An extra post this week. New ways to save!

Thank you for all the messages and comments yesterday. I will be replying properly as the weekend goes on. Our state now has a lot of flooding and is in quite a crisis but our family is not in the flooded areas. We used to live in one of them and know the areas well. So that is still unfolding. There are still widespread phone and internet outages but we have internet today so here I am!
My friend Nerilie lives in Pt. Lincoln which is a regional city and beautiful place and quite remote. Last night they still had no power, supermarkets were empty, no phones, fuel, schools shut, shops had shut, and the towns water supply which is pumped was also under threat. They were in pretty big trouble. NEVER in a thousand years would I have thought this possible!
I have reached the stage I'm writing things down in order to remember them and learn.
This can happen anywhere I guess! In a world of weather events we also have internet hackers and terrorism etc. We always just hope nothing will ever happen.

I have to tell the truth and say I have a really strong feeling about this. It is almost two years since I felt very prompted to start preparing and got busy on it. I wrote a post about that at the beginning of the series I wrote. I just had a nagging feeling and I heard others who said the same.
Now I have a very strong feeling and it is that trying to get prepared was not for this event. That this event is a practice run and to learn from it.
Normally I don't think I would talk about feelings in this way. But I am stepping out and saying it. My whole life if I ever ignored a really strong gut feeling about something it never turned out well! So I have learned my lesson there. Trust yourself when you have a strong feeling about something.


Now to my Saturday post! I have been excited about this!

Over the last three years I have really learned a lot! Each year I seem to have found new ways to save and get ahead and each time I find something new that is a big saver it is like an exciting light bulb moment!

I can even track some of my biggest savers and the things that have made a difference. Some things are little and some are huge! When you realise the value of things and work out the savings it can be a shock! Vicky says you can't bet the best price which is FREE!

Last week I had a bit of a discovery and it was the result of reading Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth. Jes often gets a mention here by both readers (i.e. Kelsey the other day showed recipe cards she had printed from her website,  Maria had just been baking with recipes from there as well!)  and myself as I find so much there that helps and inspires me.
Jes has written an e book called 100+ DIY Projects to make with fruit scraps.

Now, I already felt I make the most of any fruit that comes our way.
I love to make jams for my pantry and for gifts. In winter when we have oranges I always make the Sunshine cake and when I have lemons I go crazy making Lemon Butter, lemon icing,  I freeze the juice and slices and drink the juice daily.
I have even made Lemon Vinegar for my cleaning cloths.
I thought I am pretty good at using all the fruit we can come by in summer.
Last year we had lots of figs! I was making fig jam and figs in so many meals... fig pizza became a new favourite here!

So imagine my shock when I read Jes' book and a few pages into it I start to seriously regretting every orange peel, lemon peel, apple core and peel that I have thrown away.  She literally has over 100 uses for these things.  After a few more pages I was having flash backs of mountains of lemon skins I threw away last time I had lemons from Hilde!

According to Jes I could have made Lemon Essence, a myriad of beauty and bath products, soaps, Vitamin C Elixir, cleaning products and beautiful things.  The peel is packed with nutrition, vitamins and scent. So we throw all this away then go and buy vitamin C tablets! haha

Worse still I realised I could have used my lemon peels in my next batch of soaps and I enjoyed soap making so much earlier this year. She has recipes I am dying to try that will use up all my future peels with gorgeous citrus scents.  Also my favourite soap was the one I made with Lux flakes which are soap flakes. Her recipes are just as easy and the results are like in the stores that sell homemade soaps for outrageous prices.  I never thought of citrus peels to add scent, colour and even texture to my soaps!

To top it off beautiful labels that you can print are supplied. So you have the correct name for the product and a professional finished for gift giving. This looks lovely in our own cupboards too.

Overall I found so many things I can't wait to make that will fill both my pantry and gift cupboard. Many of these I will be using for next years gifts. A lot of things are ways to build up your pantry for practically free.

I have already pretty much eliminated the chemicals and cost of most cleaning products. The last frontier was the oven and now I don't need chemicals for that either!  For many people cleaning products, air fresheners etc amount to hundreds a year. Really you can eliminate the lot! The recipes Jes gives you are just lovely and your house will small beautiful. This eliminates another area of spending on air fresheners etc.

Jes has you making things you never really dreamed of, makes it easy and fun and her recipes do not require expensive or fancy ingredients. It is not real economy if you have to spend money to use these things up. Her ingredients are mostly stuff you already have.

We have summer ahead of us. Here we get winter citrus and masses of fruit in about January and February.  I keep a jar cupboard and build that up all year for this time! However now I will be doubling my efforts and saving bottles too as fast as I can.  The stuff I mostly throw away will all become gifts, cleaning products and things to store.

I am sharing this because I just love it. I am not being paid or anything like that! Jes gave me a copy of her book and asked me if I would review it which I did on Amazon.  This is just a world of savings to me and a way to use things I regularly have thrown in the bin!

So save your bottles and jars and your fruit scraps. They are going to get us a mile ahead with many projects form now on!

This is the link to Jes' page if you would like to get the e book. You can read about it further there as well.

Do you have any wonderful recipes that use the things that we all regularly throw away? Stocks and bone broths come to my mind.  These are another thing that are full of nutrition yet many of the ingredients regularly are thrown in the bin.
I think the skills to use all these things are great to learn in good times and would be incredibly helpful in bad times. We are surrounded by resources if only we know how to use them.
Who doesn't love free ingredients!  I still can see the huge pile of lemon peels I threw away some months ago. I won't be doing that again.

Between October 3 and 5 Jes is selling the e book for a discount price. If you enter the code
loyal reader the book will be $5.99

If anyone wants to buy the book would you think about leaving Jes a review as these are so helpful when you are trying to get a book off the ground.

This has really opened up a wonderful subject for me. What do you make from things that people routinely throw away?  I am going to have a post coming up just on things made for basically free because they use up scraps. Roseanne already sent me pictures of some of the things she makes!  So please share on this as it is really quite amazing when you discover something wonderful has been right in front of you all along but you didn't see it!

Have a lovely weekend. Here it is Grand Final day in the AFL football. We will have the whole afternoon relaxing and watching.  It is really fun. Provided the electricity stays on of course! xxx

























Jes is offering the book to us for $5.99 instead of the regular $9.99. This offer is between the 3rd and 5th of October. You need the code... loyalreader