Well, it’s been a week! Did you survive the frugal challenge?

I did! It even went better than I anticipated! I definitely think that maybe we should go for a longer challenge, don’t you think? If felt like this one ended just about as quick as it began.

Here is my recap from the week:

• When traveling away from home, pack your own snacks, meals and drinks. Yes! We’ve really not been away a whole lot, other than back to the hometown over the weekend. My house was out of all things snack related (other than a few fruit snacks–which I packed), so I knew I would have to stop off at the store. We were spending the weekend with my mom (first time in almost 6 years!!!!) and I had no idea if she would have snacks for us or not so I picked some up at the grocery store on our way out.
• Try not to eat out at all this week. From Saturday to next Friday.Yes! This is the one I was really worried about on our end. While sometimes we do really well, there are other hurried trips in which we just decide to eat out. Especially those trips back home. But, this time I stuck to my guns! I stopped off at the store on the way back to the hometown and bought fried chicken from the deli as well as potato wedges and snacks that we needed for the weeked at my mom’s. On our way home, which was right around dinner time, we decided we could wait until we got home (around 7) and eat something quick out of the refrigerator. And you know what?! Not one of us died from starvation.
• Plan outings that are no cost adventures, such as parks and museums. Again, we’ve had a pretty uneventful week. There was a lot of rain at the beginning of the week, and I’ve been fighting a migraine. Over the weekend though, we made it withougt spending a dime and the kids had a blast. We picked cherries and made a pie, and we’ve played around the house. It’s been fun, and it’s been frugal.
• Make extra meals for your freezer for days when you have no gusto to cook dinner. For lunch on Thursday, I made Corn Dog Muffins and since the recipe makes about 24, and we only need 8 for lunch, I froze the rest. This is definitely going to come in handy for our lunches!
• Make something from scratch that you normally wouldn’t, such as bread, household cleaners, snacks, etc. I didn’t do as well in this area as I had wanted. My original intention was to make some cleaners, but the headache pretty much derailed me. However, I did end up making my own vinaigrette dressing for our dinner, since I had to switch to Plan B (the boys went out on a fishing trip, so I wanted more of a simple dinner).
• If you haven’t made a budget (or goals for 2009) yet..DO IT! If you are all squared away here, check and see if there is something in your budget that you can lower, or cut out completely. I realized that since the big kids were out of school that I didn’t have to worry about their school lunch money. That gave me an additional $42/month for the summer, but I guess that isn’t technically cutting something out.
• Try out a new-to-you frugal idea such as washing/re-using ziploc bags, using less laundry/dishwashing detergent, re-use juice from canned fruits and vegetables, save butter tubs, amongst many others. Be creative! Fail. I’m sure there are frugal steps that I haven’t made yet, I just didn’t have the brain power to search them out.

How did your week go? Are you up for another Challenge in the next month or so? How about ideas for an upcoming Finding Freedom Friday? Let me know your thoughts!

Finding Freedom Friday: Frugal Challenge Recap is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

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For this edition of Finding Freedom Friday, I would like to put forth a Week Long Frugal Challenge. With Summer in full swing, we are running to and fro and spending lots of time in the outdoors. While I do love every minute of it, sometimes it is incredibly tempting to look toward the not so frugal side of things. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to fall into that mess!

While I would love to do a Month Long Challenge, I think it would be best to start out small and see if we can conquer this first. And I know we can!

Here’s the Challenge:

• When traveling away from home, pack your own snacks, meals and drinks. Be sure to check out this post for lots of different ideas.

• Try not to eat out at all this week. From Saturday to next Friday.
• Plan outings that are no cost adventures, such as parks and museums. Check out the Frugal Family Fun post for some ideas.

• Make extra meals for your freezer for days when you have no gusto to cook dinner. This post has some pointers and OAMC/Freezer Recipes.

• Make something from scratch that you normally wouldn’t, such as bread, household cleaners, snacks, etc. The Finding Freedom Friday: Making Your Own vs. Store Bought post has a lot of different ideas to try out. You can also browse through my recipe section for numerous “from scratch” recipes.

• If you haven’t made a budget (or goals for 2009) yet..DO IT! If you are all sqaured away here, check and see if there is something in your budget that you can lower, or cut out completely.

• Try out a new-to-you frugal idea such as washing/re-using ziploc bags, using less laundry/dishwashing detergent, re-use juice from canned fruits and vegetables, save butter tubs, amongst many others. Be creative!

That’s it! Easy peasy, right? The Challenge will start Saturday (gives you a day to get all the non-frugal things out of your system. and end next Friday with a Finding Freedom Friday: Challenge Recap.

I will be running around, back to the hometown again this weekend, so I’m hoping to be able to stick to the “no eating out” part. This may prove to be a toughie!

So, are you up to it?!

**I’ve just realized that Mr. Linky has disappeared from all of my old posts, and on my end it only stores the latest 5! AGH! So, if you linked to the Finding Freedom Friday posts mentioned in this post, and you want your link included–please email them to me and I can manually add them all in. Sorry!**

Finding Freedom Friday: Are You Up For A Challenge? is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

Please take a moment and visit our Sponsors:

Fashion Cents For Mom Deals and Bargains for the Fashionable Mom
Pennies and Blessings Spend Wisely. Live Well.
Groupon Local Deals. 50-90% Off!
Mint.com Your FREE Online Money Manager
Flirty Aprons Makes Daily Tasks Enjoyable!
FiveJ's Design