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Every Day

Frugal Things The Past Couple of Weeks

It’s been a frugal couple of weeks in our household. These are the things we have been doing frugally:

– Spent very little of our grocery budget the past couple of weeks.

– We have been eating out of our freezers so that we will have room for our $ .79 a lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts from Zaycon the end of this month.

– I am back to hanging the laundry in the basement now that I feel better.

– The Buffalo News delivered us the Sunday, February 25th edition on March 4th. I called and they brought us a March 4th edition. I asked that they bring a full newspaper since it was only the white pages that were February 25th. They did so I ended up with two sets of all 4 inserts for that Sunday. So I didn’t have to buy an extra paper. Evidently we were not the only people who got the week before edition. I can only wonder how that happened.

– I received a $ 6.00 rebate in the mail.

– We did change our car and auto insurance to a new company and ended up saving almost $200. Since there is no cancellation fee at the old company, we are expecting a pro-rated refund from them shortly. It will be nice to have our auto and homeowners insurance due the same day every year.


– With the exception of going to the grocery store and hair salon, we have pretty much stuck to home. This has saved us gasoline. I do need to get gas soon since I haven’t filled the car up since January. I will be using my $ .60 off per gallon discount at Top’s.

– We have been decluttering the house and setting aside what we no longer need for the community garage sale.

– We have not been out to a restaurant in a very long time. We will get take out tonight though. We do this on most Friday’s during Lent.

– Hubby has been saving a $50.00 Home Depot gift card that he received as a gift to help buy a new mailbox once the ground is unfrozen enough to put it in. Then we can take out the ugly post that the town put in. I have a $ 5.00 off coupon that will help defray the total cost also.

– We have been eating up every leftover in this house. Right now we only have some enough for lunch for one person which is the apple chicken sausage skillet that I made last night. 


– I need to redo the closet in our largest guest bedroom. Lots of West’s outgrown toys need to be given away to our neighbor’s little boys. Then I will set the closet up with necessary things for guests like spare sheets, blankets, pillows, etc. I needed some containers to do this and I found them in the right colors at Dollar Tree. So cost was only $5.00 for 5 of them. As you can see it is a hot mess of games, toys, Hot wheel tracks, blankets, and out of season clothes.

– After a number of telephone conversations, I finally got a medical bill corrected to my benefit.

– I cleaned up a big spill in the kitchen with reusable rags.

– I have been listening to You Tube videos while organizing. That is how I learn something new every day. 


– I continue to use my laundry eggs in my HE to wash the clothes. When I do use the dryer I am using my dryer balls.

– I have been taking naps when I need them so that my mind is fresh to do everything as frugally as possible.

– We have been making full use of our Netflix membership by watching 4 movies a month. We just watched “Our Souls at Night.” We never go to the movies or rent elsewhere. Between Netflix, Amazon Prime, and You Tube, we have plenty to watch.


– I made a homemade chicken casserole for my sick neighbor.


– I’ve been collecting vegetable scraps and peelings. I made a pan of vegetable stock with them. I froze flat in meal size portions.


– I made a few loaves of banana bread with really ripe bananas. I froze them for our Sunday family breakfasts.

Have you done anything frugal lately? Please feel free to share in comments.

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Every Day

Monday’s Shopping

Tomorrow is Senior Citizen 6% discount day at Top’s but it is supposed to be nasty weather. So I decided to go today instead. 

Bananas were on sale for $. 49 a lb. The mushrooms were $1.34 and were needed for dinner tonight. Hubby is grilling a 1 and 1/2 inch thick NY strip steak( from my freezer) that we are going to share. I love sauteed mushrooms on my steak. I will be baking some potatoes and making a salad.

The Rana Fettucine($2.)and the Bob’s Red Mill Unbleached All Purpose flour($1.99) were on sale but after MQ and store Q they were free. The milk was $ .99 with store Q. The yogurt, the 16 oz. Muuna Cottage cheese, the Sure deodorant and the sun dried tomatoes were  free after MQ and store Q’s.

The bacon bits and Very Berry Cheerios were full price. Those were a miscalculation on my part. I had no idea we were out so I couldn’t wait for a sale. But when they go on sale again, I will stock.


The ice cream($ 5.99) was on B1G1F sale. The Lean Cuisine was on sale for $2.00. My total OOP was $ 18.16. I may make one more trip this week to get some more of the free items if I have time. I have a $75.00 per week budget for groceries so I have $ 56.84 left for the rest of the week.

Did you get any good deals this week? Please share with us.

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Every Day

Organized Spices

My spice cabinet has been a mess forever. The bottles were all different sizes and shapes and it did not look very neat. Actually it drove me crazy especially when Hubby wouldn’t put them back where they belonged. So I spent some time and money this week organizing the spices, hopefully, for the last time.

I purchased square spice jars here. They came with  a few labels but most of the ones I needed were not with the jars. So I purchased a large label collection
here. It has blank labels and labels that I could use in my pantry also. It is an awesome collection!

I also purchased an expandable spice shelf for the first shelf here.  I already owned the other spice shelf on the second shelf. 

I just emptied my old spice jars into the new ones. I attached the proper label each time I did one. Large spice jars that didn’t get emptied are now in quick access storage so that I can lay my hands on them easily when I need to refill.

What I like about the way I arranged them is that I can see each and every label and they are in alphabetical order. Hubby has promised to let me get out the spices when he uses them. That way this will stay organized.

The ideal for my spices would have been a drawer with special shelf inserts made for the spices. However I do not have a large drawer near my stove which is where I use the spices so this was the next best alternative. I am extremely happy with how it turned out.

I hope you all are having a great weekend! 

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Every Day

Lamb Roast

As most of you know, Hubby and I have been married more than 50 years now. One of the first recipes that I cooked for us was a lamb roast. Hubby has absolutely loved it ever since. So I surprised him and roasted it today for dinner.

My SIL gave me “The Children’s Hospital of Buffalo Cookbook” for my bridal shower gift in spring of 1967. I knew nothing about Buffalo at that time so it is amusing to me that I now live near Buffalo. It was the first cookbook I got and I have used it all these years. It fell apart but I still use the recipes that I learned to love and that taught me to cook. I had no idea how to cook or bake when I said “I do”.

So today’s dinner recipe is in that book for Lamb Pot Roast. However from the first time I cooked it, I roasted it in the oven and tweaked the recipe a little bit to accommodate that. Here are the ingredients:

1 leg of lamb
Oil
2 tsps. salt
1 tsp. of oregano
1/2 tsp of pepper
1 minced garlic clove
1 can of beef consomme
1 small can of tomato sauce

I brush the lamb with some oil. Then I sprinkle it with the salt, oregano, and pepper. I mix the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and pour just enough to wet the roast on it. Then I pour the rest of the sauce into the pan. I roasted it at 325 degrees for about 2 hours. I baste the roast every 25 minutes or so. This roast was a small one- about 3 lbs. and only had a small bone. It cooked to medium. You can thicken the gravy but it was thick enough for us tonight. I always put some little potatoes in for Hubby. He loves them with the sauce spooned on them. We both love the sauce spooned on a slice of lamb. It was so delicious and tender tonight.

The pics show the roast resting for a few minutes after I took it out of the pan. The other pic is of the pan with the potatoes and sauce still in it.

Did you cook a favorite for dinner tonight?