Ways I Saved

It feels like I haven't blogged in so long!  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving break, I hope you had one too, and now we're ready for Christmas.

We had our Pilgrim's Feast for school lunch on Tuesday (pictured above).  My husband came home from work that day and was able to participate.  It was just wonderful!  The kids really enjoyed it.  I used almost everything that I had on hand.  We just had to purchase some dried cranberries, which I needed for Thanksgiving dinner anyway.  We'll definitely be doing this again.  We'll just use classier plates next time instead of clearance Halloween paper plates  :)

I made bread, cookies, burritos and Thanksgiving dinner, all earlier in the week.  After that, I basically quit cooking and we've been eating leftovers or quick meals.  I'll be making something nicer for dinner tonight!  :)

I ordered my husband's Christmas gift on Amazon on Black Friday.  I'm not sure if it was a Black Friday sale, but it was a steep discount, and they had a $20.00$100.00 purchase from this brand.  This being an investment sort of gift, I decided to get the upgraded version with the coupon instead of getting the one I had originally planned on and going under budget.  I think it'll be more versatile and last longer.  I was happy with the purchase!

Two other women and I are in charge of the children's program at church.  We have been making the children a gift for Christmas and I was able to make my part of the gift from things I had on hand.  We have a budget, but I like using my stash of sewing and crafting items for others when I can.

We went to a tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree.  While we were there, we took advantage of the free hot chocolate they offered with the tree, and the children got to visit with Santa.  We stayed right within our budget!

We went to Costco (yikes!  It's hard to stay within a budget there!) and stayed right within our budget.  We found a beautiful Bible stories book for our children that came out of their school budget.

I prepared our December budget in our big budget book as well as the little sub-budget book.  I have notated each purchase and we're right on track for the month.

I had the children make a few crafts this week out of things we had on hand.  My daughter and I made a bracelet, my son had fun beading a "worm", the children made funny faces by gluing cutout shapes onto a paper face, and I had the kids glue leftover leaves from our Thankful Tree onto legal sized construction paper for Thanksgiving Dinner place mats.