My Frugal Accomplishments

This has been an interesting week.  I ended up spending 4 days with my Mom, moving things around her old house, taking stuff to the dump, and helping her shred papers.  (She burned out the motor on her paper shredder, so I brought mine down to help her finish the house.)

One of the happiest events of this past week was that my Mom gave us the sofa she had in her family room.  It's a beautiful piece of furniture.  I believe it's a sectional sofa.  She's had it in her house for 2 years, but it has rarely been used.  It is now in our living room, and finally, everyone has a place to sit when they come into our living room!

If you remember, these were my goals for last week:

This Week's Goals:

3) Meatless Mondays
Any meal where meat is not served is inherently cheaper than a meal where meat is served.  Mondays will be meat-free from now on.  (This includes lunch!) 

We survived Meatless Monday!  Last week, we had Black Bean, Corn, and Mango Salad for dinner.

Yesterday, all of the kids were home from college.  We had a big pot of oven baked oatmeal for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and French Toast for dinner.   The oatmeal contained pecans and mixed dried fruit.  It was wonderful!

 
4) Salvage the strawberry patch.

Our strawberry patch was invaded by Appalachian Mounding Ants this past year.  These mean little buggers dig holes, bite, and killed off my strawberries.  I gave up on doing anything with the strawberries at all last summer, and haven't dealt with that corner of the yard since then.  The patch was in a raised bed, so this past fall, we pulled the surrounding bed supports out of the ground and put it into the shed.  I've found a new place for my strawberry bed that is closer to the house, and closer to water.  I need to put the raised bed into the new location, and then see if there are still any strawberries left in the old patch to salvage that can go into the new patch.

 
I didn’t get to this during this past week, I need to do this this week.

 

5) Can spaghetti sauce.

The tomatoes are going gangbusters.  It's time! 

Didn’t finish this, but we had several fantastic tomato based dinners, including bruschetta, and a mozzarella and tomato salad.

  

6) Finish the T-shirt quilt for middle child.

Finished hand quilting two more blocks of this quilt.

 

7) Go grocery shopping and stock up for a month.
I will plan out our meals for the next month.  One stop at the grocery store should hold me for the next month. 

I didn’t finish this.  I’m still planning, and I'm entering everything into a database so that I will be able to pull it up and print it all out before I leave for the store. 

8) I will get out and exercise at least 3 days this week.  I know it's not frugal now... it's for the future.  The better my health now, the less chance I will have of having a long-term chronic condition in the future.  This in turn will keep our long term health expenses down as we will have fewer medical expenses as we age.

Done.  I exercised 4 separate days this week.

 
9) I will line dry 3 loads of laundry.
 

10) I will begin working on the calendars that I give out to family every year.  These calendars contain pictures of our family, and go to the grandparents.

I’ve uploaded the pictures to the computer.  I have yet to put them into the calendar.

This week's goals:
1) I will continue to work on middle child's t-shirt quilt.

2) Meatless Monday

3) I will continue to work on the family calendars.

4) Salvage the strawberry patch.

5) I will line dry 4 loads of laundry this week.  Now that the weather is a little less humid, I'm willing to see if some of the heavier clothes will dry on the line.  (Towels, blue jeans)  The weather the past few weeks has been too humid for the heavy clothes to completely dry.

6) Can spaghetti sauce.

7) I will exercise for at least 30 minutes 3 days this week.

8) I will make and freeze several batches of French Bread Pizza.

9) I will spend 15 minutes a day on cleaning and straightening the big, messy room in the basement.

10) I will get to the library.