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Happy Friday to you!  It’s been such a busy week here that I’m not sure if I accomplished much at all from my weekly goals.  But having baby goats is a very exciting time!

Having our first kidding has not been cheap, but most of the supplies we’ve bought can be used for many years.  So as long as we continue to breed our does, it’s money well spent.  And should we change our minds, we ought to be able to sell our supplies to another goat farmer.






Now, let’s get down to the 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week.  As always, if you missed a week or two, you can pop over here to see all of the tips in the entire series.

5 Ways We've Saved Money This Week 18

CVS  I’m not sure if you’ve ever played the “CVS game” as they call it, but many times this store has special sales where they offer you ECBs.  Essentially, they will give you free CVS money to use within a month for buying certain items.  When you buy the items, you can use coupons and even stack them with CVS coupons.

CVS sends me an email nearly every week with a percentage off coupon.  With 2 clicks I can send it straight to my CVS card and not have to worry about printing or remembering the coupon.  (Go here to learn more.  Not an affiliate, just trying to make it easy for you to save!)  So I stacked these savings to buy the diapers I needed and they gave me $10 for free.  When I needed some essentials like milk and eggs, I got them for free this week by using my ECBs.

There is a similar set up at Walgreens if that is more convenient for you.  Money Saving Mom has a great explanation if you’d like to learn more.  I highly recommend you give it a try!

Saved on a frame.  My super talented Uncle painted a beautiful picture and gifted it to us for Christmas.  Knowing that framing is usually costly, I cautiously began researching how to frame this large print.  Having it specially framed would cost hundreds of dollars.  Some friends suggested Craig Frames from Amazon, and that was a much better option at closer to $60.

Frugal choices for framing pictures

But the winner wound up being Hobby Lobby, where I found a great barn wood frame to match my decor at just $36.  I love the way it looks, and I love that I saved so much money!

Now I’ll have to add hanging it up to next week’s goals list!

Youth Night  Our church hosts an occasional youth night where our kids can go play with friends, eat pizza, and get some great spiritual influences.  It’s all free, and this week it was even better since we ended up going straight there from a basketball game.  No need to worry about finding supper for everyone and hubby and I were fine with eating leftovers.

[Tweet “Check out the different ways one family #savedmoney this week! #frugal”]

Easy Suppers  If you’ve read Medium Sized Family before, then you know of my weakness for fast food.  And pizza.  I’m not sure that I love the taste of that food nearly as much as I love hiring someone else to make it for me.  That’s really the grand appeal.

But no more!  It’s the #yearofno, after all.  I have things I would much, much rather spend my money on.  So I made it a point to keep easy foods on hand.  Spaghetti isn’t a favorite meal here, and I don’t like to serve my family a whole lot of chicken patties.  But this busy week, we’ve had both.  And while it’s not a habit I want to keep up on a regular basis, I’m so happy that I planned ahead to keep meals easy on crazy nights.

(FYI, my friend Kyle is hosting an Eat At Home challenge if you’d like to join for some encouragement!)

Crock Pot Ham & Beans

Spread the Word  My friends and family know that I love to use ham bones in my delicious Ham & Beans.  So often, when we are invited to a ham dinner (especially at holidays), I am offered the ham bone to take home with me.  I suppose some could view this with embarrassment, but I think that often they are relieved not to have to worry about tossing it or seeing it go to waste.  And I wind up with an even more super frugal meal than I usually get with my recipe!  Win/win.

And those are the creative ways my family saved money this week.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

How did you save this past week?  I’d love to learn your frugal tips!