03 May 2016

The Week that was 1st May 2016


Let the rain water the garden on Thursday and Friday. I turned the timer off for a couple of days. We had a huge thunderstorm early Sunday morning and it's rained on and off since so the sprinklers are still turned off.

Dried the washing on the clothesline or clotheshorse (when it was raining).

Collected the cold water that runs while warming up in the bathrooms and kitchen and added it to the washing machine, used some in the steam mop on the floors and the rest watered the garden (before the rains came).

Cooked all our meals using ingredients in the pantry, fridge and freezer.

Did a Library Talk at Pakenham library on Saturday afternoon. What a great afternoon and it was really nice to meet so many enthusiastic Cheapskaters and to catch up with some old friends from the Hampton Park talk I did a few months ago.

Bought 8 jars of jam on half-price sale ($2.50) at Coles. It's really nice jam, but I especially wanted the jars to reuse - they are so pretty and to buy new are $2 each. I used the gift budget to buy the jam as the jars will be used for presents.

Restitched the seams on one of Hannah's work cardigans so she can wear it again. The jolly thing fell apart in the wash! Took all of 10 minutes to set up the sewing machine, stitch the seams and pack it all away again. Saved her buying a new cardigan or paying the alterations place to fix it.

A new butcher has opened up just 10 minutes from home. I raided the meat fund and bought  chicken fillets for $4.99/kg, mince for $5.99/kg, sausages $3.49/kg, whole chickens $3.99/kg, legs of lamb $5.9.9/kg and corned beef $7.99/kg (this isn't a great price, but cheaper than normal and we haven't had corned beef for ages). Packaged it all into meal size portions and took them to Mum's freezer - mine are all full. Chicken fillets haven't been that  price for around 5 years. I packaged up 63 meals for a total cost of $237.56 or $3.77 per meal - well below my $5 per meal meat budget.

Thomas lit the fire for me on Sunday instead of turning on the ducted heating (it's only 13 degrees outside - so cold after our mild weather). Today's washing is drying nicely on the clotheshorse next to it.

Downloaded some free ebooks to my Kindle from http://hundredzeros.com/

Took some leaves from an African violet I have and put them in pots to strike new plants. I've moved them inside to the kitchen window for warmth. If they take they'll become gifts.

Aldi had sewing bits and bobs for 99 cents each. I bought pins, needles, tape measures and threads to make up sewing kits for Christmas gifts. I have pretty boxes I've been saving that will be perfect for this. I just need to find decent scissors at a reasonable price to finish them off and each gift should cost under $6. I'm planning on making up three sewing kits.

What have you done to save money, time and energy last week?

2 comments:

  1. Well done on getting fantastic prices for meat.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a lovely idea for using those sewing specials at Aldi.
    I don't have anyone who could use that sort of gift, so didn't do it. I did sorta think of it, but I had already given the new sewer at work plenty of little things to help her on her way.
    I introduced some new knitters to the needle and yarn specials at Aldi after I did a trial of the yarn. It is not the softest yarn, but works up nicely. Pat

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