Frugal February #1 for lots of reasons

Hello everyone 

I plan on being more frugal than I have been in recent years and blogging about some frugal things I’m doing.  

Use What You Have - when possible- is the best way to not spend money and below are a few things I did,  using what I had.  

First, have you all heard about the tier tray decorating craze?  

I knew some people did it and then I found a Facebook group that’s all about tier trays.  And people are really serious and extravagant with tier trays.  

I’ve had a tier tray for years but never really decorated it for a season. 

So, I got out my shoe box of valentine decorations, that I  use every Valentines- and decorated my tier tray.  

I think a tier tray makes a cuter display than just having these doo dads spread out on a table. 

I didn’t buy a thing new. 

 My trays are deep so I needed some risers.  I used an extra set of measuring cups turned upside down and covered them with fabric to set the little Dreamsicle cherubs on.  

Some people buy a bunch of stuff at Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree to decorate their their trays.  But I won’t be doing that.  I think tier trays are a great way to display decorations, little sentimental things   and doo-dads I already own.  

Tier trays can be bought or they are easily homemade by stacking/glueing plates with candlesticks in between.  Look on Pinterest or Facebook if all of this is of interest to you.  

For Americans, we are in tax season.  Our finances are simple and I’ve done our taxes online pretty much since we first had access to the internet.  

The last few years I used E-file.com 

A few weeks ago they sent me a postcard with a half off code to use as a returning customer,  so I used it and saved almost $30.  

And I’m happy to say our state and federal returns have been filed and accepted.  

Having one less task to think about is a great feeling.  

I’ve been wearing press on nails for years.

Every set has 30 or so nails of various sizes and I only have 10 fingers,  so I always end up with some spare nails when I switch to a new set.  

I’ve been keeping the spares and sort them by color groups.  

So, another way I’m going to pinch a few pennies, is I plan on using up my spare nails before I buy new sets.  

I pulled out a bag of assorted dark red nails.  

That is a lot of nails!  I can’t use all of them as nails are different sizes and some are too small and some are too big.  

But I imagine there are quite a few full manicures in this bag. 

  
Last weeks manicure                                      And this weeks manicure 

Meals- I plan on using ingredients that have been hanging around in our freezer and pantry the longest and I did just that at lunch and snack time. 

Meals today 

We weren’t hungry and didn’t eat breakfast.  We just had coffee and tea.  

Lunch- I baked pork loin chops with sauerkraut and made mashed potatoes

For a snack,  I baked a spice  cake mix that was past date by 3 months.  It smelled fine so I added a teaspoon of baking powder and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon as we like lots of cinnamon.  It baked fine and tasted really good.  It will be nice to have the rest of this week.  

Supper will be the rest of the tossed salad that I made and served yesterday.  

I think almost everyone is feeling a pinch, and many are feeling lots more pain than a pinch, during this inflation cycle we are all in.  

I don’t know that anything I plan to post here is going to help anyone who is truly struggling.  

So you might want to look at the more hardcore blogs than mine.  

Husband and I both feeling much better.  Except for being a little tired,  I felt normal today.  I think he has another a day or so of healing and then he will be normal.  

Colds are not usually serious but they certainly are no fun 

❤️Rhonda