Frugal Accomplishments, March

Where did March go?  It was, apparently, a really busy month for me, because even though it was 31 days long, it flew by.   We did manage to do some frugal stuff during that time, though:

We ate mostly from the cellar, pantry and freezer.  This included a from scratch-ish banana cream pie (scratch-ish because the filling was pudding mix, but I had that mix in my pantry from a bulk buy summer before last!)

I cut DH's hair. He likes it really short, and at about the 5-week mark I can tell he's due for another haircut.

We needed to get some more wolmanized lumber and sheets of OSB for building the rest of the stalls in the barn, and I needed more stain/sealant for the wood, so we utilized a coupon for $25 off a purchase of $150 put on my Home Depot card and made one big shopping trip instead of getting a little now and a little in a month or so.  I'd been wanting to get some landscape timbers to use as trot/ground poles for working the horses over, and it just so happened that by adding 3 landscape timbers to what we all ready planned to purchase on our shopping excursion got us to that magic $150 mark.  So, when the cashier applied the coupon, my landscape timbers (plus about $4 more worth of lumber) ended up being free!  And then a few days later when the purchase appeared on my credit card I paid it off, so no interest accrued.

Then I asked Brad (who works at his family's painting business) if he knew of any white exterior paint that I could get for cheap.  He found a leftover mostly-full gallon of just that exact paint that had been at the paint shop for over a year, and offered it to me in exchange for some eggs, potatoes, onions, and garlic.

Tractor Supply ran a great deal for 25% off the log splitter DH has been contemplating buying to replace our old one that is currently not running (and he's tired of fixing).  So he stopped contemplating, and bought it.  By putting it on my Tractor Supply card rather than paying cash, we got another 5% off.  (And when the transaction appeared on the account, I paid it off with the cash we'd planned to use for the purchase).  30% off a brand new log splitter is tough to beat.  

(And now that he has a new one, he's actually decided to go ahead and fix the old one--with help from DS1--and put it up for sale.  Yay!  Even used, if it's running he can sell the old one for more than half of what we ended up paying for the new one.)

I found a deviled egg tray that holds an entire dozen eggs (so, 24 deviled eggs) for $3.29 at Goodwill.  I've been looking for about six months for one that holds more than 12 deviled eggs and is of good quality.

I went to a local book swap on the 30th and came home with eight books.  

Two other frugal things I did that weren't directly for me/my financial situation:

I mended the sash on a hand-me-down dress that Faline had been given and she wanted to wear for Easter.  It was also missing 3 buttons, so I replaced those using some I have in my button stash.

Honorary Son had a faux leather coat that one underarm seam had come out of, and I stitched that back up for him, so he was stylin' at Easter too!