My Abundant Life: This Week's Frugal Tasks

This week I've been busy doing odd jobs around the house. I had three days in a row at home so I made sure I was wise with my time.

Here's my frugal list for the week -

* Received three more avocados from a friend at church.

* Cut up three old socks for garden ties.

* Mended one shopping bag, one cardigan, one dress and took up one of Megan's Summer dresses. She's grown so much that her white maxi dress was too short to look like a maxi dress. So I took it up above her knees. She's happy now and will get another year's wear out of it.

* Sewed four new Christmas stockngs. I bought the material from Spotlight after Christmas last year for $1 a stocking. We needed slightly smaller stockings this year to reflect our smaller budget.

* Made two chocolate cakes at the same time ( doubled the recipe ). One was for a church morning tea, the other one was for us.

* Froze a single serve of leftover tuna casserole. I'll have to write freezer meals onto the menu plan soon as they are piling up.

* Cooked enough rice for two tuna casseroles. One was used that night and the other portion of rice was frozen for a future tuna casserole.

* Made double strength Miracle Spray. I dilute it back down to normal strength when I pour it into spray bottles. By making it this way I'm saving time.

* Megan made a big pot of vegetable soup. She'd come home from an overnight camp on the school grounds. They roughed it and she was in need of real food. The rest of the soup was frozen into single portions.

* Megan and her friend made raspberry and white chocolate muffins and plain scones on Sunday. We all enjoyed some for afternoon tea using my Grandma's fine china cups and saucers. The rest of the muffins and scones were frozen for lunchboxes.

* Planted out some lettuce seedlings. We had to buy these as our own seedlings are too small and we'd be without lettuce for eight weks waiting for them to grow big enough. Still, it's cheaper than buying a lettuce each week.

* Saved water from the showers for the garden and washing machine. Also saved the washing machine water for the next load.

* Refilled the shampoo and conditioner bottles and diluted them.

* Finally finished a lipstick I thought was really empty about four weeks ago. I've been digging out the remains with cotton sticks for about 6 - 8 weeks. Now I've started " finishing " another lipstick. It's amazing how much more you can get from them once it reaches the plastic part.

* Darren picked some iceberg roses for the kitchen windowsill.

* I've been busy filling up my pantry so that I don't have to do much shopping during the Summer heat.