Frugal Friday....the September 9th Edition

* I've had this decal of Queen Elizabeth on my car for a few years now.

Just last week a Rite-Aid customer saw her and wanted to know how I got a photo of his grandmother on my car! lolz  

So sorry to hear of Elizabeth II's passing away yesterday.  With her being a very distant cousin it saddens me greatly to loose another leaf on my extended family tree.  She seems to have been the heart and soul of the UK and her constant graceful and dignified presence will be missed by the whole world. Godspeed to you mum and long live King Charles III.

Here's what went on this past week at Chez Sluggy........

*  Another 3 loads went to Salvation Army this week.

*  I used all my Bonus Cash up.  I even bought one of the employees some stuff to use the BC up since I didn't want to bring 1 more thing home to pack and move. Plus he's a good kid(21 so not a kid!)and hard to gift anything to so potato chips it was. lol

*  Another HUGE load went to the food bank this morning(as well as one the previous week).

*  I gave away another bunch of stuff to my friends at Rite-Aid this week.

*  Been packing up what we are taking with us in this move.  Dear Lord, so much packing!!

*  Went to my last dermatology appointment in Hershey.  The closest dr. who treats HS will be 3 hours away in Dallas once we move.  Ugh!

*  I found money this past week!                  

 I found two pennies at Rite-Aid on one of my trips in to say goodbye to everyone.  One penny by the feminine products aisle and the other in the foyer on my way out.

My kids had a massive tub of Legos they left here when they grew up/moved out.  I had to sift through it all to remove crap mixed in with the Legos before I could donate it all to Salvation Army.  Bits of crayon, pencil, pens, paper clips, little plastic army men, candy wrappers, dog hair, etc. were weeded out before I got tired of that chore and just threw out 1/3 of the Legos.  I did find these two pennies in my sifting-one US and one Canadian(which they don't make anymore).

Then I found a nickel in my car on Wednesday when I was cleaning it out getting ready to pack it.  No clue who left it there.

Total Found in last Week.... .09¢
Total Found This Year.....$15.19

*  The large dumpster got carted off yesterday late morning.  It was totally full!

Goodbye old friend.  Now we await the massive packing POD this afternoon and the boys arrive on Saturday to move everything into it.

It had better be massive as we still have tons of shit to move(and still some packing needs doing).

*  We've been eating up leftovers and random stuff in the pantry which has made for some strange meals.  Wednesday we stopped at Bob Evans for an early dinner on the way back from my last dr. appointment at Hershey.  Last night, tiring of leftovers, we got Chinese takeout.  Tonight will be leftover Chinese and Saturday will be Domino's pizza and salad for the crew, using gift cards.  Sunday night will probably Subway using a gift card.  I haven't been to the grocery store since last week when I spent a whole $1.99.

That's about all I've got for this past week.  

Any frugal wins in your neck of the woods?  Let's hear all about them!

This is my last post for the foreseeable future.  I'll be MIA until whenever I get down to Louisiana and set up(and rested).  Wish us luck on the actual move journey!

Sluggy  

Frugal Friday....the June 10th Edition

So here are a few frugal things that happened here at Chez Sluggy this past week.......

*  Not really frugal but a win nonetheless.....

I culled more items from the house to send off to charity.  4 more bags of clothing that is too big now, some handbags/tote bags, a couple of Christmas ornaments and a knee support that didn't. *snort*

More stuff out of our lives that we can't/don't use. 8-)

*  I received a Rakuten check.......

Actually got it last week but I cashed it in this week.  It's not much as the only online shopping I did was from Easy Spirit this Winter and 2 Rite-Aid online orders in May(which I didn't pay any $$ for-just Bonus Cash).  Free money back for not spending any cash at least at R-A?  Yes please!

*  The only eating out this past week was on Thursday.  We went to Applebee's for lunch and used one of the gift cards I have.  The only OOP was for the tip.  

*  I sold something on eBay!

3 boxes of limited edition Starbucks K-Cups.  I picked these up in Jan. or Feb. for $2 a box.  Sold them before their Best Buy date.  Go me.  After fees I'll net a bit over $10 profit here.

*  As we get work done in the house we will be having to purchase stuff at home repair stores so I picked up a Lowe's gift card at Rite-Aid.  This gave me $16 in BC so I'll parlay that into more free stuff from R-A. 8-)

*  Hubs and I went to Ollie's(Good Stuff Cheap!)on Thursday and used a 15% off coupon they had mailed me before it expired.  I picked up some food items....

Popcorn and Pretzels to keep me from eating worse things.  Some pasta noodles, canned soup(can't make it for this cheap), water flavoring, a graham cracker pie crust for 4th of July pie making, applesauce cups and a bag of Brownie Brittle(so I don't eat much worse in the calorie count  brownies).  All this cost me $15.57.

*  I did some Ibotta and ShopKick deals at Walmart.....

All this cost me $20.98 after tax, minus Qs and $10 in fee gift cards.  I earned back $25.05 between Coupons dotcom digital Q, Ibotta rebates and bonus and Shop Kicks earned(I also earned some ShopKicks from scanning products in store that I didn't purchase).  So a net gain of $4.07 back.

The cereals will go into my Food Bank donation box, the toiletries/HBA may be used or go into a Giveaway and the veggie dogs and raisin bread will be eaten.

*   I found money this past week!  

When I was out on Tuesday I found a dime at the Rite-Aid South of here and a penny in one of the self-checkout machine change returns at Walmart.

Not a big win but it's better than getting skunked 2 weeks in a row. lol

Total Found in last Week.... .11¢
Total Found This Year.....$13.03

That's about all I've got for this past week.  

Any frugal wins in your neck of the woods?  Let's hear all about them!

And have a good weekend!  

Sluggy  

To-Do List....February Update

Not a lot on my plate in February.  It's a short month and the dark and cold don't motivate me to do much other than stay warm.  Add in a rough month for my health this year and it's a good thing I have a short list.  8-)

Here's the list and what did or didn't get accomplished.

* Pay Bills  DONE  If nothing else gets done, this does.

* Read 1 Book  DONE  I read this one........

Brothers by George Howe Colt

It was better than I expected it to be.  I didn't know this writer beforehand or his family but got to know them intimately in this book.  His younger brother, Ned, was a reporter for NBC news for a decade or so and was held hostage near Fallujah during the Iraqi war with his team for 3 days in 2004(this event was detailed near the end of the book).  Ned died in Feb. of 2015 of a stroke.

Having had some talks with Hubs about his family/siblings and their dynamic recently due to his sister's issues and treatment of us, we have talked about how children raised in the same environment and by the same parents(and those parents treating each child evenhandedly), how each child can come away from their childhood experience with such different perspectives and values.  This book and Colt's discussion about his siblings and himself brought that lesson home for me.
Colt also talked at length about famous brothers through history-the Thoreau brothers, the Wright brothers, the Booth brothers, the Marx brothers and the van Gogh brothers to name a few-and how their fraternal bond shaped them all.  Very interesting book if you are a fan of psychology or any of these famous brothers.

I also got another book read this month...........

American Rose-the Life and Time of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott.
Since I was a kid I was enamored of the Broadway Musical "Gypsy" which was the singing and dancing fairy tale version of Rose Louise Hovick's life.  Gypsy was a nationally known strip tease artist.  The author actually met with people who knew Gypsy and Gypsy's mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, including Gypsy's sister, June(who died in 2010)to garner information for the book.
Again, this book was very interesting and a "the true story behind the show and film" look at a dysfunctional family.  The mother, Rose, turned these two daughters into psychologically damaged goods and all three were survivors-both of the times they lived through and their family dynamic.  There is also a fair amount of information here about the history of vaudeville and burlesque and some of the large players such as the Minsky Brothers.
This book got me interesting in reading June Havoc's(she altered her last name from Hovick)memoirs(she wrote 2).  I doubt if I'll read Gypsy's memoir as she spent her life hiding her true self from the public.
I've got a sort of connection to June Havoc.....she starred in the original production of "Pal Joey" on Broadway and I played Melba Snyder the reporter in my college's production of that show and sang/performed the number "Zip" which was a satire on striptease and Gypsy Rose Lee and one of my audition pieces while I was in the theater world was "That Terrible Rainbow" which was one of June's numbers from "Pal Joey".  8-))

* Hold Giveaway  DONE

* Mail Giveaway  DONE
Crystal finally braved the snowstorm and her sickness misery and retrieved the box from the post office.  Use it all in good health!

* 2 Clothing Alterations  DONE

Daughter went to Sallie's a found some dress pants she needed for presentations in her Business class and to wear on her Science conference in March to New Orleans.
The only problem was they were too short so I needed to let the hem out as much as possible.

Whomever owned these pants before had been short and had hacked off the fabric in the hemmed portion with a knife or something(there was a line of stitching at the base of where the fabric was turned for the hem and all the fabric was jaggedly cut off there)before turning the pants legs up and hand stitching very badly a new hem.  I had to take out the old hem and then encase the jagged rough ends with seam binding just above where the line of stitching was before hand stitching a new lower hem.

What a PITA!
Daughter also bought a blue Women's dress shirt which was missing a button.  The shirt looked brand new and it appeared someone got rid of it due to the button missing only.  There was a spare button sewn into the bottom of the shirt so it was just a matter of removed the spare and sewing onto where the button was missing. lolz
I also had to resew another button as it came off in my hand when I was handling the shirt.  Factory machine sewn buttons are held on with a tiny bit of stitching which is prone to unraveling so always check your buttons when you buy a shirt and hand sew them for security.  It only takes a minute or two(and really, shouldn't everyone be taught to hand sew a button)and may help you avoid the embarrassment of one popping off at an inopportune moment. ;-)

* Load to Sallie's  DONE  Hubs finally hauled up a load of cast-offs and got them out of the living room.

* Redo Passwords Book  FAIL  I've been looking at the book I bought to redo my passwords/User IDs in but I just haven't gotten the umph to actually do this yet.  For sure this will happen in March.  It shouldn't take me more than an hour or two to wrap this up so I can't believe I am procrastinating so badly with this.

* Do Taxes  IN PROGRESS  I handed off taxes to Hubs(after gathering the initial paperwork)as he wants to handle it now that he's retired.  He is driving me crazy though as he works on it in drips and drabs and doesn't just DO IT!  And he insists on using software(that we have to pay for!)while I did it for years and years myself the old fashioned way.   Our taxes aren't so complicated we need to pay to do them but he's afraid of being audited and things doing them and mailing them in is now a red flag as most folks electronically file.  Whatever.  Just freaking get them filed already!!!

* Load to Food Bank  DONE  I finally got a good day when they were open to accepting donations and hauled up 6 jugs of laundry detergent, 4 bottles of shampoo and 4 bags of assorted canned/boxed/pouched food.

* Plan possible 2018 Travel  IN PROGRESS  A few ideas have crossed my mind but nothing has gotten to the make reservations stage yet.  I am just feeling uninspired about traveling right now.

* Work on 2018 Goals  Again, IN PROGRESS  We've got one big goal we've been working toward-selling the house in LA.  Keeping it another year and having Daughter and BF rent it from us after she gets her degree doesn't make sense to our bottom line so it's going back on the market with a better realtor.  I want it sold this year, period!  Dealing with people in Louisiana in a business relationship has been one headache after another and I want to leave it behind.

So that's what's happened here in February.
How was your month?  Did you conquer any goals last month?

Onward and upward to March's To-Do List!

Sluggy

Random Happenings Lately at Chez Sluggy

*  Well it's almost Christmas time so I opened my sealed pot 2 weeks ago.......well it's not sealed just rolled up, so I just took it out of the basket and counted it.........

And then lugged it up to the bank and turned it into this........

The rolled loose change tally for 2015--$116.50.
That will go toward paying for Christmas.

*  In other Christmas hacks........
I used credit card reward points to get some gift cards for gift giving this year.
Cost to me?  Zero.

Christmas stocking stuffers this year are mostly items gotten from Rite-Aid which were paid for with Plenti points/sales/coupons.
Cost Out of Pocket?  Zero.

Bought $100 in gift cards at Weis this week and earned a $10 off Your Next Shopping Order Catalina.  That will go toward buying a hunk of beef for Christmas Dinner.

*  Speaking of Christmas I am not feeling the Season yet.  For one thing the weather here has been VERY unseasonable.  It was 60+F here today!!
My car registered 63F when I got home and the bank sign down the road read 66F when I drove by it....geez!

Not that I'm complaining really but I'm use to frigid cold and snow by now having lived up North since 1984.


*  Don't forget to enter my Giveaway before it ends on Wednesday December 16th.
I really thought I'd have more entries at this point in the process.  It's either due to folks just being too busy to be reading blogs due to the Holidays and all the extra work/effort that entails AND/OR the sort of readers I have aren't into "stuff", are more on the frugal end of the spectrum and would rather have useful stuff like toiletries and HBA items.....and chocolate of course. ;-)
What do you think??

*  I've been changing up the BlogRoll too if y'all haven't noticed.  Adding a few folks and I'll be removing some who no longer post or I don't feel are relevant to me anymore.  If you have any suggestions for new blogs(or old blogs that I don't know about)feel free to suggest them to be added to the list.

*  In other blog business--I noticed that I keep bouncing between having 285 followers and 286 followers for the past month or so.  There is someone who keeps un-following and then re-following I think. Can they not make up their mind? lolz  Not that I care but it is odd.....or maybe I am just odd for noticing? ;-)

*  2015 is quickly coming to an end and 2016 is just around the corner.  Did this year just fly by or is it just my perception?!?
I need to sit down sometime this week and start thinking about Goals for 2016.  Other than keeping up with the exercise I started in 2015 I don't have anything else for that list.  We never did the big home repair/maintenance planned for 2015 so I guess that moves to next year as the money to pay for it is sitting in our account.  I plan to take some time to reflect and re-evaluate some of my aims in life after the Holidays.  Boy, does that sound lofty and pretentious or what? lolz

Ok I am off now to gather some more goodies to send off to charity.  I am trying to get 3 more donations made before 2015 ends and most of that will happen this week...I hope. 8-)

What are you up to lately?

Sluggy