Frugal Accomplishments First Week of March

We had a pretty frugal week this past week. We enjoyed some shared meals, accepted hand-me-downs, and did what we could to save.  My health has improved slowly with the dietary changes and supplements I've been taking, which is all good, even though it's more expensive.  We've also been making some decisions about things from my grandmother's estate, so are hopeful that we'll have all that worked out by the end of the month.

And, in exciting news, we put in an offer on the land we've been wanting!  It was for more than we'd ideally want to spend, but we're hoping to have the closing on that soon and begin the process of putting our house up for sale, etc. to fund the building of the new house.

Here's the rundown of our frugal accomplishments for last week:

• Cooked all meals at home including tomato basil soup, homemade mac and cheese with gluten free pasta, roasted veggies, steamed flounder, homemade pizza, oatmeal, smoothies, homemade banana bars, and Asian ramen slaw.
• Composted and recycled as usual to save on trash.
• Accepted items from the food pantry gleaning including:
• gallon of milk
• apples
• pineapple
• romaine hearts
• purple cabbage
• gluten free crackers
• gluten free cereal
• chocolate coconut water
• bananas
• Took advantage of HT super doubles coupon event to stock up on meat, cheese, gluten free crackers, coconut milk, frozen peas, and a few other staples.  Also found parsnips on the discount produce rack.  Said no to some items that were on sale, but weren't needs.
• Continued to work down what is in the pantry and freezer including canned tomatoes, tomato juice, dried mincemeat (used in oatmeal), frozen bones and veggie scraps for stock, and frozen butternut squash and bananas.
• Continued to work on cleaning out and added another 15 items to our donation bags.  Some will go to Goodwill, some to the library.  Baby clothes will go to some of the Hispanic families Benny knows through the paint business.  We are also looking at items we can sell on eBay and Craigslist to help give us more of a cushion for building the new house.
• Did our usual laundry routine with hanging laundry to dry and washing cloth diapers.
• Enjoyed a shared meal with friends.  We took some roasted acorn squash that we made in the crock pot.  We'd had the squash for a while, so it was good to use it up.  The boys had a great time playing together, and we ended up with a few hand-me-down clothes from their recent cleaning out.  
• We did our usual Sunday night dinner with Mom, which was an easy sheet pan meal with chicken, onions, and roasted squash.  We had a side salad to go with it.
• Finalized my list of things I'd like to have from my grandmother's estate.  We're hoping to get some special pieces of jewelry, artwork, blankets, and furniture.  It would be nice to get some of her kitchen things too, which would replace some of ours from our wedding that are wearing out.  Will see how things all sift out with other family members.
• We are looking at creative options for housing while the new house is being built.  We want to save as much as possible, so we might look into borrowing a camper and renting a month to month site at a local campground.  It is cheaper than most rentals in the area, and would allow us to have the dog with us too.  This might be fun for the boys, and would also really force us to weed through belongings and decide what we need to live with and what could go to storage/sold/donated.
• Since I'm feeling better, I cancelled an appointment with a specialist, saving the $80 copay.  My labs didn't indicate that I needed the specialist appointment, but I thought I might need one since I was still having some issues.  Glad things are getting better, slow but steady progress.
• I kept the boys for a while to give Benny some time to gather tax documents.  We still have a little to do here, so we'll need one more session like this and then we'll have things ready to file.  We plan to use the refund to reseed our emergency fund.
• I began making plans for what I want to take from this garden to the new house.  I will pot up these plants this spring and summer so that we can move them to the new house.  They will probably live at my mom's while we're in transition.  This will save us some money with landscaping the new house, so hopefully we'll only need to purchase a few evergreens and maybe a fruit tree or two.  There are also neighbors in the new neighborhood who love to garden, so I'm sure they will have things to split and share too.
• I used a free gift card to Tanger Outlets (from the ski slopes trip we took with school) to purchase a clearance jacket for both boys and a pair of shorts for baby.  Baby's birthday is today, so these will be birthday presents for him.  I only spent $1 over the $20 gift card amount, so I think it was a win!
• Working with little man to make baby a tie dyed t-shirt to go with the new shorts.  He really likes this craft, and it makes for a cheap birthday gift that is really useful.

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