This weekend our daughter will have her First Communion. I’m wondering why I thought having a party at our house was a good idea as I frantically try to clean the house between writing blog posts and cleaning pounds of baseball dirt from the bathtub.
But it’s important to celebrate these occasions! Hopefully our loved ones will overlook the state of our home and celebrate our little one on her special day.
Next week I’ll tell you how we pulled off a frugal party.
The 5 WaysWe’ve Saved Money This Week
For the past few years, we’ve celebrated Frugal Fridays in our home by reflecting on the ways we saved money for the week. This has been a key part of staying motivated while we pay off debt and meet our new goal of improving our savings account balance.
If you love money saving tips, read through the entire 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week series here. Or make it easy on yourself and grab your copy of the book 500 Ways to Save Money: Build a Cash Jackpot for the Best Things In Life.
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Let’s get down to it!
Cheap Flowers
Tis the season for gardening! I wasn’t able to do much gardening in our #yearofno, so I’m excited to have a flower bed this year.
But flowers are pricey, and I have no desire to go back to our spendthrift ways. So I’m trying to be patient. Bulbs and seeds cost far less than flowers. While that won’t get us a pretty flower bed in time for our party, I’m excited to see what grows as the summer rolls in.
Patience saves so much money!
Cheap Decor
If you’ve kept up with our 2018 Goals (here’s the latest check in for May) you already know that I have big plans for redecorating several rooms in our home this year. I’m starting to pick out paint colors, and I’m pretty happy that Lowes offers sample jars of paint for $3.
After not painting most of the rooms in our house for 10 years, I’m anxious to get it right!
In the meantime, I’m looking for small ways to update the house. I found this adorable free printable to hang on our mantle.
Haircut
Great Clips is offering their $6.99 haircut sale right now, so I took advantage of it! I rarely get a haircut for myself, so this was a nice treat.
Buying Local
Another goal we crossed off in April was chickens. I bought several baby chicks from our local feed mill.
As it turns out, I accidentally got some roosters in my mix. Not only did the owner of the feed mill know that I wanted hens, but she hunted down my phone number and called to make sure I came back to get what I really wanted.
You can’t get that kind of service from big stores! Just another reason I love shopping in my small town whenever I can.
Planted Spinach
In the fall, I often find seeds marked down to 25 cents per packet at the Dollar General. I buy them and put them in the freezer.
Then I’m ready whenever spring comes to plant simple things like spinach and lettuce. I’m especially thankful to have these things when lettuce is being recalled from the stores!
Those are the 5 ways we saved money this week!
Since you like saving money, I know you won’t want to miss this list of 50 Frugal Living Tips That Will Help You Live Your Best Life.
How did you save money this week?
I'm Jamie, and I want to help you afford a beautiful life with your family. 
Grey is a color that is in right now for almost all homes and almost all areas. There are so many variations of gray I never new. It can look amazing when done right. Free items off of craigslist are also the way to get a number of things to make the home look more up to date.
We bought baby chicks as well and are expecting to get eggs this July. We started seeds in peat pots and have six flower boxes full we plan to put in the ground the end of this month. We save big $$ as hubby is the family barber and stylist. Boys get haircuts monthly and every other month I take a seat, get caped and he takes the shears and trims my long locks. Boys look shaggy so fast and my hair doesn’t grow evenly, so regular trims are a must for me and the boys. Being hubby does them, there is no financial gain in putting them off. And getting a cheap fast haircut that I have to pay for would not look as good as what I get from hubby. He has fixed bad salon haircuts for friends of mine, I know and trust his work.
We are keeping bees and selling the honey will be a nice side hustle as well as the better yields from our garden and orchard with thousands of pollinators on site.
Haircuts??! Yep, that’s one field that I am trying to cut costs in. My partner often goes on high-end salons for their monthly grooming whereas I go to my local barbershop for a quick trim. So much for sporting a new hairdo, I save up more than a hundred dollars annually by going regular. It is definitely small, but something.