1. Shopping: I barely slid under budget this week with a $19.94 haul from Aldi. You can watch that below:
3. Earned $60.00 picking strawberries for the neighbor lady. I won't lie; getting up at 6:00 or earlier and picking for 3+ hours each morning Monday-Friday wasn't exactly fun. BUT I wanted some experience for my own patch next year, plus I earned enough money to pay for my new strawberry plants.
Another thing I did for my strawberry patch this week was set up a sprinkler system. It cost over $40.00, but I trust it will pay for itself next year by providing an increase in berries.
4. Cooking: Cut up and froze the free onions I was given (see grocery haul). I also made cheese, yogurt and Greek yogurt, and froze some of our surplus eggs. There are several ways you can freeze eggs. I froze my yolks and whites separately, but you can also mix them together and freeze in ice cube containers (1-egg portions).
Some meals we had this week were tacos, salad, baked potatoes, salad, leftovers and more salad. We also went to a contractor's lunch at Menards and ate for free there. They were giving out free T-shirts, so I picked up a large one to re-cut into a fitted T-shirt for myself (Youtube tutorial forthcoming!). Dinners were pretty sketchy this week because we were gone every night to a local church camp meeting/ revival services. Usually when we have somewhere to go at night, Hubs tends to wait until the very last minute to come home from work and ends up skipping dinner. This happens mostly during the "busy season"- thankfully not all year long. Of course it doesn't give much incentive for me to make/eat a real meal. Instead we just had cheese and grapes or whatever grab-and-go food I could come up with.
5. On Saturday we went to one of my favorite places here in MI- Greenfield Village!! Even though it wasn't frugal, I thought I'd share anyway. For those who aren't familiar, the village is a living history museum started by Henry Ford in the 1930's (it's affiliated with the Henry Ford Museum, also in Dearborn). Below are some fuzzy pictures I took with my phone. Too bad the lighting wasn't better in some of them.
Some other sites I really enjoyed visiting were Dr. Howard's office (full of herbal and plant-based medicines!) and the Hermitage slave quarters. One of the slave cabins is just an empty building with a bench in the middle and quotes/photos on the wall, but the other cabin is furnished. Slaves from the second cabin worked within the "task system" which meant that after 8-10 hours of work they could do what they wanted. I really enjoyed seeing examples of baskets, instruments and other handcrafts.
The last of my favorite sites for this visit was the Mattox home. Even though the house itself was built in the 1880s, the interior looks like it would have during the Great Depression. The staff member there described how the Mattox family would have practiced subsistence farming and made as much of their own stuff as possible because money was tight. I thought it was interesting that the family had a vineyard out back and sold wine to make extra money. This was probably extra lucrative during the prohibition years, which overlapped a bit with the Great Depression.
So that was our fun Saturday! Like I said, our visit wasn't particularly frugal. We paid full price for tickets, bought the ride pass, and ate lunch at the historic Eagle Tavern restaurant. And bought TWO frozen custards each! Travel isn't really something we economize on, but tourists on a budget could easily save money by finding cheaper tickets, buying a membership (for large families), forgoing the ride pass and bringing a sack lunch.
So, that was it for frugal accomplishments. As fun as our week was, I'm looking forward to some more time at home.
Youtube Videos:
I put up three Youtube videos this week:
Fresh Lettuce Prep & Storage
Thursday #2: Chicken Salad Wraps (part of my Weekly Menu playlist)
Aldi Grocery Haul: $19.94
How was your week?
-Bethany