My Abundant Life: This Week's Frugal Tasks Saturday 30th January 2016

The cooler weather has been great for baking and cooking. I now have restocked the freezer with muffins for snacks. We've received lots of rain for our garden. This is such a blessing. I continued to save the warm up shower water but have only used some of it. I'll have to find more buckets to keep my water " stockpile " in. Here's what else we got up to this week -

* Megan and I both had to sew a button on a pair of jeans when the stud fell off.

* Gratefully received some card making equipment from a lovely friend. I received a corner rounder, embossing ink pad and pen, embossing powder, two other ink pads, a pattern cutting mat, pattern cutters and cutting tools. I was overwhelmed with her generosity as these were items I wanted to get some time in the future if I could spare the money.

* Gratefully received some other shape cutters from another friend.

* Baked Anzac biscuits for Australia Day. Megan baked some mini meringues and we used home grown raspberries on top.

* Bought four bags of present bows for 50 cents a bag. There's about 26 bows per bag. I think I'm right for the next few years.

* Baked four loaves of wholemeal bread.

* Baked raspberry and white chocolate muffins using our own raspberries.

* Made a batch of soap with olive oil in it. I was able to make twelve rose soaps for presents.

* Gave a hand towel, rose soap and a hand made card for a friend's birthday..

* Ate leftovers for dinner after Australia Day.

* Kept the cooling off most days as the weather has been mild. When the cooling was used we had it on low and used electric fans to move the air around.

* Used the shower warm up water to keep all the fruit trees and bushes hydrated.

* Hand washed the dishes a few nights. There wasn't enough dishes to put the dishwasher on.

* Picked tomatoes, beans and a handful of raspberries each day.

* I had to use the dryer one day to dry the towels. The weather was muggy so I knew the towels wouldn't dry on the line. To offset the electricity usage I stayed off the computer all day.

* Used my flyby dollars to buy mince and sausages for our Australia Day BBQ.

* Bough Megan two pairs of school shoes. Spendless Shoes had a " buy one pair get 50% off the second pair " sale. I got a pair that fits perfectly now and a pair in the next size up for next year. If her feet don't grow any more, we'll put insoles in the second pair.

* Made potato cakes for lunch with 2/3 cup of left over mashed potato.