Frugal Friday

“Frugality without creativity is deprivation.” – Amy Dacyczyn.

I haven't done a Frugal Friday post in a long time so I thought the time has come to refocus on spending less. It's so easy to see expenses start to creep back up and these posts help me to keep an eye on that.

I'm a creative person and this carries over into my desire to be frugal. I love a good challenge so it's fun to see how I can save money, and yet, allow my creativity to flourish.

This week has been a great week for me because I got to do all the things I love - decorate, host, cook and bake, and plan events. And I was able to do most of those at a fairly low cost.

Here are some ways I've done that this week:

$ We are having our church missions conference this week and I did some decorating in our fellowship hall for it. The greatest cost was the plastic tablecloths, but the decorations were cheap. I took an old atlas and cut out flags and hearts. I had map fabric that someone gave me and I cut out the square runners and used pinking shears for the sides. I bought a bag of confetti and the wooden dowels for the flags. And viola! decorations done.

By the way, after looking at these photos, I pulled some of the confetti off the tables since it looked like a confetti-explosion happened!

$ I've heard a lot of people talk about Misfits Market online which is a subscription box of less than perfect fruits and vegetables that are also organic. I find it really difficult to find fruits and vegetables here that aren't pricey so I decided to give it a try. For $40 which included shipping I received the following items.

It's a weekly box which you can cancel or pause at any time. I'm going to try it for a few weeks and see how it goes, but it's definitely less expensive than our local store. It came a couple of days late, but I suspect that is because of the gas pipeline issue that happened at exactly the same time. We will see how it goes.

$ I received two bunches of cilantro in it which I love. However, cilantro goes bad quickly so I made a batch of sazon which is a blend of onion, peppers, garlic, cilantro and olive oil used in Spanish dishes. I blended it together and added a bit of salt and pepper and then froze it in ice cube trays. Once frozen, I popped them into a freezer bag and then can add a cube or two to whatever dish I'm making. It solves the problem of purchasing cilantro just to have it go bad before I can use it. 

$ Making everything from scratch is another way to save money. It seems as if we've gone out to eat a lot lately and I always regret it after the fact because it costs so much more. I've spent a lot more time in my kitchen this week, but it is healthier, tastes better and costs less.

Bosnian Baklava

So there you have it. I'm working on getting back on track with this and one way is by attempting to do a weekly Frugal Friday post. 

How have you cut back on your spending?