Thrift Finds

It was planned. Yes I found a need to go to a Church sale. It came to me that my rosemary plant was being squeezed between my basil and not growing as it should so the need came up for a larger pot to transplant the rosemary and add to my container herbs growing here at the townhouse. We had no intentions of getting up this past Saturday to search this sale, but I refuse to pay top dollar for what we can pick up for nearly nothing. Call me cheap, call me frugal but I prefer to be called thrifty. I was very successful. I found two twelve inch dirty flower pots with saucers and they were $1 each.

Here they are after being scrubbed clean and disinfected with bleach and the rosemary now has a pot of it's own and is doing much better. I may cut a few stems to propagate new plants so I have some growing inside through the winter. 

It looks so very happy doesn't it and I am ready to harvest a little for cooking and when it gets a bit larger I'll dry some.

We found a Martha Stewart colander for $1 which will be used for our cheese making and a few more canning jars. On the way back from the Church sale we stopped at a thrift store and found the lime green desk lamp and vintage sheet.

The Church sale was over loaded with books and my daughter found a couple she liked. The wooden doll she spotted on the first table just inside the door. She brings home many new faces. The apple corer, shot glasses and cookie cutter she got at the thrift. The apple corer is heavy plastic/Plexiglas with red handles and is very strong. She got this item because she saw that she could cut potatoes for baked french fries and have a more consistent size. 

Lastly she found many vintage patterns at the thrift store. She chose several coat patterns and a foundation ware pattern. She also found the large Georges Briard plate and two suction handles. One has been added to the shower for my benefit. I get the help I need from them getting my old knees and bad hip in and out of the shower. One handle she attached to her cutting ruler for a more ergonomic way to use it cutting fabric. Works great. So for something that was planned, but not intended we found what we needed and a few extras to make living easier along with a few items of pleasure and store inventory. Thanks for stopping by and visiting. Have a great week.

Thrift finds and freebie economics.

This past Sunday I went for a ride with my younger daughter to a baseball game for my youngest grandson. He had to be at the field an hour before the game, which his team won, so we took a few minutes to head to a local thrift store. Lots of great things and plenty available, but I continue to purchase needs and not wants. When I walk through a thrift store I wonder why everyone doesn't have everything they need. 

I purchased the salad spinner and the vintage Mickey and Minnie contact paper. The salad spinner was on my list and the contact paper will be sold. My younger daughter got the quart size canning jars for $2 at a yard sale for me and they are all cleaned and ready for canning season.

This large bundle of bath tissue was free. My eldest daughter got an eBay coupon for $25 and this was purchased and shipped free.

Bourbon was on my wish list. I wanted to make extracts and barbecue sauce with it and sure enough the message was heard through the universe and we were given this bottle of Kentucky bourbon. I love how the universe works.

These two divided wooden cubes measure 18x10x8 and were salvaged from a renovation project at my daughters place of employment. They were going to demolish these and many more, but she convinced her supervisor to take them down and either sell them or give them away. They were all saved and my daughter took these for her future home. They are small enough for her to use for now until she resettles. This is not bad for living frugal and taking advantage of what comes your way. We are very grateful for all things good. Thank you for stopping by and have a great week. 

Thrift Finds and Freebie Economics

We haven't been intentionally thrifting lately. It's been unplanned stops and the purchases are very strictly monitored. We've been busy using what we find or reselling what we find and looking for items my daughter can add to her collections.

This plate is part of collection of cute little girls and sayings. They are orange and yellow and we hang them in our vintage bathroom. We always get Pyrex covers when we see them and lately natural health has been interesting learning and reading.

She found this white divided Pyrex dish and blue refrigerator dish that she's added to her collection. 

We've been trying to eat more vegetarian meals and this lovely book has quite a few recipes we are going to try and the "American Family Cookbook" is a Culinary Arts Institute recipe book and it's been added to the collection. The Knifty Knitter was an awesome find and a complete set and the price was to good to leave it behind. It has been resold in the last week. 

We will always grab canning jars. This one was $.29 so home it came. We found NIP vintage pink double sheets, a vintage yellow floral sheet and a lovely vintage geometric print scarf. Good pickings to us.

The only free item this week is this sample of Friskies cat food along with a $1 off coupon. I won it on an on-line spin to win game. This is all of the thrifting part of our lives this week. This blog is our diary and reminds us what we are doing., and how much we are growing and moving on a forward path. It's our tool to show others how you can live a frugal life and a bountiful life without large debts. Thank you for stopping by and I hope it's been a little inspiration for you.

Thrift finds and more great economics.

The snow is starting to melt here in the northeast. The mile high mounds of snow and the ice formed on the roofs are causing flooding and leaking all over the place. To escape on Saturday after all the errands were done we stopped at a thrift store. Findings were slim, but our wants have become slim. We narrowed it down to what we can use.

My daughter makes the purchases and she is addicted to fabric, but so am I and we found a few we could use. There was a gray and green bed sheet, an aqua floral sheet, tan and purple corduroy, a vintage red tone stripe and best of all for the grand total of $1.99 a bed skirt with some wonderful off white 100% cotton. 

We found a deep wire basket that once attached to the back of a door with Command Hooks will hold light weight winter hats and mitten. Also found were two more canning jars at $.29 each, a bag with four boxes of new magic birthday candles, several mini metal buckets that will help with my garden and 20 spools of 100% Egyptian cotton thread. There were several books added this week also. Gardening books we always took out of the library, but now they are growing on the shelf and books to make us more knowledgeable about the little things we can do.

We had two more $10 off a $10 purchase coupons this week. Scott bath tissue is $12.99 for the 20 roll package and combined with a $1 manufacturer's coupon I got it for $1.99 and tax. The second coupon we put towards a $13 package of packing tape so we had it for shipping and packing things up. Lastly a york peppermint pattie free from Savingstar.com last weekend. Not a bad haul for a little bit of work.

Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful week. 

Thrift finds and "freebie economics"

This past weekend after a pleasant visit to the library and finding a few good knitting books to check out my daughter stopped at a thrift store we hadn't visited in a while. Something told her to take a few minutes and go look around. She struck gold with the blue tags making merchandise 50% off. She filled the cart with as many canning products as she could find. There were 33 various sized jars, four boxes of rims and lids, and five boxes of just lids. The pink tags were not 50% off but still a good price. I know some are old stock with all the BPA stuff in them, but I've been canning with these for about 40 years so any damage is probably already done if any. I will continue to take my chances at this point.

As you can see it was quite a find. There were more jars but those were left behind. At full price we'll let some one else find them. She also found a vintage new in package donut cutter. Now I know there are two already in the stash here some where, but it's hers and it's new and what can I say? That was all she purchased thrifting this week and as you can see by my prior post I have already filled 17 of those jars and it wasn't like there weren't any other fabulous items she could have purchased, but she chose to leave them behind. As she said they were wants not needs.

Moving on to our freebie economics she also cashed out her Walmart rewards money. This is an app that gives you money on an e-gift card if the price is lower at another store than it is at Walmart. She accumulated $26.53 and she purchased two cases of pint size jars and two packages of lids. All free just for a little bit of time on her fancy phone. LOL I give her a hard time because I live without a phone but I believe it was worth the time. 

The other freebie this week was a box of 42 boxes. Yes boxes. They are card or stationery boxes that some one at work gifted my daughter. They are 4x6x2 inches in size with a lovely clear cover. Can you see the small canning jars of home made jam and home made biscotti packaged in them for gifts all wrapped with beautiful ribbon? Anything for that matter would look lovely in them. Even some home sewn, knit or crochet gifts. Every little bit helps and we just keep on going and sharing. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week.

Townhouse Homestead Tuesday

I don't know where to start today. It's been a busy first week to the new year. We've been organizing to make it a good new year and more efficient. The holidays were wonderful. My daughter gave me a Presto pressure canner. This has been on my wish list for almost two years now so imagine my surprise when I opened this gift. When I was raising my family I always canned and preserved and when I down sized I gave away my canner and most of my equipment. We took a trip to the store for jars and it was immediately put to work.

New years eve day was quite a productive day. After eating our share of Christmas ham and serving company ham and cheese sliders I began by making a pot of split pea soup from the bone and leftover ham. The result for this day was three pints of ham alone and nine pints of split pea soup.

Since it had been many years since I had pressure canned anything I was a bit nervous about my results. The worry was for nothing because everything sealed and I felt good about not wasting food. I couldn't fit any more in our tiny freezer so I would have ended up throwing or giving it away.

On new years day the canning continued and I put up nine pints of ham, bean, and carrot soup. This finished up most of the ham leaving a few pieces to put in breakfast sandwiches. So moving on to the small freezer and how full it was it became clear that I needed to keep going and use up what I had been tossing in there. 

I made triple berry pancake syrup as Christmas gifts and had plenty of fruit stored up to make more. I wasn't aware that it would make so much, but I ended up with seventeen (17) cups of triple berry syrup. I know it's a lot, but it is preserved and will keep. You must understand that my daughter and I are always taking trips to the wonderful state of Vermont and we have always purchased a bottle of this syrup at $8.99 for 8oz. It is wonderful that now we can use our adventure to discover something new in Vermont.

It was a busy three days, but it is all labeled and put away so we can move on to the next adventure.

I also received for Christmas my favorite book to take out of the library. How excited I am to have this in my personal library and to be able to take it out and just glance through it whenever I want. 

I know that a lot of us are on tight budgets and trying to eat better and this butternut squash soup has become one of our favorites. Easy to make, simple sage butter seasoning (made with the sage I grew this summer) along with salt and pepper to taste then add a few home made croutons from that leftover bread and you have a wonderful and inexpensive winter dinner. 

This is what's been going on here in the townhouse and 2015 is starting out in a very positive way. I wish you all a very good new year and thank you for stopping by.