What did you do to save $ today?

[annmarie]

It seems like from a lot of postings lately, many of us are starting to feel the effects of the poor economy right now. While we all need to be able to commiserate with each other and comfort each other, I thought perhaps a thread dedicated to actual things we did on a given day, in order to save money, could be very helpful to all of us. I know this whole forum is about saving money and being self-sufficient, but many of our conversations are about what we want to do "someday" or ideas we've heard of but aren't sure how to implement, or ideas that actually require $ for start-up, you know, the big ideas. How about we all just share practical, actual things we've done on this particular day to save a few dollars. If we can keep it going for a while, this could turn into a nice little collection of simple ideas. Remember though, this has to be something you've actually done or will do today, no "I shoulds" or "I'm thinking abouts" or "I used tos". And don't worry about being too obvious, these don't have to Earth shattering feats of self-sufficiency! I'll go first...

Friday's are grocery shopping day, so when I head out this afternoon, rather than spending $3.45 on a decent loaf of bread, I saw that a good quality organic unbleached flour is on sale for $3.45 for a 5 pound bag. I'll buy that and make my own bread this weekend, and have enough flour for probably about 5-6 more weeks! Also, I have a list and I will stick to it!

 

[Corn Woman]

I went to a church rummage sale and for $1 got the noodle attachment for my Bosch mixer. Brand new in the box marked with the store price of $159.99 with 10 different extruding discs. I get the thing home and find out Bosch made 2 sizes but only 1 part on the thing is too big. I take it into a machine shop and in a few minutes they fix it for me. Perfect fit and my cost was $2.15 so for $3.15 I have the perfect setup. No more store pasta for me. With just a couple of batches my investment will pay for itself.

 

[Britesea]

We paid off our mortgage!

 

[Beekissed]

Planting more things in the garden today...saves money down the road. Made homemade bread and a huge chicken(chickens hatched and grown here) pot pie/cobbler for the family and a crockpot of beans. Cooking at home from scratch saves money, so we do it most of the time.

Every day is a day geared towards saving money here. Time, we have...money, not as much. What we do have is God's, so we try to manage it well and have enough left over to give away as He directs.

 

[DrakeMaiden]

Ohhhh that is something I would enjoy...just replace the milk in them with eggnog? Or are you talking pouring eggnog over them with lots of butter???

LOL, you are too much!

There are two ways you can do it, depending upon what is in your fridge. You can replace the milk with eggnog and add a touch more nutmeg, or you can do the following:

Eggnog Pancakes

2 cups flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 to 1 tsp nutmeg (or to taste)

2 cups milk
3 eggs
2 Tablespoons vanilla

(mix dry ingredients in large bowl, mix the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl and then add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and stir until just combined).

That will make you enough to serve 4 + people. You can refrigerate any leftovers, but use them reasonably soon.

--OR--

What I do is make half that recipe (for 2 people). I use one fresh egg and one "ice cube" (egg cube?) of thawed frozen egg. If you don't have any frozen eggs, you will probably have to use another half of a fresh egg.

Please note!:
1. I use duck eggs, which are larger than chicken eggs, so it might work fine with 2 chicken eggs. What I find is that with 2 duck eggs it tends to become more omelety in texture and less eggnoggy. Experiment and find what works for you.

2. I don't use butter IN my pancake batter. I save it to melt and smother on top, because I think it makes a bigger impact that way. If you want traditional pancakes, then make sure you add melted butter or oil to this recipe.

3. We top our pancakes with real maple syrup.

I hope that was thorough enough. LOL

Enjoy!

 

[Lawana]

Dried all the linens, blankets, and quilts on the line. We had a nasty stomach virus go through and I washed everything anyone had bundled up with. Lots of loads and lots of things on the line, the fences and the porch drying.

 

[Wannabefree]

I failed to find what I wanted to buy. hey, it worked, it counts

 

[tortoise]

Our bathroom soap dispenser is cracked and oozes. It's a cheap $1 one, and our third to break the same way. The more expensive pumps don't dispense well. I was wandering around on pinterest and saw a DIY soap dispenser made with a mason jar. I have mason jars, I have a pump from the cracked dispenser... so I tried it. It worked! "New" soap dispenser - $0, 10 minutes.

 

[CJ1]

I feel dirty. It's been a while since I've been to this farmers market.

Talk about inflated prices and a large corporate presence.

But there were a few good folks there and was money to be made. Sold 25 bottles of wine.

 

[baymule]

We pulled masses of green briar vines down out of the trees, karate chopped them off at the root with machetes and piled them up. The sheep love the leaves and ate so much they had to go lay down to ruminate SIX times! And we're talking about 9 sheep. We have 3 piles the size to fill up a pick up bed. Was too tired and hot to take to burn pile. Besides, the sheep weren't through eating! So we saved money on feed and hay today!