Frugal Accomplishments This Week

​Hi everyone! I don’t have a lot to report, as most of this week’s activities were just a continuation of last week’s. But here are some things:

1. Groceries: I went to Kroger this week and bought a lot of pantry fillers. You can see the haul below:

I spent under $20.00 on everything. The roast was $9.16, the butter was a little over $2.00, the pasta was something like $0.50 each, sour cream was $1.00 (I know it's the wrong brand... this was a stand-in for what I actually bought), cereal was $0.99/box, and I believe the onions were $1.50.

I also froze and canned the venison we harvested from a road-kill deer last week. I canned most of the chunk meat and froze the backstrap in steaks. We already have a lot of ground venison from a deer that my BIL gave us last month.

I'm so happy to have a basement for food storage. I have a shelf down there divided into 6 parts, where I can keep dry goods and canned goods for the next 6 months. Last week I brought October's remaining jars upstairs and dumped the ones I knew I wouldn't use. I still have some spiced plums from October that I don't have the heart to throw away, but I don't really like them, either. What would you do with spiced plums?

2. Thrifting: Volunteers of America had their 50% off sale this week. I got quite a few things:

-A book for me.
-Three books for our daughter. We have a good selection of books at home, but I’m just tired of reading them. Seriously, I can quote those books better than my favorite movies. These new books were just $0.30 each, and have a good storyline, morals and illustrations. I’m okay with buying a book and donating it again if it doesn’t fit that criteria. Little Golden Books are usually a good choice, but I’ve even passed on some of those; especially the ones with trademarked “characters”: Sesame Street, Disney movies, etc. I don’t have a beef with characters, but I do prefer a clean, vintage aesthetic over a cartoon-y one.

​-Ark toy for our daughter. I’ve been wanting to buy her an ark for her animals and little people. This was $2.50. Not exactly cheap for a thrift store toy, but I believe it was a good value for the money. As cute as they are, eventually I want to replace the wooden animals with plastic ones that match her others, and the wooden Noah with a peg person Noah. 

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​-Several square baskets. I only buy square baskets for storage, because they fit together much more easily than circular ones.

-Boots for our daughter in a size up. I think they were $1.50. I’ve been surprised at how “expensive” used kids clothes are, but thrift store shoes are less than 10% the price of new kid shoes. So I’ll take it.

​-A lamp…post. It still needs a shade, so it’s just the metal post. It cost $4.00, but it works. I really liked the bronze finish. After I bought it, we went to Walmart and I was disappointed to see whole lamps for just $10.00. We bought one. Then we got it out of the box, and I realized why it was only $10.00. Hubs threw me one of the shades. “Try breaking this!” he said. It bounced off the floor. Dumb globe wasn’t glass, it was cheap plastic! In fact, the whole thing was cheap plastic, but I guess it won’t hurt anybody if it falls over. LOL.

3. House projects: we moved the washer upstairs, and Hubs hooked up the dryer. YAY!!! Now I have a functional (if not completed) laundry room! Our cabinet guy also put the stained glass insert into our corner cupboard, and the last of the cabinet hardware was purchased and installed. I know I promised before-and-after pics last week, BUT…

I forgot about this thing. More decisions. While we are definitely past the hardest part of moving and renovating, there is still so much more I want to do. Decorating seems to compete with getting the house functional. I think if we make a little bit of functional progress and a little bit of decorating progress each week, I’ll have this thing done by the time I die. HA!

I hope you all had a wonderful week!
Til next time,
-Bethany