Saving Money on Meals on Traveling Days

This is nothing new, but I am grateful that I was able to make some advance preparations before a very long day this past Saturday. This was the day of the burial service for my FIL, which was held out-of-state. I knew that the day would be long, and therefore, I spent a good part of Friday preparing all of our meals for Saturday. We brought our breakfast and lunch with us in the car, and had a dinner ready to be heated when we walked back in our own door, late in the evening. It all worked out well. With the exception of a package of English muffins, I made all of our meals with what we had on hand.

For breakfast, I made breakfast sandwiches, using eggs, the last 2 patties of sausage, turkey bacon, cheese, and English muffins. I chopped the cooked sausage and turkey bacon and added both to the eggs, cooked omelet style (not scrambled in the pan), so as to divvy up the breakfast meat between 4 sandwiches. I wrapped the sandwiches individually; then, in the morning we heated them just before leaving, to eat on the drive down. With the breakfast sandwiches, we had tangerines, coffee, and juice.

For a midday meal, one of my daughters helped me put together a substantial lunch for all of us, which included sandwiches, apples, celery sticks, crackers, raisins, peanuts, and cookies. And finally, for dinner, I had made pizza from scratch on Friday. So I simply doubled the recipe and made 2 pizzas. It was just after 8 PM when we walked back in the door after a grueling drive, so I sliced and heated the pizza and served with juice for a quick dinner.

Preparing all of our meals in advance saved time (no stopping at restaurants along the way*, or once back in town) and money (I figure we saved about $35 by packing all of our own food).

I add the * as we did make one stop just before getting back on the highway to come home. The cemetery did not have bathroom facilities available, and we wanted to use clean restrooms before getting on the road and eating our lunches in the car. So, we stopped at McDonalds. Using the app on my daughter's phone, we bought a medium-sized order of fries for $1 (no tax, as this was in Oregon) after using their restrooms. We also received free cups of water to drink in the car along with our packed-lunch.

My usual immediate thought, when planning for such a long day, is to plan to eat lunch out and pick up a quick dinner as we drive back into town. On this blog, we have talked a lot about bringing our own food and beverages with us for long days in the car. I am often inspired by all of you and your efforts to save some money by preparing in advance. For this occasion, I used you all as my inspiration to make these meal preparations z day ahead, so our family could save both time and money. My sincere thanks to all of you for inspiring me to do better!

Using a Snow Day to Make Gifts for Valentine's Day

This is what we woke up to today. Beautiful! And it made me slow down for a day and cancel errands. What to do on a snow day? How about making a couple of Valentine's gifts.

I've always given my family members a small gift for Valentine's Day. It's usually a handmade gift. The budget for gifts just after Christmas is often very small, so handmade certainly fits the bill. The two gifts that I am making today are for my daughters. In thinking what I could possibly make from the supplies that I have at home, I thought about these -- knitted, reusable make-up remover pads. My thinking was that these would be a perfect use for the odds and ends of the all-cotton yarn that I have leftover from making dish and spa cloths two years ago. Each of those cloths used 2/3 of a 2.5 oz skein of cotton yarn, leaving me with a few 1/3 skeins in different colors. I thought that surely I could get 3 or more make-up remover pads out of those 1/3-skein remnants of yarn.

I didn't know if anyone else ever made these before, but I checked online just in case. And sure enough, lots of people have made them -- lucky for me, as I could follow someone else's pattern and not have to figure it out myself. The pattern that I chose is this very easy pattern. I will say this much though, if I could crochet, I would crochet round pads, as I think they would look prettier. But as I only knit, these had to be squares.

So, I've put in a couple of hours of knitting this morning and have made 4 lavender and 1 ecru, so far. My plan is to make about 7 of each color and give each daughter a full set to get through a week. In my knitting today, I discovered that 1/3 of a skein will make 4 of these 4-inch square pads. The small ball of yarn in the photo is a 1/3-skein remnant, just to give you an idea of how little yarn one needs to made a single square. (I had two of the lavender yarn remnants before beginning today.)

As I was knitting, I thought of several aspects of this gift that makes me happy. These will be totally free to make, as I am using the leftover bits from other knitting projects. Using up the odds bits of yarn that I have means that I am not generating any new waste in the from of packaging or manufacturing. They are reusable, to be washed after each use. They can be tossed into the laundry with towels, sheets, pjs, etc. Judging by how well my knitted dishcloths have held up, I expect these make-up remover pads will last several years. As a reusable product, they replace a disposable item that would end up in the garbage (cotton balls or squares). In addition, as a reusable item, they will save my daughters a few dollars as they will not need to buy the disposable, commercially-made product. And they are made by me. A handmade item from me adds an extra measure of love to my gifts.

After I finish knitting both colors, I will finish the ends then package up. Stay tuned, you know how much I like packaging and presentation. I have an idea that I think will be really nice, and also won't cost a thing by using some odds and ends from home.

So, this is how I spent my freebie snow day.