What We Did in June – Frugal Family Living

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Want to know all the things our family did last month to save money and live frugally? Here’s a recap of everything!

What We Did in June -Frugal Family Living

For those of you on my email list, you know that each Friday I send out an email with what we did that week. Things, I’ve been making, projects we are working on, and other frugal living things. I posted my first blog post with a round up of all these things last month for May and you all liked it so much that I’m sharing again this month.

In the comments section of this blog post, I’d love to hear how you too are living frugally right now and what you did during the previous month to be more frugal. We can all learn so much from each other!

P.S. My emails always contain freebies on Friday for my readers so if you’d like to get those, be sure and sign up here!

What We Did in June

As I mentioned last month, we moved onto our land that we are building a homestead on! In May, we’d only been on the land full time for a couple of weeks but now we’ve had a whole month here. Technically it’s been 7 weeks now although it seems like much longer!

I did a LOT of gardening in June which has been going pretty well except that we almost never get rain. Our rain is currently in a moderate drought so I have to water at least once a day to keep things alive. Sometimes twice when it’s over 90 degrees and windy.

We do have a structure on the property and we remodeled that in June to create a kitchen and pantry. It’s almost done (for the parts we can finish right now) and I LOVE it! It’s so crazy to have a kitchen that I completely designed myself. Let’s dig into this month!

What I’ve Been Baking/Cooking…. 

This month has been SO hot that baking is mostly non-existent. Meals are as simple as possible. I’ve really made use of my slow cooker this week and plan on making more from this list of 77 Toss Together Slow Cooker Meals over the coming week.

Meals on our griddle grill most nights are my new specialty. I’m pretty obsessed with grilled cauliflower right now (with garlic and olive oil).

The first thing I made in my brand new stove was these Chocolate Chip Cookies and I added white chocolate chips instead.

On one of the cooler nights, I made some yummy cobbler to go with our roast and potatoes. I also made a delicious pie that I’m working on perfecting so I can share the recipe with you soon!

At the end of the month, I was able to bake in my new oven finally! I made some Apple Cranberry Muffins using this Muffin Mix recipe and adding applesauce and dried cranberries for my addins. I also made a big batch of Strawberry Jam and Strawberry Rhubarb Jam (29 jellies!) using Pamona’s Pectin and honey for the sweetener. I also canned up some cherries and grape jelly for a total of 70 jars canned so far for this season. Not much yet but there isn’t much abundance just yet.

What I’ve Been Writing….

The cost of chicken and all meats has been going up like crazy so I wrote a blog post on How to Save Money on Chicken.

With your help, I also published a big list article with SO many ideas on How to Save Money in the Summer.

I published that article on Pantry Must Have’s. I also updated this list of garden fresh recipes with 5 ingredients or less.

I shared my husband and I’s tutorial for how to make a solar drying rack for herbs. I also updated the French Dressing Recipe because I know everyone is eating salads right now with their greens!

I published a new tutorial on how I preserve lemon juice and lemon peels and what we use them for.

I had to update my blog post on 10 Uses for Mint because I know you all are knee-deep in mint right now like I am.

And last but not least, I published a new recipe for a very simple and frugal Homemade Chocolate Syrup.

kitchen

Projects We’ve Been Working On….

In the house, we have the kitchen “rough draft” done and now we are starting on the new build part of the construction.

This past week I’ve been working on unpacking some of my kitchen items and setting up my kitchen and pantry. I just love it so far! It’s not quite finished yet but finished enough that I can work in it. (And yes, the open shelving is on purpose!) We saved over $2000-$3000 by building the cabinets ourselves.

I’m so thankful to have a kitchen that is indoors with an oven and running water! I also made a video this week sharing my bulk food storage in my pantry (what we store and how). You can watch it on YouTube here. 

Towards the end of the month, we finished getting up the beams on our smaller part of the build so it’s ready for floor and we also poured the concrete for the larger part of the build so all of the foundation work in nearly done. Once the floor trusses and insulation go in, it’s time for framing! I’ve had quite a few of you ask about videos of the house build and we ARE taking videos but we are not editing them to publish just yet. We have very limited time until it gets cold and we must have a closed in house before then so that is our #1 priority.

What I Planted…

I’ve been trying to plant every extra square inch in the garden lately I had this odd challenge for myself to use up all the garden seeds I bought. So I’ve been doing plenty of extra planting! You can also check out my latest gardening video here. I’m talking all about my berries!

I’ve been working on planting my fall garden this week. Yes, already! My estimated first frost date is in September so we have roughly 70 days left of the growing season. This week I planted peas and beets, and sometime in the coming weeks, I will plant radishes. I’ve also started thinking about which seeds I’m going to save and what I need to let go to flower. Here’s a quick article on how I save seeds…more coming on that soon too.

What I Bought…. 

I’ve actually been grabbing some winter clothes to prepare for next winter (believe it or not!). Now is a great time to buy them and you can find some nice deals. I picked up some warm base layer clothing from Thredup (you get a free $10 if you use that link!) because they had many winter things for up to 50% off. I’m also reading through more of my Gardening and Sustainable Living Bundle which is available again if you missed it before!

I received my monthly coop order from Azure and actually did a video of what I got. You can watch it here.

I realized this week that I do not have nearly enough jars for what I plan to can. I checked out a bunch of retailers that would ship jars and I found the best deal (since shipping is free) at Target. I bought all the cases of jars that would fit into my budget this month!

I also bought all the windows for our house…for $160. Thank you Facebook Marketplace!

I’m trying to stick to my really tight budget right now since we have a few things from the garden and we need all the cash for the house build. I did use some of my “How to Get Free Groceries” strategies to get some freebies this month though!

Other Ways I Saved Money…

I’ve been challenging myself to try and start using what we have on the homestead for meals. Above you can see one of the lunches I made this week…hard boiled eggs from our hens, Rhubarb Cake, and fresh salad with all the greens from the greenhouse.

I also dried anything I could! I’ve been drying chives, broccoli leaves, and kale the most.


Well, I think that about wraps it up for June 2020!

What have you been doing in June? What frugal things did you do last month?

Merissa Bio

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3 Comments

  1. What a wonderful adventure! Today I am making a rustic bread loaf, graham crackers (I saw your recipe while pinning the fudgsicle one..I need to get popmaker molds..) and refried beans to go with homemade nachos. Have a great day and thanks for letting us in on how to save each month!!