Frugal Friday with Marsha 6/20/14

I am actually writing this post early and scheduling it to post as I am at a quilt retreat.
7:30 am to get there to help set up.  We sew from 9 am to 11 pm today and 9 am to 4 pm on Saturday.

The retreat costs $65.  It's in town so not an overnight to have to cover a motel too.  The $65 helps to pay for the small amount we are paying for the building, 3 meals, and a little towards some of the door prizes. 
Most door prizes were donated by a few quilt shops and then members of the guild.

Is this frugal?  Probably not....I could just set aside this same time and sew at home.  The problem is that I won't do it.  I will allow people to call and be taken somewhere....think I need to be on the computer....or any number of other excuses.
At home I won't have the socializing with other quilters either.

Let's just say it's frugal to save my sanity!

Hubby and I did shop at Aldi this week.  We spent just over $200.  I feel good knowing that we have plenty of food for suppers for some time.
Aldi is the cheapest place to shop, in my opinion.  We got a very nice variety.

We also bought 4 jugs of scoopable litter.  You might remember that I've been cutting up newspapers for the litter boxes for lots of months now to save the money of buying litter.
This does do the job, but I had a hard time keeping up with the papers, even picking up free papers here and there.  It also doesn't cover smell too well.
Aldi has the jugs for just $3.99.  I feel this is cheap enough to buy the litter over spending the time to cut up papers.  I can now find other things to do with the time that I was spending cutting them.
The grocery store has their store brand of the same size litter on sale for $5.89 this week.  PetCo offers you to refill this size jug for $5.49.  So, $3.99 really is a good deal.

One other thing hubby bought this past weekend was a new steam cleaner for the carpets.  (The income tax refund came in).
We ended up buying  Hoover Power Path as I wanted a smaller more portable machine.
It's been over a year since our other steam cleaner bit the dust.
I can feel that buying our own machine is frugal.  It's a lot cheaper than paying a company to come out to shampoo the carpets or to rent the machine at the store 2 or 3 times a year.
I'm very pleased with the Power Path.  It does a really good job....and especially with over a year of grandchildren, children, and pet stains!

I think that is all for me this week.  I do hope you have some posts to share this week.

An InLinkz Link-up

Frugal Friday with Marsha 5/16/14

This week has been spending a lot of time in the garage attempting to prepare for a garage sale that starts tonight then goes tomorrow.
A task that I should have been working on for a month!
I have had 2 aunts die in the last year and we put my mother-in-law into a home. This means that I brought stuff home from both my Aunt Donna's and my Aunt Thersea's and hubby has busily been bringing stuff home from his mom's house since her house is now sold.
What a mess!!

I really feel the need to put an ad in the newspaper to advertise our sale. I don't feel the need to pay the $26.25 that they want to only say Multi-family garage sale, our address and the day and time! That is highway robbery, as my mom says.
We don't have high ticket items to sell and usually I would be lucky to make $20 at a sale, if even that!

I've put the ad on craigslist. I've posted it to my status in facebook as well as to the local garage sale group. We also have a local buy, sell and trade facebook group. They co-own a website called BST Exchange. I've put the ad on the exchange and then posted the ad to that group too.
My mom is calling in to the local radio talk show this morning to advertise.
We then have a few signs made up to hang on some corners. Will it be enough? I can only hope and pray that it will.

Garage sales are so much work for such little turn over, at least for us they are.
I need to look through what is left of my couponing stash....I know I have some toothpaste and shave gel in excess and that generally will sell.


Last week I bought groceries at Walmart and spent $40 ($39.19 to be exact) on what seems like so little.
I bought:
16 lb bag of cat food
bagels
whipped cream cheese
8 pack of frozen burritos
sour cream
bag of salad
taco sauce
2 cup bag of shredded cheese
Carnation Instant Breakfast
.98 box of mini chewy sweetarts
gallon of milk

I've found myself wishing I had shopped at Aldi instead. In fact, when I get $40 again to spend I'm going to go to Aldi and experiment.
I know I can't get the sweetarts, but I can find some other sort of candy. They also don't sell my breakfast drink so I will have to know to take off $5 for that. I will be sure to post my results once I do.

Groceries are horribly priced these days! I'm working towards catching up with cutting and sorting my coupons once again. It's a must that I start paying attention to what is on sale and price matching and matching coupons as well. $40 a week for groceries is about my limit on what I can spend. As you can see from my list that $40 only really covered 1 meal and breakfasts, plus feeding the cats.
I could only do that last week because of the meats I got on markdown the week before.
It all works out in the end, but I'm missing my bargain coupon shopping.

How has your frugal week been?

An InLinkz Link-up

Frugal Friday with Marsha 3/28/14

It's hard to believe that March is almost over. A month ago today I was off to a weekend quilting retreat. It was here in town at a building at our state fairgrounds. It was my first retreat and I hope more to come.
I'm still kind of reeling from spending the $75 to go but I know it was important for me to get away from it all for a bit. I had a great time, completed 2 projects, and came home with $69 retail in prizes and goodies too. Of course we also were fed all of our meals and snacks.

This has felt like a rough week. There has been NO money to spend. Yesterday I did get in a $12 check for doing surveys and was able to buy milk. I'm expecting a paycheck in the mail today from my merchandising job.
I have a smallish list made out of essentials.
I'm actually going to shop at Aldi where I know that items are cheaper. I need to make shopping there a habit since I can't keep up with my coupons, and it's rare to have a coupon for milk, eggs, etc anyway.

Speaking of coupons.....I've not cut out the coupons from the Sunday papers for 4 weeks now! I'm having a hard time working that back in to my routines.
I've looked through them and taken out ones that I wanted to use right away. I have used coupons that I've printed from the internet too.
Not saving much this way.

I'm still reading Lean Body, Fat Wallet: Discover the Powerful Connection to Help You Lose Weight, Dump Debt, and Save Money It's such a good book and I highly recommend it. I'm working more on the health part and changing my diet....next comes exercise.
I still need to get my husband on board on the wealth part of the book since he is the main money earner and bill payer.


Motivate me!

An InLinkz Link-up

Frugal Friday's With Marsha 5/20/11

Here we are to Friday again.  I hope to see lots of you sharing your frugal type posts in the linky this week.   I'm sharing 2 of my shopping posts in the linky, as well as my Mailbox Monday post.

This week has been a rainy week so I've not been able to hang clothes out to dry.  However, so far I've only done one load of laundry too.  Procrastinating as I wait for a non-rainy day.  I had to do one though to get myself clean jeans.

We've done a lot of shopping this week because our amended return came in.  I can't say that we were super frugal in the shopping, although we did buy the cheapest brands we could on a lot of the items.  My daughter, Jasmine, and I were in need of some clothing.  Jasmine did try to only choose clothing from the clearance racks, so I'm pretty proud of her for that.  She knew how much she was given to spend and worked to make the most of it.  What she didn't spend on clothes at Wal-mart, she was able to pick up more at the Goodwill store.

I also bought a few things at the Goodwill store as well.  I bought 2 bags of stuffing (I have some super cute little crocheted creatures I'm going to be making soon) and a skein of black yarn.  Out of my whole tote of yarn, I was out of black....and it's a color I need for a lot of those critters too.  I also picked up a package of thank you cards for my middle daughter as well.

I also chose to shop at Aldi for our stock up of groceries.  No coupons, and no sales to speak of there, but we all know that for the most part it's the cheapest place to shop.  I spent $159 and some change.  I plan on taking my receipt and making myself out a listing to carry with me.  Then I will price compare when shopping.  If the items at Aldi are cheaper, even with sales at the grocery store, then to Aldi I will go for those items.

We cut some spinach leaves out of the garden this week.   It's a good thing that we aren't dependent on our garden for food, but it would be nice to be.  The dirt here isn't good at all.  I'm working on attempting a compost pile.  I've never done one is all my life.  Jasmine and I have been reading gardening books and watching gardening videos for over a year now.  Anyway, I hadn't even ever eaten spinach, but I tore some of it up into my regular lettuce salad and will keep doing so.  Spinach is growing well in the garden.  I only planted a bit of it, saving more to plant later so that we will have it all summer.   The peas seems to be doing well enough.  We have some strawberries that are turning red.  The onions are also doing very well.   I severely need to get all the weeds out of the garden.
Our first spinach "harvest":

 

P.S. If anyone can tell me how to fix the coding for my button, please do. It comes up funny if you paste the full coding that is there. Thanks!