Hi everyone! I have a few things to share this week.
1. Reorganized upstairs area. I brought a child's school desk and chair into my study/library so I can have a child working with me as I'm writing or researching. I've been looking for time in my day to do more writing, asking myself why I haven't finished a book since last year; not even a small book. I think part of the answer is that I'm working on several book projects at once, and the other part is that I have to have content in order to keep putting out books. I have to keep reading, keep getting new ideas, and keep trying those ideas. If I don't have any experience to draw from, I'm just gathering up information from other books and reassembling it into a "new" book. I guess you could do that, but there's no flavor to a book like that, and it's not quite as satisfying to write. 2. Oh yes, I forgot to mention—the desk and chair were free, left behind by the previous desk owners. It used to be that I had to travel in order to acquire free stuff, but between having renters and having bought your house from a quasi-hoarder, there's hardly a need to travel anymore. 3. Harvested beans, cucumbers, raspberries, beets and swiss chard from the garden. One of my favorite meals this month has been chicken salad wraps with swiss chard. 4. Started cleaning up some of my strawberry patch. This needs to be done asap! I should have had that thing mowed a month ago. 5. Finished watching the Basic and Intermediate disks of Mosby's Nursing Skills, as well as Mosby's "Physical Examination & Health Assessment" Skills. I still want to watch the Advanced Skills disc before the end of this month. I know I didn't retain everything just watching them in a blitz, but I did learn several new things, and I have a reference of what is "normal" for your body. The Nursing Skills disks had some good information, but not very much of it was usable for me; for example, a majority of the skills involved the use of specialized equipment that you'd only have in a hospital. Other skills were things like pouching a colostomy or inserting a catheter. I find that DVDs or video is a lot easier to learn from than a book, although books are easier to reference. The DVDs I bought cost between $20.00 and $40.00, but if you can save even one doctor's visit, the purchase will more than pay for itself. The skill of ruling out medical problems is so thrifty. You don't have to diagnose WHAT a problem is, as much as diagnosing what it is NOT. I've gone to the ER for pleurisy (which is treated by ibuprophen) thinking I had heart trouble, paid a doctor to remove earwax (I thought I had an ear infection), paid someone to take X-rays on a perfectly good foot. I've known others who went to the ER for the doctor to diagnose colds or bruises or a virus. Knowing the difference between "I need a doctor to fix this" and "I can handle this at home" can often save hundreds of dollars. That's about it for this week. See you next time! ~Prudence~
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I hope those of you in the U.S. had a wonderful Independence Day! We spend the evening at a local lake to watch fireworks with family. Here are a few thrifty things I did this week:
4th of July decorations: I used things we already had to decorate with. The wreath pictured above was made with a stripped-down, free grapevine wreath out of someone's trash, plus some Dollar Tree items I had from previous years. I also hung out some bunting flags I bought on sale several years ago. The flags are beginning to fade (they were just cheap vinyl ones... something like $1.50 each) so I moved the faded ones to areas that were less visible. I also stuck two miniature flags in a potted plant. Garden: We harvested the first cucumbers this week off of the trellis! I also harvested raspberries, swiss chard and beets, which where delicious. I also froze some black raspberries picked on the edge of our property. Weather: we narrowly avoided a tornado this week, which was a relief. It was extremely hot for our area, plus humid. As I mentioned last week, working with the heat and humidity required a tricky routine of opening and closing windows, along with turning the dehumidifier and air conditioning unit on and off to save money on electricity while also keeping the house at a reasonable temperature. Now that a cold front has moved in, we'll be fine just running the dehumidifier. That's the good news: the bad news is that a swarm of mosquitos have hatched out of their watery nests. They're awful! One cannot step outside for 30 seconds without attracting a cloud of them. My challenge for this week will be trying to strike a balance between mosquito bites and DEET. I bought a repellent lantern, thinking it would be a good investment at $20.00. What I didn't know is that the lantern requires refills every 12 hours, and the refills cost between $3.00-$6.00 each! A whole can of mosquito spray costs between $6.00 and $10.00, and that will last from 3-6 months. The only advantage I can see to the lantern is that you don't actually have to spray your skin, which could be healthier. The other thing would be that you can cover two or more people with just one device. I'm going to try it and see how well it works before investing more money in refills. Books: On our trip last week, there was a cookbook I considered buying, but it was $20.00. Instead, I waited until we got home and bought it for $6.00 on Ebay. I've been trying to buy most of my books on Ebay rather than Amazon, for political reasons but also since they seem to be less expensive in general. Along with that book, I also bought Pilgrim's Progress, the Screwtape Letters and Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin. I know you can probably borrow all of these books for free from the library (at least, through the interloan system), but I like having them in our home. I grew up with an extensive library at home, and it was those books that shaped my beliefs and interests, rather than the ones I borrowed from the library. Speaking of borrowing from the library: I borrowed an obscure book about death to read as research for my local history fiction. I found what I was looking for, which was the burial process prior to 1870. As it turns out, local carpenters or a family member would make the casket, which wasn't even lined. After the person died, a family member or neighbor (usually female) would prop a board on two chairs to make a sort of table, and then they would lift the corpse on top for burial preparation. The makeshift "undertaker" would wash the body first. Then they would use a coin on each eye to close them, and use a forked stick between the chin and collarbone to keep the mouth closed. The final task was to wrap the body in a shroud or winding cloth before putting it in the casket. I was surprised to learn that people were not buried in their clothes; at least, not according to this book. That didn't happen until the late 1800s. Another interesting tidbit I learned was about gravestones. In our local cemetery where most of my characters are buried, there are a few plots that are surrounded by post and chain fences. One of my characters has a plot like this all to herself. Not only that, but her gravestone itself is unique; it's called a "cradle grave"—a large headstone on one end, a smaller stone on the foot end, and sidewalls so it looks like an actual bed. The grave is essentially a large flower planter, and at the time it was planted and cared for by family members. Of course, Maggie (my character) died in the 1870s, and it's likely that neither her grave nor the other two cradle graves in our cemetery have had flowers for over 100 years. At some point I may ask the sexton if I can clean up the grave (or, all the graves of my characters) and replant it with flowers. They did this in Philadelphia, and I think the result was very honoring to the occupant. Fitness: I haven't given a fitness update in a while. I stepped on my Renpho scale this morning, and it said the exact same thing it did at the end of April. I quit intermittent fasting for a while, and now I've attempted to start it up again, but I don't know if it has any effects or not. I spent $80.00 on a good quality but inexpensive rowing machine to help my posture, which has always been kind of slumpy. I've been watching nursing skills videos on my laptop while rowing, which is nice because I'm making more use of my time that way. I wish I had more to update you about on this journey, but I haven't got very far. At least I haven't gone backward at all in the past several months. Well, that's about all for this week. I have some chores calling my name. Blessings, ~Prudence~ Hi everyone! I hope you've all had a great week.
Over the weekend we were able to visit a French colonial fort while travelling. I loved it! The gardens, above, are very much like my own kitchen garden, but bigger, and many of them were planted with perennial herbs (of course... easier to take care of) whereas mine have vegetables. But they were so beautiful. I snapped a ton of pictures for inspiration, not only of the gardens but also the interiors of the homes. I love the colonial décor- not only French, but also British. I love all of the glass, cast iron and other natural materials. Free books: Our trip to the fort coincided with my reading Jocelyn Green's Between Two Shores, which is a novel about the daughter of a Mohawk mother and French father. The setting and time period is much the same as that of the colonial fort we visited, which was pretty cool. I still haven't finished the book yet, but most of Jocelyn's work is fun to read and I always come away with a better working knowledge of history. While picking strawberries for the past two weeks, I put in many hours of audio book time and read 3 out of 4 of her "Heroes Behind the Lines" series, set during the Civil War. Then I started A Refuge Assured on audio (Scribd), and discovered that many of her novels are also available for free if you have Amazon Prime. Thus, I'm listening to one story and reading Between Two Shores on my Kindle. Several years ago I read Mark of the King, which was good but it took me forever to read on paperback. If I keep going the audio and Kindle route, I'm guessing I can finish most of her books by the end of the year, having not paid a penny for any of them. I've not read much fiction since I was a teenager (and that was a LONG time ago!), but I want to write a book about our local county history, and there is just not enough information or market to sell a non-fiction book about it. When you dig deep, there are plenty of characters, plots and events from real life that just need some blanks filled and a storyline made in order to be saleable. So I think that's the route I'll be going, but in order to do the job right, it might take me five years to get a good work of fiction out there, since I've only written and published non-fiction. Strawberries: we finished up our market strawberry season and now I'm just picking some for our own family use. I've dried some and frozen some, but we don't go through many strawberries out-of-season. I've just burned out on them, I think. I figure that I earned about $700.00 this year on berries. I tweak the business model a little bit each year, but it's still not good, financially, for something more than a hobby. If I were to expand the business, it would have to be a U-pick operation, since if I hire helpers to pick, neither them nor I make enough money. Garden: I've been harvesting lettuce, turnips and spinach seeds this week. I need to find a faster way to collect the spinach seeds. Cooking: I made bread and tarts this week, in addition to regular meals. I've been trying to use a lot of eggs, since that's what we have most of. Electricity: As with many areas around the country, our electricity rates have gone up and I'm trying to use less of it. It's very difficult, though, when it gets so hot and our house is so humid. At times, we've had to run the dehumidifier in conjunction with the air conditioning unit, just to keep things from sticking and molding. One thing I've done is to move my clothes drying racks upstairs, where it's warmer and dryer. This move saves at least $1.00 per load, and it's something I don't mind doing. I've also been more mindful to bake two things at once and keep some things on timers. That's about it for this week! Hope you've all be staying cool, well hydrated and thrifty. Blessings, ~Prudence~ Well, I am here! The month of June always flies so fast for me. Here's a little bit of what I've been doing the past couple of weeks:
1. Strawberries: my market strawberry patch has literally come to fruition, as it has every June for the past several years. This year, rather than hiring pickers or enlisting my husband to help, I've simply divided the patch into 2-3 sections and picked one section every day, taking Sunday off. I get up between 6:00 am and 7:00 am, depending on what the weather looks like, and pick until 11:00 or so. The most I picked on a given day was about 20 quarts, and the least I've picked was 4 quarts. I'm selling them for $4.00 per quart, so on most days I'm making between $60.00 and $70.00. On a good day I can pick one flat (8 quarts) in an hour: on a bad day, I pick about half that. A bad day means I'm picking in a bad section of the garden, where you really have to hunt for berries, and/or the berries are small. So I make between $16.00 and $32.00 per hour picking. Of course, that doesn't count all of the time I spend taking care of the patch. If you take that into account, my actual wage is probably closer to $3.00 or $5.00 per hour. That's pretty awful, but you have to remember that this is a job you can do at home with almost no start-up costs, and in some cases you can involve your kids in. Babies and toddlers will need a babysitter or playpen, but ages 3-5 should be okay playing nearby while you work, and 6 years old and up can work with you (or, of course, play... but on picking days it is really nice to have some extra help). My strawberries under plastic were very easy to take care of, but sadly did not produce more than three quarts on any given day. I already have another three rows of plastic put in, so I'll probably fill it with strawberries and just keep on going with it. But the matted rows are far, far more productive than my strawberries under plastic. 2. Chickens: I nursed several older chicks back to health from certain death. Two chicks died, but I would have lost 5 or 6 more, had we not acted quickly and got some medicine for them. We also had success with a broody hen!!! After several failed attempts, our bantam hatched out three chicks yesterday. None from her own eggs, of course, but who really cares about that. They're all different colors, and they're adorable. It was a totally free project for me; no electricity, no buying feed, no buying chicks. Last time I spent like $30.00 hatching three chicks and this time it was free. Yes! 3. Garden: I harvested spinach seeds, turnips, elephant garlic and lettuce this week, plus, of course, strawberries. Most of my vegetables and flowers are looking great. My corn patch failed miserably, but my gourd and squash patch is doing well. I ended up laying rows of plastic down, and in between the rows I planted my winter squash/gourd seedlings. In between the seedlings I laid down cardboard. There are almost no weeds, and the plants are big, bushy and healthy so far. I had wanted to interplant corn and black beans with the squashes, but it was too much for me to take care of, with the strawberries and my regular garden. Next year the strawberry patch will be cut in half, and thus more manageable, so hopefully I can put some effort into growing more of a "survival" garden. I also harvested chamomile. I missed the lavender harvest in the midst of the strawberry season, but this is the lavender's first year and at least now I know when to expect it. 4. I've been trying to read several books, if I can do so without falling asleep. 5. My grandma and I went to a discount/bulk store. I found some awesome deals to stock the freezer with: sausage and ham, in particular, for $1.50 per pound. I also bought a bunch of snack foods there for very cheap. Well, that's all for this week! My eyes are already starting to get sore and it's not even 10:00 pm yet. We may be leaving for the weekend tomorrow, and there is just so much to do. I will do what I can and let the chips fall where they may. Blessings, ~Prudence~ I woke up this morning and thought, "I think I forgot to write a blog post yesterday. Wait a minute, did I even write one last week??" That's how crazy the last eight days have been! First with Memorial Day weekend, then we had three days in succession of evening activities, plus a fencing crisis. And it's only going to get crazier as my market strawberry patch begins bearing fruit in a few days.
Anyhow, I thought I'd pop in and share a few frugal things I did this week. 1. Paused a newspaper subscription. I pay about $2.50 a week for the Epoch Times. I'd subscribed for a year, but haven't been able to read more than the headlines in the last few weeks. My first thought was to cancel it, but then I discovered that you can pause it for up to three months. So I did. Moving forward, I may only renew such subscriptions for six months at a time; October thru March, since I simply run out of time during the warmer months to read. 2. Fixed the chicken fence with fencing we already had. It should keep the chickens IN, which will keep them OUT of my strawberries, vegetables and flower beds. Hopefully it will also keep our steer IN, as he's already defoliated about 1/3 of my strawberries under plastic, just from getting out a few times. My next step, probably happening this weekend, is to fence in the strawberries. 3. Harvested spinach and radishes from the garden. I also froze a bunch of spinach, since it's starting to bolt. My garden brain has been spinning with all that I want/need to do. I planted sweet corn this week, but the patch is so small I don't know if it will pollinate itself. I want to start a new bed by my vegetables and plant some field corn there. I also found a bunch of poison ivy that I need to spray, plus I harvested rose petals this morning and the lavender is due for harvesting in a day or two... I'm telling you, my mind is a blur with all of the outdoor things that need to be done. 4. I made a few local history discoveries this week. Family Search now has people linked to most, if not all of their records, which saves a lot of time and allows you to find records of the person that were misspelled or otherwise misrepresented. For example, one person I'm researching is named "Oliver", but his name is also spelled "Olive", "Olivia" and even "Alvin" on census and other records! I'm not sure if the links between records and people are a new feature or just new to me, but it's a lot of fun and makes research (for a novel series I'll be writing) a lot faster. 5. Our electricity bill has been switched from a standard rate to on- and off-peak hours; off peak being the cheaper hours. So I've rearranged my cooking and laundry schedules to accommodate that. Sadly this probably won't reduce our bill, but it will prevent it from increasing. I find that this is better for the summer anyway, since it's miserable to cook during the heat of the day... and we are going to have several 90 degree days in the coming week. That's about it for this morning! I need to hurry off now and get the dishwasher running and dry some of those rose petals before the increased electricity rate kicks in this afternoon. Blessings, ~Prudence~ Summer is almost here!! Tomorrow I will probably get out our Memorial Day/ 4th of July / summer decorations.
Art prints: I took apart an old art history book (that I pulled out of someone's trash) and am in the process of extracting artwork from it. Most of it is black and white, but there are some nice color prints that I want to use. I'm saving a lot of the black and white prints to use for kids' coloring pages or for reference. I have a whole file full of artwork clipped from different newspapers or books to use for projects or as reference. Garden: I harvested spinach, radishes and asparagus from the garden this week. The spinach and swiss chard are starting to bolt and go to seed, so I'll be saving as much of that seed as I can; for microgreens, and also for using for next year's garden. There are only two spaces in my gardens not planted, plus some sweet and field corn that I have yet to plant. I may not plant the field corn this year, so as to avoid tainting the sweet corn. But I will work on having my husband build another raised bed for the kitchen garden that will be big enough to grow corn and sweet corn in, in preparation for next year. We burned more holes in the landscape fabric that we laid down last year. If I fill up all of these holes with strawberries, it will double the amount of strawberries that I have under plastic. The plants are looking great; much better than the weedy patch of strawberries farther out in the field that are now four years old. This will be the last year for those; and what a blessed relief that will be. In addition to getting rid of the strawberries, I will be looking for a new growing situation for some of my other perennials in the old garden; the asparagus, raspberries and delphiniums. I would love to make a permanent market garden area: a space we could use for extra food production in an "emergency event" year, or one that would just hold flowers, perennials (like asparagus, rhubarb, flowers, etc.) that we could sell at our roadside stand in a good year. According to the book How to Grow More Vegetables, in to have a garden that's 99% sustainable (a vegetarian diet) I would need 12,000 ft. of growing space for us, and even more growing space if I were to grow crops for our animals (which, in an emergency situation, would only be rabbits, chickens and possibly goats). My beds in the market garden are about 40 ft. long, so if I did a 4' by 40' bed, I would need 75 beds! And I don't even have a large family! The book states that 10% of this space is for salad vegetable crops, 30% is for calorie-dense root vegetable crops, and 60% is for grains. Right now I have 160 square feet (one 4' by 40' ft. bed's worth) planted in salad vegetables and around 40 square feet in root crops. The salad vegetables I have down pretty well, and I feel like we're about 50% to sustainability in that area. As far as root vegetables go, I do well with beets, turnips, radishes and parsnips. Potatoes usually turn out okay, but I need to learn more about storing and growing them on a larger scale. Carrots are the only root crop I've had a pretty hard time with, so those will need a lot of work as well. Grains will be a first for me in 2021. I had plans to grow field corn, and I still might if I can get a bed rigged up fast enough. This fall I'll try my hand at soft winter wheat, but that may be a steep learning curve. Rather than going for 99% sustainability through produce alone, I would rather raise animals for a portion of those calories. Rather than having corn 10 different ways, for example, I can feed the corn to a chicken and get meat AND eggs from it. Furthermore, the animals provide poop for compost that I NEED for my garden beds, anyway. So as I work on learning to grow grains and a larger (small) scale, I'll be looking at ways to create a sustainable closed-loop system for raising chickens, rabbits and goats, and what garden produce they may need to survive the winter. Goats, however, require hay, so that is a whole different hurdle. So I will work on the chicken and rabbit systems first. Sewing: I patched up two pairs of jeans, and now I can wear them. Yay! Prepping: I've set a few new prepper goals for myself. I bought a $35.00 DVD of nursing skills, and my goal is to watch all of them before a medical skills class I have scheduled at the end of the summer. I used to think that nursing was some high-minded, interesting job, and it probably is to some degree. But after watching some of these skills videos, it looks mind-numbingly boring. Washing people. Putting on and taking off gloves. Changing bedsheets. While I think nursing is an honorable job and very important, I've been reassured that it's not the job for me. My second goal is to learn how to use a ham radio. It costs about $35.00 for study materials and $40.00 to take the test to get your license. I bought a cheap ham radio for $25.00, so this project is already far less expensive than medical prepping, where even the most basic tools cost over $100.00 and training can be even more costly. Thirdly, I ordered some free CERT materials from the government. I couldn't find any in-person classes in our area, but since the student workbook was free, I decided to order it and read it on my own. I believe that's about it for this week! I know I was a little long-winded about my garden, but it's been on my mind a lot lately. Be blessed, ~Prudence~ Hi everyone! I did a lot of fun, thrifty things this week.
1. Discount chicks: I sent my husband to the feed store to buy some more chick starter for our three incubated chicks. While he was at the store, he called me to tell me that they had chicks on sale for $0.50 each! I wanted to buy a TON, but I restrained myself (knowing that we already collect more eggs than we can eat) and had him get 10; seven Barred Rocks and three Black Sex Links. They are so cute and I love them. Here is the general math I figured out last night about raising laying hens: Chick: $0.50 (normally $2.50 or more) Chick starter for 8 weeks: $2.00 Electricity for warming plate (divided by 10 chicks): $0.50 Layer mash for 4 months: $5.00 Total cost to raise to laying age: $8.00 The going rate for mature laying hens in our area is about $15.00. Thus, by raising my own laying hen, I can save $7.00. Since I bought 10 chicks, all pullets, I'll be able to save $70.00 with this project. Had I bought the chicks at full price, I would have still saved at $45.00, which is good to know for next year. 2. Free stuff: I went "junking" at our annual "throw your junk on the curb" event. I found two wooden chairs, a small desk, sidewalk chalk, muffin cup liners, one children's book, seven non-fiction adult books, a child's dry erase easel, a pile of cotton fabric scraps, a Jiffy greenhouse with pellets, a wooden organizer, a basketball, a rug, a large picture frame, four outdated grapevine wreaths that I plan to redecorate in a modern style, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. All in all, I found over $100.00 worth of stuff, comparing with prices at the thrift store. 3. Upcycled jars: I washed out and scrubbed the labels off of some random jars and wine bottles we had lying around. Then I painted the lids with a chalk paint, so they all matched. What a transformation! I put dry goods (beans, chia seeds, etc.) in the jars, and put oil and wine vinegar into the bottles. I put a $0.50 dripper lid (from the Dollar Tree) on the oil bottle to make for easy pouring. I love the way the two bottles look on my counter, and it makes the oil and vinegar more accessible and easy to use. 4. Pasta: I tried a pasta recipe this week from one of my Italian cooking books. It actually worked great! I made ravioli with the dough. Fresh pasta is so much more expensive than dried pasta at the store, but the fresh ravioli was so good. I was happy that this recipe worked out better than the Venetian Cornmeal Cookies. 5. I continued listening to When Harry Became Sally on Scribd. 6. Chicken rescue: we caught and killed another raccoon, which had also been slaughtering chickens. This one I actually caught in the act, attacking my silkie rooster. Thankfully I got there just in time. We were able to rescue the silkie, who thankfully had no bite marks or other damage. There was one other missing chicken that I thought had been eaten, but the next morning it was walking around outside the coop, wondering where all of the others were. Praise the Lord! My broody hen unfortunately decided not to be broody anymore. But I guess my discount chicks this week made up for it. That's it for this week. I hope you've all had a thrifty May so far! Blessings, ~Prudence~ 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~ 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~ |
About PrudenceI am a Christian homemaker who lives in the Midwest. I enjoy sewing, gardening, reading and thrifting. Archives
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