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"