May 2016 Frugal Chatter - ALL WELCOME

[Giseledta]

Amazing shop today needed to go to Costco , to get my sons trial pair of contact lens...... she gave him 10 days worth to try - score.
and some free eye drops.

went to no frills.... cherry picked the sales....
got 2 very large roasts- sale. cost , just under 40 .00.
when I got home... cut them into 8 meals..... steaks for 2 meals, 3 pks of beef strips for beef aand broc, and 3 more beef dip sandwiches meals..... ( for my family of 5!!)
got some bacon... and used 2 free coupons, have 4 more coupons to trade, or use at a later date. - yes... Ia m starting to coupon again!!!
also go some 2.88 peanut free drumsticks..... I am peanut free... allergy ....


used 70.00 in pc points..... got 10000 in points from my shopping. spent50.00 out of pocket.
I am very happy frugal shopper right now

[sweet sparrow]

Took LO outside to water her blackberry bush and the three surviving strawberry plants. They all look like they're doing well so far. Even my Peace rose that I found for 50% off has new growth at the bottom. Phew! I didn't manage to kill it! Peonies are looking lovely, but next year, I will put the sweet pea seeds in a planter. I don't think they survived the transplant.

LO has worn through almost all her pants at daycare. They say she's having fun, but I have three less pairs of pants to put her in than I did a month ago. Her shoes look as though they're starting to get a hole in the front too. I wonder if Sketchers has some sort of product guarantee. You would think they do if they charge $60+tax/pair. Thankfully, I did not pay that much, but I think I will ask. Unfortunately, the nearest store is in Toronto, which is about an hour away with traffic.

Paid a $13 library fine today, most of them silly mistakes. I made the mistake of checking my account and accepting the charges instead of returning the books that day. That resulted in an extra $0.25 fine in many of them. I suppose if it cost nothing, I may not have learned the lesson.

Tomorrow double the daycare fees will be taken out. I'm still happy that both the bank and the daycare waived the NSF amounts!

[walkonby]

The long weekend has come and gone fast. ( I know it is still Monday, but it feels over to me ) but thanks to Lowes no tax offer we have a prettier back yard. DH bought many plants, dirt and made up many hanging baskets, some long window boxes as well as filling 4 planters ( 20" across x 20 deep ) for beans and snow peas. Him and DS erected the new gazebo Saturday, laid the outdoor carpet down, pulled the furniture from the shed and set it up.
All we needed were colourful drinks with umbrellas in them but no one was drinking when we did our family BBQ yesterday, I am still giggling about how many " meat " items we had cooked up and it was very chintzy on the vegetables....I mean why bother? ha ha
I was kind of glad that I resisted making up salads that no one would bother reaching for anyways.
Today we'll have to focus on eating salad ONLY.......hoping everyone is relaxing and enjoying the day!!

[Giseledta]

good morning all.
going to be a pretty frugal day.
hanging laundry- hopefully a lot will get dry.. as it is going to get hot..
I am pretty sure our local place for dirt, is closed. if it is not.. we are getting some for he big garden.
either way, I plan on working on the front beds. today. getting some weeding done
making up 2 more baskets for the front.
I am separating out some herbs, and giving them to people off a local garden site. free. I have loads, and its a nice thing to do

that's pretty much it for he day.
have fun all

[SassyAshley]

Good Morning Everyone,
Today will be prep day, I had a discussion with Mom yesterday and tried to keep it as positive as possible. I told her we need to be prepared for when she gets a full time job (positive out look, I am trying even though it feels like it won't happen), we cannot go back to take out and being lazy. We have the skills we have the talent that we should not be relying on take out and we need to look at eating out as a treat not a need. We can look at budgeting in eating out but we cannot rely on it but all of this is based on her finding full time work.

I am trying to be positive but I have to say her finding full time work seems impossible. She had what we thought was a great lead but got a message yesterday that they do not have an open position for her confused as they told her about a new position and gave a general job description but now there is no job. They said if they heard of any other jobs coming up locally they would refer her but based on the whole situation I am not holding my breathe.

One girl my Mom works with said she heard you get a phone call, not even an interview for every 24 to 30 resumes you send out due to how competitive the job market is right now. Add in Mom's current experience it kind of feels like all odds are working against her. Any feed back she has gotten is they can see she is a loyal employee but has been in retail for the past 11 years with the same employer and is probably best suited to stay where she is as her skills are for that job.

I am trying to be positive but I feel like I have to keep reminding Mom there is no end point for our current situation and the bills are pilling up. Her car needs service and right now the cost of the service is more then she is making in a 2 week period and saving money is not an option. Also our House Insurance needs to be paid next month and every time I put money aside for this it gets spent on something else.

I am home this week and am trying to figure out if it is possible to add even more overtime to my daily schedule. Usually when I am home I work 6 to 4 which gives me 1.5 hours of overtime each day (after lunch is removed) but wondering if I can bump this up even more to try to get some extra $$$$.

As well I will post more items today for sale and see if we can move any of it. I had 2 large sales which I really needed the money for but both fell through. One the person came to pick up the items and only took 2 of the 10 items which has taught me a lesson to no longer offer package discounts. I took $5 off since she was taking 10 items and even though she only took 2 she still took the $5 off those 2 items. The other one was a co worker and I have no idea what happened, I had the stuff in my office he never came to get them and then when I was last week he cancelled the transaction and has never said anything. All and all that was somewhere between $40 to $50 I was hoping would cover this week's groceries.

Have a great day everyone

[Frugalbigmama]

Hanging a load of wash out to dry now and off to finish the garden. Then a nice afternoon drive to the beach

[SassyAshley]

Kind of annoyed right now, we got new phones last week. I noticed when I took the protective over there was a little chip in the screen which I was going to show our controller this week. Well the screen has now cracked right where the chip was, I have sent an email asking if we can do anything about this since the phone is new and to me there was a defect since there was a chip where it has cracked.

[Frugalbigmama]

Garden is done and had lunch with my mom. Just put my load of laundry away that was out drying and new load out to dry. Love this weather for laundry we are off for a drive now . Dinner tonight is homemade pizza. We have leftover steak and cooked chicken breast last night for it so will be easy to whip up later.

[jasperandchar]

@sweet sparrow Sketchers has a 3 month guarantee which is still good considering most sneakers don't. I just got ds2 a new pair from Mark's and they have 100 days satisfaction guarantee, I know you can't shop their for your LO though.

We went to the re-use it centre, got a lovely set of light green curtains which are now hanging to dry, a pair of shorts for me and a washable rug for the bedroom and drum roll....a lovely looks like new Loveseat, I'll post a picture tomorrow once it's in the house, FIL is borrowing our truck as his is not working properly so we'll unload it this evening.
@Giseledta welcome back to couponing, I just restarted myself in the last 1.5 weeks and it sure makes a difference on the amount of items you can get at once for much less. I'm all stocked up on laundry detergent for several years which is great and I opened my first Tide bottle this am and boy what a difference Name brand Detergent makes
Tomorrow I will be unpacking dh's large dvd collection into an armoire in the bedroom which should give me some room back in my storage room/stockpile room.

WIshing everyone a great evening.



[coupon girl]

- I got a lovely hanging plant today at lowes rang up 14.99 but the sign stated 9.99 where it was hanging -so I paid 8.84 after the tax discount -we stopped in there after visiting hubby's brother and his wife
-I want to surround myself with lovely flowers on my deck this summer in pots ,hanging and my 2 tomato plants in the corner in one large pot-I just was reading a book out there on my loveseat -so relaxing
-supper tonight we just had hard boiled eggs with toast and bacon -nice and light

-I am wearing a tank today that was my dear mothers -a carrol reid(zellers) navy blue tank with lace around it -it was new and I decided not to give it away with all her other clothing a few years back -now I feel nice in it makes me think of dear mom

[SassyAshley]

I am happy as we did manage to check a few things off our to do list.

Meatloaves are made and in freezer, no $$$ spent as I used a GC to buy the meat.
Pizza Pockets are made and cooling, I made the dough and sauce yesterday using ingredients we had on hand.
We did not get the roasts broken down but that is okay we will get to that. I used some money I had stashed away to buy these and Mom stuck right on budget well shopping alone.

I did not get anything posted for sale but that is something I can do one night after work. I have most of the pictures taken so just need to do the write ups.

Currently relaxing a little before I go pack my stuff for tomorrow. Have a great night everyone.

[Granger]

Looks like everyone has been long weekending.

DH was away at a youth conference with his crew Fri-Sun. I was so happy to have his return yesterday.

I have been busy in the garden because I am still seeing return and it is motivating me to get them prepped for the season (they are never done). $67 extra dollars if everyone shows up and I can resell the rose of sharons from the no show. $41 has already been collected. I still have more to split and sell.

[Natalka]

Good morning - it will be a nice, frugal short week, not much shopping other than necessities by the end of it.

[sweet sparrow]

Does anyone know if the GC trading list still exists in SC? I have the worst time trying to find anything using the search feature.

Last night I stayed up until late to do LO's laundry. She was quite something. It took two hours to try and get her to take a bath. Not even the promise of ice cream was enough to get it over with. Each time she got in, she would scream that she had to use the potty, even though she didn't do anything when we took her out, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again..... If she was ignored or thought she wasn't getting out immediately, she would force herself to go in the water and ruin her bath.

Of course, we used up all the time we had and there was only time for dinner afterwards, no dessert and no ice cream for helping mommy in the garden. I don't know how parents do it sometimes! Then, I had no time to prep the laundry and ended up putting everything in the dryer. Children just don't understand frugal. LO had a lovely time at the new playground we brought her to though. She got very sweaty, hence the desperate need for a bath.

[Frugalbigmama]

Morning! Love having the day off with an empty house. Got so much done already! Bathrooms cleaned, a few areas that collect junk, laundry put away, a few items posted for sale. Going to keep at it for a bit then have some errands to do. Happy Tuesday ��