Last month, I decided to see how long I could go without grocery shopping, just by using up the stuff I already had on hand in our cupboards and freezer.  I hadn’t been stockpiling anything and we didn’t have a huge amount of food stored, but it was 15 days between shopping trips, as opposed to my normal 7.  And when I did go back to the grocery store, our bill was only about $40 higher than it usually is, so it was definitely worth some kitchen creativity to use up some of what we had on hand before buying more groceries.

There’s a great Goodwill just around the corner from the grocery store, so I decided to treat myself to a little thrifting that afternoon.  I spend a total of $42 at Goodwill…

We are going to a wedding in June, and I went looking for a new dress to wear.  I found this, plus shoes that are a perfect match and were still tied together with the little string that retailers use to keep pairs together:

I got a great stainless steel bowl that I’m planning to use as a planter, and a black pan that I can use to sun dry tomatoes this summer.  I also got a cute little wooden step stool for our son to use in the bathroom – and it folds into a chair too!  In the pan you can also see some Melissa & Doug wooden stensils:

A friend of mine is expecting a baby girl this spring, and I got this adorable little dress/bloomers set, along with about four yards of super cute fabric that I will use to make something for the baby.  I haven’t decided what I’m making yet, but I’m sure inspiration will strike:

I also got a complete croquet set for out backyard:

And even though I know that I don’t need any more clothes, I did buy two tops for myself.  The brown one is LOLE, and I could tell it was a well made shirt as soon as I saw it.  After I got home, I looked up their website, and all of their basic long sleeved shirts sell for about $45 – $60:

All of that for $42.

Thanks Goodwill, for making it possible for us to have nice stuff and still fund our retirement accounts!

Last week, I decided to make a Christmas gift for a friend’s daughter.  The little girl is about the same age as our son, and we get the two of them together every month or so.  They’ve evolved from looking at each other, to poking each other in the eye, to running around the playground and taking turns on the slides. 

I wanted to make her some wooden blocks, and a bag to put them in.  The project ideas came to me while I was out on a walk with the dog, and the whole thing was very simple.  For the bag, I used fabric from a huge mu-mu that I wore to a costume party (and got at a thrift store).  As an outfit, it was pretty horrible, but as fabric for a little girl’s bag, it’s fabulous.  I lined it with flannel from those sheets that I bought last year to make diapers (those sheets just keep on going – I’ve used them for a whole bunch of projects, and they aren’t even close to gone yet).  For the handle and the velcro tabs on the bag, I used a waistband from a pair of jeans that my husband didn’t wear anymore.  Here’s the finished bag, filled with blocks:

For the blocks, I bought two sizes of wooden dowel, and the rest are just made from scraps of wood (mostly 2×4s) that we had in the garage.  My cuts aren’t the straightest, but it gives stuff you build with the blocks a bit of a Dr. Seuss feel, which I think is pretty cool.  I didn’t measure anything, I just cut the wood randomly, so the blocks are all different sizes.  The most time-consuming part of the whole project was sanding the blocks, but even that was fun.  I sat on the back patio sanding blocks while my husband worked in the yard and our son played in the grass with the dog.  Here are pictures of the blocks:

I finished the blocks on Black Friday, which I thought was appropriate.  Sitting outside sanding blocks of wood was a lot more fun than standing in line at a store somewhere.  I spent $8 on the dowels, but everything else for this project was from scraps of wood and fabric that we already had. 

Every year, I make Christmas ornaments for our five nieces.  I love making them, and the girls tell me they love putting their own ornaments on the tree.  Some years I’m stumped for ideas, but last week I came up with an idea that I really like, and I’ve made three ornaments so far.  Here’s a picture of the first two:

In my craft stash, I had kept a pile of old Christmas cards (this goes against my new clutter-free lifestyle, but my craft corner is exempt).  To make these ornaments, I cut squares and rectangles out of the cards, used a needle to punch small holes all around the edges, and then stitched them together with embroidery floss.  Each one took me about an hour to make, and they are a thoroughly enjoyable project. 

Overall, we’re planning to skip Christmas this year.  Our son is only 18 months old, and gets just as much pleasure out of a drawer full of wooden spoons as he would from a tree piled with presents.  So we plan to skip the tree and all the craziness this year.  But the ornaments for my nieces is a tradition that I enjoy, it’s stress-free, fun, and in this case, turns old Christmas cards into something new and pretty. 

Andy at Tight Fisted Miser is hosting a book giveaway that ought to be a good read for anyone who enjoys my blog.  It’s called 10,001 Ways To Live Large On A Small Budget, and was compiled by the editors of Wisebread.   All you have to do if you want to enter to win a copy is head over to Andy’s blog and leave a comment on his book giveaway post.  And while you’re there, check out his current plans to hike the Appalachian Trail for a month, starting next week.  He’s only going to be spending $200 for the month, and will be posting updates to Twitter anywhere he has cell phone coverage.  We can all live vicariously through him as he heads out on a fantastic frugal adventure.

My in-laws are visiting us this week, which is nice – we hadn’t seen them since October.  My mother in law’s birthday was last week, and I decided to make her a gift.  Her grandkids are a huge part of her life, and I’m a pretty good scrapbooker, so I thought I’d incorporate those two things to make her birthday gift.

I had my husband’s sisters email me pictures of their daughters, and I picked out a photo of our son that I really like.  Then I changed all the pictures to black and white (to avoid problems with clashing colors), and spent a dollar to get prints of all of them.  I had cropped them so that the people took up most of the picture, and once I got them printed I cut out the people, so that I could make them all fit on one page.  I fit the pictures together along the bottom of the page, and popped them out from the page using a sheet of foam.  I glued them to the background papers that I had made, and added some paper embellishments.  I printed a quote on vellum, stitched it to the page, and put the whole thing in a frame.  It was a $20 frame, specially designed for scrapbook pages, but I got it on a half price sale.  So the whole gift cost about $12, including tax and the photos.

My mother in law loves her gift, and has commented on it several times since they arrived.  With three kids and six grandkids and lots of extended family, her walls have gotten pretty crowded with pictures over the years.  That’s why I wanted to make one frame that included pictures of all six grandkids in it – wall space is valuable real estate in her house!

I’ve made entire scrapbooks several times as gifts, but they take a long time to complete.  This page only took me about an hour to make, and it turned out great.  Easy, cute, inexpensive, fun, and very much appreciated by the recipient!

Congratulations to Alicia and Adrienne, the winners of my Turbo Tax giveaway!  Hopefully this will make filing your taxes a little less painful, ladies

Manda is the winner of the $25 Beau Coup gift card give away.  Congrats Manda!  I’ll be drawing a winner for the Turbo Tax prize tomorrow, so if you haven’t filed your taxes yet, get yourself entered.  So far there are only a few entries, and there are two prizes, so the odds of winner are pretty darn good at this point!

For all you readers who haven’t filed your taxes yet, I have another give away.  Yes, I’m just full of good stuff this week.  Turbo Tax is giving two of my readers web cards with a prepaid access code (includes one free federal + state preparation + efiles) for Turbo Tax Deluxe Online (approximately $65 value each).  I’ll be drawing winners on Saturday morning, so get yourself entered in this contest by midnight on Friday, April 3rd.  To enter, just leave a comment with your favorite April Fool’s joke.   Good luck!

Time for some more fun – another gift card give away!  Beau Coup has offered to give a $25 gift card to one of my readers.  They sell all kinds of party favors, wedding stuff, bridesmaid and groomsmen gifts, invitations… if you’re planning a party, you can probably find something you could use on their site.

Browse around their site and see if you could use a gift card.  To enter the contest, just leave a comment saying what your favorite product is from the Beau Coup website.  I’ll draw a winner on Friday, April 3.

I got a comment from a reader yesterday that reminded me that I had never announced the winner of the $25 Mandee gift card giveaway.  My husband drew a number last Wednesday, and the winner was Donna S.  I notified Donna and the rep at Mandee who sent out the gift card, but I forgot to post the winner on my blog.  Sorry about that!

I also got a question asking how I did the texture on the bathroom walls, so I’ll try to describe the process.  I used about two gallons of drywall mud for the project.  I removed all of the loose, peeling wallpaper, but was able to leave most of the paper on the walls.  The texturing was pretty labor intensive – probably not a time saver compared with stripping the wallpaper, but I like the textured look that we ended up with.

Once I had the loose wallpaper off, I started by applying a very thin layer of drywall mud.  I worked in sections roughly two feet square in order to make sure that the mud wasn’t drying out before I had finished. Once I had the thin layer in place, I went back with my 3 inch drywall trowel (if I did it again, I’d use a little bit wider one, just to make the process go a bit faster) and applied chunks of mud randomly all over the area I was working on.  Then I smoothed them down (in random directions), but without using enough pressure to remove the mud completely.  The thickest areas of mud were less than 1/8 inch, and the thinnest areas are barely there at all.  That way it dried relatively quickly and there was no cracking as it dried.  Adding the drywall mud meant that the whole room had to have a coat of primer before I could put on the finish paint.  Now that it’s done, I’m very glad I did it.  But when I was halfway through the texture/primer process, I was wishing I had picked a more simple process!

I painted the trim in the bathroom last night, and the room is now complete.  It’s an amazing transformation, and proves the power of paint and elbow grease when it comes to low-cost home improvement.  A bathroom is a great place to use up leftover paint, since it tends to be a small room.  In our case, the wall paint was left over from painting our kitchen, and the trim paint was left over from painting our other bathroom a few years ago.  But even if we had bought new paint, the project would still have been less than $75.