My Abundant Life: This Week's Frugal Tasks Saturday 24th October 2015

It's been a very exciting week here. Lamb and broccoli were on sale and Jessica finished high school. Please read on to find out what else we got up to -

* Received a few belated birthday presents. I saved the gift bags, bubble wrap, tissue paper and gift boxes to use again some time in the future.

* Picked silverbeet for two meals,

* Went through all the birthday and Christmas presents I've stashed away for the next couple of years. I've now allocated them and written them into my present / gift book.

* Gratefully received a tomato plant and a few colored chard ( silverbeet ) plants from my Dad.

* Hand washed the dinner dishes a couple of nights.

* Dried the washing on the line and clothes horses ( when it rained ).

* Saved the shower warm up water to water all the fruit trees.

* Wrapped up my handmade rose soaps ready to give as presents.

* Made a double batch of Cranberry Hootycreek biscuit dough for the freezer. I baked some that day and the rest of the dough will be baked just before Christmas to give as presents.

* We ate freezer meals ( leftovers ) for dinner two nights.

* Filled up both the cars with petrol using discount dockets and paid $1.14 a litre. Darren's old car was on gas / petrol. Now that both our cars run on petrol we need to watch the price cycles carefully and use dockets to get the best price every time.

* Darren organised a better deal on both our car insurances. He saved $154 on mine and got a better excess and windscreen replacement included. For Darren's new car he saved $172. Our insurances were not that dear to begin with compared to what you see on tv. So we are happy with our savings.

* Bought rice bran oil on a better than half price sale. This will be used to make a different type of soap.

* Bought eight kilos of broccoli for $1.50 a kilo. I spent 1 1/2 hours cutting, blanching and freezing all of it. I even cut up most of the stalks and froze them to use in casseroles.

* We went out for dinner to celebrate Jessica graduating high school. We used a coupon for 25% off the food bill.

* Bought five legs of lamb for $5.99 kg from a new local shop called Fresh Value Market in Cranbourne. This will be enough lamb roasts for Christmas Day and until lamb comes on sale again next Spring.

* Made a batch of Miracle Spray to sell to a cleaning client. I also made a double strength batch to use at home. It's time saving to make it double strength then dilute it when it's decanted into spray bottles.