Frugal Friday

As it tends to be at this time of the year, the weather is changing (a bit cooler, at least), the nights are longer, & there's less sunshine. I'm also entering into my busiest season at work. I feel good that we have (largely) frugal habits to hang on to, even when things get really busy. 

It was our 15th anniversary yesterday, and we'll be taking the day off today, spending it together & hopefully drinking a nice (non-frugal) bottle of champagne by the pool!

Here's what we've been up to in the frugal world lately:

Saving on things we buy

• Bought some granola bars for the kids, on sale & uploaded my receipt to Fetch, for additional points
• Bought a 6.5 lb whole chicken for $3.67. We will likely roast it near Thanksgiving
• Stocked up on juice at $1.49/2 gallon, as the kids use it for smoothie making in the morning. 
• Found a good price on Honey Crisp apples, & paid $1/lb
• We usually get zero trick or treaters, but bought 2 bags of candy for $2, and will put them out at the end of our driveway with a free sign for neighbor kids who may just walk on our street to stay safe. 

Earning money

• I've continued to list things on eBay, even though sales continue to be slow. I did sell a few things:
• A book
• A set of 12 bike maps, for $96. Nick spotted these on a "free" table in our neighborhood, and thought they looked cool, but quickly lost interest when we got home. I posted them this week, and sold them for full price a couple of days earlier. Crazy!
• Sold a pair of very nice dress pants (M's) that no longer fit
• Sold an old Halloween costume for $7 on Facebook marketplace. More junk out of the house, and an inexpensive costume for someone who wanted one

Avoiding spending

• Picked up the Friday Freebie at the local store, which was sous vide eggs. We purchased the same brand when we had no kitchen, & found these to be pretty tasty. They are normally super pricey ($3.59), but were free with the Friday Freebie. We'll keep them on hand for a quick & easy breakfast
• Roasted pumpkin seeds from the pumpkins the boys carved & saved other seeds for a future pumpkin planting. 
• For M's anniversary gifts, I realized we were out of tissue paper. We almost exclusively "wrap" with gift bags, for environmental & financial reasons. I had four gift bags (small, themed running related gifts) & one lonely piece of tissue paper. I used the tissue paper for one bag, and then got creative, going through our old gift boxes I've stored away for re-use & found just enough tissue paper to fill top each bag. While we will need more tissue paper, we'll stock up at Costco near the holidays, where it will be very inexpensive to get a large package of white paper, vs the pricey colored & patterned kind that nearby shops carry. (Update from when I wrote this... when I received my anniversary gift from M, I noticed that the tissue paper looked suspiciously similar. He took it out of the packages I'd wrapped & used them for my gifts! I couldn't stop laughing. Great minds & all.)

For others:

• Helped a neighbor
• Volunteered at a non profit
• Gave away Halloween costumes to neighbors
• Organized a work 5k for charity
• Donated money to a kids organization
• Donated money to school for a supply drive, when they realized they needed mini wipe boards for the kids in certain classes (foreign language)
• Helped M with a project where he is translating school flyers for parents that don't speak English. Apparently, he's one of the only bilingual parents in our district, with this particular language expertise. 

What about you? Any frugal wins to report? Kind deeds to inspire the rest of us?