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After taking a good 9 months (plus?) off blogging, I’m finally back in the saddle.

Whoop!

Time to dust off the old “5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week” series and see what fun things we can add to it.

It’s challenging to come up with ideas I haven’t shared before. I mean, come on…I’ve done 162 of these things! I can’t promise there haven’t been repeats.

But I do my darnedest to try to come up with outside the box ideas whenever I can. (Also, I just learned how to spell darnedest for the first time.)

Ways We Saved Money This Week

By the way, in my latest post I gave you a sneak peek of what we’ve been working on for the past year (plus). If you missed it, be sure to check it out!

I promised you more info about our huge house project.

Well, it’s coming. But as I started writing, I realized that there is a huge amount of info to share!

So, tell me…what do you want to hear about? The whole process, step by step? How we saved along the way? Something else? I’m all ears!

Now let’s chat about this week…

IKEA

Our home addition left us with a brand new second bathroom, a sort of new master bedroom (we took out a pantry, which left us with a much bigger bedroom than we’d had before), and a huge (compared to our old house) dine in kitchen.

For now, let’s just say that I have a lot of space to decorate and turn into a home.

Luckily, I happened to read Cozy Minimalist Home a week or two ago. (Seriously, I didn’t even know that the book was about teaching you how to decorate your home. Which is something I desperately need, since decorating is definitely not my strong suit.)

I loved her advice about how to use rugs and plants (for instance) in your decor.

AND I happened to have a training I needed to attend that was 5 minutes away from IKEA!

Which was great, because it would be hard to justify the hour long trip (with gas prices so high) otherwise.

I checked out the rugs, but didn’t find anything I was thrilled with. (That turned out to be a good thing.)

I did find some pretty greenery that even I can’t kill. 😉

And I loved these tins that were just 79 cents! I grabbed an extra for the magical day my kitchen is ready to decorate.

Auction

Hubby and I have been using a bed with only a frame…no headboard, no foot board, no style…for years.

After pouring through bedroom ideas, I decided that a metal frame was my favorite style.

Luckily, they aren’t too expensive. This one on Amazon seemed pretty good. And I almost bought it using some Christmas gift cards I’d received.

But then I remembered a local auction site that my brothers like to use.

And I just happened to spy a queen sized metal bed on an auction. In the end, I was able to get a brand new bed frame for just $40!

Boy am I glad I waited.

Here’s the site I used if you want to see if it’s available in your area.

Expensive Light Bulbs

I’ll admit that I chose to splurge in a few places on this new addition.

One of those places was in light fixtures.

I figure they’ll be around for decades, and since they are on the ceiling, there is a slightly better probability that the kids won’t destroy them. 😉

Unfortunately, as my Hubby was installing one of the light fixtures, the light bulb fell and busted.

sad trombone

Even worse…when I stopped to buy a new one, I found out that the bulbs are $15 each.

Holy cow!

Apparently I didn’t do my homework on the light fixtures.

Now, I don’t have to use the fancy light bulbs. But they complete the look! So I started shopping around.

It’s no big shock that Amazon was able to beat the stores prices. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the price was even better than I’d anticipated!

Sinkless In Ohio

Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “sinkless in Seattle” would, but more true.

I’ve been without a kitchen sink for almost 2 weeks.

It’s maddening. Do not recommend.

We’ve been using a lot of disposable plates, bowls, and utensils.

I’ve been using a couple of plastic dishpans (as if we were camping) for doing the other dishes we have to use. There’s just no way I could keep up with 8 people’s worth of dishes doing that!

(I guess I could, but I value my sanity.)

To compensate, we’ve also used the grill and the crock pot a lot more.

One night I grabbed a Sam’s Club rotisserie chicken.

We did order pizza once, but we’ve mainly compensated as many ways as we can come up with to avoid that temptation.

Dress Clothes

Being a stay at home mom for 14 plus years doesn’t leave you with the most professional wardrobe.

Which caused a small problem, because in November, I was elected to our local school board.

Not a bad problem, just one that had to be solved.

Shopping the second hand shops is my favorite way to solve this kind of problem.

I can get much better quality clothing that looks brand new at a fraction of the cost I would have spent at the mall.

I scored a couple pairs of nice pants and a pretty shirt for $34. That left me well set for my training, and should get me through many meetings going forward.

Those are the ways we saved this week!

Eh, maybe it’s been a couple of weeks worth of savings, but I’m easing back in here. 😉

I’m so looking forward to reconnecting with readers! Be sure to let me know how you’ve been saving money, too.

And next week, I have a huge announcement for you #yearofno fans. We’ve got another goal for this year, and it’s a biggie.