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Happy Halloween everyone!  Do you have any special family traditions you like to do to celebrate this holiday?  We have a few family traditions that we enjoy.

We always carve a family pumpkin and let each child choose a feature to design: eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.  (Guess we’ll need to figure out another feature for the 2 year old this year!  A mustache, maybe?)

5 Ways We've Saved Money This Week Halloween

This year we bought a couple of extra pumpkins so we could carve fun stencil designs into them.  It’s hard to believe that my older boys are now at the age where they can be trusted (mostly) to use a knife to carve a pumpkin themselves.

Buying extra pumpkins isn’t frugal, but we choose to splurge on family fun from time to time.  That’s the good stuff of life!

But let’s get on with more good stuff!

The 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week

Shoes.  

Our oldest boy moved into a size 6 shoe recently.

Have you ever tried shopping for a size 6 shoe?  What is up with that??  You can’t ever find them in the boys’ section… I assume they are too big for that.

However, you can’t find them in the men’s section, either!  It’s like the awkward puppy that neither side wants to claim.

Amazingly enough, I happened to find a pair of size 6 church shoes at Gabriel Bros today for just $5.  Woohoo!  Actually found the elusive creature, and for a bargain, too.

Visited the pumpkin patch.

Not exactly a frugal event, but since we enjoy this yearly occasion, I’m happy to have found a better way to do it.

The pumpkin patch we currently visit charges one flat rate at the door rather than nickel and diming you for each thing you want to do once you enter.  For one price we were able to do a wide variety of activities including a large corn maze and a hay ride.

AND we went on a weekday (the kids had a random day off of school and hubby was able to take the day off to come with us).  This saved us $18!

Crock Pot Ham & Beans

Cook with dried beans.

Cooking with beans is a money saver.  Cooking with dried beans is even better.  I used to be intimidated by the idea of cooking dried beans.  Especially after I tried it on the stove (and stunk up the house with the smell of burnt beans for 2 days!).

Then one day I learned how simple it is to cook dried beans in the crock pot.  (I pretty much cook all of my beans the way I do my Ham & Beans.)  So easy, so tasty, and super frugal!

5 Ways We've Saved Money This Week (2)Toughed it out.

The weather turned colder here this last week.  We even had frost one morning.  (Luckily my Mom moved my lettuce to the porch for me!)  But we decided not to turn on the heat despite the cold.

Instead, we added more clothes and blankets.  If we play a game where we put off the first time we turn on the heat for the season, it becomes a challenge that also saves us cash.

No smart phone.  

That’s right, I don’t own a smart phone.  Sometimes I feel like I’m the last person in the world to have an old dumb cell phone, but I know that isn’t true (probably).

The prices of the phones and plans have finally come down low enough that I’m going to make the big switch soon.

Over the years we have used different cell phones and plans to save money where we can.  We have had pay-as-you-go/by the minute types of plans, and shared plans to save money.

I never felt good about the idea of spending hundreds of dollars every month just to have internet capabilities on my phone.  This has saved us a lot of money over these years while we waited patiently for prices to level out.

Since I’ll be such a newbie at this, be sure you let me know some great money saving apps so I can put that phone to work paying for itself!

Have a very Happy Halloween!  Hope you have a lot more treats than tricks this weekend.  🙂

How have you saved money this week?  Let’s celebrate our accomplishments together!