Happy Thursday, everyone! I have some fun things to share this week.
1. Fall décor and styling: I found a beautiful piece of autumn artwork (pictured above) at a thrift store for $3.00. The frame was a warm-colored wood when I bought it; very much in the 1970's bicentennial style. I absolutely loved the picture, but the frame didn't fit our décor so I decided to spray-paint it black to match our other frames. I was very happy with the result. After we hung the piece, I cleared the junk off of our piano so I could appreciate the decorative elements a little more. 2. I purchased some fall-themed pillow covers and a yellow throw blanket on Amazon, along with some small orange decorative pillows and a gray throw blanket at a discount store. I'm delighted with how cozy they make our living room, and bring out the orange in my new piece of artwork. The thrifty part? These are decorations that I'll be able to pull out and use year after year. 3. I added garden-fresh parsley, garlic and lemon juice to regular butter, and made flavored butter. Each stick of butter cost about $0.50 (I used three sticks), and with the added ingredients I made about 3.5 sticks of flavored butter. Store-bought flavored butter is something like $2.00 per stick, so by making it myself I saved about $4.00. The project was easy enough. It took about an hour, but the small hourly wage is offset by the fact that I'll be able to have "fresh" parsley and garlic, already chopped up and ready to use, in the winter. 4. Our duck began laying eggs! So far I've collected almost half a dozen duck eggs, the value of which is about $10.00 per dozen. 5. I butchered an extra rooster we had, that kept making a pest of himself. Rather than plucking and gutting him like you would a chicken, I just skinned the breast and thighs, and took those (I also saved the feet for broth). The meat was enough for two meals. Our flock seems happier and less "pecked-on" now that he is gone. This was the first bird that I butchered myself from start to finish, as previously I'd always had my husband do the killing. I still absolutely hate that part, but with a killing cone the process seemed quicker and easier. We still have at least two more roosters that could go, but annoyingly they have become pets at our house. That's about all I can think of for now! Blessings, ~Prudence~
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Hi everyone!
Well, after a week of resting up, I'm eksited about life again. I will be participating in Nanowrimo in November, so I've spent some of the last week working on preparation for my novel. In the past few months I've listened to some great free lectures by Brandon Sanderson on developing characters and plot, which really helped me put things together. I've also been researching for several years now (it's a historical novel). The last time I tried Nanowrimo-ing this novel was in 2017, but I didn't have the research to support the story line or the character development. Here are some other thrifty things I did: 1. Harvested roots to add to my medicinal herb cabinet. I've been using herbs for years, but never bothered to harvest any roots, as it just seemed to time-consuming and daunting. Since August, however, I've been diving more into herbalism and dandelion root keeps coming up again and again as something I should be using. So this week I took some time to dig up a bucket of roots; dandelion, burdock, yellow dock and marshmallow. I got about 3 cups total and it took at least 3 hours to process. While I'm happy that I got to go through the process from start to finish, I'm going to look into buying the roots, as they might not be worth my time to prepare (at least, while money is still in good supply and the roots are still available online). 2. Made elderberry syrup in my Instant Pot. This was so easy: I just put the berries and spices into the IP with water, pressure cooked the miksture, strained out the berries and added honey back in. It actually tastes good, too! We had one person with a fever and headache over the weekend; I kept giving elderberry "juice" (elderberry syrup and chamomile tea over ice) and they were totally fine the nekst day. 3. Harvested tomatoes, hot peppers, one beet, one carrot, parsley, and a LOAD of ornamental and edible squash from the garden! I cleaned out most of my garden this week and moved some of the more tender plants to the south side of our house, where they will be warmer. 4. Listened to Jocelyn Green's Spy of Richmond on Scribd. My goal was to read her other two novels (the Chicago ones) this year as well, but I think I'll save that series for 2022. I'm not quite done with Spy of Richmond, but I hope to have it finished by the end of the year. I'm also reading one of Deeanne Gist's novels about the World's Fair. I read her novel about Biltmore, Maid to Match, a few years ago. While I really enjoy some of the humor in her books, the plot feels contrived, and overall there's too much smut and physical attraction. Going on and on about her beautiful eyes and lips, or his bulging biceps. I find myself skimming over those parts. It just feels awkward to read. I enjoy the historical aspects and humor, but her novels seem to be heavy on romance and very light on mystery, which keeps me interested a lot more than sculpted abs. I will look for other writers who feel more worth my time. 5. Didn't renew our Pureflix subscription. I talked a little bit about that last week. Another subscription I don't think I'll renew is the Epoch Times. While I really liked the newspaper, I just don't have enough time in my week to read it. I've figured that listening to one or two Youtube or Rumble shows will keep me updated with the truth for free, plus I don't have to use valuable reading time to digest the information. Cutting the Epoch Times will save $139.00 per year. Well everyone, happy Thursday! Let's talk about being thrifty.
1. Fire cider: This week I went down the rabbit hole of Fire Cider. First I made the tonic itself, which took a whole afternoon of chopping (which included many interruptions). Then I got to thinking about the ginger and wondering if I could replant some and grow it in my new indoor garden. 2. Ginger: As it turns out, you can grow ginger indoors, and your plant can create a brand new rhizome to harvest in about 6 months! Of course, you'd want to have more than just one plant growing at a time. So I purchased a chunk of ginger with many potential growth knobs, and I'm waiting for it to sprout a little more before I plant it in dirt. 3. Turmeric: But wait, there's more! After I bought the ginger root, I found some fresh turmeric root (not available in our local area), and I grabbed some of that to try and sprout as well. I put the ginger, turmeric, and a small onion in a cheesecloth-covered jar to sprout together. Supposedly the onion will help them sprout faster. I'll get back with you on this project in a couple of weeks. 4. Horseradish: I harvested this from our asparagus patch, where the previous owners had planted it. To my delight, it turns out that horseradish is pretty fool-hardy and it's already planted in a suitable location. This plant is something I've had access to for years, but only now have I utilized it. 5. Thrifting: I found one pair of jeans and one long-sleeved shirt at the thrift store. I also purchased some medical supplies and some VCR tapes with Bible stories on them. Our Pureflix subscription is $100.00 per year, and we haven't used it very much in 2021. There was one series I found that was very good for kids, called Friends and Heroes. We watched that one through twice. We hardly watched any of the adult shows except The Chosen, which I believe is available for free on other apps. The other kids' shows we watched (Bibleman and Veggie Tales) were not to my liking. The Pureflix account was purely for the use of a 30-minute portion of time every day for kids shows. If you divide $100.00 by 365 days, the cost works out to about $0.27 per day. Before we purchased the subscription, I asked myself if it was worth a quarter per day to have specifically Christian content, and came to the conclusion that it was. While Bibleman and Veggietales did include some Bible verses and "moral lessons", they were thin on actual Bible stories or concepts that a young child could understand. I almost preferred showing Barney over Bibleman, because Barney shows real kids doing real things, plus there are (almost) no lasers, superheroes, or mouthy, disobedient kids portrayed. And Veggietales is just silly. The conclusion I came to was that, ultimately, we paid $100.00 to watch Friends and Heroes. I will be searching the used market for DVDs of Friends and Heroes to watch next year, but otherwise we'll be watching educational videos on Youtube, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus. Which, as much as I dislike the Disney company right now, that was a streaming service that we did use quite a bit over the last year. Okay! That is about all I have time to write about for today. Hopefully next week I'll be feeling a little more rejuvenated. 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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