Thrifty Tells

Our Weekly Plan and Menu for 5/12/13 Week – Birthday and Garden Week

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Cassie on May 14, 2013

thrifty-plan-may122013

Time to share our plan for this week 5/12 – 5/18/13.  How has your weekly planning going?  Are you accomplishing all you hope?  Well we hope this planner will help you to zone in on all areas of life and accomplish a lot each week with less time.   Be sure to see our Be Intentional Baby Steps for Whole Life Change.

This week is busy for us as we try to finish preparing our yard for garden, flowers and more landscaping.  For a birthday present from my extended family, I just requested that they help us finish up and so I am looking forward to having that project done! We are revamping and redoing many of our garden areas and so it’s been a bit of work!

As always, before I share our weekly plan and our menu, you can read about each of these on these links as we encourage you to do the same to save time, money and sanity:

Here’s my plan this week:

T – stands for Thrifty – what are my thrifty goals for the week?

  • Refill Handsoaps
  • Refill empty/low cleaners

H – stands for Home – what are some things I/we need to do around and for our home?

  • Finish rotating seasonal clothes
  • Wash blinds and drapes
  • Clean out garden beds
  • Lay weed barrier and bark
  • Build garden boxes

R – stands for Relationships – a place where I write down who I need to call, send a note to or remember a birthday/event.

  • Call Leona
  • Email Janice
  • Email Jessica
  • Alex call parents about upcoming visit

I – stands for Involvement – this is the part of my planner that allows me and my family to be involved in our community and church in small ways each week.

  • Email about 2 meals for new moms at church
  • Collect and set out donations for 16th pick-up

F – stands for Finances – What financial tasks do we need to complete this week: (also as we continue to find our 2% cuts each month!)

  • Send books/movies to Amazon to sell for $$
  • Deposit Rebate Checks
  • Deposit Garage Sale Money
  • Call on Service
  • Put large items on classifieds

T – stands for To-Do’s- misc. things I need to do this week!

  • Take Shirts Back
  • Call on concrete bid
  • Vitacost order
  • Next essential oils order
  • Finish Jo’s Birthday details and invites
  • Find sitter for Friday date night
  • Order book for cousin

Y – stands for You – what are some things that I can do for myself to de-stress and relax for all of the hard work!

  • Birthday week (so there’s eating out, date night, and family time which is perfect for me this week)

Plus I have my developing shopping list and other tasks list on the right for those extras.

Here’s our planned dinner menu for the week!

Monday – Lasagna Casserole

Tuesday – Stir-Fry

Wednesday – Chicken Marsala

Thursday – Taco Night

Friday – Birthday Date Night with Alex

Saturday – Birthday Dinner out with extended family after family birthday earlier

Sunday – Roast, potatoes, carrots, celery and onions

And… no matter whether you make a menu or not, don’t forget about “dinner by 10.”

If you would like to print your own THRIFTY weekly planner, you can do so below. Alex designed it to where it requires very little ink and in fact you can print it in fast draft/grayscale to use even less ink.  But either one uses miniscule amount of ink! I would recommend printing or copy several as I often write plans a couple of weeks ahead too!

Please note, if you are reading this email in our rss feed or our email newsletter, you may have to click to the post HERE to print this download. 

<== Download your printable Weekly Thrifty Planner HERE

Please share in the comments below what your menu and plan is for the week!

{ 0 comments }

Alex & Cassie
 

Gardening Update: Our Homemade Newspaper Pots and More

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Cassie on May 8, 2013

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Back in March, we shared about our 324 seedlings that we planted indoors.  We then shared an update in April and so now we are sharing our May (before planting in the ground) update!

These beautiful flowers and vegetables are growing and growing! We had to transfer them to new pots so that they had more room to grow.  We used old cottage cheese/yogurt containers (the big 32 oz. sizes) old flower pots and our own homemade biodegradable newspaper pots, all sitting on flats of cardboard from previous cans and food.

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We do still have these 4 original seed starting trays that we haven’t transferred yet.  Three trays are the flowers and one in the top left is the broccoli, cauliflower and radish.  They will need to be transplanted soon, but they still seem to be okay!

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Our tray of carrots, peppers and green onions are still in the original planting tray and I think they may be okay until we plant in the ground in a few weeks.

But as you can see, the rest have been moved to new pots.  It has been a lot of work to find and fit the fast growing ones into new pots and find space for them on the table.

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This is the very top of the shelf with the roma tomatoes, green beans, peas (with the straw trellis!) and corn.  They are not under the light as it is the top shelf, which means we are rotating them since we are out of room under the light! But it all seems to be working!

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So here’s a close-up of our newspaper pots. These are working very well and I wish I had known about them a few years ago to save money! I previously shared a different version of these, but ultimately decided to make the origami pots.  They are very simple and our 8 and 9 year old were helping out too!

I had a printed instructional on how to make them, but got frustrated as I couldn’t figure it out exactly.  So I headed to YouTube, just like we have suggested when you are wanting to learn something, and sure enough, found a video on it.  The video helped immensely and made it very easy!

Here’s the video on how to make them.  You can even start seedlings in these pots, not just transfer like we did!

Here in a few days, we will start hardening them off but placing them outside for a few hours at a time for them to acclimate to the outside temps and then we hope to plant them in the ground in a few weeks!

How is your garden going?

{ 0 comments }

Alex & Cassie
 

Our Organic Produce Order This Week from Bountiful Baskets for $32 Including Rhubarb

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Cassie on May 7, 2013

This is a sample from a previous organic basket!

Today we decided to get an organic basket of produce again from Bountiful Baskets.  As the springtime continues into summer, we will probably not be getting very many baskets from Bountiful Baskets co-op in the summer and fall months we actually find better produce values at the local farmer’s markets and even in the grocery stores that buy locally.  But until then, I was really excited to pick-up Rhubarb really cheap! We haven’t had Rhubarb for a long time.  My grandparents use to grow this in their garden and we had an abundance every year for many years.  I miss Rhubarb, and so does Alex.  He mentioned it a few weeks ago and I looked at the grocery store to only find it at $2.99 per lb.  I passed on it then, so I was happy to see it as a cheap produce option this week!

They have many options, but we just did the $25 organic basket and the Rhubarb for $32 plus the $1.50 fee.

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I should have started Rhubarb seedlings, but I guess I need to get it on the list for next year! ;)

Here’s what I ordered for Saturday’s pickup:

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If you want to see if they are available in your area too, then…

Head to Bountiful Baskets HERE and choose your state and then a pick-up location closest to you from the drop-down menu.

If Bountiful Baskets is not in your state yet, either contact them to see what they need to start one or keep watching for them to open up in your state too! They are rapidly growing and rapidly opening other states.  We have been fortunate to have been the first state and so we have been able to do this for quite some time!

*Please note, you only have until tonight at 10pm PST to order your produce for this week for pick-up on Saturday at a local location!

Also, to fully understand what we are talking about, you do need to read this article HERE.

For more fun and informative frugal reads, don’t miss these posts:

{ 0 comments }

Alex & Cassie
 

Our Weekly Plan and Menu for 4/22/13 Week – Lots To Do, What Are You Doing

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Cassie on April 24, 2013

thrifty-plan-april22-sm

Time to share our plan for this week 422 – 4/28/13.  It has already been a super busy week as you can tell from our long list!

As always, before I share our weekly plan and our menu, you can read about each of these on these links as we encourage you to do the same to save time, money and sanity:

Here’s my plan this week, I’ve already done quite a bit of it between Monday and Tuesday this week!

T – stands for Thrifty – what are my thrifty goals for the week?

  • Cook and freeze bulk natural sausage
  • Start avocado seeds
  • Plant onion bulb
  • Create compost bins around house and add dumping to chore list

H – stands for Home – what are some things I/we need to do around and for our home?

  • Clean out lg. kitchen cabinet
  • Order Sprout Farm Kit
  • Continue with Garage Sale Prep
  • Clean out bedding and space bag it

R – stands for Relationships – a place where I write down who I need to call, send a note to or remember a birthday/event.

  • Email Uncle
  • Work out vacation details with grandpa/grandma

I – stands for Involvement – this is the part of my planner that allows me and my family to be involved in our community and church in small ways each week.

  • Gather items for donation pick-up

F – stands for Finances – What financial tasks do we need to complete this week: (also as we continue to find our 2% cuts each month!)

  • Send in current rebates
  • Check when farmer’s market starts for sellers schedule (our girls are going to have a booth this year!)
  • Evaluate and adjust savings goals
  • Check out additional/different investment options
  • Return Dish Box (we had this satelite service for a short while as it was included with a phone/internet package, but we have since changed providers and completely cancelled tv this time.  We don’t watch it as we use many of the alternative forms we’ve talked about many times!)
  • Pay current medical bill

T – stands for To-Do’s- misc. things I need to do this week!

  • Next essential oils order (I rave about the 7 for household cleaning, but I have been slowly building my supply many different types for many different uses…when I have enough saved for the next round, I order more!)
  • Order promotional supplements
  • Tropical Traditions order
  • Follow-up on allergy information for Azure Standard foods
  • Calculate costs associated with building sq. foot gardens
  • Service lawn mower
  • Make Vitacost order for more foods/spices on current sale (do this by 4/26)

Y – stands for You – what are some things that I can do for myself to de-stress and relax for all of the hard work!

  • Take a bubble bath!

Plus I have my developing shopping list and other tasks list on the right for those extras.

Here’s our planned dinner menu for the week!

Monday – Country Fried Chicken with mashed potatoes, corn and roasted zucchini

Tuesday – Spaghetti with Mizithra Cheese and browned butter (our knock-off restaurant version), green salad, roasted asparagus with hollandaise

Wednesday – Beef and potato casserole, sliced oranges, cottage cheese, steamed broccoli

Thursday – BBQ Chicken Sandwiches (using our frozen pre-cooked chicken), green salad, rosemary red potatoes and fruit

Friday – Date Night in… $5 Pizza for kids and Alex and I get a 2 for $20 meal. (Remember how we’ve mentioned that date night in means kids on one house level playing games/watching movies..spending time together with their pizza party and mom and dad are on another level for our date night in! It is a cheaper, yet fun way for the whole family to have a date!)

Saturday – BBQ Chicken Drumsticks, Sweet Red Potato Salad, Frito Corn Salad, Fruit Tray

Sunday – Spaghetti with Mizithra Cheese and Browned Butter

And… no matter whether you make a menu or not, don’t forget about “dinner by 10.”

If you would like to print your own THRIFTY weekly planner, you can do so below. Alex designed it to where it requires very little ink and in fact you can print it in fast draft/grayscale to use even less ink.  But either one uses miniscule amount of ink! I would recommend printing or copy several as I often write plans a couple of weeks ahead too!

Please note, if you are reading this email in our rss feed or our email newsletter, you may have to click to the post HERE to print this download. 

<== Download your printable Weekly Thrifty Planner HERE

Please share in the comments below what your menu and plan is for the week!

{ 2 comments }

Alex & Cassie
 

Our Organic Produce Order This Week from Bountiful Baskets: $51 of Mostly Organic Produce and What We Are Getting

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy here.

by Cassie on April 22, 2013

This is a sample from a previous organic basket!

It’s Monday and about every few weeks we order our organic produce from our produce co-op, which happens to be national co-op available in many states and areas!  If you are curious what our co-op is,  read up on the Nationwide Produce Co-Op called Bountiful Baskets for food shares of $15 and more HERE!

We typically order between $35 and $50 of produce each time we order. One full organic basket is $25 (non-organic is $15) and then we usually add some extras.

We have never order the breads and grains due to not knowing the allergy warnings for peanut and tree nut allergies that we deal with in our family (baked goods are some of the biggest culprits for these allergies), but they do have those too!

Here’s what I ordered for Saturday’s pickup, it is one of our larger orders:

These where the selections we picked this week, but there are many, many more! I am excited about the 40lbs of organic oranges for only $18!! The juice packs are also popular in our house since we have our morning smoothies most mornings!

If you want to see if they are available in your area too, then…

Head to Bountiful Baskets HERE and choose your state and then a pick-up location closest to you from the drop-down menu.

Also, they just made the announcement that they have added yet another state – Minnesota! If Bountiful Baskets is not in your state yet, either contact them to see what they need to start one or keep watching for them to open up in your state too! They are rapidly growing and rapidly opening other states.  We have been fortunate to have been the first state and so we have been able to do this for quite some time!

*Please note, you only have until tomorrow night at 10pm PST to order your produce for this week!

Also, to fully understand what we are talking about, you do need to read this article HERE.

For more fun and informative frugal reads, don’t miss these posts:

{ 0 comments }

Alex & Cassie
 

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