June & July Frugal Accomplishments

Well, I never did get June's frugal accomplishments posted.  And now we're 10 days into August and July's frugal post is also AWOL. So, I'm going to roll both months into one post. 

As always, we ate mostly from the freezer, cellar, and pantry.

I baked bread roughly every two weeks.

All laundry except jeans and towels went on the clothes line to dry.

Since summer electric rates went into effect on June 1st (meaning higher rate for electricity used between 3 and 7 p.m.), I tried to get laundry washed before 2 p.m. and not do any tasks requiring electricity until after 7:00.

In June I:

Gave DH a haircut.

Bought a bag of Oneida silverware (about 6 full place settings plus several serving pieces) at an estate sale for $10.  I'd been saying since last Fall that I wanted to get more silverware (but only secondhand) because what I have had for decades isn't enough now that we have over a dozen adults/older grandkids using 'big forks' when eating here for family gatherings and holiday meals.  Personally I hate trying to eat with a plastic fork/cut meat with a plastic knife, so it's totally worth it to me to store extra silverware that gets used less than a dozen times a year.  And as a bonus, this 'new' silverware is almost a match in pattern for my (Oneida, wedding present) silverware I've had for 31 years!

Used a 30% off code at State Line Tack to purchase some new riding gloves and a few miscellaneous  barn supplies (enough that I met the free shipping threshold).

Took advantage of Dover Saddlery's 60% off sale to get myself some summer riding apparel (apparently last summer's colors), including some polo shirts that can also be (and were!) worn to church.

Utilized an email offer for 20% off and free shipping at AZPepper.com to restock on DH's favorite Gunslinger green jalapeno sauce

Moved the remaining meat from the upright freezer into the chest freezer (finally ate enough elk to have room!) and unplugged the upright freezer until it's needed again.

 

A friend of DH's bought a new house and sold his home that was less than 10 miles from us.  He had some largish items he didn't want to bother moving/wouldn't need at the new place, so he gave them to DH.  A box blind for hunting, a portable generator (which will be given to DD1 since she and Honorary Son don't have a generator and both of our sons do), a pressure washer and a brand new never installed laundry sink (that will go in my tack room once we have the walls and ceiling built.)

DD2 brought her laundry to do here while having her all-day sewing lesson , saving herself roughly $20 instead of using the not-free washers and dryers at her apartment complex.

In July:

I gave DH another haircut

Took advantage of a deal at SSTack.com and saved $110 as well as used loyalty points to get $20 (of $25) off freight charge to buy a 4-tier saddle stand for the tack room.  What a lot of space that saves!

We got a $38 "reliability credit" on our electric bill from DTE because we lost power 6+ times in the previous 12 months.  A happy surprise to get a credit on our bill for this, but I do think it should be called an "Unreliablity credit". (Side note: since the middle of July we have randomly lost power three times, twice lasting longer than the 'minimum five minutes' to count as disruption of service according to DTE.)

DH and I went to a free polka concert at the outdoor band shell in the community park at the next town over.

I bought a baker's dozen of bagels (to put in the freezer for quickie breakfasts) at Panera on a Tuesday when they're cheaper, and used a 'Free Bakery Treat" coupon to get a chocolate croissant while I was there.

After 15 months of not knowing how many flicks of the switch it would take to activate the ballast in the (fluorescent) kitchen light each time we went to turn it on, DH finally replaced it. Actually, he rewired it for LED bulbs instead of buying whole new fixture.

Knitting Update, August

 Churfirsten Sock 1: DONE!  YAY!

Sock 2: cuff complete, and about 1/3 of the way through the (very short) leg.  I honestly have done very little knitting in the last several weeks.  Apparently I've spent all my couch time reading, as evidenced by the list below.

Books read:

• Bake, Borrow and Steal by Ellie Alexander.  Another Bakeshop Mystery, a good light read.
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. Saw this one on Ginny's blog (Ginny the originator of the Yarn Along idea) and requested it from the library.  If you only like a more modern writing style involving female characters, this book most likely isn't for you. I did enjoy it, the style of writing reminded me of a lot of books read in my youth.
• The Riding Instructor's Manual by Gordon Wright & Samuel Kelley.  I've had this in my personal library for a long, long time and got it out when I first had K3 start working the Little Black Mare with me. This book is mostly themed for the English/jumping rider, and was written many decades ago.  Some info was still relevant to my project with K3.  (Side note: went on Amazon to find a link to add for this book and WHOA!! Check out the price!! I knew it had been out of print for while but didn't know my copy was worth so much!)
• 500 Miles From You by Jenny Colgan.  She has become one of my favorite writers when I want a feel-good read that isn't fluffy.  Another story based in Kirrinfief Scotland and there are cameos of familiar characters from her previous two books that I read.  Pretty sure I literally read this book in two days.
• The Burning by Linda Castillo.  This is her latest Kate Burkholder novel and is as gripping as all the others.  
• The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center. Her latest novel, was engaging, funny and hard to put down.  Another that I devoured in 2-3 days.

Currently reading You Only Die Once by Jodi Wellman. I've barely started it, but so far I like her writing style.  Not sure if the perkiness and the in-your-face will wear on me after a while.  Will have to report on that next month. 

Horse Update, July

 The bugs have been awful at this little place here pretty much since May.  One huge drawback of having a warm winter: not enough prolonged cold weather to kill off the bugs.  And so we are having an especially buggy summer this year.  Mosquitos honestly aren't so bad, but the black flies and stable flies and green head flies and deer flies are horrible.  I'm going through fly spray like crazy and no matter which one I use, it seems like a few hours later there's flies landing on the horses again.

The Poetess wears a fly mask with ears in turnout because she has ear plaques (had them last summer; not sure what her history is on those) and I don't want them to get worse/irritated by fly bites.  Her mask keeps her happy when she's out in the pasture.  But when she's being worked, her ears are unprotected and she really doesn't want me to rub roll-on or cream bug repellent into her ears, especially the one with the majority of the plaques; it's sensitive.

The LBM doesn't seem to care much about flies in her ears when she's out grazing.  But under saddle, that's a whole 'nother story!  The head shaking to remove bugs sometimes got so bad that she wasn't listening to me at all while riding.

So, shopping to the rescue: I ordered two ear bonnets.  One for the Poetess to wear while working, and one for the LBM.  And just like that, the LBM was no longer being driven out of her mind while being ridden.  And Poetess's ears are protected during work sessions without me having to try to swipe goop into them every couple of days.  What a game changer.  I highly recommend ear bonnets if you are having similar issues with bugs in the ears driving your horses batty under saddle.  Mine aren't fancy, and aren't the sound deadening kind.  Just something lightweight to seal up those ears from bugs.

Along with the bugs being a problem, we went through about two weeks of nightly invasions by raccoons.  My nice heavy duty snap-on lids for my grain bins failed me; the darn raccoons figured out how to get them off.  I'm not sure if it was the biggest one(s) doing this, or if it was a joint effort of many little raccoon hands. Even on the nights they didn't get the grain bin open, I could tell they'd been wandering around inside the barn because in the morning when it was turnout time and I opened her stall door Poetess would put her nose down to the cement floor and walk up and down the aisle, smelling.  

This couldn't continue; raccoons in the barn and barnyard/chicken coop area was not a good thing.  So, I baited two live traps, put them nightly near the front door of the barn and in 8 nights of setting out live traps I was able to catch five raccoons, two of which were adults and three were juveniles.  They were quickly given lead poisoning.  DH patrolling in the evening just before dark was able to dispatch six or seven more who were given lead poisoning without being trapped first.  That seems to have solved the critter raids on the barn problem.

In the last three weeks, K3 has been able to 'help' me with the LBM's training twice.  LBM's owner and I had talked about putting K3 in the saddle to see what the horse would do with a much less experienced rider than I.  We agreed to start this on the longe line, and then progress to K3 riding solo.  So far so good, a few interesting things have come to light (the LBM spooked the first few times I had K3 raise her arms while in the saddle; shorter legs giving the walk command got ignored) which have given K3 things to do in the saddle and me to desensitize during my work sessions with the mare.  We are planning on having K3 in the saddle once a week for the remainder of her summer break.

While DH was on 'vacation' (mandatory first week of July), one of the many small/medium size projects he worked on was finishing up the final two stalls of the barn by laying the floor mats.  Luckily, that week had decent weather, a break from the low 90's with high humidity that we'd been having and was a comfy lowish humidity upper 70's on the day that we put in the mats.  We still got sweaty and tired, but at least neither of us got heat stroke!

DH cutting a mat to needed size, using the tractor forks and a pallet as a work table.

(Yes, that's my foot in the foreground, my knee was super blown up still and I frequently had to sit with it up on shavings bales to rest it while working in the barn.)

If you recall, last summer we'd found these stall mats on sale and purchased the total number of mats we'd need to do all six stalls even though we were focusing on getting just two stalls built that year. We didn't want to come back in a few months (or more) when we were ready to mat the remaining stalls and have to pay full price (which at that time was $15/mat more than the sale price) for those. Well, when measuring and cutting mats for the very first stall, DH miscut one of the mats and it was then too small.  We set it aside, hoping that it would work for one of the future stalls as each stall wasn't quite exactly 12'x12'.

As each new stall was matted, that miscut mat was still too small.  It was beginning to look like we were going to have to make a half-hour trip to buy just one new mat, at the regular price, in order to finish matting all six stalls.  

We were literally down to the last mat needed in the sixth stall, when, to our utter joy and amazement  (because we'd been measuring it for four whole stalls hoping it wasn't too small), it wasn't too small for the final corner!  In fact, it needed just quarter inch or so trimmed off part of one edge.  Whew!  So glad that mat wasn't wasted after all!

The 'thank goodness it's not too small for here' mat! (A bit dusty from storage not in a stack.)

That's all for this month's update.  I was going to mention more about the Poetess's progress, but that was making this post extremely long, so I decided to give her her own post talking about how far she's come.  Look for that soon.

Family Time

The end of June and beginning of July found DH and I having a lot of family time.  It started with beef brisket being on sale, and DH deciding he wanted to smoke a brisket on the upcoming Saturday and invite all the kids and grandkids to spend the day and have a meal. 

Everyone was invited, and told to bring a side dish to round out the dinner of smoked brisket.  All except DD2 and Brad were able to come.  The afternoon was full of kids, grandkids, ball, and smelling the brisket smoking in the smoker.  

We had baseballs, softballs, the appropriate bats as well as a batting tee, and anyone who wanted to got a chance to pitch, bat and catch.  Which was just about everyone although I only ended up with pictures of one grandson and one son-in-law actually hitting the ball.

At this little place here, we bat away from the house, into the large backyard.  If you hit it over the septic mound, it's a homerun.  If you hit it into the cornfield beyond the septic mound it's even more impressive but the fielders don't really like you because they have to go searching in the corn to find the ball.  At one point, DD1 got a little fed up with her husband because he kept hitting them into the corn for her to have to retrieve.

Buck and Rascal practicing t-ball.

Buck is a lefty.

DD1 pitching and Honorary Son hitting,

DS2 and Faline watching.

Will it go into the corn?

Once the brisket had reached the optimal internal temperature in the smoker, DH wrapped it in a towel and set it inside a cooler (without ice) to rest for an hour before serving.  He couldn't resist offering everyone a smell at the end of the rest period before removing the brisket and slicing it for serving.

Smelling the brisket, trying not to squish Sixlet in the process.

The four oldest grandkids: K3, Toad, Rascal and Faline, were invited to spend the night at this little place here, and DH built a small fire using a hollow stump.  Once it had burned a bit, smores were made with K3 and Toad doing the marshmallow roasting until they tired of cooking for the smaller kids.  After that, DH roasted a few opting to save on his back and knees by just sitting in the grass.

After church the next morning, DH and I took those four grandkids hiking at a recreational area about half an hour away.  We let the kids determine how long we hiked and were pleasantly surprised to have Rascal and Faline walk for about two miles.  Shortly before getting back to the trailhead we'd begun at, Faline announced that her "knees are tired", so DH put her up on his shoulders for a little ways before having her finish the trek on her own feet.

Faline is quite a character and is known for saying what's in her head at the moment.  Being three, she also has some funny mispronunciations and word mix-ups as her vocabulary builds.  A couple gems from the 24 hours she was with us:

 

(At bedtime, which was later than normal, and she wasn't wanting to lay down and give it in for the day yet, at which time I told her that I was really tired and wanted to go to sleep.) "My body says it's not going to sleep; you can go to sleep Ahma, but I'm not going to."

(While leading us in the common Lutheran table prayer) ". . . and Moses endures forever." (rather than ". . . His mercy endures forever.")

(When debating what toppings to get on pizza for the grandkids to share after hiking) "I don't like pickles on pizza, but I can pick them off." (referring to green peppers).

For July 4th, DS1 invited us all to his house for a cookout in honor of the fourth and for Toad's 10th birthday (his birthday is the 5th, but that was a work day.)  Again, everyone except DD2 and Brad were able to attend.  DS1 grilled hot dogs, brats and burgers and introduced us to an alternative way of cooking corn on the cob: shucked, placed in a cooler, boiling water poured over it to cover, then the lid of the cooler closed and kept shut for an hour or more.  It turned out really well.

Buck enjoying some corn.

There was some more batting happening, as DS1 had recently purchased a pop up style batting cage and a pitching machine for the kids to practice their batting skills.  All three of his kids have been playing summer ball through the school.

Apparently when it's your birthday, you can bat barefoot,

 shirtless and in shorts like Toad as along as you wear a helmet!

Back at home after that party, DH and I decided to relight the remainder of the stump from the Saturday before and get it the rest of the way burned.  Alas, it was not to be as we had no sooner gotten a fire going than the sky opened in a downpour!  We relocated into DH's shop to wait out the storm, sitting inside the opened back door.  Once the rain had passed by, there was a really bright rainbow.  A few minutes later, a fainter rainbow appeared just to the left of it.  In the photo below, you can just barely make out the double rainbow portion near the edge of the tree's branches.

We did, eventually, get that stump burned on Saturday evening, a full week after first lighting it.  It had gotten rained on and put out at least twice since then.

Sewing and Stitching Update, July

My Celtic Santa counted cross stitch has all the cross stitching completed.  Now I am working on the backstitching and plan to do the beading and get it finished in the coming month.  

In June's update, I showed 10 airplanes that I had sewn for the Airplane Quilt.  How many airplane blocks have I made since then?

Eleven!  That brings the total to 21, which is half the number I need to make.  It makes me feel good that I was able to sew that many.  

21 Airplanes

There was a day in late June that I had wanted to spend some time sewing, but ended up spending about 6 hours instructing DD2 in how to do 'clothing' construction.  She had purchased fabric to make Brad an apron for his birthday, and through circumstances ended up waiting until pretty much the last minute to come over and sew it.  As she hadn't sewn anything before other than the log cabin throw quilt she made for the wedding present of friends a few years ago we had to start with washing, drying and ironing the fabric as all fabric for clothing should be preshrunk.  

Then came learning how to read pattern instructions, identify and cut out the correct pattern pieces for the item being made, layout the fabric with the correct side up, pinning down the pattern with the correct side up, cutting around the pattern pieces, transferring marking lines from the pattern to the fabric before removing the pattern pieces. . .  And then the actual sewing. 

Since DD2 had also brought over about 5 loads of laundry to do while here (instead of paying to use the machines at her apartment complex), she spent about 15 minutes of every hour changing the load in the washer, hanging stuff out on the line or putting it in the dryer (depending on how long it would take to line dry).  So the 'sewing class' took way more time than we'd anticipated.

But, she finished her first ever apron in time to gift it to Brad on his birthday, and while I couldn't sew and quilt blocks that day I did manage to sew a total of eleven new airplanes in the last month.  

Faline sent me home from her house a couple of weeks ago with a tulle tu-tu style skirt that she'd ripped the top layer almost completely off of.  Her request?  "Please sew this for me; I need to be Minnie Mouse for Halloween."  The layer in need of reattaching is red with big white polka dots, so it would be rather difficult to be Minnie Mouse without it.  That is on my sewing list for the coming month, as well as seeing how many more airplanes I can get sewn.

Knitting Update, July

(Apparently I didn't have this scheduled to post on Wednesday like I thought I had.  Better late than never!)

Well, I didn't get sock #1 of my Churfirsten socks finished.  Lots of things happened in June, including a death in the extended family that required lots of changes for DH and I for about two weeks, both helping Mother-in-Law while her long time friend was in the hospital/hospice care and traveling up north to attend the funeral.  

I did, afterwards, get the foot knit on the sock, though, so only have to do the toe decreases.  Need to pick up the pace so I can (maybe) get the second sock knit before the middle of August.  That's the timeline I have set in place for beginning Sixlet's Christmas stocking so that it's finished by Thanksgiving.  

So far, Sixlet has auburn hair that wants to curl in the humidity.

There wasn't a whole lot of reading going on in June, although I did finish The 8:55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames.  It was interesting in a history of the Middle East kind of way, although it wasn't quite so much about Agatha Christie as I had originally thought it would be.

I also read Begin Again by Helly Acton.  I really liked this book and found it hard to put down.  In a way, it reminded me of Cecilia Ahern's fantastical novels.  

This week I began reading Bake, Borrow and Steal by Ellie Alexander.

Whole Lotta Color Around Here

 In May, I took a whole lot of pictures with the intent of sharing them here.  And then I had a whole bunch of issues with getting said pictures uploaded to the blog.  And, I have to admit, it was a really busy Spring and I didn't get online much to work on posts.  

All of which means that now, in July, officially Summer, you get to see Spring pictures of flowers that are all done blooming.  On the upside; in the last couple of weeks I've been getting lots of emails for ordering tulips and irises to plant for next Spring, so if you see something you like--and I correctly recalled the name of it--now's apparently the time to shop for these flowers.

Tulips:

Rembrandt

Kingsblood

Blue Aimable

Irises:

(lost my notes on variety)

Red Masterpiece

Raven Girl

(peachy that I can't remember name)

Montmarte

(lavender that was given to me nameless)

(another lost notes one)

Dracula's Kiss (I think)

a white variety given to me decades ago

Surprisingly, as in the nearly 21 years we've lived here we haven't seen them due to the aurora borealis not getting this far south, or if it did, our weather was totally cloudy at the time, we were able to see the Northern Lights. Not only did we see them, they were the best any of us had ever seen.  So bright, lasting for nearly an hour, and so many different colors from green to red to pink and purple.  It was a spectacular light show watched right from our deck. 

The picture below is actually my favorite one I took that night.  It was taken from the yard behind the garage, facing south, but there's still some visible northern lights.  And, if you look closely you can see DH's silhouette and the little light from his cell phone camera as he's trying to take a picture to the north.