Archive for what’s in my hand?
Summer Salad
Here’s a salad you can make without going shopping for the ingredients- although you might need to take a walk. As always, be careful and be sure of your plant identification: Lettuce- grow this in an ice-cream bucket of compost or potting soil. Sprinkle with lettuce seeds, sprinkle with dirt, keep damp and set in [...]
Joyful Frugality
I scanned through my daughter’s pictures for a few minutes last night looking for photographs of frugal good times, and then I started brain-storming a bit to flesh out the list. Some of these things are ‘dates’ and some of the are family activities, and many of them work just as well in either category. [...]
Ten Frugal Practices I Wish We’d Done from the Beginning
This list is off the top of my head. If you ask me again tomorrow, it will probably look slightly different, and the week after that I might remember something else I think is even more important. There is probably something more important that we do that I learned at my mother’s knee so I [...]
Frugal Eats On Road Trips
I tried to count the number of road trips our family has taken, but I really just can’t. I have no idea. And when I talk about road trips, I am talking about trips we have taken of several days duration, sometimes weeks, and, a couple of times, road trips that lasted over a month. [...]
Composting
Alright, you city folk, apartment dwellers, thinking that this whole composting thing doesn’t apply to you because you live in a small place and don’t garden… I think there could still be something for you in this post. You don’t have to have a big, involved composting system like ours to benefit from compost. This [...]
Self-Discipline
One of the problems with trying to get out of debt or maintain a budget is that things just keep right on breaking, often before you’ve even paid them off. Tires go flat, plumbing needs repairing, the alternator in the car needs replacing, the computer goes blank, the belt on the washing machine breaks- and [...]
Knowledge
Knowledge is another key frugality that perhaps doesn’t spring first to mind when somebody asks you how you live within your means. You can increase your frugal power by learning how- how to do things, make things, sell things, and how to get by without. How to be charitable when you don’t have much money. [...]
Frugal Ice-Packs and Learning to Plan Ahead
I assume we all know the emergency tip about using a frozen bag of peas or corn on a nasty bruise. But what about when it’s not exactly an emergency? This past week our daughter Pip had her wisdom teeth out- three cut out and one extraction, and she needed to apply ice packs every [...]
Flexibility In Your Hand
A while back in a post on my regular blog about drastic budgeting in the kitchen, I shared some links on cooking on a budget from an extension office, and then I shared some ideas on how to use that basic plan and make it even more frugal. The recipes and menus included a recipe [...]
Advice from a young bride
The Equuschick (our second girl) got married to her best friend, a man she’s known since before they were in their teens) last November. Their first child is due sometime this month. Shasta took a massive pay cut to move here instead of taking the Equuschick away (we love Shasta), and they’ve had to learn [...]
Various and Sundry
Wonderfully frugal way to get clean, soft, lovely skin- I LOVE this method. Green cleaning ideas- these are the things we use to clean at our house- and by green, I also mean the green that’s in your wallet. One tip I don’t think is on there- to clean sinks I use a bit of [...]
A Frugal Birthday and Family Craft
The above picture was taken from a birthday several years back- The humpty-dumpty tin, the costume jewelry, and the dress all came from a thrift shop. Humpty Dumpty was this child’s favorite nursery rhyme. I shop at thrift shops and yard sales several times a year looking for birthday and Christmas items and I stash [...]
Seashells and more
These pictures were taken about 23 years ago. We lived on a tropical island in a foreign country. What I had: Cheap wicker shelving (it was cheap- a couple of dollars at a yard sale, I believe). Candles in sconces, flowers I pressed and framed in a thrift shop frame, sea urchins I picked up [...]
How A Stick-It Note Helped Me With a Frugal Hack
Monday I was on my way home from a dentist appointment and I passed an unattended yard sale. That is, there clearly had been a yard sale, and there were still some pieces of furniture and a large table set up on sawhorses with plenty of stuff on top and beneath. But there was nobody [...]
In My Hands… Picture Frames
I have several framed pictures with glass from thrift shops- it’s one of my many weaknesses. I cannot resist framed pictures with the glass in them if it’s a really rock bottom price (I’m talking a buck or two at most for frames with glass- more if I actually like the picture). They’ve been piling [...]
