Hi everyone! I hope you had a great week. Most of our weekend and Monday was cold, so I did some house projects and schluffed around indoors. On Tuesday it warmed up by 20 degrees or so, so I went to the nursery and bought some seeds and flowers and worked outside for this week!
1. Books: I saved several dollars by buying books on Ebay rather than Amazon. For the last few months I've been trying to check prices on both stores before ordering, as I want to get away from shopping on Amazon. If I can save money by NOT shopping on Amazon, then great! 2. Venetian Cornmeal Cookies: I tried a new recipe. The frugal thing about it was: it's a recipe I won't make again. It was a strange mix of really cheap ingredients (cornmeal, flour, sugar) and expensive ingredients like vanilla bean, raisins and orange zest. And it made a less-than-stellar cookie. If I'm going to use pricey ingredients, then by George I want it to make a good cookie! Or a good something else, like custard. 3. Yogurt: I made yogurt out of milk that was about to expire. 4. Garden: I planted carrots, lettuce and re-planted some sprouted onions in the garden. I also weeded, worked up and covered the soil so it will be reading for more planting in May. I also transplanted some volunteer lettuce and mulched it with grass "clippings" (I just pulled them out by hand) nearby. We also harvested cilantro, spinach, and parsnips. 5. Seed starting: I started the remaining warm-season plants indoors; cucumber, squash, gourds, pumpkins, and herbs (basil, cilantro and parsley). The cucurbits are fairly cheap to buy at the nursery as plants ($0.30-$0.50 per plant), but I had the seeds anyway, plus they don't sell some of the varieties that I planted. I will save about $24.00 if the herb seeds grow. Not only that, but it takes time to pack everyone up, drive to the nursery, pick out plants and drive home. So essentially I'm saving $35.00 with the same hour that I would have spent spending the $35.00. 6. I trapped and killed a racoon that was slaughtering my chickens. I also caught a mouse. 7. One of my hens went broody, so I moved her to a special broody spot. I hope she stays and hatches her eggs! In 10 years of having chickens, I've never tried to hatch eggs with a broody hen. Most people remove the first eggs and replace them with their preferred eggs, but I'm just going to let our hen sit on the four eggs that she has already adopted. Baby steps. 8. I cut a bouquet of lilacs for our table. That's about all for this week! I hope you all have a thrifty weekend! ~Prudence~
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Happy Thursday! It's been c-c-cold here, so I did some thrifty things indoors this week. 1. Baking Day: we spent one morning making bagels, and some muffins for the freezer. I didn't make enough bagels for the freezer, but I think I will next time. I also attempted some sourdough bread, but I think my starter has kerfluffed. As in, defluffed. I cut the failed bread into cubes, and will likely do a breakfast casserole with it at some point. I'm going to try and revive the starter. 2. Chicks: our baby chicks are doing great. I bought another piece to go on their plate warmer: it's called an "anti-roosting cone", so they don't stand and poop on the warmer. It was $14.00, but it will keep them from flying out of their box... for a few weeks, anyway. It will also mean less poop for me to clean up when this process is all over. 3. Granite repairs: I made a few repairs to our granite countertop using a $12.00 repair kit. The one disappointment I've had with the granite is how easily it chips... not on the smooth surfaces, but the edges. We chose to have an ogee edge done, which LOOKS great, but it's a little harder to wipe off, and the sharp edge chips easily. The other edge I've had a lot of trouble with is on the undermount sink. It's easy clean, but also easy chip, and there are several fairly large chips in one side of the sink now. I put off doing the repairs for several days because I was intimidated with all of the items included in the kit. However, after I was done with the first repair I was far less intimidated. It did a great job, and I will work on several more repairs as time allows. 4. I finally finished the DIY Beddy's bedding for our toddler mattress. It took me far too long, as I made many mistakes and had to make a lot of adjustments. At the beginning I tried to do an exact replica of Beddy's, but that was too many layers for my sewing machine and too much for my skill level. I bought fabric, batting, and a roll of bulk zipper for the project. I ended up not using the batting at all, and I realized in short order that I could have saved a lot more money by using new fleece blankets rather than buying new fabric from Walmart's sewing department. I also realized that, for a toddler bed, I could have used a 36" zipper rather than buying a longer roll of "bulk" zipper. That being said, the bulk zipper will be necessary on a twin size bed. What began as a full Beddy's replica morphed into a fitted blanket with sides and a zipper. Beddy's comes with a built-in fitted sheet, but I realized that a not-fully-night-trained toddler will likely need their sheets changed every now and then, so it would make sense to just have a separate fitted sheet. The sides of my "fitted blanket" were originally four pieces, but after I got going I realized it would have been much easier to just start with one long strip (eliminating corner seams), and then cut off any extra length. As for the zipper: It doesn't need to zip all the way from top to bottom. In fact, I realized that it would be better if the zipper stopped about six inches or more from the top end, and up to twelve inches from the bottom end. This will make it vastly easier to install the zipper, and also less zipper for the child to have to zip. One Beddy's feature I decided to keep was the "blanket flap" that drapes out over the side of the bed while the child is sleeping. This does make it harder to zip up, but otherwise a draft comes in from the side of the bed. The end result could have been nicer, and I may do a different one at some point in the future. But for now I'm happy that I actually finished the project (in my mind for more than a year now!) and I have the skills and ability to do another one. 5. Garden: I harvested a bunch of parsnips and froze most of them, which amounted to a gallon bag. There are still 4-8 square feet of parsnips out there that I have to use!! I may just have to cut out the woody parts and freeze what's left. 6. Figure: Here's this week's numbers: So, I'm down 0.1% body fat and 0.6 lbs. from last week. I'm still (mostly) intermittent fasting and (mostly) not having sugar during the week. I had some dark chocolate this week and some lemonade one evening, but nothing crazy. On Sunday we went over to my mother-in-law's for lunch, and she had made dessert, so I ate that out of obligation.
For as long as I've been doing the intermittent fasting thing, it's still hard sometimes. I don't like to be hungry and still occasionally feel cheated... not when it comes to breakfast, but all of those after-dinner snacks. We were at small group the other night and everyone was feasting on chips. I had one chip out of obligation (we're new, and someone said "Hey, you should try these!" And what was I going to say... "No, I'm not going to try those."), but it was socially weird to just stand there while everyone else was eating. No sugar is still really hard. One morning per week my husband takes donuts to his office, and I miss that donut every week. And when we go on dates, I miss getting dessert or cookies or ice cream afterward. This week we went to a bonfire and everyone ate smores except me. I don't think "no sugar" is going to be a maintainable diet for me going forward. The saying "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" doesn't ring quite true. Because "socially acceptable" feels good, too. The reality is that a lot of our social traditions are built around sugar and when you don't partake, you cut yourself out of certain experiences. A lot of our traditions revolve around alcohol, but people understand if you don't drink. They figure you might have been an alcoholic, or maybe alcoholism runs in your family, or maybe your church doesn't allow it, or you're pregnant. Sugar isn't the same way. When you say, "I'm trying to cut out sugar,", people feel like you're being self-righteous or cutting them down in some way. I know, because I've been on that end of the stick! People understand if you tell them you have diabetes or something like that, but not if you're just trying to lose weight or eat healthier. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with where I'm at, health wise and weight wise. But after 140 lbs, I start to feel and look chubby. And it doesn't take a lot to move up past 140 at this point. But I would love to get to a point where I can have a weekly donut, ice cream cone, and bend my rules a bit when we're at someone's house for whatever reason. You know, for mothers-in-law who make dessert. Anyhow, that's it for this Thrifty Thursday! I hope you all have a great weekend. ~Prudence~ We've had such a fun week here. Let me tell you about it! 1. Chicks: out of nine eggs, three of them that went into the incubator were fertile. And all three of them hatched, praise God! Since there are only three chicks this year, I'm keeping them in a cardboard box in our kitchen. The warming plate I bought last week came, and it's amazing. I can actually sleep at night not worrying about if the chicks are too hot or too cold, and I also don't worry about our kitchen burning down. We have a small amount of feed left from last year's chicks—about a gallon. So I'm trying to waste as little as possible, with hopes that we won't have to buy more. Rather than using a regular feed dispenser, I'm using a 1/4 pint jar with a parmesan cheese container lid screwed on top. You can see in the picture how there is just enough room for two heads to fit in there. This year I've spent about $130.00 on chick supplies, with the incubator and warming plate. But I know the warming plate will pay for itself in three years, and hopefully the incubator will work long enough to break even. Chicks cost about $2.50 at our local farm store, so this time our incubator only saved $7.50... let's say $8.00 with taxes thrown in. And I'm not sure how much electricity it cost to run. If I save $5.00 every time I use the incubator (value of the chicks minus electricity costs), it will take 11 uses or hatchings to break even. I don't know if it will last 11 hatchings, so my plan is to (hopefully) pick more fertile eggs and hatch ducks, quail or other high-dollar birds. For example, hatching three $5.00 ducks will save $15.00 instead of $8.00. I hope there will be some savings involved in incubating chicks every year, but the main reason I bought the incubator was to ensure my ability to produce birds in case of shortage or unavailability. Chicks are worth far more than a couple of dollars when you can't find them anywhere!! 2. Terra-cotta pots: Walmart finally had some clay pots in stock!!! I would have loved to find some pots for free (and I will definitely keep looking), but I was just happy to find them. I also bought trays for the bottom of each pot. Next time I'm there I will buy more trays for the three pots that I already have. The cost per pot (with tray) was as follows: Large pot: $16.89 Medium pot: $6.10 Small pot: $2.88 You can see that the large pot cost over twice as much as the medium one. That being said, the large one is over twice as large! I will use the large pots for indoor trees like my fig tree and citrus (Lord willing). The medium size ones will be for regular houseplants like snake plant, anthurium, etc. And the smallest pots I bought (which were not the smallest ones at Walmart) will be used for fresh herbs, indoor and outdoor. My hope is to fill some with herbs that aren't winter-hardy, like tarragon and lemon verbena. I will also keep some empty in the summer so I can plant basil and thyme in them during the winter. Eventually I want to replace all of my plastic pots with clay or ceramic pots. Plastic deteriorates in the sun, but it's also lighter to move. Some of my largest plants are in plastic pots and I will probably keep them there until the plastic deteriorates. Walmart doesn't have plain clay pots that big, so I will probably need to invest $50.00 or more into especially large pots, which will likely need coasters to move around. Sigh. But we will take one step at a time here. 3. Garden: I harvested cilantro this week. I also spent a couple of hours chopping up storage onions for the freezer, weeding out onions that have sprouted, and putting the rest of them in the fridge. I have a whole drawer of onions now! I also have several gallon-size bags of cubed squash in the freezer, to which I will probably add more gallon bags of parsnips. I thought for sure that I would be able to use 12 square feet of parsnips this spring, but we had an especially busy time in March where we were gone for meals or I fixed simpler meals like sandwiches. Someday when I get my life together, those busy weeks won't throw me off so much. It's one thing to plan a meal that doesn't happen. It's another thing to plan a garden for that meal, grow the food for it, and then end up not eating it. Feels like such a waste! Next year I will still plant extra parsnips for spring, but I will try to figure out some potluck-friendly dishes to make with the garden produce. Anyhow, there are still parsnips out there, but I know they'll start to get woody in a couple of weeks as they go to seed. So I will be digging out the remaining plants. If we can't eat them, I'll freeze them. 4. Figure: I get so tired of sharing these screenshots, but I know they're helping me stay accountable to my goal. There was a .4 lb. weight gain and 0.1% body fat increase from last week, but I'm still doing no sugar six days per week, exercising every day, and intermittent fasting. I will continue to put in place good habits, work on healthier meals, and we'll see what happens.
5. I've been working on a rocking chair remodel for some time now, and finally finished it. I found the rocking chair for free, painted it white, and the next step was to make a cushion to hide the missing piece in the back. Well, we finally just bought a $20.00 full-chair cushion and it works. The shape isn't quite right, but it's very comfortable and the fabric on it is nice and summery. How is that thrifty? Well, it's thrifty when you figure not that I paid $20.00 for a single-season cushion, but that the cushion has the potential to work for all seasons! All I have to do is make a slipcover for it, and we can have a "different" cushion for fall, winter and spring. The cushion is nice and sturdy, covers the back AND bottom of the chair, and will last for a long time. I'm pretty happy about it. 6. I ripped some audio CDs onto my computer. Our preschooler LOVES playing music on her thrift-store CD player, and I like the idea of using music as part of a homeschool curriculum. Several years ago I got rid of all of my CDs. People don't use CDs anymore, so I thought our music consumption would be mostly digital via my phone or our smart TV. Well, that works great until the internet goes out, or until a child wants to listen to music independently. Now I'm back to ripping and burning CDs. Right now we're just listening to whole CDs of hymns, bluegrass, harp music, etc., but eventually I want to make assortment CDs that have many different genres and songs, themed to the season or to what we're learning about. That's about all for this week. I hope you're all enjoying spring! ~Prudence~ Hi everyone! I hope you had a great week. Spring has truly SPRUNG here in the midwest. Here are a few frugal things that are happening. Flowers: several perennial flowers that I planted in past years are coming into bloom. In the front I have some beautiful double-blossomed daffodils that I planted last year. The forsythia bush that I planted five years ago is finally blooming at full capacity. It's particularly special to me. At the house I grew up in, there was a genuine hitching post by the driveway, hidden by a big overgrown forsythia. As children, my sister and I would pretend it was our "fort", and hide underneath its branches. Before my parents sold the house, I dug up a little piece of the bush and planted it at our current home. It took a full year to even grow leaves... I thought it had died! But the second year it grew a few leaves, and the third year it grew a lot of leaves. The fourth year it grew some flowers, and this year it is full of flowers. Not only does the plant have special memories, but it was free to me and will produce flowers every year now. Figure: I'm happy to announce that I did make some progress toward my weight goal this week. I weighed in at 138.8 pounds, with a loss of 1.4 lbs and a body fat percentage loss of 0.5%. I've continued to weigh myself at least a couple of times every week, and this week my weight spiked to 140.6 on Saturday and got to its lowest point this morning, Thursday.
The intermittent fasting has become almost easy for me now, but not eating sweets still takes a lot of discipline. But it's not just sugar that takes discipline. I've realized that I just enjoy eating. Chewing, tasting, swallowing. I like it. Yesterday for lunch I had half of a hamburger (it was a restaurant hamburger, so it wasn't small) and a pint of cooked squash. I was kind of full, but I still wanted to eat more, so I ate a few leftover fries from my daughter's plate. Before dinner I ate two cheese sticks, and then for dinner I had a ham and turkey wrap and a tall glass of jamaica (hu-MI-cuh) tea. I was full, but I still wanted to eat. There was so much more food left! For the last week I've been eyeing some blueberry bagels, and I just haven't had a chance to eat them. I thought about eating them last night, but I really was full. There are so many foods that I want to eat, just for the sake of eating them. Instead, I ate what amounted to a quarter of a sandwich from my daughter's plate. It made me feel like I wasn't shorting myself out on extra food, even though I was already full. I seem to have this "thing" where I need to eat until I'm full, plus a little extra, "just in case" I get hungry later, or to finish off food that is still left, as if it's my job or something. In the coming weeks I'm going to practice telling myself that I don't need to eat food just because it is there, and that more food will always be available. I wonder if I wasn't making progress with intermittent fasting because I had a food shortage mentality: "My food window is only 8 hours, so now I have to eat three meals in the time it takes to eat one meal!" and then sometimes I would think that because I was only eating two meals, that I "deserved" a snack or something sugary in between those meals. Not going to lie, sometimes I feel gypped because I only get to eat two meals. Then I feel gypped because I'm too full to eat all of the things I wanted to eat in a day. There is just so much good food to eat and not enough time or stomach capacity to eat it all. The thought that I've been encouraging myself with lately is: "Being fit costs so much, it's not even something money can buy." Self discipline is actually a type of wealth, and sometimes I picture myself "spending" big amounts of it, like I'm some kind of rich self-discipline banker and no amount of discipline can bankrupt me because I'm so wealthy that way. Normal people practice the normal self discipline of waking up every morning to go to work, bathing themselves and not supersizing at McDonalds every day. Folks poor in discipline sleep in every day, slack off on personal grooming and can never say no to processed food... especially a LOT of processed food. Poor people love buffets. People who have a lot of discipline-wealth, however, can get up a little earlier, do a little more personal grooming than the average person, and they can ALWAYS say no to food. I love a good buffet, so I still have a long way to go. But as I continue to use this analogy in my mind, I hope it will change my thinking and make it easier to say "no" to food. Garden: I planted parsnips, spinach, radishes and turnips in the garden this week. I also transplanted some strawberries. Books: I started reading Dolly Freed's Possum Living. Although half of the suggestions aren't pertinent to me or practical to our lifestyle, there are so many suggestions in the book that it's still well worth reading. I've taken a lot of notes so far. Chickens: I bought a warmer plate to use with our chicks this year in order to replace the heat lamp we've used in the past. The warmer plate cost about $50.00, but it will save $20.00 per year in electricity costs, it's better for the chicks, and less of a fire hazard. That's it for this Thrifty Thursday! I hope it's helped or inspired you in some way. Be blessed, ~Prudence~ Food: You can see from the picture above that we have a sprinkling of homestead food coming in! I'm harvesting parsnips from the garden (that is, from last year's garden), and we are collecting eggs galore. I've been selling a dozen per week to my sister-in-law, which helps offset the cost of feed. We will likely be eating some spinach this month as it grows to maturity in the garden. I've been cleaning out the pantry some, as well. Using up some of our dried and canned foods, and using the rest of the winter squash from 2020 as they quickly deteriorate into moldy uselessness. I threw out three of the four spaghetti squash (something I just never used) and a few butternut squashes. I froze what I couldn't use of the butternut squash, so there is just one spaghetti squash and one small butternut left to eat fresh. Figure: I've been trying to lose some weight in the last several weeks. I would love to get down to 132-135 from 140. So far I've been intermittent fasting 8 hours on, 16 hours off. I've also reinstituted "Sugar Saturday", which means that all of the other days are no-sugar. That is SO much harder than the fasting, but in the past it has worked well to slim down a few pounds. As you can see below (and if you compare with this January post) I haven't made much progress. In fact, my body fat percentage has gone up 0.1% for all of my efforts. Sigh.
One thing that's been holding me back is that I don't weigh myself on the last half of my cycle, as I'm not sure how the Renpho scale would affect any potential pregnancies. But the last several years have been barren in that regards, so this time I've just decided to weigh myself several times per week rather than once a month like I had been doing. It encourages me to keep trying if I can see where I'm at more often. Laser hair removal: I purchased an IPL laser hair removal device from Amazon to see if I can make any progress in that department. I've NEVER been happy with shaving. I tried an epilator for a few years, but it was so, so painful. I eventually went back to shaving, which is time-consuming, pricey and not very effective for my dark hairs and pale legs. Before I bought the device I looked into getting the laser hair removal done at a clinic (which I believe is a slightly different process), but it was far too pricey. We're talking $3000-$4000 for legs and underarms. I'm hoping the $90.00 device will give me smooth, hair-free legs at last. I've tried it once so far, and the process is easy and not very painful at all compared to the epilator. That's about it for this update! I have a bit more to share, but not much more time to write. Blessings, ~Prudence~ |
About PrudenceI am a Christian homemaker who lives in the Midwest. I enjoy sewing, gardening, reading and thrifting. Archives
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