Frugal Friday

I haven't blogged a Frugal Friday post in a long time and thought perhaps I was due for one. Dan and I believe in tithing at least 10% of our income if not more and have always done that regardless of the amount of money we make - be it little or a lot.

That isn't always easy because money is tight sometimes, and it would be easy to just use it to pay a bill. Yet, we want to give back to God what He has given to us. I find that when we step out in faith we are still able to pay our bills so that is a huge blessing. And we are not lacking what we need.

I want to preface these posts by mentioning that I believe it's important to tithe no matter what. So my frugalness does not extend to that.

Our biggest thing we are trying to do is to pay off debt. I'm thankful that due to an unexpected gift I was able to pay off a credit card and take a sizeable chunk off another bill. 

Some specific ways I've saved the past few weeks are as follows:

$ A woman at church taught some of us how to make these crepe paper flowers the other night. I'm doing the centerpieces for my daughter's wedding next summer and texted her a picture of these. She liked them and I'm incorporating some of these flowers in her wedding colors into the tables.

$ I went to two local farm stands the other day and picked up a bunch of veggies. For $100 I got 4 baby eggplant, 4 large sweet peppers, a quart of beans, 1/2 peck of apples, 3/4 pound of garlic, 1 & 3/4 lbs. of delicata squash, 3 & 1/4 lbs. of butternut squash, 2 kabocha pumpkins, 2 sugar pumpkins, 4 onions, 10 lbs. of potatoes, 8 quarts of hot peppers, 1/2 bushel of green beans, 3 large tomatoes, 2 yellow squash, a quart of grape tomatoes, 2 huge cabbage, and 1 quart of plums.

I've been busy canning and preserving. I canned the green beans as well as making 4 quarts of pickled peppers with the hot peppers. I turned 1 1/2 of the cabbages into sauerkraut which is fermenting at the moment. The rest I'm using in cooking and eating. I'm thankful for great sources for inexpensive and home-grown fruits and vegetables. 

$ Walmart had this vase and attached wreathe on sale for $10 and I added the beans and candles to make a pretty centerpiece which I can change up as the mood strikes. 

$ Because I've changed my eating habits I'm staying out of restaurants and that always saves a ton of money.

$ Still using all my homemade cleaners such as vinegar and water as well as laundry detergent. Saves quite a bit.

That's it for this week. I've been away so haven't put as much effort into it but I'm still doing pretty well watching those pennies.