My Abundant Life: This Week's Frugal Tasks 4th July 2015

With school holidays upon us and being too cold to be outside, it's a wonderful time to be busy around the house catching up on baking, cooking and maybe a few crafts. I try to use this time to bake extra school snacks for the freezer. Here's what I got up to this week -

* I gave both Jessica and Megan a haircut. Their hair was due for a good trim. This saved us $10 - $15 each.

* Made a litre of vanilla yoghurt using some natural yoghurt given to us as a starter.

* Baked two loaves of white bread with chia seeds and two wholemeal loaves.

* Filled up my car before the school holiday price hike and used a discount coupon too

* Gratefully received a couple of boxes of clothes from a family member. There were lots of jeans and other items we can put to good use. All were in as new condition.

* Froze two single serves of a pasta dish.

* We've started using newspaper in the bottom of the chicken coop nesting boxes with a smaller amount of hay. It gives the boxes better insulation during the colder weather and means we don't have to use as much hay.

* Made Annabel's Golden Syrup pudding. This is a very frugal pudding and wonderfully comforting in Winter.

* Refilled all my spray bottles with Miracle Spray.

* Started saving the washing machine water again. With the two big birthday celebrations lately, we just didn't have time to do it. It's great to get back into the routine.

* Dried most of the washing on clothes horses. Some was put into the dryer.

* Watered all our pot plants and bulbs with water saved from the kitchen.

* Gratefully received some meat and vegetables. Most of the vegetables I blanched and froze straight away as I couldn't use it quick enough.

* Donated another couple of bags to Savers and received some discount stamps. Megan bought some tops from Savers as she's doing work experience shortly at a local hospital.

* Baked raspberry and white choc muffins for snacks.

* Picked lettuce from our garden for two meals.

* Collected a fair few eggs. One day we collected four eggs from five chooks. Not bad for the cold weather.