I've spent the last couple weeks with my head buried in books looking for ideas on stretching the dollars, and cooking mass quantities of foods on my good days so that on days that I don't feel well, I have dinner already stashed in the freezer. I know about Once a Month Cooking, but physically not up to it, so I am trying to make larger batches of things when I do cook. What I need are ideas so we aren't eating the same things over and over. I'm looking for ideas on books that use this idea I can request through my library and when I find one I really like, purchase it with a bookstore gift card I have.

All help appreciated! I do cruise the internet, but I spend so much time on line for the business we run, I'd much rather have books that I can feel and flip the pages myself from the comfort of my couch.

I did find a slow-cooker recipe book at the library with 1 recipe I could use. They weren't geared for frugal cooking in the least, but I've just about worn out my crockpot.

This afternoon I took a few minutes to sew a patch and a button on my $4 denim jumper. Now that I have had it for a few years, I have popped that bottom button off multiple times. This time I knew I needed a bit more fabric to reinforce the old fabric so the button would stay secure. My MIL gave me a small piece of denim from her mending stash, I pulled out my thread and the button and within a few minutes it was fixed and as good as ever.

I have heard of 'investment' dressing which usually involves $250 jackets, $1300 dresses, etc. depending on the articles that you read. But really what is investment dressing? For me it is something I look good in, fits me, will last just about forever (with a few mendings), and didn't cost an arm and leg. I'm not sure how long the person had the jumper before me (I bought it at Goodwill), but they never got their whole investment back! By the time I'm done with it, it will be salvaged to mend hubby's jeans, maybe make a denim purse for myself, or many of my other ideas for smaller bits of denim.

Saw my arthritis doctor on Friday and was prescribed a new medication as I just haven't had any pain relief or symptom control lately which means I've been barely functioning. Barely functioning also means you don't care about sticking to a budget, you don't care about budgets or anything else.

Anyhow, we got home and started checking on the cost of this medication. The formulary cost for a 3 month supply was $1400! The generic was $146! Thank God for Medicare D, I think my cost will be $18! Hopefully it will work the way it is supposed to and I can rejoin the world of the living. It is hard to comprehend friends my age doing fun things like scuba diving while for me taking a shower wears me out so much I have to rest for an hour afterwards before I can go on to the next 'activity'.

Over the last 5 years as I have tried to cope with this, I am so glad for the internet and the chance to 'meet' other people interested in the same thing I am since to actually get out and meet people is so difficult.

Last night hubby and I went out on a rare date night. In the course of helping with our on-line sewing pattern store,

www.MoonwishesStore.com, he has gotten very familiar with clothing, style and fit. So while we were people watching at the restaurant, we got especially interested in the clothing worn by the larger ladies such as myself. He surprised me when he said I was one of the better dressed there, simply because my clothes fit me. When I got home and changed clothes it hit me, I was wearing a $4 denim jumper from Goodwill bought several years ago and a knit top bought at a thrift store bag day for about 8 cents several years ago. I wear this outfit frequently and so have had a well fitting decent outfit for 2-3 cents a wearing. Compared to a NEW sweater we bought a couple years ago that literally fell apart within three wearings, what a bargain. It just goes to show that quality garments picked up used that fit well will probably serve you better then spending money for new clothes without a 'wearing' track record!

Well I got lazy/busy and stopped blogging and stopped really thinking about the $5000 challenge that I had going. I ended 2005 with about $700 from the intitial challenge and now want to continue on. I need to think more frugally and figure out some new ways to save money and get money into the savings account.

I did lose one way of making money this year though. After years of doing Pinecone surveys, when they expected us to download flash softwear (or something like that) I had to quit. Hubby really doesn't like downloading softwear via the net--computers that get sick with viruses are worth the $5 checks from Pinecone.

Any how I'm going to start using my ING account to save the yearly tax money and monthly mortgage money, to increase my interest rate on that money about 3%. I just really hate opening the property and school tax bills every year and decided about a month ago to start doing the save 1/52 of the tax bill every week if I could. Granted it may be tight some weeks, but not nearly as tight as coming up with several thousand dollars all in one swoop.

Last week I also got approved for a 0% APR for one year reward credit card from Sharebuilders that earns you dollars into your Sharebuilder account towards buying stocks. That account was started with nothing and has been funded by rebates, credit card rewards, etc. and is at around $1000 now. Not a huge lot, but moeny that we wouldn't have had otherwise.