Five Frugal Things -- Sunflowers & Star Trek

1) My sister and I were still in the mood to get out of town, so we drove out to Sauvie Island, which sits just north of Portland and is one of the largest river islands in the United States. Sauvie Island is known for U-pick farms and is a popular destination for Portlanders looking to visit farms, bird watch, cycle or just lounge on the beach.

We chose Topaz Farm, as I'd seen their sunflower "maze" online and thought it looked like a fun destination. It was free to enter the maze, but would've been $1/stem had we decided to cut flowers. We split an $11 caprese sandwich, made with their freshly grown tomatoes.

They had animal pens with goats, sheep and donkeys; freshly grown food to purchase and lots of good props for photo ops!

Like so:

We then drove down the road to The Pumpkin Patch farm, where we saw more animals, (rabbits, turkeys, ducks, goats and a miniature horse) and walked over to see their brahman cows.

I wish we'd gone earlier in the day to spend more time exploring the island, but we'll just have to save that adventure for a future visit.

Such a fun day for a couple of city gals!

2) I bought fresh produce from the Pumpkin Patch store including apples, corn, beets and fresh lettuce. It's been a hot minute since I've enjoyed a salad in the United States and I look forward to eating lettuce that doesn't put me at risk for weeks of diarrhea!

3) We had the kids and their partners over for "family dinner night," which as always was an enjoyable evening. The theme was "hotel breakfast buffet" and I served cheesy scrambled eggs, hash browns, cantaloupe, croissants, bacon and orange juice. My sister refilled some of the empty mini-jam jars from Canada and everything was set out buffet style.

They're just so cute!

We played a few rounds of a recently thrifted Telestrations game ($2.50 -- it was the half-off tag color!) and served ice cream cones.

4) We added a 7-day free trial of Paramount+ onto my sister's Amazon Prime account to watch the fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. We'd been waiting to start a trial until most of the episodes were released.

Initially I was going to bite the bullet and pay for a 30-day subscription, but this is better as we can motor our way through the season while she's still here in town. I'd prefer not to give CBS/Paramount a single penny as their CEO actively promotes the current fascist regime.

How we spend our money matters.

5) My husband was able to resurrect our youngest's college-era printer by following the directions from a YouTube video. This is HUGE for me, as I've been scrambling to print eBay labels and going in person to the post office to have them scan a QR code. Now I can go back to my norm of using the USPS.com website to arrange pickups.

Ahh . . . .

Now your turn, what frugal things have you been up to?

Katy Wolk-Stanley 

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

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