Frugal Fun, and Squirrel Spotting

One of my hobbies, now that I'm not bringing in any money, is making Stacey's income stretch as far as possible. I've always been frugal, and since having Cora and leaving the working world, I have come to enjoy making meals at home, cooking from scratch, and stockpiling food and household goods when the price is right. I pair coupons with store sales, and try to save 50% of the full retail price whenever I shop at traditional grocery stores (traditional as compared to the 99 Cent Store, which is a favorite of mine).

I don't blog about this sort of thing often, but after the grocery trip photographed above, Stace said I really ought to mention it. The above represents my recent trip to Ralphs. The full price was about $50; after Ralphs Club Card savings, the price dropped to about $32. And after coupons, which Ralphs doubles, the total was $5.81. I practically ran from the store in case someone stopped me for shoplifting! This was a very special circumstance, because our nearest Ralphs sent special coupons for us as "new neighbors" to "introduce" us to the store. One of those coupons was $10 off a $25 purchase, and four coupons were for free bread, eggs, orange juice and mayonnaise. So, I don't expect to catch this kind of deal again, or at least not very often!
Part of my frugal hobby involves keeping up on a couple of Web sites that alert the like-minded to great deals. My favorite is www.moneysavingmom.com. On that site a couple of days ago, the lady linked to a deal at Red Mango, a frozen yogurt shop in town: they offered free yogurt with a topping on Saturday, to allow customers to try out a new flavor they were unveiling. So, we all enjoyed our free yogurt.

Also, on the frugal fun topic, on Sunday night we had a nice time watching a free performance of the play "Beauty and the Beast" at an outdoor amphitheater in Stevenson Ranch. During the intermission, we planned to buy ice cream or a smoothie. But, the Jamba Juice employees were going around handing out free samples - quite large samples, too. So another free evening's fun!

Here we have Exhibit A of why Stace built the odd-looking contraption over our fruit-and-veggie garden.
On Saturday morning we had two squirrels racing around our yard, having all sorts of fun, and then one of them wanted to see what was on the other side of the chicken wire. Thankfully, he failed ... so far, so good.