My Abundant Life: Frugal Tasks, A Year In Review And Merry Christmas.

I've kept my days quite busy this week. I worked two days cleaning homes, then did a fair bit of sorting, cleaning and organising around my own home. The garden needed a little weeding and watering too. Here's what else I got up to this week -

* Made a big batch of pita chips with pita bread that was given to us. These will be great with dips, cream cheese and camembert cheese over the holidays.

* I went to Spotlight earlier this week. They had 50% off all Christmas decos, craft and material. I stocked up on lots of ribbon for crafts and card making. The ribbon was 60% off.

* Saved the shower warm up water for the pot plants. Saved the washing machine rinse water for each next load of washing.

* Picked our first two peaches of the season. We also picked boysenberries for the very first time ( just a few ), lots of raspberries and strawberries.

* Darren picked lovely pink roses from our garden for my bedside table. They are the first thing I smell when I'm waking up in the morning and the last thing I smell as I'm drifting off to sleep.

* Refilled the Miracle Spray bottles around the house.

* Baked four loaves of wholemeal bread with extra goodness. I used recycled bread bags to store the loaves in the freezer.

* Gratefully accepted lots of bread bags from a charity bbq. I turned them inside out, decrumbed them and hung them on a clotheshorse in the sun to dry.

* Darren and I picked up a few Christmas decorations last Sunday at 50% off. They are a lovely light mint green and dusty pink / mauve color. These will be the colors on our tree next year with silver.

* Lined the bathroom bins with lots of recycled bread bags.

* Made a batch of strawberry and apple jam using our strawberries, lemon juice from our lemons and sugar given to us.

* Refilled the foaming hand wash bottles with diluted shower gel.

* Refilled a conditioner bottle and added water to the almost empty bottle to get every last drop out.

A Year In Review

Well, 2016 is coming to an end. I must admit it's been a challenging year to get through. We lost a good family friend to cancer early this year. Darren and I found it hard at times to keep going with our goals but we did manage to get a few things done. I'll be glad to start 2017. It will seem like a fresh start.

Here are some of this year's highlights -

* In January Jessica bought her first car. She'd been saving since she started work at 14 1/2. Her hard saving paid off and she paid cash for her three year old car.

* Megan received her leaners permit on her 16th birthday in January. She's had fun driving to school and work on the weekend.

* Cath and I travelled to Adelaide in February to help promote the opening of Aldi in South Australia. We had approximately 35 people attend our guided shopping tour. We also had fun catching up with Annabel, Tania ( Outback Tania ) and a few Cheapskate Club members.

* Jessica got her drivers licence in March. That's when Darren and I started going even greyer. It's hard to let our kids grow up, but grow up they must.

* During May I filmed a story for the Channel Nine News.

* August came around and we had a new kitchen installed as well as new flooring throughout our home. New lighting was installed too. We were glad to say goodbye to bare light bulbs and hello to down lights. Darren installed new colonial skirting boards too. Our home was packed up and moved from room to room during these big renovations.

* Towards the end of August a group of mums ( including myself ) set up The Crafty Mums Co op Etsy online shop. We've been busy making and selling our cards and crafts. Thankyou to everyone who visited our store. Thankyou to our customers who bought our goods and for the wonderful reviews.

Once again I'd like to thank all of my blog and Facebook readers. I appreciate all your comments and feedback on the topics I've shared. We've become an online family who learn from each other. I get a thrill to hear from overseas readers too. We have quite a few readers from New Zealand, America, Canada and England. The world seems quite small when we can chat and share our frugal tips.