Frugal Accomplishments

We did a pretty good job this week with our frugal accomplishments, with one minor frugal fail.  We did some traveling, but we tried to use our gift cards to limit the financial impact.  It was a great long weekend with family and cousins.  We did an early Thanksgiving dinner and early Christmas with the kids, which was super fun.  There are some great family pictures of the kids decorating cookies and all crowded in on the couch in their pajamas watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  So fun!

Here's the details of this past week:

• Cooked all meals at home including black bean chili, whole wheat pizza, salad, butternut squash casserole, smoothies, and muffins
• Frugal fail:  forgot to turn the heat down on the overnight crock pot oatmeal, and now it's a burned on mess.  Will use baking soda and water with it on high for a while to remove burned mess.  Totally bummed... was really looking forward to it!
• Had free dinner with our parenting class on Monday, which was so appreciated.  Saved us some money, time and frustration with clean up.
• Used gift cards earned from our parenting class to pay for gas for our trip.  We ended up taking the least fuel efficient car because the better one was making a weird noise.  We didn't want to get stranded on the highway on a holiday weekend with two little ones.  We'll get the other car looked at this week so it's good for travel over Thanksgiving.
• Used another gift card to pay for gifts for the kiddos.  I try really hard to do gifts that don't contribute to the amount of "stuff" we all accumulate, so I purchased some craft kits and gingerbread house kits for each family.  
• We also made our standard holiday chocolate caramel popcorn.  It is always a hit and really easy and relatively inexpensive.  We substitute pecans for the peanuts, because we like them better and generally have them on hand.  It's really nice to make gifts that are consumable, so that it's not something else for folks to store, when we're all really trying to simplify things in our lives.
• My cousin made sugar cookie dough earlier in the week, so we made those with the kids on Saturday morning.  It was so fun, and even the little ones (18-19 months) got involved.  It's relatively cheap to make, and was such a great time for the cousins.  Having the dough ahead of time really helped out.
• I brought frozen tomatoes and bell peppers (from the food pantry) from our freezer to make chili on Friday with the cousins for dinner.  We also took our crock pot, in case we needed a second for the large crowd.  Having these ingredients really helped save on prep time and cost, which meant we had more time together as a family.
• Graciously accepted steel cut oats, date almond balls, popping corn, and Kind bars from the food pantry this week.  These things will really help round out our pantry and help us keep our grocery bill in check.
• Grateful for snacks that family offered throughout the weekend.  Those helped us through the road trip, and it was nice for the boys to try some new things.
• Stopped at Aldi on the way back home, which was a nice break for us all (especially after getting stuck in traffic for over an hour), and restocked the fridge at a cheaper price than usual.  We were able to get a lot of organic produce for cheaper than we could have at Harris Teeter.
• Thankful that our tenant kept Lavender for us, which made our trip a lot less stressful.  
• Mom picked up take-out for us for dinner last night, because we got home late from the trip.  So grateful for this, and it was a new food experience for the boys.  They loved it, so we'll repeat it sometime.  It also gave us leftovers for lunch for today.
• Received a paper grocery sack full of hand-me-down clothes for the boys, which is so generous.  Glad for these.  (Now we just need to go through the baby things and begin consigning them.)

What did you do to live and save green this past week?  I'd love to hear from you!