Frugal Accomplishments - Thanksgiving Week

We attended a free Baroque concert at church on Sunday.  Some friends joined us too - it was lovely!  The harpsichordist made the harpsichord....incredible!

We had 4 hours between the end of church and the beginning of the concert.  We used that time to do some things in town - errands and a bit of shopping.  We picked up some crackers at Sam's so we can make some packets for the homeless, and ate a 'lunch' of samples.  They had tons of things out because it's close to the holidays.

Albertsons has some store brand items on sale - notably butter for 1.88 a pound and cream cheese for .99 per 8oz.  In addition, there were coupons in the Sunday paper a few weeks back - buy one get one free on the Albertsons store brand (up to $2).  Butter for .94 a pound and cream cheese for .49 each is pretty good around here - I was really happy to get them!  I also got 2lb. powdered sugar for 75 cents.

I transferred a prescription to King Soopers, which got me $1 off per gallon of gas, up to 30 or 35 gallons.  I haven't used it yet, so I'm not sure.  I used coupons and sales to get free Suave deodorant, TP for .29 per 4-pack, sour cream for .60 and Celestial Seasonings tea for $1.  There were cuties in the produce area in the sample basket, so we each had a cutie tangerine. 

We're using the wood stove for heat as much as we can.  It helps us use far less propane.  I have flannel sheets on the beds too, which helps us all feel warmer.

We made bird seed cakes for our suet feeder.  We used washed bacon grease, coarse ground wheat flour (this was actually from when I took a grain mill to church and let the kids mill some wheat for a Bible lesson) and 'economy' bird seed.  I'll do a tutorial post soon.

I printed high value coupons that should get me shampoo for free at Walmart. 

I pressure canned six pints of chicken broth.

I made a double batch of chili - some for the day before Thanksgiving, the rest for the freezer, for convenient future meals.

We got books and media from the library.  I'm reading The Christmas Candle (Max Lucado) and enjoying some books of soup recipes - several I'm eager to try!

We did some online 'Black Friday' shopping.  I have a hard time thinking of it as Christmas shopping, because the things we bought are not really gifts - they're just household items that we can make good use of.  We ordered an office chair for Husband from Staples.  Free delivery to our home, $100 off regular price, and we had $28 in Staples Rewards to apply to it, so it cost just over $22.  He's been using a molded plastic chair, so this is a major upgrade!

We also ordered some really heavy-duty shelving for about one third off.  I don't know the brand, but it's the angle iron stuff with the thick wood shelving, and each shelf can hold up to 800 lb.  We ordered three units - one will go in the basement utility area, one in Husband's workshop and one in 'the shed'.  We chose free in-store pickup, which means we don't pay any shipping, plus we didn't have to go out when the power-shoppers were doing their thing.

(I'm sure our purchases get counted in the national figures as 'Christmas Spending', but really, we are just buying them now because the prices are really good.)

We stayed home for Thanksgiving.  Our families are literally thousands of miles away, so we called them and talked to them on the holiday.  We had a nice meal with plenty of leftovers.  It was a pretty day, so we went for a walk between the meal and dessert.  The rest of the day was quiet and relaxed.  Husband watched some football, Daughter played with legos and other toys, I did a bit of knitting and watched Martha Stewart bake sticky buns on PBS.  :)

I potted some flowers we got for 10 cents per six-pack at the end of the season.  They will provide some pretty indoor color this winter, and hopefully we can plant them outdoors in spring.  I needed potting soil, so I refreshed some we had on hand.  First, I emptied the soil I had (from previous pottings) into a bucket.  I added some water-soluble plant food and some timed release plant food, both gotten free from the hazardous materials/cleaning supplies drop-off place, stirred it all together, added a little water to re-hydrate it some, and then potted my plants.  This should keep the plants fed and happy for a good long while. 

Daughter got a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut as a reward for reading.  They have a program called Book It, for the elementary grades. 

American Express had a promotion on Saturday to 'Shop Small'.  If you registered the card and then used it in a qualifying business, you get a $10 statement credit on a single purchase of $10 or more.  We used my card to purchase a gift for a family member, and Husband's card to save $10 on lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant.  We go there once in a while, and it had been a while.  It was a nice treat.

Husband got a $15 gift card for Target as part of a promotion to get people to try using a credit card to pay utility bills.  We used it to get flannel sheets for our bed, which were on sale for $16.99 per set, any size.  Queen size sheets for 1.99 a set is really good!

Husband cashed in Swagbucks for Amazon gift cards.  He used them to get two gifts for family members and three gifts for Daughter, spending only $5 out of pocket.  I can't be more specific, because the items are gifts, but he got some great prices, and then used the Swagbucks to make the deals that much better. 

That's about it for our week.  How did you do?  Did you find any good deals?  Did your frugal behavior save you money?  Let us know in the comments!