The Frugal Family

We are in the middle of home renovations and children growing.....so needless to say money has been flying out of our pockets lately as we redo floors/walls/baths and to clothe our children (well, child - the oldest has been spoiled with many new things lately and the youngest will received them one day as if they were new!).

So on Sunday, in an effort to spend some quality family time together and yet remain super frugal.....we went to the free movie offered at our local movie theater AND I packed a bag of snacks for everyone - something I've not really done before - I even packed popped popcorn! ha! We did get lunch at a local fast food place where all 4 of us chose items from the Dollar Menu and spent around $10.00. And for dinner I cooked a ham, made pasta salad, and had strawberries to use up - so I made strawberry shortcake.

Please note my frugalness at dinner....our ham was $0.89/lb. - and I bought an 8 lb. ham - BARGAIN! And when it came to the pasta salad, my dh said he wanted italian dressing for the dressing part.....I panicked - did I have it? - well, I had a little of it and added oil, vinegar, and spices to make up the rest. And when I was deciding on the dessert portion, I ALMOST ran to the store for those spongy little shortcakes and some cool whip......my frugal little angel said to me "Angela dear, you can make shortcakes and whipped topping....you have everything here". So I turned to my trusty Betty Crocker and found an easy shortcake recipe and ATTEMPTED to make whipped topping out of skim milk.....it didn't work, but I didn't panic, I quickly dumped in some vanilla pudding I had on hand and decided that would be our topping.

So - while we did spend $10 for fast food and of course the groceries cost me (not much, but some!) - I was proud of myself for not running to the store italian dressing, shortcakes, and cool whip.

After dinner and clean-up, I made laundry detergent and both of the boys were really interested in helping and we talked about little expenses and how it only cost me about $0.01 per load with this detergent and how other laundry detergents were not alot more expensive per load, but enough to make a significant difference through the year, etc. So I was able to talk about making changes to how we spend money and let them help with the making of the detergent and hopefully I taught them valuable lessons for the future!

Whew.....being frugal is fun, but tiring!

Another frugal note - we road our bikes to the library last night to return movies we borrowed over the weekend, and I let each boy pick out one movie and one book each (it's a school week - so we might not have time to watch the movies) and I borrowed a book as I've decided to begin reading and watch less t.v. - I spent $0 yesterday and did a lot!