Frugal Friday

We had some frugal wins, and then some less than frugal moves. Here's an assortment of both!

Frugal wins for the week:

• M & I completed hours of yard work & pool maintenance (vs paying for a service)
• Sold a small table & 2 chairs (Pottery Barn Kids, from when the boys were small) for $30
• Made dinner for our guests rather than going out or ordering takeout
• Used flight credit for M's trip to the beach house this summer, and was only out $50 out of pocket after the credit
• Sold our old TV for $200 
• Made almost all of our meals at home. 

Frugal fails for the week:

• M took our guests to the local park to explore while I was cleaning up & getting dessert on Sunday. One of the kids had a drone & wanted to show M how to use it. Of course, the battery died while M was flying it, & it's stuck 35+ feet in a tree & won't come down. We ordered a replacement. :-(
• Realized that the flights I'd booked for M's birthday trip to Las Vegas had a stopover (yuck!), so changed our flights. It was Southwest, so no flight change fee, but still an additional $110 for the change in flights. 
• In other flight news, I've been keeping any eye on flights to Portland for my relay in August. I was supposed to receive a discount code through the event. No dice. Have emailed, contacted them, etc. In the meantime, the flights have gone up $150, and now there are only two seats left on my flights in & out (my schedule is really tight, so I can't change the times or dates). I was so frustrated, as this is almost twice what I normally pay for a flight to Portland.
• We have our house on the market in Seattle, and are obviously not around to monitor how things look. We paid quite a bit for a cleanup yard service before we listed the house. (Note that we have always had ongoing yard service as part of our rental agreement). The house has been on the market now for three weeks, and apparently the grass is two feet high & the yard needs $350 worth of weed pulling, mowing, etc. I get that things grow, but I'm very frustrated that the original yard service didn't do a thorough job, and now we're having to pay again on top of that. Sigh. Can't wait to get the house sold! 
• We had an unexpected dinner guest on Monday, and ordered pizza for the kids. M & I stuck to our plan of steak salad, but didn't have enough quick leftovers to go around. This was really about laziness, as I could have easily gotten up & whipped something together. However, I was firmly entrenched in the lounge chair, sipping wine & enjoying the kids. :-) 

What about you? Did you have any frugal wins or fails to report?