My Abundant Life: This Week's Frugal Tasks 6th June 2015

We've had a wonderful week. Jessica turned 18 last Sunday and we celebrated as a family by seeing Strictly Ballroom the musical Afterwards we went out for dinner at The Docklands. It's been cold and wet in Melbourne this week but we've managed to keep warm, dry and busy. Here's what we got up to this week -

* Made Jessica's birthday cake. She decided to have cupcakes which was easy to do. I cut off the tops to make it easy to decorate. I ate these tops for morning tea for a few days.

* Jeesica went out to tea with a few friends for her 18th birthday. They came back to our place for dessert and a movie. The cupcakes were for her friends as well as the apple pastry roses and choc coated strawberries I made for dessert.

* Darren pruned the raspberry bushes in readiness for the next season. He's taken 18 cuttings and planted them. If they take, we'll have more raspberries next season and maybe some plants to give as presents ( RRP $16 each ).

* Saved the box, ribbon and plastic from Jessica's birthday flowers. These will be handy for giving bunches of flowers from our garden as presents.

* Saved the shower water for the washing machine.

* Cleaned the dishwasher with bi carb and vinegar.

* Diluted the vinegar by 50% to make two bottles.

* Saved a ribbon from a box of chocolates. I'll use this to decorate a card.

* Made dried bread crumbs with crusts I'd been saving in the freezer. I'll season them when I finish using the last batch.

* Gratefully received some flowers and homemade vegetable stock concentrate from a facebook and blog reader. Thankyou Emily. It was lovely to meet you.

* Made muesli bar slice for school lunchboxes.

* Fed the compost bin and worm farm with the kitchen scraps.

* Made a batch of hot chocolate drink mix. It's a recipe from the Cheapskates website that I've tweaked to suit our own tastes.

* Saved lots of bread bags from a charity bbq. They would have been thrown into the rubbish bin otherwise.

* Made two loaves of white bread ( for my girls ) and two wholemeal loaves for Darren and I.