Sometimes it feels like I’m just treading water, making no progress. Or that I may even be going down.

I’m tired of feeling crummy ALL. THE. TIME. I understand that this phase won’t last forever but I am exhausted. I wake up exhausted. During all this, saving money can seem impossible some days. But we have to keep trying. One foot in front of the other. It WILL get better. And to that point I would like to acknowledge that I am beyond privileged to be in this position. I have a safe home. I have family that love me and are more than willing to help me through this difficult time. I have incredible friends who have given incredible emotional and mental support. I have food to eat, a bed to sleep in, and so much more.

So now that we got that out of the way, onto some frugal happenings lately!

• I make treats from scratch on a regular basis so I never feel like I’m lacking. Today I made rice krispy treats and peach tea with home canned peach slices! There is a delicious Vietnamese tea shop down the road that makes incredible peach tea that I just love. It does however cost upwards of $6 for one tea! So I decided today to attempt my own version. Is it perfect? No. But I suspect it will be quite tasty once it is properly cooled. And rice krispy treats are always a favorite that I am happy to have on hand.
• A dear neighbor’s birthday was last week and I made a double batch of my famous carrot cake cupcakes from scratch for them! Bonus: I got to keep a dozen to enjoy myself.
• I made some awesome improvements in my garden for the upcoming season! (The initial cost was not exactly cheap, but I believe it will be worth it in the long run. ) I determined that in order to get the most out of my growing space I was going to need to grow more vertically, necessitating a trellis or arch of some sort. Last year I grew peas up my fence and that was pretty successful so I am hoping to build on that. A friend let me borrow their truck and offered to assist me with the set up. I got four 16 foot cattle panels, and sixteen 5 foot tall t posts, plus wire to secure them in place. Total for the supplies was just around $200 but that is still far cheaper than four garden “kits” would have cost (each of them ran anywhere from $150 to $200!) My friend helped me carry them out to my garden and set it all up! I am SO excited to see how it works this season because it looks AWESOME! If I do say so myself. (Also, I paid my friend in baked goods and we both felt we got the better end of the deal!)
• Continuing the garden theme, I got my first seeds in the ground! It’s still quite early in the season, but some plants like our cool wet Spring weather including peas and lettuce. It feels wonderful to get the garden started! Like everyone else I am watching food prices soar higher and higher and feel strongly that I want to produce as much of my own produce as possible. What I can’t grow myself I will purchase from local farmers. My parents have been working on their garden as well and I was the lucky recipient of 3 extra blueberry bushes, 2 strawberry plants, and some raspberry bushes! I will find extra places to tuck them all in.
• Borrowing lots of library books, and listening to library audio books. Returning everything on time though my library doesn’t have late fees anymore.
• Doing my best to eat from the freezer/pantry and do as little grocery shopping as possible. I did go to the market this weekend for some produce as I had exactly NO vegetables or fruit in the house! I’ve done a good job using up frozen produce but didn’t realize I was totally out! So I got lettuce, carrots, Persian cucumbers, and two apples. That should hold me for a while.

I’m sure there were other things but my brain is fuzzy due to my mistakenly taking drowsy allergy meds! I’m going to take a mini snooze before getting to work on dinner. I hope you are all having a lovely day!