton. Of course all the materials (cotton, hemp, bamboo, microfiber) are finicky in their own way and each has their pros and cons. I also read all sorts of cool tricks and improvements to increase absorbency and/or eliminate diaper rash for cheap. I look forward to report on some of these experiments in the following weeks.

So far I've used $34.22 of my $100.00 cloth diaper budget. I also have another $45.12 worth of merchandise on its way to my house: the AIO diaper, a pocket diaper and bamboo inserts. Lastly, I want to remember to save $12.00 of my budget for the snap pliers. With all of those costs added up, I have just $27.40 left to spend. How I spend this will determine which kind of diaper works best for me; prefolds and covers, pockets or AIOs. If the AIOs work best, I'll most likely exceed my budget by $50.00 or more. But I've come to the conclusion that it would still be saving money if I used the expensive diapers; just not as much money. But the diapers would be there for the next kid, or available to sell and I might be able to recoup some of my investment.

4. Lastly, I cleaned out the chicken coop and saved the manure to use on my garden.

What frugal things did you do this week?

​Well, guess what? I actually have some accomplishments to share this week! 

Groceries: I spent $18.20 on groceries this week at Kroger. You can see my (very) brief grocery haul below:

Kroger had a buy 10, get $5.00 off sale. I only found one item at stock-up price: pasta. The very cheapest I can get pasta for is $0.66/lb. at the Dollar Tree, and Kroger had it for $0.49/lb. I bought 19 boxes for a total of $9.50. I also bought a box of cereal, which I THOUGHT would cost $0.50 after the sale and an additional e-coupon.

To make a long story short, my box of cereal was 1/4 oz. too large to qualify for the sale. This messed up my receipt big time: not only did I pay full price for the cereal ($3.50), but I only had 19 participating boxes of pasta instead of 20 and therefore nine boxes were NOT $0.49/box. I knew something was wrong because I estimated paying around $15.00 and my bill came to $22.50. To make things worse, we used the self-checkout, so I didn't know if the mistake was mine or the machine's, or what. 

The lady at customer service was very helpful explaining what had happened. She also showed me how to check the receipt at the bottom to see if I have enough "participating items" to qualify for the sale.

Even with all of the cereal hoopla, I'm still very excited about the pasta purchase. This will save an additional $0.25-$0.50 every week for the next year. That's how grocery savings are done- quarter by quarter!! Compared to Dollar Tree pasta the savings are relatively small (more like $0.08- $0.16 each week) but the Dollar Tree only has elbow noodles and spaghetti. At Kroger I was also able to get fettuccine, angel hair, and mostaccioli. 

Also picked up two free containers of yogurt (I'll use them for starter this month) with an Ibotta rebate:

Other than that, I did bring all of my houseplants indoors. Some of the drainage trays had been broken or lost over the summer, so I decided to make my own communal drainage tray for all of the houseplants. I bought a boot tray at Walmart and added some decorative stones from the Dollar Tree. Total cost was about $8.00. This will minimize spills, keep all the plants in one place, and it is prettier than a bunch of random, mismatching trays (I used a pie pan underneath my corn plant. Ugly!). Why are houseplants frugal? In addition to cleaning the air for free, they provide flowers and foliage for winter cheer.

3. VOA 50% off sale: Volunteers of America had their monthly half-off sale this week, which is my "winter garage sale". I keep a running list of random Walmart-type items that I need, and look for those at the 50% off sale. This time I bought brand new sheet protectors, two binders, four shirts, two tubs for organizing, and a bread machine. I estimate that I saved over $50.00 by purchasing those things used (half-off used, no less!).

I think my best find was the bread machine at $2.00. I had picked out a different machine at the store, but when I plugged it in it didn't work. This one worked at the store and made a nice loaf of bread at home. The inside was a little scratched up, but for $2.00 I'm not complaining. Eventually I want to find a machine that can mix cookie dough and pasta as well, but the current machine will fill in the gap until I can find my dream bread maker for cheap.

My kitchen tools are my little servants. On Thursday (cooking day), the work I did was really minimal. I used my larger Instant Pot to make the yogurt, and the bread machine made the bread. It was fascinating to watch the bread machine start kneading, let the dough rest, start up again, let it rise and bake. I didn't see the timer when it was done, but it must have taken between three and four hours. During afternoon nap time as I scrolled through my phone looking for coupon deals, I could smell the bread baking. I thought about how in former days I would've had to babysit the loaf, move it to a baking pan, remember to turn on and turn off the oven. Not to mention there would've been flour and gunk all over the counter, and I would've had to wash the flour paste off of my mixer/mixing bowl. The bread machine did all that for me. Amazing! (Well, I still had to clean the baking container, but it was so fast and easy thanks to the non-stick surface.)

The sheet protectors and binders are for my new Home Management Book. This will replace the little planner that I've been using for the past two years. With baby around, I don't fill up a planner sheet every day. It will be easier and faster to use the Home Management: Plain and Simple method for organizing tasks into different days. Already this is working so well for me and Baby Girl. On Monday all the laundry got done, on Tuesday I cleaned up some office loose ends. Wednesday was kind of a disaster, but things cleared up in the evening and we still made it to town for date night and errands. Thursday made up for Wednesday when I was able to not only do dishes, but clean the fridge, make bread, yogurt AND two REAL meals plus breakfast for myself! On Friday I took out the trash and did vacuuming/sweeping. I'm sure there were other things I did on Friday too; I just forget what they were.

4. Picked up cans this week while on a walk with Baby Girl. Almost a dollar's worth!

5. Gave Hubs his annual/semi-annual haircut. I used a pair of garage sale clippers and some hair-cutting scissors from Walmart. This is the second time using the clippers. I like using the clippers for the sides especially, which tend to get out of control, and leave more length on top. While curly hair can be challenging to cut, it's very forgiving when you're finished. Once Hubs' hair has been washed and dried, most of my mistakes are covered pretty well. :)

So those are my frugal accomplishments for the week! Did you do any frugal stuff this week?