Frugal Friday 162

Happy Frugal Friday!

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

- Mark worked one night at his part time job.

- I babysat for a friend.

- Mark worked the South Side Parents of Multiple Sale. He made enough money to pay for Annabeth's birthday party next weekend. Well worth a few hours of work! :)

- Saturday night Mark's parents took Annabeth to dinner and a movie and she enjoyed a sleepover there. Mark and I ate a pizza dinner with Owen and watched the movie The Cobbler. 

- Mark's parents treated us to lunch out on Sunday. It was wonderful and Annabeth and I were able to enjoy the leftovers for lunch on Monday.

- We are now over 1/4 of the way finished with our school year - this means our schoolroom was a mess! We spent Tuesday afternoon working on deep cleaning the schoolroom. We sorted out all of her playdough items and reorganized them. We recycled half a bin of papers. We also took five boxes out to recycling. We now have a nice, clean area to learn and make messes in! :)

- Monday morning we headed to the outlet mall to get Owen new tennis shoes. We got a GREAT deal on his new shoes at Stride Rite: outlet store price + 30% off + $10 reward coupon making our total just $15.50! We had a gift card so we spent $0 OOP!

- I was pleasantly surprised by our good deal at Stride Rite and was able to buy some things for Owen to use the rest of his gift card he won at summer reading. I was able to get him 4 shirts at the outlet mall. Annabeth and I checked out a free shipping toy deal on Zulily and she chose a toy set for him and I found a good deal on some crayons (Owen loves to color!) to round out the gift card! We were able to get all of that for $0 OOP!

- I price matched an oil change and cashed in some WalMart Savings Catcher dollars to save $16.81 on our oil change this week.

- I ordered the kids' Halloween cards using a 10 FREE offer from Shutterfly. Saved: $24.90

- I turned in all of our items for the fall consignment sale. My sales goal is $300 for this sale. People often ask, "Are consignment sales worth it?" Well...they are quite a bit of work, but after doing a few each person develops their own organization and storage system making each sale faster and easier. I have made $1167 profit back in six sales. Not a fortune but that would have been ALOT of money lost if I had just taken things to Goodwill! I also regret not doing the sales sooner - the first two years we had Annabeth I just sold everything at garage sales and I probably lost a lot of money doing it that way.

Sheriff Owen and his trusty steed 

This cool bouncy toy was a hand-me-down!! 

We are looking forward to a great weekend and week ahead celebrating Annabeth's 5th Birthday!

Check back over the week for birthday fun and Etsy birthday finds! 

Happy Savings to All! 

Frugal Friday 161

Happy Frugal Friday!

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

***We had an AWESOME savings week this week! Praise the Lord!***

- I babysat for a friend.

- Mark worked one night at his part time job.

- I ordered Annabeth's fall/winter church shoes online. As a Stride Rite Rewards member, I always get free shipping. I also get free returns so if they do not fit, I can return them for free. By picking out just a few choices online, I can control the price much easier than taking Annabeth to the store. I was able to buy a pair that was under $25! We also earned our next $10 reward which I will use when we buy Owen his next pair of tennis shoes.

- Friday night we enjoyed pizza and breadsticks at Annabeth's favorite place, Pizza King Station, for free thanks to a gift certificate!

- I renewed our OnStar subscription for the year. I save $50 by waiting until right before it expires. Thank you to my Mama for that money saving tip!

- We purchased a cool old window for a project. We shopped at Madison Street Salvage and used our library card to save 15% - that deal is good through September 30. We spent just $20 for the window - it was less than that after the discount but we donated our change to their donation jar.

- My parents came to visit for Saturday and Sunday. They treated us to dinner both days and we did some shopping for the kids as well. We were able to spoil them some too - we treated them to breakfast from Tom's Pancake House and we took them bowling. 6 of the games were FREE thanks to a gift certificate. We just had to pay for two games and two shoe rentals.

Annabeth had SO much fun bowling!

This is one of favorite dates with Mark and I think

she really enjoyed having Grandpa and Grandmama along too! 

Owen enjoyed playing "score keeper" for everyone 

- A friend gave me four codes to get a FREE Finding Dory lantern from Kellogg's Family Rewards. I ordered the lantern and we will put it away for a Christmas gift.

- Our biggest and best savings of the week was SO EXCITING! A few weeks ago, I used our garbage disposal in the morning and it was fine but it went out after lunch. Mark did some trouble shooting and determined that it must have just been done :( I was so sad but that is a luxury and not a necessity so we have just been doing without one. Then, this past week, the light above the sink also went out. It had a pretty new LED light in it and we just thought that seemed too fishy that both were out. Mark went and spent $5.98 on two new switches, replaced the old ones, and the light and garbage disposal are now working again! This saved us over a hundred dollars!!!!!

We hope you all had a fun week saving money too!

Happy Savings to All!

Frugal Friday 160

Happy Frugal Friday!

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

- I babysat for a friend. Her meeting went over and she paid me more than I was expecting. The expected amount was added to Owen's savings and the extra was added to our offering for church.

- I tagged ALL of our items for the fall consignment sale. I am done a few weeks ahead of the drop-off date and it feels so good to have it done!

- Sunday we enjoyed a breakfast at church for first responders. The kids enjoyed seeing a fire truck that IFD brought over.

- I made a quick Aldi trip Sunday afternoon. We had received a $10 off $40+ purchase and I did not want that to go to waste! I bought all of the rice milk in the store and some extra gluten free items for Owen.

- On Monday, I helped a friend tag her items for the consignment sale. We also took over homemade cookies as a thank you for providing lunch for us on Friday as well as Monday.

Mixing her cookie dough.

She is to the point where I just read some of the recipe and double

check her measurements while she bakes.  

- Wednesdays we spend the whole evening at the dance studio as Annabeth has three classes and a 45 minute break. I have been packing dinner so we are not tempted to run out for fast food or to buy expensive treats at the studio.

- Mark attended a fundraiser Wednesday night. He won a door prize that included gift certificates for a service on a car, a free car wash, a nice set of flashlights, and some other freebies from a local car dealership. He also bid on and won a $40 value bowling/pizza gift pack for just $20. He was happy to support Kirby Cochran for Sheriff!

- We got another Zulily box and another freebie this week. This time it was a package of cat treats and a package of dog treats. I was able to give these to a friend who has dogs and cats. Jeanette had gave us a pair of ballet tights for Annabeth this week so I was happy to be able to give her something as well.

- Mark worked one night at his part time job.

- I took Owen to his first Wonderful Ones storytime. He has been tagging along to the preschool storytime since he was just a couple of weeks old but I haven't been taking him to his own. With Annabeth in Kindergarten this year, she will no longer go to storytime and we will take Owen to his own. He LOVED it! He was so so happy!

We had a wonderful week and hope you did as well!

Happy Savings to All!

Frugal Friday 159

Happy Frugal Friday!

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

- On Friday, we had a play-day with my nephew Nate and my sister-in-laws. We took back a whole box of hand-me-downs that they had let both kids wear. I am so thankful that they have shared so much!

- I have taken on a once-a-week babysitting commitment to help a friend. The money from this will go to Owen's savings.

- A package from Zulily came. It had a free sample of gluten free crackers. Owen enjoyed them with a nectarine for an afternoon snack.

- Mark painted all of the trim on the outside of our house. A neighbor noticed that our tall ladder wasn't tall enough and loaned us his tall ladder to help get the tallest parts painted. This was a HUGE project but by having Mark do the painting we saved hundreds of dollars.

- We shopped at Sam's Club for some items. I made sure to swipe my card at the free item kiosk. It is some kind of air freshener thing. We will share it with Mark's mom who loves things like that.

- Mark worked one night at his part time job. He also worked many hours over his usual shifts meaning we will have over-time pay coming in a few paychecks. We pray that we will use these extra funds wisely.

- We adjusted our grocery budget as Owen is now eating all table food. We realized that we needed to bump up what we are spending at the grocery to continue feeding everyone healthy foods!

Blueberries, carrots, pizza bagels, and watermelon dinner.

As always, Mr. O had a death grip on his rice-milk cup. 

We had a great (short, due to Labor Day) week of school! 

Happy Savings to All! 

Frugal Friday 158

Happy Frugal Friday!

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

- We went to Evansville/Owenbsoro for a quick visit this weekend. We did not stop for dinner on the way there and resisted the urge to eat out or shop while visiting. We had a wonderful, but too quick, visit with everyone. Momaw was kind enough to empty her change basket for the kids' savings accounts and she shared some little notepads and pens for our schoolroom. She also was going to throw away some plastic sets of forks and spoons so we took those to donate to the Weekend Meal Bags.

On our trip to Evansville,
Owen was finally brave enough to sit in the police pedal car at Grandmama and Grandpa's.

Read about why this pedal car is so special here.

- We rolled change from the kids' piggy banks and added it to the change from Momaw before taking it all to the bank. "A penny saved is a penny earned"

- A friend shared some beauty samples with me. She has a family member selling all natural beauty products and I enjoyed sampling some of their items. I really loved one of the face masks!

- I was contacted by Kendall Viewpoints to complete a review of the InStyler MAX Wet to Dry tool. I was given the tool free, to keep, in exchange for publishing two reviews. I also did a post with pictures about my experience.

- Mark worked one night at his part time job.

- I took a bag and box of items to Goodwill. We also ran in for a quick trip to look for items on my fall must-have list. I was able to find Annabeth a pair of Justice shorts for gymnastics. (I don't know much about the Justice brand, other than it is extremely expensive at the mall, but I have found quite a few pairs of athletic shorts at consignment stores and they hold up through gymnastics class better than any other brand. That has made them a "must buy" when I find them item.) I also found a fall/spring Columbia jacket for Annabeth for just $2.99!! This same jacket is $29 new! What a deal!

We had a great school week and were SO excited to wake up Thursday morning to beautiful, cooler weather! We made Thursday afternoon a Downtown Franklin day and enjoyed looking, without buying, at the Marshmallow Monkey and Toodleydoo Toys. We also split an order of cookies at Suzy's Teahouse (we love that they are gluten free!) for just $1.85!

We hope you all had a wonderful week as well!

Happy Savings to All!