Frugal Warmth During Our First Snow Flurries

We are getting our first flurry's of the winter this evening. I, personally, love snow! It is always so pure, so white, so crisp. A blank canvas where beautiful nature seems to whisper "look at me"!

I am excited. I know it won't stick and we won't have any accumulation, however, I am enjoying the beauty of the different shaped flakes falling to the ground.

With that being said, we are having record lows in my neck of the woods (It is 8 pm and it is down to 19 degrees with a wind chill of 5). We burn wood so this can be a problem if no one is awake to stoke the fire in the middle of the night. I will be setting my alarm to get up every 2 hours to add a log and make sure that the inside of the house stays warm.

My main concern is the water pipes. Every year we have several breaks. It can be costly and irritating. This year we have been turning our water off at night where it comes into the house and draining all the water out of the pipes by leaving the spouts open and flushing the toilets. We haven't had one break this season and we also haven't had any frozen water pipes to deal with either!

To keep ourselves warm and toasty in our beds we use electric throw blankets. We each have one. They cost about $20 at Walmart. I prefer the throws over full sized electric blankets because if the weather is cool enough to need a little heat up on the feet or legs but not cool enough to waste wood in a fire the ones who are cold can just grab their throws. We turn them on about 20 minutes before going to bed. When we crawl in bed it is warm and comforting. It costs only about $1 a month to run an electric throw blanket. With 6 of them running in the house we use about $6 worth of electric heating our beds over the course of a month. That is a pretty reasonable price for sleeping comfortably. The dogs pile in the beds with us and all cuddle in for the evening. It's a cozy and wonderful time of year here on our homestead. (It is also my favorite time of year. You can always add clothes to warm up but taking off clothes to cool down isn't always an option).

How do you frugally save money during the winter time?