Life on a little urban homestead in the making, with ideas for self-sufficiency, Permaculture, DIYing, organic gardening, food preservation, Chicken keeping, cookery, crafts, thrifting and more...

Feb 4, 2023

Saving Money On Meat & More! Dining Room Refresh- DIY Reupholstered Chairs & Paint

 

 Saving Money On Meat And More!-
As we all know grocery prices get higher and higher. While we don't eat meat everyday we do eat some. I was recently at a Fred Meyer grocery store. I browsed around and stumbled onto some huge 9 lb. pork roasts. They were $24.00 each. I read down on the sticker at the bottom (we are members of the Savings Club) the roasts were $8.00 each. That's about $1 a pound! 
 

I decided to buy two for that price! When I got home I cut both of them in half. I created two boneless roasts and two bone-in. I used my Food Saver bags and froze three of them. I roasted one of them with the bone in, low and slow with herbs. The meat came out fabulous! Very juicy and tender. I served one meal with fresh veggies. Another meal with roasted yams. A third meal I did shredded pork with barbecue sauce and Memphis style coleslaw on top, WONDERFUL! Recipe here Memphis Style Coleslaw-


What a deal! Good reminder to keep your eyes open when shopping and try different stores. I have heard recently there is getting to be a shortage of Baking Powder. Buy some! It's cheap and can be used for all kinds of baked goods. This is a really great preparedness item. 

I love Starbuck's Strawberry Acai Refresher, but they are just too expensive. I found a copycat recipe and made my own! Pretty close! Recipe here Copycat StrawberryAcai Refresher


First you simmer white grape juice and strawberries to create a base concentrate, then strain to get the berry juice-
 
 
 

Last I added the powders listed on the recipe, stir and refrigerate. It keeps for about two weeks. You use 1/2 concentrate and 1/2 water. I found some freeze-dried strawberries at Trader Joe's for $3.00 and I topped with those just like Starbuck's (a little darker), but much cheaper! I bought the powders listed on the recipe. Those will last a LONG time and you could use in smoothies. You could play with this recipe and use other fruits if desired. Fresh strawberries here are terrible so I bought frozen. Worked great!

I bought two totes of organic mushrooms at Costco, will dehydrate most of them for storage, $5.00 for a 24 oz-

Not to forget pets, bought a big back of cat food for Bonnie to go in a tote with oxygen absorbers. I still have two extra bags of chicken feed.  Now if they would just start laying!!! Should be any day....


Dining Room Refresh- DIY Reupholstered Chairs & Paint- 
Years ago I bought two used French style chairs for the dining table. The fabric was worn so I had them reupholstered for about $40.00 each. Over the years they got food stains, shampooed them and spot treated them I could never get them really clean-
 

They were just past the point of no return. I saw YouTube video on how to reupholster these kinds of chairs. I knew that I could do it myself and save a ton of money! I looked around for fabrics, did not want to do plaid/stripes since it has to really aligned to look good. I stumbled onto some denim fabric with embroidered dragonflies at the checkout stand at the local fabric store-
 

I had planned on getting just plain navy blue playing upholstery fabric. When I saw this fabric I knew this was the right one! To start I used a blow dryer to soften up the glue stick material that the upholsterer had used to attach the trim and removed all of that-
 
 


Next I cut out large pieces of fabric to cover the chairs and ironed it. I read it's really important always iron it before you start stretching it to get it really flat. Dave helped me in a few spots and I stapled it around really well. I did this on top of a card table, helped a lot to have it UP-
 
So clean!

I was not able to find any trim locally so ordered some on Amazon in Navy. I wish I had gone a little bit lighter on the color but it's really hard to see on a computer. After I got everything upholstered, I trimmed off the excess, and then hot glued it all the way around with the trim. It looks so much better! 
 
 


Clean and will last for quite a few years. Not perfect but works for me. The total for the fabric was about $25, the trim was about $8.00, I have some fabric and trim left over. I might do some kind of a fun pillow for the summer.
 
 

I started thinking that I wanted to repaint my little shelving unit that hangs on our dining room wall. It was a deep blue. With the new chair and buffet fabric it was a lot of blue. I had seen the PBS new series All Creatures Great and Small and loved the green accents in the kitchen. I also liked the green paint on my antique wood-handled kitchen utensils-

 

 

PBS All Creatures Great and Small Kitchen shot

It's called French green or Antique green. Previously I had used spray paint but was not able to find this color anywhere. I settled on a large bottle of craft paint at Hobby Lobby, about $6 each. I bought some new foam brushes, wide ones worked really well for the two big shelves. I knew it would take two coats especially on the metal side pieces. I love the color! I wish I could have found chalk paint in this color, but it does have a satin finish which I like. Took two coats-


 

I finished my thrifted shadow box with the WWII chicken print. I added broken egg shells, wheat and Lavender-

Says "I am a brave little WWII hen, don't eat much but produce a lot"

4 comments:

Leigh said...

I am so impressed with your upholstery job! Your chairs look so professional! Nice fabric choices too.

That was a fantastic discount on the pork. Good reminder to always take the time to look for discounts. And to be willing to try new places. That's how I found my current not-a-national-chain grocery store that has fantastic weekly sales on meat.

I hadn't heard about a potential baking powder shortage. Maybe I should promote my How To Bake Without Baking Powder! If you'd be interested in doing a blog review, I'd be happy to send you a PDF copy of it.

Nancy In Boise said...

Thanks Leigh! I thought the dragonflies were really Charming. Yes it's definitely good to try different stores and ethnic stores for instance too. I'd love to review your book! If you go to the contact me tab my email should populate there if not let me know? Thanks! I'd be happy to read it and do a review on my blog

Judy said...

Wow everything looks great. The chairs look so nice and I love the color of your shelf.

Nancy In Boise said...

Thanks Judy, fun to be creative!

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