A couple months ago, my husband’s aunt got new living room furniture and offered us her old stuff.  It was 10 or 15 years old, but we liked it better than our own mis-matched pieces, so we happily accepted.  We now have a couch, chair, loveseat, and footrest – all matching!

What didn’t match was our throw pillows.  Our old couches were tan, and our pillows were shades of brown and red.  The new furniture is shades of grey and blue, so there was a lot of clashing going on:

Last fall, I bought a king size blue sheet at a thrift store to make curtains for our son’s room.  I had a lot of leftover fabric, so yesterday I spent less than an hour to whip up covers for our pillows:

Much better, I think!  The covers are as simple as can be – no zippers or buttons, I just made the back out of two overlapping pieces of fabric.  Here’s a picture that shows the back of one of them:

The best part is that they are easy to take off and wash.  And our living room looks a lot better.  Not bad for leftover fabric… I spent $6 on that sheet, and ended up with curtains and three pillow covers.

I just finished making our first holiday e-card, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out.  We always send out photo cards, but the cost of postage and the cards, combined with the time I always spend addressing envelopes, made me decide to try an electronic version this year.  Nearly everyone we know is online these days.  We have just a handful of elderly friends and relatives who don’t use email, and for them I will still mail photos of our family.  But for everyone else, I created a digital scrapbook page with two photos, some simple text, and a few holiday-themed embellishments.

I’ve been scrapbooking since 2001, but had never tried digital scrapping.   So I turned to Google and found more information and free template downloads than I could ever use.  Nearly every digital scrapbooking site has free downloads that you can use, some are just there for the taking, some require that you sign up for their newsletter.  I made my layout as an 8.5 by 11 page, and it fills a computer screen nicely when the recipient opens it.

Zero time spent addressing envelopes, zero dollars spent on cards and postage, and a really cool-looking scrapbook page as our holiday card… what’s not to love?  If people want to hang our greeting on their wall for the holidays, they can easily print it out.  But I think most of us store our photos digitally these days, and our e-card will be easy for people to store with their digital images.

Anyone else going the electronic route when it comes to holiday cards?

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. 

This is a bathroom-themed post, so if that’s tmi, here’s your fair warning to mosey along now. 

For some time, we’ve been on a mission to reduce the amount of disposable stuff we use.  It’s cheaper and far more environmentally sound to go with reusable products, and we’ve found that it’s a lot easier than it seems.  Our son has been in homemade cloth diapers since he was born, and I barely even notice the extra loads of laundry.  Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess has a challenge on her site about ditching disposables – check it out if you’re looking for inspiration.

Anyway, I started thinking…  Why not make myself cloth wipes that I can use instead of toilet paper when I pee?  I wash diapers all the time – how hard would it be to toss in some little squares of cloth along with the diapers?  So I got out my sewing stuff and my recycled fabric.  Remember the flannel sheets that I got at a thrift store before our son was born?  Those sheets have definitely earned their keep around here.  Diapers, a sling, more diapers, and they’re still going strong.

I cut little rectangles of fabric from one of the sheets, about eight inches by four inches.  Then I folded them in half and sewed around the open edges, leaving a little space to turn them inside out.  Then I stitched up the open space… done and done.  It took me about 45 minutes to cut out and sew 20 little squares.  Now I have nice soft flannel double-thick squares of fabric, instead of toilet paper.  And I’m the only girl in the house, so they’re all mine.  I toss them in the diaper pail, and they use no extra resources at all, since I’m running the washing machine anyway, with or without them.  By the way, I’m a very well-hydrated girl, so those 20 squares last me two days – I was going through a lot of toilet paper.

(I should note that this is not an original idea.  My parents did this when I was a kid, long before “green” was the buzz word of the decade.)

That got me on a roll, and I started thinking again about all the tampons I’ve thrown away over the years.  I checked out some of the websites that sell cloth pads, and considered buying some.  But then I thought about what an awesome sense of satisfaction I get from making stuff myself.  And even though my sewing skills are nothing to brag about, I figured that if I could manage to make diapers, I could make a pad.  I read through the directions on the Tiny Birds Organic website (I got that link from Alissa, who sews beautifully and makes amazing-looking pads and diapers and all sorts of other stuff), and then I sat down to give it a try.  I’ve found that with diapers, I prefer pockets and inserts rather than having the soaker layer built into the diaper.  So I skipped the extra layer, and just cut out the front and back of the pad (the back is made of two overlapping pieces).  Other than that, I followed all the steps listed.  Then I made an insert using a layer of flannel from the sheet, a middle layer cut from an old towel, and a backing layer made from an old fleece sweatshirt that I had been using to make diaper liners.  The fleece provides some waterproofing, but you can also use wool.  I’m thrilled with how well it turned out, given that it’s my first try.  Here’s a picture of the pad and the liner:

And a picture of everything all put together, with the wings folded underneath:

I still need to figure out a snap.  I’m going into town tomorrow, so I’ll browse around at the craft store and see what they have in the way of snaps.  This project took me about 30 minutes, from start to finish.  My sewing machine is quite old and before I started making diapers last year, my previous sewing experience was limited to home ec class in 1990.  So trust me, if I can do this, anyone can.

My husband is teaching himself to weld (with a little help from YouTube and Google).  It’s something he’s wanted to do for a long time, but now that we’ve moved, he has more space to do it, and lots of things to weld.  He found a welder on Craigs List, and a welding mask on eBay.  He got all of the other supplies at various places around town, and found some metal shops that let him take their scraps for free.  There’s one place just a half mile or so from our house that has a dumpster out back where they toss their scrap metal, and they told him he can dumpster-dive anytime he wants.  It’s all mostly small stuff, but it’s been perfect for practicing.

He made his first project last week.  We had bought an umbrella for our patio, but had skipped the $50 umbrella stand, because my husband decided that would be a good place to try out his welding skills.  He welded together a chunk of old I-beam and a metal pipe, and they make a great umbrella stand:

I love it.  It’s unique, very effective, a great example of recycling, and very frugal.

The next project is window well covers.  Our basement windows don’t have well covers, and with a toddler, those are a must.  We were shocked to discover how expensive they are if you hire someone else to weld them for you.  We were finding prices of $300 – $400 per window (we have two).  My husband went to a metal supply shop last week and got all the supplies he needs to make both well covers for about $70 (angle iron and heavy duty grating).  By the time he’s finished with the window well covers, the welder and all its accessories will have more than paid for themselves.  And there are many more projects to come…

We have been using the same garden trowel ever since we moved into our house in 2003.  Somewhere around 2007, the handle broke.  It’s a metal handle with a soft plastic grip around it, and the metal inside snapped in half.  All that was holding the handle to the trowel was the plastic sheathing on the handle.  And yet we continued to use it.  I don’t know why we didn’t just get another trowel.  I guess we always forgot when we’re out and about.

Last night, we were at Marshalls, and my husband found a garden trowel and fork set – with a ten year warranty! – for $12.  Sold.  They’re stainless steel with handles made of oak, and they seem much more solid than our old one (I suppose that doesn’t take much, considering the state of the old one).  We had actually gone to Marshalls to look for a new cutting board to replace one that was so old that it had finally cracked in half.  I found a beautiful bamboo cutting board for seven bucks.  I also needed a cloth shower curtain liner, since our new house has tubs instead of shower stalls.  I don’t like vinyl shower curtain liners, and the cloth ones I had seen in regular retail stores were $25.  I found one at Marshalls for six dollars.  I love finding exactly what I need and feeling like I got a bargain at the same time.  But I wasn’t expecting was to find a perfect replacement for our garden trowel at Marshalls.  Since the vast majority of our free time is going to be spent gardening after we move, I think finding a beautiful trowel set  is a good omen…

Since we’re going to be putting our house on the market, we decided we needed to reclaim our crawl space.  Having the hydroponic garden in there has been great for us, but most people would want the space for storage, and the garden was blocking off most of the storage area.

Last month, we transplanted all of our greens from the hydroponic garden into our outside greenhouse.  It’s been getting full sun for quite a while now (in the middle of the winter, our neighbor’s house blocks the sun for a good part of the day), and if we don’t open the doors in the morning, the temperature inside will quickly reach 100 degrees.  We open the doors during the day and close them at night, which does a great job of keeping the climate inside just right for the plants.

But our little greenhouse isn’t big enough for tomato plants, and there’s no room in it for pepper plants.  We have it crammed full of greens, which makes my green smoothie making adventures much easier than they would be if I had to run to the store for greens every day.

So my husband found a fantastic resource online that he used to build “semi-hydroponic” containers for our tomatoes and peppers.  He used the directions on the EarthTainer site to create three containers that look pretty much exactly like the ones they show.  Last night we hauled the plants out of the crawl space (no easy feat – the tomatoes had been twining around each other for the last eight months.  I felt like Russ on Christmas Vacation when his dad tosses him the ball of lights and asks him to untangle them).  We got them all planted into the EarthTainers, and they’ve been getting natural – free! – sunlight all day.  We’ll have to haul them into the garage on nights when it gets below freezing outside, so we’ll be keeping an eye on the weather for the next month or so.  But it feels great to have them safely in their new home.

We’re donating $25 to Feed The Children in trade for the free plans that we were able to download from the EarthTainer website.  The guys who created it have put the plans out there for anyone to use, free of charge.  They just ask that if you do use them, that you make a donation to Feed The Children, and we’re happy to comply.

It was a bit sad to see our hydroponic garden being dismantled, but we’ll have it all set up again as soon as we move.  And it’s nice to know that all of our plants are still growing and producing, but with free sunlight instead of grow lights.  Ah, spring.

Our dishwasher may have died, but I’m finding ways to give its parts a new life.  I’m a scrapbooker, and I love pens.  I do a lot of writing on my pages, and have quite a few pens.  Until today, they lived in a drawer, all jumbled together.  Now they are neatly organized in the cutlery holder from our old dishwasher.  It’s perfect – portable, organized, and big enough for all my pens with room to spare:

Here’s some good stuff I found around the blogosphere this week:

At Green And Crunchy, they are hibernating and making some amazing food.  Their pictures look like something from a food magazine.  I was inspired by their creations, and today I made bean burgers from scratch (with beans I cooked in the sun oven) and buns to go with them.

The Thrifty Chicks have a wonderful article about children and thrift stores.  I grew up shopping at yard sales, and I remember looking forward to it all week.  We would get the newspaper, plan our route, and spend all of Saturday morning at yard sales.  When I was in high school, we took a family vacation to a big city several hours from our home.  It turned out to be very touristy, and everything was expensive.  So on a whim, my parents stopped at a Goodwill.  We discovered that the city had several great thrift stores, and spent the rest of our vacation happily hunting for bargains.  After that we would return every summer for our thrift store vacation.  We never did visit the tourist traps – the whole family had so much fun in the thrift stores that there was no need for anything else. 

In the Frugal Blog Network,

Tight Fisted Miser has a compilation of his best posts from 2008 – check them out if you missed them the first time.

Almost Frugal is saving for retirement with a budget that is already so tight it squeaks.  A few years ago, we were working to pay off debt and didn’t have an emergency fund.  We set up an online account and put $100/month into it.  The payments went in automatically, and after a few raids early in the process, we managed to stop dipping into it 2 years ago.  It’s tough to build savings when you’re paying off debt at the same time, but the psychological boost is considerable, and I wish Kelly and her family all the best.

Frugal Zeitgeist did a little shopping.  I would say $1.09 over-budget is pretty darn good.  Well done, FZ!

Frugal Duchess has the scoop on how to watch the inauguration for free, in the comfort of your own home.  As much as I’d love to be at such an historic event, I think I’ll enjoy it more on my couch.

Not Made Of Money has written about paying down the mortgage early.  This is our number one financial goal at the moment.  We cleared out the rest of our debt in 2007, and we’ve ramped up our mortgage repayment schedule.  Even if we end up moving, we do not want to be making mortgage payments for the next 20 or 30 years. 

I just finished making another diaper for our son, and the process is getting much easier and faster.  This evening it took me less than a hour from start to finish.  I used a fleece sweatshirt I found at a thrift store for the liner (I should be able to get three more diapers out of that shirt, so for $2.50 it was a good deal), and an old t-shirt with a cool design on it for the outside.  I only make pocket diapers these days, as I find that they dry much faster and I feel like they get cleaner, since the insert and the diaper get washed in two pieces.  I used to make inserts, but I found that I can just fold a prefold diaper into quarters and have an instant liner.  Several people gave us prefold diaper burp cloths when our son was born, and we’ve been using them as all-purpose baby rags.  But now they’ve become diaper inserts, and save me time when I’m making diapers.  I retired one of his smallest diapers this evening, and replaced it with the new one I just made.   The rest of his diapers should last a few more months – I altered them all at the end of the summer, and gave him lots of room to grow, so they’re still working for now.  I’m trying to make a diaper every few weeks so that I can stay on top of the process.  I don’t want to find one day that he’s outgrown everything all at once and have to spend a whole weekend making diapers.

Last week we bought a desk at the thrift store for $15, and I moved it into our guest room as a permanent home for my sewing machine.  The sewing machine is a portable model, and I had been dragging it around the house, using it at my office desk, the dining room table, and the kitchen countertop.  And I had been storing my material and supplies in boxes and bags in the corner of the guest room.  Now everything is neatly housed in the new desk, and it fits perfectly next to my office desk.  The guest room gets used for guests maybe 4 or 5 weeks out of the year.  The rest of the time it’s my office and scrapbook room, and now it’s my sewing room too.  I like making good use of that space – our house is small and we can’t have a room just sitting there waiting for guests to show up.

We had a great day today – the only time we left the house was to go the gym and to take the dog for walks.  No spending, and lots of accomplishing.  Those are the best sort of days.  I did get a chance to do some catching up on my blog reading.  Miss Thrifty hosted the Festival of Frugality, full of great frugal ideas to inspire and encourage you on your journey.  Check it out.

Kristen has a post about a documentary called A Delicate Balance.  I decided I wanted to see this, and as a Christmas present to myself, I shelled out the five bucks and my husband and I watched it together after we put our son to bed on Christmas night.  It is a powerful movie – our motivation to be vegan is stronger than ever now.

In the Frugal Blog Network, Tight Fisted Miser details how he’ll be cutting expenses in 2009.  I love his plan to hike the Appalachain trail (for only $200/month) for a few months.

Kelly at Almost Frugal is on vacation this week, but is reposting some of her greatest hits.  I enjoyed her post about the problems with reselling cloth diapers.   For the people at ebay – what are you thinking?  We got some cloth diapers on Craigs list before our son was born ($3 each) and made the rest from recycled fabric.  We also got three as a gift from Kelly (thank you!)  I’m planning to hold onto mine in case we decide to have another baby someday.  After that, maybe one of my siblings will be ready to have kids, and I’ll be able to pass them on.

Not Made Of Money has some good ideas for a frugal New Year’s Eve party.  I’m just thrilled to have another short work week.

Frugal Zeitgeist has an article about turning 40 and her goals for 2009.  Lots of good stuff here, and I like seeing the high numbers on her savings goals.  That’s what happens when you pay off the mortgage – there’s lots of extra money for savings.

The Frugal Duchess writes about how a good number of us aren’t particularly savvy when it comes to finances (or basic math from the looks of it).

I hope you all had a good week.  Enjoy the last few days of 2008!

We spent today painting our house.  It’s starting to really come together and look nice.  We’re doing the same colors that were already there, but the new paint looks all shiny and fresh.  The sides that are finished look fantastic – the trim really makes it look great.  We should be able to finish it next weekend.

While we were working on the house, I cooked a big pot of brown rice in our solar oven.  It’s in the fridge now, ready for beans or stir fry this week.  We should have enough for about three meals, and it got cooked for free in the sun.  No heating up the house, no electricity used – love it.

Yesterday we turned down our hot water heater.  Don’t know why we’ve never done that before… We’ve lived in this house more than five years, and never checked the setting on the hot water heater.  My husband crawled under the house to check it, and it was nearly at the highest setting (it has “hot”, A, B, C, “very hot” and ours was set at “C”).  So he turned it down to the lowest setting – “hot” – and it’s been just fine.  I wonder how much energy that’s been wasting for the last five years?   But at least it’s fixed now.

In addition to the rice, yesterday I cooked a pan of oatmeal raisin bars in the solar oven.  I used a regular recipe and baked them for about 40 minutes at about 300 degrees.  Turned out fantastic – I am very sold on the solar oven.  I haven’t tried any yeast breads yet, but one of these days I will.