Frugal Babe

Our house is wonderfully warm right now, thanks to my parents.  When our furnace died on Wednesday, I had described the problem to them, and told my father that we had removed the igniter from the furnace in hopes of getting a replacement on Thursday (we knew the problem was the igniter based on the [...]

We bought a new dishwasher today!  New to us anyway - we found it on Craig’s List and drove to the other end of town today to pick it up.  We paid $100.  It currently retails for $645, although the lady who sold it to us said that it’s about 7 -8 years old.  It’s fully [...]

Wow, what a week this has been.  And we don’t even “do” Christmas - can’t imagine what it would be like if we did!  On Monday, I bought a shadow box picture frame (50% off) and was up until midnight making a scrapbook page to put in the frame for one of my best friends.  [...]

We just spent a great Thanksgiving with some of my husband’s extended family that live near us.  We brought a spinach salad (about $12 for the ingredients), and ate all sorts of great food that everyone made.  I always enjoy hanging out with that group of people, and today was no exception. 
I’m pretty sure that [...]

It’s that time of year again.  Time to start thinking about holiday plans and gift-giving.  We tend to be very low-key for the holidays.  We spend Thanksgiving with my husband’s family most years - and will do so this year as well.  For Christmas, we’ve invited my family to our house, which will be a first for us.  There [...]

We had decided a long time ago that we wanted to use cloth diapers for our baby.  But I didn’t want to spend $12 - $20 each for fitted diapers online, nor did we want to have to mess with safety pins and diapers that fall off as soon as the baby is able to crawl.  My [...]

Yesterday, the other pregnant lady at the library asked me if we had started registering for gifts yet.  I told her that I didn’t think we were going to register at all.  I explained our plans to buy most stuff used and that we have friends and family who have finished having babies who have [...]

My husband’s parents called today to see if we’d like any of the baby stuff that his sister has leftover from her two kids.  My inlaws are staying at her house right now, and they offered to pack everything up and ship it.  There’s a Baby Bjorn, a monitor, and several other things, including the [...]

Wow, we’ve had a crazy busy week.  One of my best friends is arriving at our house this afternoon with her two kids (ages 2 and 2 months) to stay until Thursday while her husband is out of town.  I’m excited to see her, but I haven’t been to the grocery store yet, I have [...]

We’re going to my husband’s cousin’s wedding this weekend.  We got invited earlier this fall, and knew we would attend, but my husband was not asked to be in this wedding.  We were both glad - it’s a lot less expensive to wear your own clothes than to rent a tux, and my husband would rather [...]