Sunshine and Frugal Things

February 2015 Goose Spit Comox

I hope everyone had a great weekend - we certainly did.  Saturday we spent 3 hours cleaning the garage, spider wrangling (hubby had that job) and making room for our new kayaks.  The good news is everything fits nicely, we got rid of some recycling and made a small pile for our next garage sale.  We have a crawlspace under the entire house so have room to store that kind of stuff.  If I didn't we would have driven it straight to the thrift store.  It was tiring but it is so nice to know exactly where everything is in the garage and that it is tidy and organized - it hasn't looked this great since we moved in almost 3 years ago.


I hope to have a garage sale at least once every three years together with my Mother.  This will keep her on track as well as she is definitely a pack rat, one who we successfully downsized last year.  Her condo association is contemplating allowing an association garage sale every May which she voted in favor of but we don't know the final results yet.  That would be great as then it would attract large crowds and would still be acceptable to have smaller tables each year at which we could could purge our accumulated unwanteds and get some cash for things we enjoy doing.

We have hardly eaten out this month.  On Valentines day which we normally don't celebrate we had originally planned on going to the pub for lunch just to get out of the house.  Life overtook us so we ordered takeout from our favorite Greek restaurant instead for dinner and enjoyed it in the comfort of home with a movie afterwards on Netflix.  Total savings?  About 50% of what it would have cost had we eaten in the restaurant:  no tip, no alcohol tab.  I can't recall eating out at all this month except that meal.  We do have a lunch date planned for this coming Friday in Nanaimo(hour drive away) while our puppy Buddy gets his first hair trim by his old human Mom.  She is a dog groomer and Buddy came with a year worth of free dog grooming.  It costs about $10 gas to get there and back and we can have lunch, all for the cost of what a local grooming would be.  Plus, he gets to visit with his little dog buddies including his Mom and Dad who are her pets - a win win for everyone.  I wish to keep this relationship up as she also advised instead of kennel service if we go away we can pay her to keep him.  Something we will likely do in September as we want to go away for a week for our 10th Wedding Anniversary.  I know he would be extremely happy there - his old home away from home.

I mostly cleaned out the freezer this month and did a lot of scratch cooking.  When hubby complained there was no snack food in the house last week I whipped up a lemon cake (using a $1 box cake from 1.5 years ago that needed using up) and instead of frosting used lemon drizzle which consisted of lemon juice and icing sugar - way less than frosting would have required.  Later in the week I made a batch of pumpkin apple raisin muffins with strudel topping - all with things in the cupboards.  That seems like an odd combination but they turned out great.  I used this recipe from allrecipes.com changing the recipe slightly - I used one can of pumpkin puree (again 1.5 years old) and one old apple, plus added in 1/2 cup of raisins, soaked in water for a few minutes before going into the recipe.  No photos, I am not Cretty Bocker, lets just say they were yummy and the last one got eaten with coffee this morning.  Tonight hubby gets salmon and I am going to try and eat up some of the last of veggie patties which we bought and didn't like(not even my Stepdaughter who is mostly vegetarian).  I am not keen on salmon so no point in wasting expensive good fish on me - and I am not throwing out the veggie patties so will BBQ them - no food will be wasted in this house.

February 2015 - Crowded beach at Goose Spit Comox (joking!)

The weather has been amazing the last few days.  Yesterday we played with the dog in the back yard, sat in the sunshine and later took a long walk on the beach at low tide at Goose Spit.  The dog can only handle a couple of blocks so we didn't take him with us yet but will later in the Spring.    It was difficult to get a parking spot there, the busiest we have ever seen it even in summertime.  The good news is that once you get out the parking area if you walk a ways on the beach you still have the beach mostly to yourself.  There was little wind and every time we get to walk on the beach in February to plus 12 degrees celcius and sunshine - we are thankful that we get to live in Paradise! Shhhh.....everyone else from the rest of Canada might just abandon their snowy cold winters and move here.