Monday, February 6, 2012

Add more water to the soup....

Due to a budgeting mishap, completely caused by me, we had a rather tight week financially speaking.

This caused me to be all sorts of thrifty and creative.

Like, when we ran out of laundry detergent and I had four loads left to do, I grated my last half bar of Dove soap into an old formula can, added half a cup of borax and half a cup of washing soda, and did my laundry.
We washed the shower with borax and washing soda instead of buying shower cleaner.

I found even cheaper chips (and a slightly smaller bag) at the grocery store so we could have cheese dip to watch the superbowl.  I made trail mix with pretzels instead of peanuts and milk chocolate baking chips instead of M&Ms.  I even attempted brownies from scratch rather than buying football shaped brownies or a box mix (and I am never buying a box mix again).

When we ran out of bread, I made some in the bread machine.  When we wanted pizza, I made the dough from scratch.  I discovered shortening can add creaminess to mashed potatoes when you are out of butter, but I missed the butter flavor.

Obviously, a lot of the cut backs were in food.  But we also homemade a valentine wreath instead of buying one, when there was a really cute one in Walmart!

Some things I will stick with - the brownies, the trail mix change-up, the pizza dough (which I was already doing most the time anyway, but I found another recipe we liked a lot!).  The bread?  Maybe sometimes, but not all the time! 
We've done the laundry detergent before, but generally with fels-naptha soap.  I really like how it came out with Dove, and I know there is a good off-brand Dove, so we might revive the homemade detergent for a little while.

And I'm sure pinterest will continue to offer all sorts of cute crafts to make cheaply ourselves!

1 comment:

Katie Olthoff said...

I thought I commented on this already, but I guess not!

You are amazing! I would have no idea where to start on many of those things!