Frugal Friday 208

Happy Frugal Friday!

Here is how we saved money/spent money wise/made extra money this week:

- Mark worked a shift at his part-time job, had over-time, and I had one Usborne Books & More party.

- Saturday morning the kids and I headed to the Trafalgar library to see a penguin! The library brought in the Wave Foundation from Newport Aquarium and they brought a live penguin! The ladies who came did a great job education us about penguins as well as conservation efforts. The kids loved it!

Look how excited they are!

Thank you to our friend Ann for capturing this great moment!

Photo Credit: Ann Black

Annabeth loved being able to pet the penguin!
What a neat experience!

- Mark was given a gift-card as a "Thank You" from a citizen. He surprised Annabeth with a cake-pop and me with coffee from Starbucks. Thank you. 

- Sunday afternoon we went to a cook-out at Luke and Cassidy's. Annabeth and I made chocolate chip cookies and funfetti cake cookies. Both were gluten free box mixes that we found on sale for $1 earlier this summer. Anytime I find Owen's GF items on a good deal I buy what we have room in the grocery budget for. 

- We went to a birthday party Sunday afternoon as well. As always, I tried to take gifts that included art projects and we also added some bubbles. My kids would blow and chase bubbles all day long and I thought they would be great for this new three year old! We also took a box of hand-me-downs for the birthday boy and their family gave us some magazine racks that we will use in our school room. 

- I found a coupon for a FREE notebook at Meijer in my mPerks. The kids don't need it for school this year but I went ahead and got it and saved it for later.

- We had a $4 reward in our mPerks. I always try to use these rewards to buy items for the Weekend Meal Bags we fill at the Church of God in Franklin. We were able to purchase 16 applesauces for the bags. We will be filling our first bags of the school year on September 9th - please let me know if you would like to help donate to this great project!

- I organized a HUGE tote of books given to us by our friends the Gish family. They have loaned us around 75 books for our homeschool! Thank you all so much!

Frugal Fail:

- We ate out three times this week! UGH! We try to only eat out two times a month as a family and we just blew that in the last week. We were out of town for a week and then we got back I had so much cleaning, laundry, and mail to deal with that I didn't get a meal plan/grocery list made and it got crazy. We will do better this week! 

We are looking forward to Labor Day Weekend and hoping that Mark gets some time off so we can enjoy some family time! Although the kids and I enjoyed all the above activities, it would have been wonderful to have Mark along too.

Happy Savings to All!