Small Means

Great perspective

2009-10-21T18:55:00.002-05:00

Everyone dealing, in any way, with debt should read this post by Leila -- superfantabulous words of wisdom from someone who has been-there-done-that.

Working on the house

2009-07-16T15:33:00.002-05:00

We've been working on the house this summer. A new foundation was started the second week of June and finished the second week of July. My husband is doing the structural things and I've been finding beautiful furnishings at Goodwill and garage sales and all sorts of places! I've been scarce around here this last month, but there's much to share!

In the meantime -- anyone know how to safely clean Victorian fireplace tiles with some significant soot damage without removing them?

Many hands, light work

2009-05-27T23:30:00.004-05:00

A little over a month ago, my mother came up with the idea of sharing cooking duties for three families and my grandfather amongst four of us -- mom, my middle sister, my youngest sister, and me. Each person cooks a meal of our choosing for dinner, one night during the first four days of the work-week. Then we have leftovers and family meals on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We plan three weeks in advance.

So far, it has not only been delicious, but it has been frugal, too! Last week, my contribution was fried chicken and macaroni salad. (The families provided their own salads, fruit and dessert). A jumbo pack of thighs and a jumbo pack of legs made more than enough. The macaroni salad was made from a huge box of macaroni I got for free and some leftover veggies.

Tomorrow, I'm making sausage and pepper hoagies with oven fries and oatmeal and dried fruit cookies. The cost for the sausage and pepper hoagies for 8 adults and 5 children was about $17. Tomorrow, I'll pick up day-old bread from Jimmy John's for $.54/ loaf. Four loaves should be plenty to feed the families. Everything else I've had on hand for quite a while.

I look forward to figuring out more frugal meals for the next three weeks. I think the meals could be much less expensive if I'd prepared a bit better. But $20 for four days of dinners is not bad! And with this plan there's lots of variety, new tastes and old favorites, and the money-saving aspect of it is wonderful! I'd suggest it to anyone with friends or family nearby and a desire to break out of the same-old, same-old dinner routine!

Determining costs

2009-05-26T21:26:00.000-05:00

These bananas are 58 cents/ lb at WalMart. Our small-town grocery store sells them for 69 cents/ lb.

Even though we are cutting as many costs as possible, I still buy bananas from our local grocer. In fact, I do most of our shopping there using the sale flyer, even though we sometimes pay more for sale items than we would at WalMart or Kroger. To me, the extra few cents is worth some insurance that our grocery store will stay in business despite serious competition from the larger groceries in other towns very near to us.

It leads me to wonder how others determine costs of items. What makes something worth paying a bit more?

Sometimes little ideas suffice

2009-05-25T16:13:00.000-05:00

I'm a person of big ideas. I'm also a person of big lack-of-follow-through.

Patriotic buntings hung on the porch of our rental home would have been perfect for our traditional Memorial Day family-and-friends breakfast followed by parade watching.

I ended up settling for an 80-cent red, white, and blue-striped cut of fabric from the thrift store and a length of patriotic ribbon wrapped around the handle of a pitcher of peonies.

We had enough to decorate our winged porch pig, Portia, too.

Buying a house -- a tale of Redemption

2009-05-23T15:07:00.001-05:00

We bought a house this weekend. It is what one might call a "FIXER-UPPER!!!" -- capitalization and punctuation intended. We bought it for about 30% less than its appraised value, which I know is not a good deal in some areas of the country, but in this town is amazing.

When we began looking at the house, we had planned to pay for it with cash and take out a construction loan for repairs and construction. (Somewhere along the way, we drank the Dave Ramsey kool-aid and now view debt as anathema). Then we found out that taking out a mortgage would provide us debt of about 3% less interest rate points than a construction loan. So we applied for a mortgage at 4.6%.

Here's the very cool part of having to take out a mortgage -- the bank was thrilled to lend us money! Our credit scores are perfect. Our only debt is a school loan at 4.2%. We have a 12 month emergency fund in the bank and additional money to pay cash for the house. I write this not to brag, but to testify to the goodness and provision of God. Six years ago, my credit score was such that I was worried about whether I would be eligible for a cell phone. One year ago, our debt was overwhelming our income. We could not imagine that we would ever be able to qualify for an ethical loan, let alone buy a home! How we got here is a complicated story involving an auto accident, loss of function of limbs and a huge insurance settlement. But what it comes down to is this -- God is gracious to provide. And to Him only belongs the glory and honor and praise for this situation

So -- now we (and the bank) own a house! We love the house and know that one day, it will be beautiful. In the meantime, there is a WHOLE LOT to do! The foundation will be replaced mid-July. Geothermal heating and cooling will go in at the end of August. We hope to finish walls and floors, put in a new kitchen and two new bathrooms and move in by the end of November. Then we'll work on the roof, siding and windows next summer. We'll see how that timeline works.

So for now, I'm taking pictures of things I truly love about this house. The double front doors, the intricately decorated and cast doorknobs and hinges, the gorgeous staircase and solid wood paneling underneath it, the transom windows in each bedroom, the pass-through fireplace with marble mantle on one side and art nouveau tile on the other, the gorgeous huge picture windows, french doors, pocket doors... all of these things, I just absolutely love. (I'm saving the rest of the pics for my other house-related posts.)

I just am so excited about getting to work on the house frugally, faithfully... finally! This fixer-upper is sort of a solid illustration of how we've been fixed up, I think. We have been redeemed and soon the house will be, too!

The versatile picnic basket

2009-05-23T00:31:00.001-05:00

After the birth of our third child, a church friend brought a deluxe dinner to us in two old picnic baskets. With the use of a tray or two, she had layered a couple of casserole dishes, a cake pan, several mason jars and several smaller dishes. And she had a handle to carry the whole thing! I was immediately sold.

Meredith from Like Merchant Ships (who always inspires) uses picnic baskets so creatively. I decided I needed a few and have been keeping my eyes open for them. So far, I've seen a lot, but it seems the average cost is about $10.

The one pictured above was about the same cost and was my Mother's Day present. So far, it has been worth every penny. It's great for storing things in the kitchen, terrific for transporting food, and wonderful for those days when I drive my husband's pickup truck and need something in the bed to keep a few grocery bags from flying about!

Last week the kids and I found out that it has another use, too. It's great to load up and take to the park for an impromptu picnic! I'm going to have to find another picnic basket. Or two!

Speaking of contentedness...

2009-05-21T01:20:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've felt the Holy Spirit working on me, asking me to do some Bible study on being content. I've been reading a lot in the Epistles from The Message version of the Bible and I've grown a lot in this regard, I think. I've also found another great resource I'd like to share.

Chip Ingram is a pastor with a radio program on Moody Broadcasting Network called Living on the Edge. I find his sermons to be refreshingly real, Biblical, solid, relational AND challenging. I think many people relate well to his style and teaching; I have friends who are Protestant, Catholic, Conservative and not-so-Conservative who really appreciate him.

He has a GREAT series of messages called Contentment: God's GamePlan for Satisfaction available as MP3 downloads. They are just 99 cents each right now. I've downloaded them and listened to them over and over again. If you listen to them, please let me know!

How to make frugality taste better

2009-05-13T00:24:00.000-05:00

Use one of Grammy's vintage bowls to do the mixing. I swear it makes anything, even the already-yummy things, taste even better!

Saving a treasure

2009-05-10T23:53:00.000-05:00

I love quilts. In fact, I love all vintage textiles. Textiles and tableware -- those are my Achilles Heel. I love to go to antique stores because they inspire all sorts of creativity in me, but they are dangerous. Have you ever noticed how many beautiful embroidered linens there are out there? And the china! Oh. my. goodness.

Anyway, my birthday was earlier this month and I had a bit of money to spend, so the other day, I visited one of my favorite antique shops. I found a gorgeous quilt. Made of 1930's feedsacks, it was a very unusual pattern called Arkansas Star. It had a teeny bit of damage to just one small piece of fabric, but I knew that my mother-in-law-the-brilliant-seamstress could fix that easily. It also had some large and significant brown stains on it. The price was low because of the stains.

I brought it home and decided to wash it. I know that some folks suggest that antique quilts shouldn't be washed in a washing machine. They are probably right about that, but I want to actually use these things, so I decided to give it and the quilt pictured above a good wash. I filled up the washing machine with really hot water, added a couple of scoops of OxyClean, agitated the tub a bit to mix up the OxyClean and then added the quilt. The water immediately turned brown and smelly. I let it soak overnight in the machine. The following morning, I added some detergent and washed it on a regular cycle. With trepidation, I pulled it out after the cycle was done, and...

I have a beautiful quilt! The whites are actually white! The colors are still vibrant! I hung it on the back of my couch to dry for a few hours, then stuck it in the dryer after I got tired of waiting for it to dry. It smelled so fresh and clean and it looks just gorgeous on my daughter's shabby iron bed! I'm not going to leave it on there until I get the torn part fixed, but I'm so excited that the OxyClean did such a great job! Isn't it pretty?

One pink sticker

2009-05-09T00:21:00.000-05:00

One pink sticker means that this chandelier was only $25 at the Habitat Restore. (Don't worry -- all of the other shades were included, too.) We went to Menards the day after I bought this and the exact same chandelier was on sale for $185. If you have a Habitat Restore near you and are in need of household items, check them out before you buy retail. They may have a MUCH better deal. And buying from Habitat is a win-win for all -- good cause, good stewardship of already-used resources, and good for the pocketbook!

Entertainment for the cost of soap and water

2009-05-07T19:30:00.000-05:00

During a very rainy spring this mother-with-a-general-aversion-to-dirt has learned that if there's no lightning, it is perfectly ok to let the kiddos take an oversized umbrella or two and go out to play in a muddy puddle. It helps if they wear rainboots. But socks and shoes wash up pretty well.

What we don't need

2009-04-27T22:52:00.001-05:00

I always feel a little overwhelmed by the sorting out of seasonal clothes. Since my first child was born, I've been buying clothes several sizes ahead for my children whenever they go on deep markdown at stores like Target. It's hard to beat brand new fairly good-quality long-sleeved shirts for $1.58. I supplement with clothes from the $1 rack at a consignment store I use.

I had a lot of things stored up, but I'll confess those short-sleeved shirts and shorts at the thrift store started calling my name weeks before we actually needed them.

So, this year before I bought many clothes, armed with some great advice from Leila, one of my favorite bloggers, about how many clothes little children actually do need, and convicted that NONE of us need the amount of clothes we have, I sorted. And sorted. And sorted. Through mounds of clothes, I found items to bag up and keep for the next little one, then I stuffed a big box full for donation to the local charity shop...

...and in the process found that my eldest daughter has plenty of clothes for the next two sizes!

It's amazing how much money one can save just by realizing what we don't need!