July 2020 Frugal Chatter

[coupon girl]

My son dropped ashlyn off at 9.30 and we had lunch at noon (turkey sandwiches and fruit ) then packed up and drove to ancaster to visit hubby's niece and go swimming in her pool for 2 hours ,refreshing but soo hot .

Came home bought ashlyn a frosty on the way home .Had lasagna for supper and she wanted to go to the splash pad ,10 minute walk from my house .At 5.30 we went and came back at 6.00 p.m .I just gave ashlyn a bath and she is playing with her aunt's barbie dolls right now and my chrissy doll (which is about 50 years old ) she knows i want her to take care of these dolls when she is here.

Oh and this morning chipped a tiny corner on my bottom tooth eating oatmeal with raisins -honestly back to the dentist next week .

[SassyAshley]

Good Evening Everyone,
Went to Walmart with Mom after my meeting, I actually did not go with her to go to Wal-Mart we were going to go to Canadian Tire but I found what I wanted at Walmart.

We had decided we were going to put the same shelves we used in the stockpile room in the L where we are cleaning now as storage shelves. Originally I was going to go to Canadian Tire as they had a set on sale for $29.99 but then I was torn as it had mixed reviews and a few reviews mentioned a design change, that they had the old design and loved them but the new design people mentioned the shelves collapsing.I took a look at Walmart and discovered there was not design change made to the ones Walmart sell and they were $31.99. It was only $2 more but I was thinking about it when I realized the Walmart ones are actually 5 shelves where the Canadian Tire version was only 4 shelves. So I figure for only $2 more it was worth it to just buy the shelving unit now.

We will need more Shelves in the future for this area but until we get the area cleaned out I will not know exactly how many we need but for now we can make room for the one set and we will put stuff we want to keep on these shelves. Most of what we are keeping will eventually move to the craft room once we get it cleaned out but this way until we can move it to the craft room it can live on these shelves and instead in piles in the washer & dryer area. I am trying to keep the washer & dryer areas clear so we don't have to move stuff everytime we need to do laundry. Stuff like that drives me insane, the washer & dryer are a need and I shouldn't have to move stuff to use them.

I also grabbed a new BBQ covers, I was looking at our BBQ the other day from inside the house and couldn't figure out what was all over the BBQ cover. Turns out there wasn't anything on the cover it was holes in the cover so it was the BBQ I was seeing.

As well I got a new power bar. I have set myself a personal goal of using our small Kitchen Appliances more. I think one of the main reasons we do not use some of them is because they are not accessible. For example our 2 Crock-Pots live in the cabinet above the stove, one on top of the other, these are a pain to get out even myself at 5'10" I have to climb a ladder to get them down. So I am going to move them to the sideboard in our Dining Room and use a power bar so they are more accessible.

All and all I spent $100 and I am happy.

I really need to work on our budget, I know we are now over spending in the fact that I look at how much is coming, how much is going out and how much is going into savings but I need to break down where is it being spent. Do I need to move money from the take-Out budget to cover some of our grocery overages? How much money do we have saved up for house expenses we can use as needs arise as we clean the house? Do we have the money to set up the crafting station or to buy a small table/desk to move my home office?

I feel like I should get some more done tonight but at the same time I am quite tired so maybe it will just be early to bed for me, we will see.

Have a great night everyone.

[lizzie bargain]

QOTD-which do you think is a better deal -2.5 dozen medium eggs for 4.99 or 2 doz large for 4.98? It seems maybe egg prices are coming down a bit here too.

[SassyAshley]

I personally would buy the 2 dozen large but for me it is because we do a lot of baking and I find it does not come out the same if you use medium eggs. I have tried adding and extra egg, if it calls for 2 use 3 eggs but still my recipes were not turning correctly.

[GoodBoy]

Welcome Back Ciel!

[Ciel]

Welcome Back Ciel!

Hello and thank you, @GoodBoy ! I'll have the laptop for the next 9 days due to the ridiculous heat (too hot to Internet in the car for me unless very breezy). If you have a backdoor link to someone who can issue a temperature rebate and reset the weather to breezy and warm 25C, let me know!

[Ciel]

Some frugal highlights of the past 14 days:

Mom wanted me to trim her hair and I did a decent job. Forgot to check on Saturday for stray stragglers but at least Mom did not have to ask Bro to make time to take her to a place with a walk-in service.

I cut the garlic scapes from most of the fall garlic and April garlic one week ago. Found more scapes on Monday. Harvested 2/3 of fall garlic on Monday night-actually have about 1/4 of the crop with bulb heads at least loonie size or bigger! Plus nickel to quarter sized bulbs and some smaller ones like last year.

Tuesday-last free day of bus rides on HSR. Went to Meadowlands Winners (actually some stuff to see there-got slip on shoes for 19.99 in my size plus a gift bag), HOmesense/Marshalls (Homesense actually still has decent Full and queen size sheet sets but end caps and pillow shelves are bare), and Moores(sibling had $50 reward expiring that day and yours truly was able to use it to buy 3 hankies sets and pr of socks plus score extra $10 off as BOGO 50% 2nd accessory sale was on. $15.82 out of pocket after all rewards/discounts paid!). Will be making masks out of hankies as they will be easier to wear in this muggy weather.

Bought some groceries Tuesday afternoon (prior to bus trip) and also got 2 watermelons. Tired of eating watermelons but we finished the 2nd one today. Yesterday was not as breezy as Tuesday and today-somehow the outdoors is cooler than indoors *(I have not put on the fans in recent days but tonight I will as I read my e-books).

While thrilled to read that Lime Ridge Mall will adjust hours on July 12 to 10am to 6pm, I don't know if The Bay will adapt to those hours. Until the temperature breaks (next week is a bbq temperature week too), I won't go to the mall to stand in lines. I'm running out of time to scope summer clothing deals but have spotted something on Uniqlo I want to snag online tomorrow (it's on sale and might be worth paying the almost $10 shipping charge for).

I have determined that spending $199.99 plus on Samsung tablet or cellphone won't help me in the printer department and I have lowered my printer budget to $50 and under (for refurb or secondhand and hopefully cover a USB B cable too). I have too many tech pressures on budget and I must get Microsoft 365 subscription next week to expand my offline options and allow for copy and paste documents meantime until I get a working printer setup.

Happily, my friend surprised me with my new laptop case (ordered about a month ago)-it came this week and she did not tell me until she picked me up today for an early Internet session in our fave high-speed Internet location. Worth the wait and I joked that plush eggshell padding interior is Baby Yoda's backup garment! So cuddly! I have tagged the case my travel pillow-if I can figure out if I can turn it inside out, I could use it on the GO bus on a future trip.

[Ciel]

Food Basics and Shoppers locally are back to charging for bags. Longos is still not charging for bags and sent an email that cash is now accepted. Customers at Longos using reusable bags have to bag their own stuff--masks are still required. Fortinos is not yet charging for bags.

Local Rotary group will run Sunday can drives but I'll hold my empties back until cooler weather returns. Not sure what's up with the 11am start times for this event and some retail stores--too hot to wait in the sun for anything!

Did manage to get a surreptitious viewing of Eurovision Song Contest movie last Saturday morning-Dan Stevens makes that movie pop (shades of Wham! duo's hair from the 80s-much love for that look!). It helped my viewing that Bro was asleep when I figured out that he left the Internet connection on. He wanted to watch the movie on Monday or Tuesday but connection would not work. Mom did not like the trailer preview so she has not seen the movie. I'd love to see the movie on a movie screen-hope it happens at an independent theatre this fall! Did anyone else watch the movie and have a review?

[Ciel]

@Coupon_girl Hope your toe is feeling better! I cleared out our gutters alone the morning of the expected rains for evening. Both openings were packed with spruce sticky material and more and had to be handscooped. No waterfall heard during rains, so job was done! Sorry to read of your dental woes.
@Angela _273 Hugs on the passing of your beloved cat. How lovely that you have the cat's photo on your gadgets!
@SassyAshley I share your interest in the Got Junk service-how fast and easy would it be to get our furniture out! To quote the Max Millions coach "Girl can dream!" Even though my Mom commented I could not do such a thing without having new furnishings attained first before the old stuff goes, there'd not be any way to house new things without a storage unit and I've not money for it. Bro has a van and still has not realized the old table and chairs and armoire needed to be gone over a year ago...thus I'd love to live the commercials'
"just point" tagline in real life...

[Angela273]

I realized that a container of sealed vanilla yogurt got missed and not eaten by its best by date. I opened it tonight and it looks fine, so I’m looking for recipes to use it up. To err on the safe side, I wang to bake with it. Any recipe suggestions?

[Angela273]

I’ve been growing sprouts once a week for the last month. I love to eat sprout sandwiches and twin boy is really enjoying them. He asks me to make a sprout sandwich for him or he’ll come and take several bites out of my sandwich.

I’ve been growing kitchen scraps. I grew a romaine lettuce Heart in a mug, ate it when it started to bolt. I have a new romaine lettuce heart started in another mug. I’ve had a celery heart in a different mug for over a week now. Today when I changed the water in the cup, I noticed that it finally sprouted little roots that are up to 3mm long.

We have received a lot of rain this week. We are in a humid cycle woth repeated thunder storms and more in our forecast.
I was very surprised and disappointed to find that about 1/3 of my Swiss chard plants suddenly bolted and are trying to go to seed. I’ve never had this happen to 1 month old Swiss chard. I researched what I could and ultimately tipped off the top shoots. I’m hoping that my remaining Swiss chard plants are ok. I can also plant new Swiss chard, but I’m reluctant to do so with our relatively short growing season. My second planting of carrots is coming up nicely. My forest of dill is out of control. I’m literally picking it by the bag full. This evening I gave a bag full of dill to a woman that we know. She offered to use her dehydrator on the dill and give some to me. We’ll see how this goes...but I could grow/harvest...she could process and dry for both of us to have Fried dill for the winter. My first planting of peas...only 25% came up due to seeds being stolen out of the ground...but the ones that grew now have flowers and skinny pea pods. My second planting of peas are still very small, which is why I’m pulling out dill plants, to avoid killing my baby pea plants due to their lack of sunlight. My red potatoes and yellow string beans are beginning to flower. My tomato plants are large enough that I spent nearly 1hr putting in bamboo steaks to support them. These tomato plants already have a lot of flowers on them. I hand pollinated some of the tomato flowers last week because I was concerned that I hadn’t seen a lot of pollinators yet this year.

Ds and I went for a bike ride after supper. 35min bike ride. He can really get some speed on his bike. Our twins moved to bigger bikes with training wheels. One we had from ds, the girl bike we picked up a while ago. Dh just had to buy and install training wheels on twin girl’s bike. I posted their old bikes for sale, no bites yet.

We went on 2 family bike rides on Canada Day. One trip was for a treat on an outside table, Dh brought out our small order. After supper we bikes to a park to play for a while.

[Frugalbigmama]

TGIF! What a mixed up week! Let's get this work day over with

Seems a little overcast so will decide if I will toss a load in the washer with plans to dry outside.

DS son is off swimming again today at his friends cottage I'm happy he is enjoying summer!

[Frugalbigmama]

$2 sale this morning An item I posted a few days ago. Decided I am going to post 10 new items for sale right now and keep potential sales going. Off to pull 10 items from the garage

[Giseledta]

ok, hot here. just hot.

worked outside for a bit.
off to a local farmer stand for strawberries, going to freeze some for the winter.
i need to fill the bbq tank.
and hit redneck store, foodland and sobeys is having a mega type mile event. in there flyer they have 4 items i want. but they are claiming more offers in store. so i will walk every isle and see what they have. i am trying to take advantage of all and any sales i can.
i will be back later to report any good sales i find.

[Frugalbigmama]

Posted 11 items for sale! Have some interest already.

Wrote out a list of things to get done. Scratched a few items off already.

Have a few slices of pizza heating up in the oven (DS got for free and only ate a few slices. even has chicken and spinach on it-My fav!!)

Cleaned up the kitchen dishes. Filled the brita in the fridge (best $1 I spent at a garage sale. Its the big box type with a pour spout) Both DS's love it and use it all the time.

A few more boxes emptied from the garage and recycled. Just need to deal with those damn empties!!!