Frugal Friday

I love a bargain. One thing I don't spend money on like I used to is clothing. There is so much good quality, low cost clothing available these days (and pretty nicely designed to boot) that I spend far less on it than I did 30 years ago. (No scientific fact, just my casual observation.)

Anyway, I freely admit to really liking a lot of the clothing COSTCO gets in for sale. For years I never even glanced at it, turning my nose up at the idea of buying clothing off a table in the middle of a box store. No longer, I snagged this down jacket for just $49, I needed to replace my Landsend jacket and I did it for less than half what I would have spent with LE- LE I still love you and your ponte knit dresses still rock!

We've gone solar!

We've gone solar thanks to Solar City. It was an amazingly easy process, and I give Solar City high marks, they were very professional and make the process simple and straightforward. And oh yes, it hasn't cost us a penny. They get the tax breaks, but we should see at least a $50 a month savings on our utility bill. I'll post again when we get our first bill that reflects being 70% solar.

BTW, the photo is a snap of just a few of the solar panels on our roof, we were able to get 46 solar panels installed!

Frugal Friday

A friend gave me this coat- except it didn't look like this when she gave it to me. It was very long-even on 5'9" me!  So I asked my SIL to shorten it, then I removed the shoulder pads, and viola, a lovely dark charcoal wool car coat was born! (BTW, in the background is the new AirStone brick we had installed back in November along with the new Trex deck- huge improvements to the look of the back of our home!)

Pork - the other frugal meat

Last year GW and I purchased a cow  - since keeping large, bellowing livestock is frowned upon in our urban/suburban enclave, we had a friend raise the said beast for us. When we picked up the lovely organically raised beef from the butcher in December we ended up with roughly 4 cubic feet of meat. (BTW, we actually only bought half a cow.) And we ended up paying about $2.48 a pound for the meat. (That includes purchase of the cow, care and feeding, and butchering.)

That experiment went so well that we bought a pig- this time the whole pig. The oinker is now in our freezer as well and the price per pound came to about $2.38. In terms of this being a frugal venture I think this one is a keeper. And the meat has been fabulous- and I feel better knowing that it wasn't raised on some huge factory farm (and all of its attendant ills) and that we supported a local farmer and a local butcher shop. Win-Win!

All the meat came vacuum packed so it should last a nice long time.

Frugal Friday

Our deck is on its last legs. I've repainted it, and repainted it (ugh, hate doing it too) but I didn't start doing that until it was too late and it was already awfully weather damaged.  We had a contractor come out a couple of weeks ago for an estimate to put in new decking and rails, and while it was a very fair estimate, it still exceeded out meager budget. So we hightailed it on over to Home Depot to see what other solutions we could find.  Until we did it never occurred to us to consider vinyl railing. But we found the price perfect and the ease of installation just what we were looking for. Here is a sneak peek of how its going . We have something very thrifty planned for the decking as well, so stay tuned!

Frugal Friday

Gerry loves bananas and has always wanted one of those stands to hang them on. But it turns out that one of those itmes that when you look to buy one you can't find them. So we improvised by using this nice (and cheap) hook that we bought at Ikea.

Furgal Friday

This is our newest time and money saving gadget, the Soda Stream. It dispenses carbonated water - seltzer water and to that you add what ever kind of flavoring you desire. We have tonic, cola, and diet cola on hand, but I've become addicted to just the water without any flavoring - sipping fresh soda water satisfy the need for a drink that has a bit more class than plain tap water. The coat savings is huge, the flavoring have fewer additives and less sugar, and we can have any kind of soda we want, whenever we want as long as we have the small flavor bottle on hand. No more storing cases of soda and disposing of all those plastic or aluminum containers, so better for the environment. I love this thing!

Frugal Friday

I recently came to the realization that because of their high cost there are alot of equine related endeavors I'm not going to be able to pursue. Realizing this caused to pause evaluate all things horse. What I came to realize is, it's being with them that matters the most to me. I'm just as happy grooming as I am riding. I'm just as happy to watch them in the field as I am to watch time in the show ring. I'm beyond appreciative that I have them back in my life after such a long absence and just being with them is enough.

Today's photo is of the kind eye of my BO's horse, Pepper.

Frugal Friday

I started on my frugal quest way back in 1990.  I saw an article in our local paper about a woman named Amy Dacyczyn  who was starting a newsletter called "The Tightwad Gazette" I was one of her first subscribers and continued to get her home produced, low tech newsletter until she ceased publication in. December 1996.

I miss those newsletters. Amy wasn't one of the crazy loon proponent's of frugality. Her ideas and methods were time tested and reeked of common sense. I still have most of those old issues in a binder and I look through them every once and again-- I recognize favorite articles and tips with an almost nostalgic feeling. Her newsletter stopped publication right before the Web boom, before cell phones were commonplace, and before finding kindred spirits, no matter how obscure your interest, was made easy by the Internet.

Frugal Friday

I love original artwork. We collected some nice pieces from contemporary artists over the years, but not enough to fill all our bare walls. As an interesting and economical way to decorate I've made it a habit to buy interesting fruit and crate labels. Some info on crate labels in case you aren't familiar with them.

Most were produced via stone litho so the ink hadn't faded over the years. I don't think I've spent more than $18  for them, and many were much less. Paired with an inexpensive frame and you've got a frugal, but beautiful piece of artwork.

Here are two of my favorties:

Frugal Friday

Todays' Frugal Friday post is about pre-planning for the flip. This Xmas Gerry and I gave each other iPads (how much I love my iPad is worthy of a post all of its own-lets just say for now, it is always with me and don't know how I lived without it.)

Knowing that at some point in time a new, improved iPad will be offered, we purchased our iPads with a plan for the future sale - or flip. First, we bought the best version available,  the ones that are Wi-Fi 3G with 64GB. We had them engraved (since it was free) but instead of having our names or some other personal identifier permanently etched on it, we took a humerus route and had "This is my iPad : ) " engraved. This still marks it as ours, but when we go to sell it, it won't be a negative to a potential buyer.

Frugal Friday

Too much Christmas.

After hauling up 18 boxes and bags filled with Xmas decorations Gerry proclaimed I'm a hoarder (I'm not!) How did we ever get so much Xmas stuff.... anyway it is going, going, gone this year. Can I get it down to 4 boxes maximum, we'll see.

Frugal Friday

I make jewelry. Years ago I did it to make extra money. At one point my jewelry was in 17 stores in 3 states; and I attended 8-10 craft shows a year. I made money but it wasn't fun. Anyone who has done the craft show circuit will back me up when I say there is no greater hell than spending 16 hours setting up, manning and breaking down a show booth and having no sales to show for it. Those perfect shows, where the weather is right and your buyers show up in droves are few and far apart. The stores had their own special set of challenges, most especially poor record keeping.

These days I make jewelry for myself and to give as gifts.  I especially enjoy taking apart old jewelry and reinventing it into something modern. It's a frugal way to give myself a present while only spending time.

Case in point is these necklace. The clasp came off a ugly, broken cast-off, the jet beads are from a necklace that was my grandmothers, I purchased the 3 lampworked beads from their maker, Kate Fowl, who I studied glass bead with, the rest of the beads are various cast-off, and leftovers from other projects. And if in a few years this necklace no longer suits me, then I'll take it apart and design something else.

Frugal Friday

This Frugal Friday I thought I’d share some of my favorite frugal websites.



The Simple Dollar

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/


I like this website because it covers the idea of frugality from a very wide point of view. You are as likely to find an inexpensive recipe as you are a detailed explanation of a complicated fiscal conundrum. The writing is solid and engaging, and timely.




Search Tempest
http://www.searchtempest.com/


I’ve become a Craigslist seller and shopper and Search Tempest allows me to search Craigslist posts based on their geographic relationship to my zip code. So if I’m looking for a Brenderup trailer within 100 miles of my zip, Search Tempest will return all the results as one listing. Very time saving and handy.




Artisans' Bank free financial calculators
https://www.artisansbank.com/


I’ve used a lot of free website calculators, but my favorites are the ones offered by Artisan bank. Simple, easy to use and no pop-up ads. To find them just to the their homepage and click on the word “Calculators” in the tool bar at the top on the right hand side.

Frugal Friday

I try my level best to practice frugality- which to me, is saving money on the stuff that doesn’t interest me and spending it on what does.

Throughout our marriage Gerry and I have pursued several passions and activities very thoroughly. When we were dating we were into backpacking and camping, after we got married we began road cycling, then mountain biking, from there we moved into paintball, followed by kayaking, and now horses.

At home, I've always had a very complete studio, which over the years has morphed from a drawing studio, silkscreen studio, photography studio and darkroom, hot glass studio, and currently a jewelry and mixed-media studio. Gerry's at home passions have remained pretty conistant over the years: collecting and computer gaming.

When our interests change, I try very hard to sell of the equpement for one activity and use it to purchase equipment for the next. The sale of our Cannondale tandem bike helped fund the purchse of Dallas. I've just sold all of our kayaking equipment. It took about 3 months to do that including inventorying everything, looking up comparable prices, writing descriptions for each item, pricing each iitem, shooting photos of everything and then placing ads on Ebay and Craigslist.  But the effort is worth it, I made enough money from the sale of the kayak equipment to purchase a horse trailer!

Frugal Friday's

For this week's Frugal Friday post, an inexpensive craft project!



Just thought I’d share a photo of the back of the card box that I created for a friend’s B-Day celebration which was held a couple of weeks ago. I plan to put a variation of this box into the craft book I’m working on. The images are just advertisements torn out of horse magazines and then tarted up with paint. I challenged myself to only use items/supplies that I already had on hand and not buy anything specifically for it, and I achieved my goal. I think it’s a nice project, that could be tailored to any interest or event.

Frugal Friday's

Frugal Friday's will be my semi-regular update on what I'm doing to achieve a frugal lifestyle. As mentioned, many times already in this blog, my first phase of this process is to rid ourselves of everything we don't need or don't use. The selection process was easy at first- old IPhones, jewelry, video cameras, and the like were the first to go.

Now, it's getting a little harder. Last week I sold our 17 foot Perception Airolite sea kayaks. Since buying the horses and mule we've spent less and less time in the water with our boats, up to last year when we kayaked exactly once when we took them down to Chincoteague. They have been sitting in the utility area of our yard, waiting in all their red and while beauty to go into the water. And it just wasn't happening.

Kayaking and horses are very time consuming hobbies- or life styles is likely a more accurate description. They consume all your available resources (time, money, and energy) but the payoff in pleasure is well worth it. It's just that two middle class working people like us don't have those resources in unlimited amounts. So using Craiglist and EBay we sold them last week. The proceeds of which will go towards the down payment of a horse trailer.

Despite what some folks have said to us, we aren't "giving up kayaking" at all. We paddled most everything there was to paddle around here, and I'm pretty sure at some point we will do the Sea of Cortez and go back to Maine. We couldn't have taken our boats with us to those locations anyway - we will need to get them from an outfitter- so it makes sense to sell our boats while they still will fetch a good price --which they did :)

I hope the new owners of The Ben and The Bella will enjoy them as much as we did!

Haven't said much about frugality lately....

The title of this blog includes the word, frugality, which as a topic for posts hasn't been in evidence much. But it is something I try to practice as much as possible. It's tough though, since I was born and bred to be a shopper. Some of my fondest childhood memories are going out shopping every single Saturday morning with my Mom. After a good 3 hours buying we'd always go out to eat and discuss our purchases. It was a very long-standing tradition, and one I miss to this day. However, I'm truly aghast when I think about how much money we spent on those trips. 

Equally by choice and necessity, my life today is very different.  I'm not at the point where I could ever call myself a minimalist, but I'm trying to head down that path.  Right now, my biggest effort on that front is to rid my self of as many belongings as I can. I like having nice stuff, but I don't like having alot of stuff. I sell on Craigslist and Ebay and I give away alot of stuff to Goodwill, as evidenced by this photo of this summer's donation.

Swatches

Today I went to one of my favorite stores- Interior Alternatives- a fabric store dealing in material for upholstery projects. Of which I have one right now. I have two wing back chairs that need a major overhaul. They were my Mom's and Bella and Ben thought they made perfect little dog beds - so the fabric on them is threadbare and hmmm, a bit doggy.

I'm guessing I'll need about 6 yards per chair, so I got busy with my scissors and collected some nice swatches to take home and study.

My last (and actually first ever) upholstery job was about 4 years ago when I redid this chair and its mate. I'm self taught, so I don't know if I'm necessarily doing it correctly, but its a lot like graphic design meets a giant flexible fabric puzzle.

Costco and the 4th of July

So I'm a huge fan of the semi-homemade concept of cooking and baking. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy cooking, but I don't have much time, ever. So, when I need to bring a food item to a party I try to come up with something that is yummy, different, and easy.

Case in point are my mini-cinis. I start by taking a trip to Costco (I love that store, love it-in future posts I'll tell you why I love buying the huge amounts of single items even though I'm only feeding my husband and myself-so stayed tuned!) Anyway, I march over to the bakery section and pick-up a package of their 2-Bite Cinnamon Rolls. At home I mix up some cream cheese frosting (cream cheese, softened, some butter, 10X sugar and vanilla-amounts to your taste, but try for a fairly thick consistency) I spread that on top of each roll. Then I chop up some pecans (also from Costco- yes, I have a huge bag of Costco pecans and almonds AlWAYS in my freezer- yes, in the freezer they stay fresh forever.) I toss the pecan bits in a sauce pan with a couple of sprays of butter flavor PAM and toast them. Sprinkle those on top of your mini-cinis and you've got one awesome desert. I took these to a 4th of July party and people just devoured them.

Now, that's my kind of baking!