My Abundant Life: This Week's Frugal Tasks 5th December 2015

I've just about finished my Christmas shopping this week. Most presents have been wrapped and are under the tree. It's such a good feeling to be organised. Here's what else we got up to this week -

* Gratefully received a bag of shredded paper from a cleaning client. It was building up in their shredder so I asked if I could take it home. This will help line the laying boxes in the chicken coop.

* Recycled some old Christmas cards into gift tags. They look great. I only wish I'd done this years ago.

* Darren cooked up some tomatoes and onions that was given to us. It was portioned into meal sizes and frozen for future spag bols.

* Continued to pick raspberries and strawberries each day.

* Wrapped lots of Christmas presents using paper bought on clearance last year.

* Baked four loaves of wholemeal bread with extra goodness.

* Gratefully received some uncooked sausages. Darren cooked them on the bbq and portioned them into meal sizes and froze. Jessica has requested sausage casserole to be made ( her fav )

* Saved a couple of gift boxes and bags to be reused for future presents.

* Megan shopped from the present shelf for a last minute class Kris Kringle. Men's toiletry packs bought on clearance in the New Year come in handy for unexpected occasions.

* Cut open a very expensive hand lotion to scrape out the last of it's contents. When this lotion was given to me I knew I'd be using every last drop.

* Did the usual water saving tasks of saving lots of shower water for the veggie seedlings, hand washing dishes, used kitchen water on the pot plants and recycled washing machine water for each next load.

* Both my girls have finished school for the year. They have gone through their stationery and kept what they can reuse for Uni and school next year. We are sorting through text books and novels and anything that can't be used will be advertised on facebook.

* Both Darren and I filled up our cars with discount dockets when petrol was about $1.12 per litre then topped up again when it was $1.09. A couple of hours later it went up to $1.30. We are grateful for full tanks of petrol.

* Collected half a bucket of water from the gas hot water system overflow pipe. I used it to water 3 plants.