The Vicky Challenge. 9th May, 2016. Scraps!

Welcome to the Vicky Challenge! I hope you had a good weekend. Thank you for all your encouragement last week. I had a restful weekend and feel ready to take the bull by the horns again!

I hope you had a lovely Mothers day too! The girls put on afternoon tea for me. It was beautiful!

My Vicky Challenge last week included:

I colour changed a pair of winter boots. They are in good condition and look great. I think this probably saved me around $200 as now I have scrapped plans to buy some.

My side of the road Ficus tree would have to be worth $100 at least. Its made my back courtyard look lovely!

I made all the work lunches $100.

The fish Andy caught were $27 a kilo in the shops and he caught 3 kilos = just over $80 worth!

I made a big batch of chicken soup. This fed everyone plus some frozen for later.

I cooked a giant pot of spaghetti sauce. It provided meals and frozen meals.

(I am not sure the savings to say for those... but these things mean we never get take away)

I made three dozen cornbread muffins. As muffins are at least $3 each here I will say $90 (after costs)

And I took apart my handheld vacuum as it wasn't working properly. Following the directions on how to take it apart and clean inside I did all this step by step and it worked! So I saved there over a repair man for sure.

It is well over $500 in savings. I will fine tune that a bit before writing my total into my book. I do that so I can add up each month and ultimately get a total for the year!

I hope you also found ways to save and get ahead. Last week so many of you had testimonies of how getting ahead has helped you to stay afloat in hard times, help others, pay off mortgages and is making an absolute world of difference. Almost all of it is achieved bit by bit. It is the small things that add up!

Each week we are trying to come up with new ideas! We want to see how much our efforts save and add to the family budget and position but also learn more and more so we can build on that.
This week our extra savings subject is scraps! Ok, that doesn't sound wonderful but people throw out so much food that they consider to be scraps or waste.

A common thing that we have left over is bread. I tend to freeze bread so these days I have less leftovers but I used to have many.  I wrote a post ages ago called "Never waste a slice of bread!" One of the loveliest things you can make is Bread and Butter Pudding. I make this as a cake. It looks beautiful, slices nicely and is yum. It is served warm with cream. It also uses up jam as I always have plenty of that.

I will let you read bread ideas at the above link. And the recipe for this Pudding is there too.

I have a cooking show I love and learn from. I could see that in a commercial kitchen nothing is wasted. It would not be viable to waste food. Every peeling, stalk, bone, oddment goes into something. They are amazingly inventive on how to use everything.

Stock is probably the number one way to use every bit of left overs. I have only been regularly making stock for a year or so. Now I love to make it! And then it is the base of many soups which is another wonderful way to use up every last piece of vegetable, meat, herbs etc.

I make my stock in the crockpot. I have a colander that fits inside the crock pot and that I pack with whatever I have no hand. At the end of the day I just lift this out and it is self strained. However you do it doesn't matter. Long slow cooking extracts the goodness and flavor.
Aside from soups stock is great to cook your rice in! Stock or bone broth is full of nutrients. I think of it as a cheap way of making vitamins!  If you think of it that way imagine not buying vitamins and instead using everything you can to add nutrition to your home cooking? Pouring water from veggies down the drain is pouring vitamins down the drain and then we go out and buy vitamins!

At home I do not peel potatoes, carrots etc I just scrub them. Many things have most vitamins and minerals in the skin. But if you do peel them they can go into your stock. The stems from the bunch of parsley go in too!

I keep and use all celery tops. They make the best stock ever! I freeze it too, fresh, if I have too much at one time. It just goes from the freezer into the next batch of stock or chicken soup.

Broccoli stems go into soup. You often get a lot of stem. I keep it all. If I am not making soup yet I just freeze the whole bit in my "future soup" bag in the freezer. This bag fills up faster than you think. Soon you have the makings of a big pot of soup.

You could also slice it in a stir fry, grate it in a zucchini pie etc.

The bones from your roast or ham can all go into wonderful stocks. To make baby food I usually get a lamb shank or other sliced through bone with some meat on it and add loads of veggies. This is so nourishing! I reported before that I costed this out and compared to store bought baby food. My crockpot full of baby food would be $70 in jars from the store and I can make it for about $5.  I think homemade is better too.

Vicky saves her pumpkin seeds and grinds them for her chickens. I feed them to our parrot! 

Of course there are also other ways to put scraps to use.  If you have chickens then nothing really ever goes to waste, or a worm farm or a compost bin. They are all great as well.

Patsy at A Working Pantry has a Facebook group. Each week she has a challenge of coming up with 100 ways to use something up. This is a great source of ideas for all kinds of leftovers. And things! The other day it was 100 ways to use ice-cream containers!

Now over to you! I want to see how many ways we can come up with to use up scraps. We have some serious savers here just trying to get ahead. (wisely) And we have some families experiencing hard financial times.  Food going into the bin is money going into the bin! Food prices seem to just be going up and up. So if you can help with this it might really help someone and will certainly help me.
I am amazed at how many new tips I have from you all that I am now using and wonder why I never thought of!  Ways to use scraps and left overs can add "free" meals and so much goodness.

Have a great week! xxx

Feather your Nest Friday, 6 May, 2016.

I am truly having trouble deciding what to say about this week! It was basically ok but I had some moments of feeling really blahhh.  Mostly I think because my energy is still low from not being well and my arm is too sore to paint!
Two good friends were really sad as well. Both were over the loss of relationships. It was spreading. I felt the same as I feel I have lost some friends and supporters recently. When you don't know why it is hard. But this is part of life. Both my friends had done so much to help others and then this! They are broken hearted.
It has happened to us all I am sure. It hurts and if you are tenderhearted then that doesn't exactly help.

Then just when I needed it two letters came to me that lifted me up. They were simply kind and encouraging and that is all I needed. Which goes to show how being kind and encouraging to others might make all the difference in the world to them. And it might come at just the right moment as you never know what struggles someone might be facing..
And then I got an email from a dear friend and reader this morning. Her husband has just lost his job. In the context of the blog I should say ANOTHER husband has lost his job as there are many.
This email was thanking me as Bluebirds has helped them be ahead and be in a way better position than they might previously have found themselves in. In fact her husband thanked her so much for being so prudent with the household and money and how wonderful it was. And she thanked me for helping her in this!
Well, that made me feel there is a point and to focus on what I should be! And there is a need.
I have actually lost count now of the families who have lost jobs this year.  Even the most unlikely jobs that have been faithfully attended to for forty years!  Just "go home, take a bus and leave your phone" kind of dismissals. Utter devastation.

However things are get ahead while you can in anyway that you can. The pantry, the emergency fund, meals in the freezer. Just do it.

When you share your week and your saving and creating ideas you are encouraging someone believe me. Thank you to everyone who has hung in there with me!

This week I saved by:

I made a big batch of "Fridge Soup" using up left over veggies from the fridge and freezer.
Also a big pot of Chicken Soup. One part of the chicken when poached became a couple of meals for Harper. (which she loved!)

I turned my $20 Coles voucher into $40 worth of free groceries.
And added more store points towards another voucher.

My phone contract was up. It was a two year contract and I learned years ago that then they give you a free upgrade. So now I go in basically on the day! And I have a much newer phone at no extra cost. Plus my old phone is now Chloe's and an update for her. The first "smart" phone I had I kept for years as I didn't realise that if you are on a plan you get free upgrades. If Chloe did not need a phone I would have sold it online as there are phone buyers that give you cash for them. Very happy with my phone as it has a great camera!

I made a big lot of spaghetti sauce. I do a mince and tomato cook up. It becomes spaghetti sauce, pizza topping, tacos, lasagne and many things.

Andy came home with fish again! He is on a roll with the fishing. More Salmon.

I pan fried some fillets with butter and lemon. When I go to the supermarket I look at the current price of fresh fish and Salmon is $27 per kilo.

I got ahead by:

Two types of soup in the freezer.
Spaghetti sauce in portions in the freezer.
Fish fillets in the freezer.

I feathered the nest by:

Prettying things up. I have a beautiful hallway with two chandeliers. As chandeliers go they were very basic and not blingy. But I love chandeliers so much and am very grateful to have them. So I went on to Ebay and found crystals to be really inexpensive and I ordered ten feet of garlands of crystals plus droplets. I spent a long time up a ladder adding all of these! It cost less than $30 all up to really add so much that they look so much better and bigger!

It was a good week to add sparkle. And everyone who has come in the front door has noticed! 

Any light fitting with "arms" (even the bronze or gold old style fittings ) can have crystals added. It was really easy to do!

I found a tree on the side of the road. It is a standard Ficus. Chloe and I had just been to the local nursery and saw that larger trees in pots were hundreds of dollars. We were staggered at the prices. And on the way home there was this! Nice pot and everything!

It involved calling Andy to see how far away he was. But he was nearby and there quite quickly and the tree was in his van in no time flat!  It's almost as tall as me. (although that is not so tall) The reason it was on the side of the road, I am guessing, is that it has been against a wall and is sparse on one side. Well, I can fix that!

There are Lilly's flooring in the garden...

I added quite a bit to my pantry and supplies. Canned soup, Polenta, spices and creamed corn.

We had rain and things look fresh. Then we had a sunny day yesterday and my washing was out! It is beautiful and sunny today as well. I will try and get more washing done.
I am about to make Cornbread to go with all these soups I am making. I make it up as Muffins and freeze lots.

I hope you had a good week! How did you get ahead and save?

Keep at it. Consistency really pays off. Some weeks will be better than others but everything adds up!
xxx

The Christmas Challenge. Show and Tell for April, 2016.

Last week I forgot to remind everyone about Show and Tell! Oops I was lagging behind a bit last week.

It is ok... I got lots of letters and photos anyway and thank you to everyone who remembered! And I need to do it over two weeks  as there are always a lot of photos so please, if you have been making gifts, send the photos in for next week via the Facebook page or to me brinkzi21@hotmail.com
Thank you! You all helped me stay on track!

We are really getting into the year now! And we are starting to see the results of keeping at it month by month. As we give gifts during the year only some presents actually end up being kept all the way until Christmas. But still they soon add up and it is so exciting to have a range of lovely things put away and most Christmas gifts taken care of.
Keeping busy all year on making what we can is lovely. It adds to life. It uses things up. But not having to shop and spend so much at Christmas is the biggest thing of all. It makes the whole month of December so much better for many reasons. The budget one of them! Working on gifts all year round makes it realistic. The best intentions of making Christmas gifts in December when it is already a really busy time just makes it really hard to achieve. Starting in January it is really truly achievable!

Also we are making things for our homes! Lots of things I wish for I find a way to make or am just recycling somehow and I love to see those photos too!

In April Mary made over some jars. These just made my heart happy!

This is the kind of thing I adore as something simple and useful like a jar can be so gorgeous!

She also picked up a towel holder for a couple of dollars and made that over for her kitchen...

Mary these are just beautiful!

Jane has been sewing ...

Preserving...

Crocheting...

What gorgeous gifts! Jane has a Grandchild on the way who is going to be the most well dressed and loved baby ever!

Kelsey had a wedding to go to. She made up a cleaning, caring for your house gift...

I love this. She made cleaning cloths and cleaning products.

I also love the bridal wrapping!

I have to show you Kelsey has ducklings. Her husband made this gorgeous duck pond! Notice the little ramp!

Leigh made gift boxes from craft paper she had. This is really good especially if you have lots of papers on hand. I love something else to make with scrapbooking paper etc. A supply of these would be very handy.

Leigh made a tutorial on how to make these. She also has a whole post on cards, gift bags etc full of ideas here.

Jen in NC has been knitting gorgeous socks plus making a range of gifts and cards.... all beautiful.

Jen your gift cupboard must really be growing. Everything is lovely.

Vicky had a roll of wallpaper. She used it to cover boxes and then package up cleaning themed gifts. She also covered storage containers with it. I love this as she used what she had and was inventive with it! And Emma was her assistant!

For my own craft supplies I had a parcel arrive from the US with the most gorgeous gift of fabric from Paula! Thank you so much Paula. I am dreaming and planning what to make with this. I love the Bluebirds of course!

This is part one! We will be back with part two next Wednesday.

Thank you so much to everyone. The variety is amazing and the ideas are never ending!

I hope you are having a good week. We have had rain which is really good as it was needed so much.
During the evenings I am working on two baby blankets, one is crochet and one is knitting.

Hopefully I will have lots to report on Friday so I had better get cracking!

How is your gift making coming along? I hope you found some inspiration from the ladies who shared here today. xxx

The Vicky Challenge. Recycling and being inventive!

Our week was plagued by colds and germs! Some days I have to say I moved at a glacial pace at best!

But this happens. And sometimes rest is our best investment. We all have times when things have to slow down, there is sickness in the house or over tiredness kicks in.

These are the times when getting ahead pays off. There are meals in the freezer on on the pantry shelves. It is like the emergency fund. That is what it is for... emergencies. After these times then we begin to catch up and get ahead again.

Also this time has made me notice a few things. One is we need more bath towels. Another was the kind of pain killers Andy takes were in short supply. This is because he never takes anything! So when he was sick suddenly he was willing to take a Panadol and I didn't have many. So I have realised a few things to build up in my supplies.

My savings subject this week is recycling. Some things are simply reusing things and avoiding waste. Others are more inventive and might be using something for a totally different thing than it was intended for in the first place.

Some of my recycling around the house includes my use of old ladders. I love them! I have never bought one, they are found and now people know I like them I have been given a few.
They are so useful. I have one in my kitchen for my kitchen towels...

I have one just for drying my herbs and flowers. One in the bathroom for towels and one in the lounge room for blankets and throw rugs.
In my old house I had one hung from the ceiling and all my pots and pans hung from that and baskets went on top. I also hung herbs from it to dry. It saved me so much cupboard space and looked really good!
And old gate might work in a similar way.

Another favourite one is my endless collection of jars and, more recently, baby formula tins. I love these! I have collected jars for years and painted the lids to make sets. Theses were recent ones...

Also I have a set that is still growing of giant coffee jars...

I have a lot of food storage and basically do not pay for containers.

Recently I have had some great photos sent in and this is just a sample that I wanted to share:

Pat and her husband love to recycle. Just now they have been making planter boxes from free pallets they pick up. 

They also are making them to sell to add to their savings. I love them! In our own area free pallets are endless. They can be turned into so many things!

Also Pat has storage in a cellar for root vegetables and they have recycled containers to make this...

As Pat said to me they have been recycling before it was cool to recycle.  Just as Nan did. They saved a lot of money this way. 

Jane's husband made her a butcher block. This was also from pallets plus other recycled wood. (I have shown this before but it deserves a second showing!)

Love it! 

(Sorry to the husbands being identified by who they are married to! But I don't know everyones name...)

Vicky's husband made a wood splitter that is huge! He made it entirely of recycled parts, things he had and things he battered for.

It's astonishing. Look at the size of the log it will split!  Oh and he made it so that it lifts up the heavy logs itself. Not only will this keep them in wood for the fire but he can hire it out or cut wood for others. Plus he has had people wanting to buy it.

Vicky was given a whole heap of told towels and pillowcases. She has been making them into cleaning cloths and all kinds of useful things.

I love these! Old towels are so useful. I also love old flannelette. It makes up into the softer hankies ever and soft dusters that are also pretty.

Rachel's husband made a whole shed out of recycled materials. (plus many other things!)

A shed for your animals could be completely free with a bit of recycling and hard work.

There are so many ideas and I am glad I have the chance to include some of what the boys have been doing!

In our yard we have old barrels that store water and a barrel that stores the laundry water. Andy has the washing machine hooked up so that the water goes into this for garden use. We have a giant container in use as a rainwater tank also for the garden.

We have the side of an old cot hanging in the shed. I hang washing from that in the winter out of the rain. It is so handy.

If you have things you make by recycling or ways you save money please share them. And if you have pictures please send them in as I will do a follow up post as this is an area we can all make things and save money.  Post pics anytime to The Bluebirds are Nesting Facebook Page. Or email me at brinkzi21@hotmail.com

I hope we might all get some new ideas and find things to recycle or reuse. Saying that I am just glancing at a pile of wrapping paper from Andy's birthday that I have to fold up. Two gift bags as well. Of course they will be reused!

These are my savings for the Vicky Challenge in the last week:

The usual lunches and coffees packed and sent all week. $100
The fishing day picnic and drinks, saving $50.

A big pot of soup all made from leftovers that really needed using up. I included some chunks of sweet potato and pumpkin I had frozen. It made a lot of soup! I packed it up into some to eat now and some to freeze and give away. I gave Chloe three serves.  I notice pots this size of soup in the supermarket are about $5 each!

Being the end of the month I add in doing my own hair $225
Doing my own nails and toes $120. (yes I paid that once!)

So even that added up quite nicely and wasn't so bad.

I hope you had a good week and found new ways to save. Now that April is over we have another month to total up and a new month of the challenge! The months and the seasons offer different ways to get ahead and things to do. In the south we have cooler weather and darker evenings. This means soups, stews, handiwork in the evenings for me. In the north it must be busy as its spring and time to plant which is a very busy time. I love the seasons!

Have a wonderful week! xxx

Feather your Nest Friday, 29 April, 2016.

This week wasn't very spectacular! We have both been not well and that is rare for Andy especially.
I am behind on replies but I will catch up! The comments and ideas on Wednesdays nature post have been so lovely!

Some of the ways I saved money and feathered our nest include:
Over the long weekend I painted the whole front fence! As there are roses along the inside of the fence by the end I had scratches, splinters, bruised legs, paint in my hair and various other things! But  some of the paint  actually got on the fence and it is done!

You can see the yellowish cream on the house in the background, the fence was the same as this and quite worn in sections. Now it pretty much looks brand new! Also it stands out on the street so much!
Now for the house! But having not felt well, sore arms etc. I took the rest of the week off painting!
I am very happy to have finished this and love the results!

It was Andy's birthday. The fruit cake went on to a cake stand (a cake stand makes everything seem more special!) and he is at work today with a slice of that in his lunch box.

It was also our anniversary!  I got beautiful roses...

This week I found cauliflowers marked down to $1.50. This is really cheap for us and I bought two.

I found turkish and focaccia breads drastically marked down. It had been a while since I found these. They are so handy in the freezer for toasties and an easy dinner.  I got five packs which is 24 individual loaves and saved $20 over the five packs. (They were 99c each so I am stocked up).

From when we pulled up all the carpets and underlays we still had all this on the verandah  to get rid of! Our council has it that once a year we can book an extra rubbish collection for free. All of this is finally gone! 

I made three dozen sausage rolls for dinner, lunches and the freezer.

Also I had milk that I needed to use up. I made a big lot of pancake batter and made stacks of pancakes for Andy's lunch box and desert one night. 

I finished cleaning Lucy's floor rug. It actually came up good as new!

I built up my pantry by adding a dozen cans of soup on a big special and also some medical supplies. 

Last night it rained gently all night! So this is wonderful and the garden is watered.

How was your week? How did you build up your home or save money? 

Every week is different. I love having a long list of things I did and ways we got ahead where as this week it was just about trying to sleep and get better! But the fence was one big thing and it has helped me get ahead with my painting and is such a house improvement. 

Week by week it all adds up. 

I am always amazed by that!  Remember those storage tubs that I bought to slide under the bed? Three of them are full now of added pantry items. I thought it would take forever but each week I have bought something and now they are filling up.

Next week I will use my Coles voucher and get my free groceries and add to them some more!

Have a lovely weekend! xxx

The Christmas Challenge. Nature.

Thank you to everyone for so many great comments about investments. Some of the savings were inspirational! So many ideas. I am thinking now what could we invest in that would have the same results as the simple coffee cup!

Today for The Christmas Challenge I want to think about how we can use the natural world around us in our gifts. We need our eyes open!
Recently we had a good example of this when Jen used sea shells she collected to hold pretty little soaps. This looked beautiful!

For all our crafts, gifts and decor nature is our best friend! Plus we have what is around our garden and immediate area but when we travel there is a whole world of possibilities! (When I was little the nature table was the thing I liked best about school!)

And it is all free!

If you have looked in a florist lately you will see so many natural elements with massive price tags. Sticks for $60 a bunch an example I saw a little while ago! Bundles of twigs tied up with string, vases of foliage. Giant leaves for $8 each! yes, leaves! I could go on!

Mimi is a star at making up a floral bouquet with flowers and foliage and presenting it nicely. This is a lovely gift anytime or for a birthday. At Christmas this could be flowers for the table or a centre piece. If you study what you have and what is around you it might turn out you can give lovely bunches of flowers. You may even have wild flowers.
Flowers can also be gathered and pressed and used in your card making.

At the farm Mum has a native garden that blends into the bush. So it is full of native flowers. When I am there I pick masses! A bunch of these in the city would be $30 for a posy size and $100 for a massive bunch.  Last year I was there when a lot was flowering so I made up small bouquets to bring home for gifts.

I have to say it was also beautiful just to be out gathering flowers in the sunshine!

When I got home these went into red tissue paper. They worked as presents really well!

Also in Mum's garden I picked bunches of fresh rosemary and Bay leaves. This is a lovely git for a cook. My neighbour went mad over this! Also in the shops they sell these in tiny bunches for a few dollars and these were ten times that size!  I just tied them up with brown string.

I dry the Bay Leaves and have given packets as gifts in with all kinds of kitchen gifts. Also if I am giving a little hamper gift I pop in a bunch of fresh herbs from the garden. It looks really nice and they are useful.  Not to mention the scent!

Another time I dried my own herbs and made Bouquet Garni. I had Parsley, Thyme, Bay Leaves etc. I just air dry them.

I packed the Bouquet Garni into cellophane bags. These were a gift I gave lots of people a couple of years ago. Plus I made a big jar of them for the kitchen!

Also at Mum's I pick Lavender. I give it away as gifts or make it into gifts. Last year I made Lavender Sachets.

In my decorating my dream item is a nest! Basically everyone knows this and so if a nest has fallen they end up with me. I would never take a nest in use. These have blown down well after they have been used.  I would rather a nest than an expensive ornament! (the eggs are fakes!)

I have also used nests in wreaths and loved how they have looked.

At home my hydrangeas give me both flowers to give as gifts and for the house. I also dry them as they make glorious wreaths as well.

Every year they are an asset to me. Also I can give bunches of cuttings to grow these and most years I do that too.

I have to include picking up kindling and wood. It is free at the farm and I grew up collecting firewood. I still love it. I love the sight of it sitting ready for the fire.

A basket of wood is still a lovely gift for anyone with a fire or for my Son in Law for his pizza oven!

We always pick up pine cones too. On our travels we often see gum nuts and pinecones and collect them. Apart from good kindling they make great Christmas decorations! One year I gave away bags of these and another year I decorated my Christmas presents with them...

I often make a cake for a gift. I am no cake decorator but flowers from the garden do the trick and make my cakes a much nicer gift.

I know that I have many more possibilities and need to open my eyes. One I am thinking of is that the deer leave fallen antlers in the paddocks. These are in trendy homeware shops! So I am thinking how can I use antlers... that is at least one more natural element I can use.

What do you have around you that could become gifts and an asset? If you have herbs, a fruit tree, roses, wild berries... ohh ... all these things mean you are set! Run with all the possibilities! If you have roses you can make lovely bunches up as gifts,  decorate cakes, sugar roses, rose petal scented bath products! They might not be your roses. A friend or relative might have a rose garden....
If you have a fruit tree you can give fresh fruit, fruit pies, dried fruit dipped in chocolate, jam, jam tarts, preserved fruit...
You see what I mean. So many possibilities!

This is going to be different for each of us depending on where we live but nature has a way of providing so many beautiful things. Just now on the streets around us there are beautiful giant sized autumn leaves falling. I usually collect some and have a bowl of them inside. Just lovely.

There are so many ways to incorporate natural elements into our gift giving with stunning results and it is all free.

What do you have that might be able to become gifts? Recently Vicky's husband cut down a tree so we had a kind of challenge to see what Vicky could make from this wood. And we came up with so many things as natural "slices" of branches make everything from stepping "stones" to rustic placemats! She came up with so many ideas!

If you have made gifts from natural elements please share!
One of my favourite things is road side gathering! The things you find! My eyes are always busy as I love gathering! I keep scissors and a basket in the car too! You just never know....
xxx

The Vicky Challenge 25 April. 2016. Investing.

Because I had a really busy week last week and then busy weekend I had a lot of savings for The Vicky Challenge!
Also we have a long weekend and so today is still a public holiday. We have worked all weekend.
Andy had extra work to do and has worked in the office and I kept painting, gardening, washing etc.

So it has been a big week.

My Vicky Challenge is:

A $5 voucher from Spotlight that I will use this week.
A $20 voucher from Coles that I will use to add to my pantry.
Plus I have my vouchers lined up in my diary to repeat this.

We do not have coupons here but some supermarkets offer points rewards that you can turn into dollars. This one is working well for me.

Lots of painting. I have almost finished the front fence! It is a huge transformation. I love it! Hopefully this afternoon I will finish it.
I will count $300 saved but I think if I hired someone to do this it would be much more.

This is a work in progress photo. You can see the creamy old paint on either side and the white I am painting. Hopefully soon I can show you finished pictures!

I made a picnic for fishing and saved $50.

And the boys brought back about 5 kilos of salmon which would be worth about $125!

This gave us a meal,  frozen meals and some to share.

I made an inventive dinner of left overs and frozen things.

The notebooks I made gave me eight gifts which in the shops would be $20 or so so I will count $100 saved there.

I picked mint from Mums and saved about $4.

The cakes I made saved about $50 for two gifts and a spare.

Lucy had a bit of a disaster. She has a good floor rug that she just loves and it was reasonably expensive. Well it had a nasty accident! And the more she "fixed" it the worse things got! She was upset and fear it was ruined. But Mum came to the rescue. It's not finished yet and drying but I think I have fixed it. If so I don't want to guess how much I saved her but lets say $100 plus for professional cleaning. (probably more I think)

Lately I have really noticed I have saved a lot by going through my junk mail faithfully. I found something Mum was looking for and having trouble finding, a voucher, several special sthat were fantastic that I would never haven known about otherwise. The Aldi catalogue is positively exciting!
I don't know how much that has saved this week but it's worth mentioning as I keep saving money by studying the catalogues.

$100 on all packed lunches and coffees.
So my Vicky Challenge came in at around $760.

And next week we can add up another month! This will give me a burst to have another good week!

My subject to add this week is investing. My kind of investing is thinking of something you pay for regularly that you could possibly find a way around and investing in what you need to make that happen.

I was trying to think of a convincing example to show how much this can save. So I picked Andy's thick ceramic coffee cup that has a lid. He takes it in the van every morning. It holds two normal coffees at least. I bought him this about five years ago. It keeps the coffee warm for an hour or more. He loves it!  I paid about $8 for it at the time.
When I worked out how much this had saved over five years I thought I had made a mistake. So I did it again and again!
This coffee cup has saved about $10,000 in coffee! I can't even believe that but at two coffees a day, five days a week, most weeks of the year then that is what it has saved.
So that was a pretty good investment!

Don't underestimate the potential savings. Think in terms of what you spend per year on this or that.

My other best ever investments are my crockpot. I never need takeaway food because of it. I pop something good in it in the morning...

(I have a whole crock pot/slow cooker series in my index.)  This was just a pot roast I just started.

For times I am not expecting to be unable to cook dinner I have numerous meat pies in the freezer made from crock pot casseroles and puff pastry.

Also so many scraps get made into stock. That saves me money too and uses up so much.

I have a colander that fits inside my crockpot so that I just life that up and the stock is already strained. It is so handy!

I won't even try to estimate the savings I have made from a crockpot but they would be many times the savings made by the coffee cup!

Another is my back door herb stack.  I have two of these. The pots were free, I purchased the soil and seedlings from time to time. This was a great investment! I pick herbs daily and give away many bunches. I pop a bunch of herbs into many foodie gifts too. I always have herbs on hand and never buy them.  The savings must be heaps!

I notice all of these investments are also investments in health!

Andy has made some great investments. Most of his tools have saved us a fortune. From hedge trimmer to power drill the amount they save is staggering. I have to say his fishing gear was a great investment!

Other great investments I can think of are fruit trees, a rain water tank or barrels, a clothes line, an outdoor cooking area, hair dressing scissors and clippers., a freezer...
The list is endless!  I think if we pick an area that is a leaky spending problem that is a good thing to try and invest in.  Finding that solution might save a huge amount.


How did your Vicky Challenge go last week?
What are some money saving investments you have made that paint big dividends?
What is a leaky area for you that maybe an investment could overcome?  If you have a financial leak but cannot think of a solution maybe we can all help you to find one.

As we go along each week hopefully we think of new ways to save and do things. All the ideas coming in have been amazing! I have implemented so many from great comments here and on Facebook. Thank you!  So my Vicky Challenge continually improves and is well beyond anything I imagined!

Have a wonderful week! The sun is shining and it is a lovely day. I am heading out to finish this fence! xxx