Hi everyone! I know I missed two (!) weeks of posting, but it wasn't for lack of activity. I had a long list of things to do before the craziness of December begins, and thankfully I've been able to get some of it done.
1. Photo books: One of my big projects was printing photo books of family pictures. My goal is to print one every year, but I missed last year so I had double the work to do this year. I only have a certain amount of hours to work on the computer each week, so I spent a lot of my computer/writing time sorting, editing and arranging photos. I was able to get both books ordered from Shutterfly and used promo codes on each one. They were still expensive. I've tried printing individual photos and then stuffing photo albums in the past. That method is slightly cheaper if you can find a used album, but in the end they're so heavy and clumsy we never pull them out to look at them. Another option is to buy photo protector pages and put them inside a binder. That way you can print extra pages (and at minimal cost). But it still makes a bulky, easily-destroyed book. 2. Jeans hunting: I cleaned out some old wardrobe items I sometimes wear, but have never liked. The unthrifty part is that I bought some new clothes to wear. Several of my jeans had multiple patches and I was wearing out my "good" shirts too fast. I replaced the old jeans with new ones; a $36.00 pair from Amazon, and two $60.00 pairs from Wrangler. I bought an additional pair from Wrangler that I'll be returning, since I didn't care for it. Recently I've been careful to check the tags on clothing to see what materials are used. You can read in this post about my last Wrangler purchase, where I realized that my thrift store Wranglers were likely the $60.00 kind, rather than the $20.00 TSC kind. I thought Wranglers were Wranglers, but apparently not! I told my husband about this, and while we were on the company website, we figured out that the wash, or color, of the jean had more to do with its material than the style or cut of the jean. Do I love Wranglers in particular? NO! But I've struggled to find the kind of jeans I like: boot-cut or flare, low or mid rise, and no rips or tears. Seriously, most everything is high-rise these days, which I can't stand to wear and don't think are very flattering. Wrangler seemed to be a brand with at least three different style choices that fit the bill. And interesting aside: as I compared my $20.00 Wranglers and my $60.00 Wranglers, I noticed some subtle differences. Apart from the large amount of polyester and rayon in my cheap pants, I also realized that the expensive jeans had "W" buttons and rivets, rather than flat, plain rivets. They also had a leather patch sewn to one of the back pockets. For the price difference ($40.00), I thought these details were shockingly petty. Interestingly enough, my thrifted Wranglers had the logo embroidered inside the waistband, while my new $60.00 pants had a stamped logo, same as the $20.00 pair. While I do care about the type of fabric I'm wearing, I truly could care less about how much branding is on the pants. And I will keep that in mind the next time I'm hunting for jeans. 3. Shirts: I purchased a whole new wardrobe of shirts that I love for $7.00 apiece. While my body hasn't undergone dramatic changes from pregnancy and childbirth, one bummer was that my top half seems to have shrunk in relation to my bottom half. My bottom half is slightly (truly, not much) larger, but my top half is the same or smaller! What?! All that to say, the form-fitting shirts I was keeping around make me look exceedingly pear-shaped now. So I decided to donate them and look for some new shirts. Per that previous post I mentioned, I wanted shirts made with 100% cotton. I also wanted certain colors; jewel tones, mostly. I wanted a crew cut neck and long enough sleeves and hem. It's not uncommon that I find a shirt that meets the first two requirements, but has a short, wide hem, sleeves about one inch too short, and a gaping neckline that cold air rushes into when I wear a pea coat. Anyway. I got to thinking, "What I really want is a T-shirt. Like, a T-shirt with long sleeves." And then I got it. Long-sleeved T-shirts! I received one at a 5K several years ago, and loved it except for the gaudy yellow color. Sure enough, I looked on Amazon and found exactly what I wanted—every color of the rainbow—in 2-packs for $11.00-$14.00 per pack. I bought two packs for the lower price, and four packs for the higher price. The average price was about $6.50 per shirt. I usually pay $3.00-$6.00 for thrifted long-sleeve shirts that rarely function as well as my new long-sleeved T-shirts. I love my new shirts and pants. I can wake up every day and not ask myself: "is it okay to wear a holey outfit today?" Or, "Will I be able to accomplish today's tasks without bending over and exposing myself?" or "Do I want to look like a pear today?" I know that every day I will reach a certain standard of "I look good today", regardless of what I choose. What's more, since all of the shirts came in 2-packs, I'll have a whole new set when the first set of six wear out. I have more I want to say about this topic, but in regard to the aforementioned computer time, I'd better move along with this post. 4. I've been making fancy drinks (see above) with a milk-frother that we bought last year. I'm not a coffee drinker, but tea lattes and hot cocoa lattes (is that a thing?) have been popular tea time favorites over the past several weeks. The steamer/frother cost $40.00, so I'm curious as to how long it will last. The more drinks I can make before it dies, the lower the cost will be per drink. I looked up the prices at some of our local coffee shops, and a tea latte can cost about $4.50. If the ingredients for my homemade latte cost $0.50 (a hefty estimate), then I've saved $4.00 for every latte made. By those estimations, 10 lattes would "pay" for the milk frother. That being said, I know there are cheaper ways to froth milk, but this one steams AND froths, and it's easy to wash. Anyhow, the more lattes I get out of this frother, the lower the cost per latte for use of the machine. I still have to calculate electricity usage, so perhaps I will check in on that again. As of today, I've probably used the frother 20 times, making the cost about $2.00 per use. I would love to get it down to $0.10 per use, but that would mean using it 400 times! If I make 20 lattes per month, 5 months out of the year, I'd have to use the machine for four years before I can say it cost $0.10 per use. Wow! 5. Garden: I've been using manure from our now-frozen steer to fill up my raised beds. We replaced three of the beds (which were rotting out, being made of untreated wood), and also added one new bed, which is a long one, rather than the square beds I've done for the last several years. My plan for the long bed is to plant "preserving crops" for overwintering. For example, corn, winter squash, dry beans or tomatoes. Eventually I will try to plant a plot of wheat in there. Sheet composting is so interesting to me. I started with the simple layering of grass clippings and fallen leaves, with a little bit of chicken or goat manure on top, since the manure usually turns into a good soil over the course of a year or so. But last year I started adding garden clippings (for example, the frost-bitten tomato and pepper plants) as the nitrogen layer, which saved me a lot of time raking up grass clippings. Plus, I no longer had to find a place for the garden refuse. This year I'm putting twigs at the very bottom of my old bed, as a sort of base layer to fill up more space (it is frustratingly hard to fill a 1' tall bed with layers of grass and leaves! Or even garden refuse and leaves!) and as my first carbon layer. This was nice because rather than burning the fallen twigs, I could use them in a productive way, while also accomplishing the goal of filling the garden bed faster. To the twigs, I added fallen leaves (also something we'd have had to clean up anyway) to fill in the cracks for my base carbon layer. Just in the last year, I've learned you can also compost bathroom trash like toilet paper (sans feces), human hair, and toilet paper tubes. So I added another trashcan to our main bathroom, and now I'm putting those things on the compost pile rather than throwing them away. Again, it accomplishes two goals: lessens trash that we have to pay for ($2.50 per bag... we figured it out), and also adds to my compost—aka soil—pile for future raised beds. Some other factoids I learned: urine helps speed up the breakdown process, and you can also compost cotton (and, I believe, wool) clothing. Two things I haven't implemented in the compost plan, but interesting factoids nonetheless. So, that's about it for this week! I feel like this fall has been rather productive in terms of learning and trying new projects, so I'm pretty happy about that. Blessings, ~Prudence~
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About PrudenceI am a Christian homemaker who lives in the Midwest. I enjoy sewing, gardening, reading and thrifting. Archives
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