Can you believe we are actually in MARCH!?

And the days are about to spring forward one hour?

For whatever reason, January and February often zap my energy each year.  I almost dread these months every winter and anticipated 2017 to dish out even tougher days.

Some days were certainly difficult, but the calendar moves on toward spring!  Makes me happy.

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Last Week’s Frugal Accomplishments

Even as a teen, I loved cutting coupons and finding deals at the store.  So years ago when I came across Brandy’s blog, The Prudent Homemaker, I read with interest.

She offers a weekly post on frugal accomplishments and things which brought her joy for the previous week, and I decided to play along.

Last week I tried a new-to-us recipe, Chicken Thighs with Apples seasoned in sage, nutmeg and thyme (I used rosemary instead).  Deliciously yummy and worth making again.

After receiving a 30% off coupon via email, I finally jumped in and purchased from Thrive Market, an online grocery store.  With Thrive’s already reduced prices, plus my coupon, PLUS remembering I had an abandoned Paypal account with a bit of cash…

…I took my $99 order down to $13.00 total including shipping.  A joyful moment for sure. 🙂

I made a huge batch of Yummy Pintos (using kidney beans instead).  We had beans and eggs with tortillas, beans and cornbread and even just a bowl of beans during our week.

The letter C seemed to dominate our free time.

We played many, many games of chess, checkers, Clue, UNO and also did some coloring (a newfound love of all three children…at least for now).  On warmer days, we headed outdoors.

We checked out library books AND returned them on time with no fines.  Major frugal accomplishment!

In the joy department, last week I soaked in a quiet, leisurely dinner with a close friend.

An opportunity to visit our youngest’s University Model school made me smile the rest of the day.  He obviously loves a bit of structured classroom time in his weeks.

After cutting our weekly grocery budget by more than half last week, I decided to celebrate with something FUN.  Frugality is a necessary practice and I also feel it enables us to do other things we would really like.

So…we headed to a high school performance of The Little Mermaid (the boys pictured with Sebastian above) — an absolutely stunning production!

I still snuck in a frugal accomplishment here.  Since it was allowed, and I knew the 7 yr old would sit on my lap anyway, I didn’t purchase a separate ticket for him.  And on my lap he sat…happily!

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I hope this week brings joy in ways which make you smile.