Frugal Friday 565

 Happy Frugal Friday!

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

- Friday evening into Saturday, Annabeth enjoyed her last Confirmation Retreat at church. We are so proud of the work Annabeth has been doing on her Confirmation workbook, field trips, and independent Bible study. Annabeth already serves in several areas at church and we are excited to see her faith continue to grow. She baked cookies and took them to share.

- Friday evening I enjoyed a Mom's Night with some ladies from our homeschool co-op. I took a long a cheeseball + crackers and gluten-free Oreos. We had a lovely time! 

- Saturday I tagged ALL of the items for the Kids' Sale. The sale has been moved up a few weeks this year so I needed to get organized sooner than usual. With my Express Tagger's items I had about 500 items to tag. We will use the money from this sale towards vacations this year.

- Saturday I did take a break for lunch out with the boys and again when my best friend popped in for a chat. We live 90 minutes away from each other and we treasure every moment we can snag together!

- Sunday after church we hosted Mark's mom for dinner. Owen helped make homemade stromboli and Annabeth made homemade cookies. We also had salad. I love love love how much the kids enjoy baking/cooking and that they love sharing that with others.

- This week Owen attended a FREE Lego Camp at a library. In all, he had 7 hours of class on Legos, coding, and some other math skills. As other camps in the area are quite pricey, I was so thankful for this free opportunity! The kids also enjoyed playing at the library, getting books, and I enjoyed fireside sits with several friends.

One of the newer additions to this library is this game table.

The kids loved the air hockey game!

- Mark's coworker gifted us another loaf of homemade sourdough. As she's perfected her recipe, she will now be selling in small batches. We will simply return her bread bag with our order/money and Mark's coworker will bring us back the bread. Her price is what we pay at the grocery store and the quality is MUCH better! While my own sourdough journey failed - I am thankful to support someone local!

The most perfect bread.

Look how cute her bread bags are!

- Owen worked many hours this week clearing part of the yard for a garden. We have tried bucket gardening in the past but failed due to critters eating all of our produce. As the kids have starts from 4H and free seeds from the library - we have agreed to try again. Thankfully, we still have all of the buckets from previous years so we will only need some soil. 

- I did some thrifting this week. I found Owen church shorts, a sweatshirt, and new t-shirt. I found Annabeth an extra lightweight jacket and new church dress. She is down to just two dresses and we've had a very hard time finding ones that meet her requirements. I was thankful to find one thrifting! 

- We are now 900+ items into our 2,025 clean-out. One of my goals this year was to sell more as I'm not in such a rush to just get stuff out. We've made $1100+ from selling items already. I am honestly amazed that we have had that many items leave our home already this year! Proof that while we made good progress last year, there's still work to be done! 

We are looking forward to a fun weekend! Happy Savings to All!