Frugal Accomplishments

Frugality… always a challenge and always room for improvement.  I am not always the most frugal with my time or money but most of the time I make it a goal to try to do a little better with this than I did yesterday, last month or last year.  I do not consider this way of thinking to be “cheap” but prefer to think of it as “smart” whether the idea came about from the mother of necessity or not.  I proudly present my “own kind of beautiful” from the past two weeks…

I harvested the rest of my zucchini as most of the plants were shriveling (I still have a couple left) in the heat and dryness and got about 33 cups of zucchini sliced and shredded and stored in bags for the freezer AFTER I gave some to a neighbor who inquired of my zucchini and said I was the only person she knows this year who had any luck with them.  This will make quite a few pots (cauldrons) of soup and a good number of loaves of bread as well during the coming months.  The empty spots in the garden then got re-planted as I figure there is still enough warmth in the season for something more.

My husband is finally catching the spirit… (with a friendly nudge.  This must be related to garbage picking while wearing lamp shades… he usually won’t do it).  Rick did both of these shelving projects FOR FREE!!!  I love it.  Salvaging scrap wood and with a few cuts our broom closet received a total makeover with sturdy shelving from top to bottom.  Now everything has a place.  The girl’s bookcase also received new life when a scrap from the kitchen wall was nailed as a backing to this old bookcase.  I personally wouldn’t choose this as a back to a bookcase (I would choose bead board) BUT it was free and honestly you can’t even see this backing because the bookcase is so full of books.  It really serves as a means of helping support the integrity of the bookcase itself.  It’s FABULOUS!  And I told my husband so.

My son brought me his pillowcase (left pic)… not just any pillowcase but the special one that matches his quilt.  The same one he received on his very first birthday and sadly asked “Mom, can you fix this?”  Only a magician could fix this thing but I decided to become the magician.  Digging deep into the recesses of my scrap stash bin I found fabric scraps from his baby quilt and pillow (middle pic).  Then I dug out the “Wild Goose Chase” pattern fashioned out of a brown bag that I had stored with my patterns and set to work.

Iron, measure, cut, stitch and SURPRISE!  Tristan loves it BUT it is not so soft he tells me and the ruffle could not be salvaged which makes him a little sad.

My cucumber plants are maturing inside of tomato cages on the north side of the garage.  I can get more plants in this vertical space and the cucumbers like being up off the ground as they dangle and grow.  I picked some for a fresh cucumber salad for tonight’s dinner with company and the plants are promising me many, many more.  The tomatoes are limping along but we did eat a couple and I’ll be frying up the green ones that my youngest son picked.

I bought 20 ears of corn for $4; some to roast now and others to blanche and freeze for later.
I grew a pumpkin!!!  It is now completely ripe after sadly falling off the vine green.  Since it won’t make it until Jack-O-Lantern season this little spooky will become yummy muffins in my kitchen and I’m conspiring a pie for Thanksgiving with it too.

I made my own “Quick Mix”, similar to Bisquick and made a Coffee Cake for Sunday morning.  My kids arose excitedly to the smell of cinnamon this morning and are blissfully unaware of the fact that I skipped buying expensive processed ready to eat cereals this month in order to make better use of my grocery money.

I made Hershey’s Syrup for Tristan’s requested Birthday pie this past week as well as for the extra pie I stowed in the freezer.  I know it doesn’t cost me as much to make this as it does to buy the same amount of Hershey’s syrup in the plastic squeeze bottle and it IS made from Hershey Cocoa.  The best part is that this syrup tastes like the Hershey Syrup you used to by in the tin can long ago that one would open on both sides with the triangular cut of the can opener.  The recipe they use today just doesn’t taste the same.  This, too, is very simple and quick to create.

And finally I made a triple batch of homemade laundry detergent again this week.  I probably spend as much for a year’s worth of laundry detergent now as I did when I bought ready made detergent for just a month.  This is hypoallergenic detergent that smells fantastic and is a non-sudsing “he” friendly soap.  I use a cleaned out bulk size corn starch container to store half of a triple batch in so I can feel good about my environmentally friendly re-use of a container.  And why do I buy corn starch in bulk???  Because it goes into the pudding mixes from scratch.  I love making “something” out of “nothing”.
Being smart with my resources is a beautiful thing.