Frugal Fridays #19

We are slowly getting back to “normal” around here after the birth of our newest little love. We have been amazingly blessed with a church and homeschool community that has been providing us meals since we came home from the hospital. I’ve only needed to cook one meal since we got home, and it was a freezer meal that was already prepped, so I don’t even really count that. I’ve also been physically recovering well. As I expected, it’s been a slower recovery than after a natural birth since I had to have an emergency c-section, but overall I’m feeling really well. Each day wake up feeling infinitely blessed that Henry and I are both here and healthy.

Successes/Blessings from the last few weeks (mostly blessings because I haven’t been feeling up to doing much!):

• I was given a bag of clothes and several pairs of shoes from a friend of mine who was cleaning out her closet.
• I printed off a free grammar workbook for my oldest son. McGraw-Hill Treasures Workbooks.
• We placed our order for 1/4 steer and 1/2 pig. They’ll be ready in June.
• My husband was able to purchase a used vehicle after searching for a few months. The man selling it was willing to negotiate because his wife was not pleased with having it sitting in their driveway. Because of this, we were able to negotiate quite a bit off of his original asking price.
• I picked up some Easter candy on sale at the Family Dollar.
• We purchased birthday gifts for my oldest son’s 8th birthday and some non-candy Easter goodies using an Amazon gift card.
• Breastfeeding is going well. Does that count as a frugal success? 😀 I’m excited about this because I usually have milk supply issues. Not enough to require supplementing (except for when I was still working outside of the home), but enough to make nursing very stressful and exhausting for the first several months.
• My inlaws were out running some errands when they got flagged down by a mobile food pantry ministry. They had to get rid of the rest of their food by the end of the night, so they practically begged my inlaws to take as much as they could fit into their car, otherwise it would go in the garbage. They split the bounty between us and 2 of my husbands siblings. We got several packages of frozen breakfast sandwiches, a ton of snack packages of baby carrots, 2 cans of pears, some fresh fruit and a box of popsicles. I used some of the fresh fruit and mixed in some frozen fruit from my freezer to make fruit salad.
• I had some bell peppers in my fridge that were purchased before the baby was born. They were starting to get soft, so I cut them up with some onions and made some freezer fajita packs. They’ll either be used for meatless fajitas, or I’ll thaw out some meat to go with them when the time comes.

Goals:

• The Baptismal outfit that I had originally made for the baby is too small, so I’m working on making another one.
• Make birthday cupcakes for my son’s birthday (tomorrow).
• Start some seeds. I dropped the ball on winter sowing this year due to the pregnancy, but I’m hoping to get a few things started using seeds that I already have. The rest will most likely be purchased from a local nursery. I have some sugar snap peas soaking in water right now so that they can be planted tomorrow. I’m going to plant them in styrofoam cups and then put the cups in clear plastic totes to act as miniature greenhouses. Hopefully it works…I’ll let you all know.
• My husband’s birthday is on Easter this year. He is in desperate need of clothes and almost never finds his size (he’s pretty tall and thin) at our usual thrift shops. So I’ll be watching for some good deals and/or coupons so that we can hopefully fill some of the gaps in his seriously lacking wardrobe.
• I never did get around to digging out the newborn and size small cloth diapers, and was physically unable to do it when we first got home (and really, it was the least of my concerns at the time). I’m hoping to pull them out within the next week and be done buying diapers for 2 for a while because sheesh it’s expensive.

How did you save money this week?

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