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.

I just spent the last hour playing with my new sewing machine.  I made a new diaper, using yellow fleece that I bought at Hobby Lobby for the liner, layers of old towel for the soaker inside, and super cute rubber ducky pajamas that I found at a thrift store as the outer layer.  The stitching isn’t the most even, but I did manage to get it all together, get elastic in the legs, velcro on the front and tabs, and end up with something that looks pretty much like a diaper.  Very stoked about this, as it’s my first solo attempt at sewing anything.  Considering I had to sit down with the instruction book and figure out how to thread the machine before I started, I’m feeling pretty good about having a finished product.  I also sewed wing extensions on another diaper that our baby had already outgrown.  Feeling good, but very tired.  We spent the whole day today painting our house (more details about that project tomorrow), but I couldn’t resist trying out my new sewing machine this evening.

Here’s a picture of the finished diaper:

I bought a sewing machine today.  Now I can make things without having to wait until we’re visiting my parents.  We’re in the middle of painting our house (I took a break from it this evening to go pick up the sewing machine), so I have to wait until that’s done before I get into a sewing project, but I’m excited to figure out my new machine.  I’ve started altering the diapers we made earlier this spring, because my 12 pound baby is outgrowing the diapers that fit him when he was born.  I’m adding wings on the back to make the part that wraps around his waist longer.  Then I’m moving the velcro tabs out to the ends of the wings.  This makes the diapers much more adjustable, and they’ll grow with him for a while, but doing the sewing by hand was taking me more than an hour per diaper.  I did a few at my parents’ house last weekend on the sewing machine, and it was about 15 minutes per diaper.  So I went looking for a used sewing machine.  I found one on Craigslist – it’s portable and can be stashed in a closet, which is a plus, since I don’t have much extra room in my house.  It was $45, and I think it is going to turn out to be money well spent.  I’ll be able to make more diapers for our little guy as he gets bigger, and now when we visit my parents I won’t have to spend the whole time sitting in front of the sewing machine.  And, I’ll be able to do machine sewing on my scrapbook pages!  I love sewing on my pages, but I’ve always done it by hand, which takes forever.  So that’s a good bonus.

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

Millionaire Mommy is quite the photographer!  Check out these beautiful pictures she’s taken.

Brip Blap has a good article about how America grew fat and unhappy.  More is not necessarily better, and less is often more.  We don’t need nearly as much as we think we do, and most of us can live very happily on not much money – we just have to figure out what truly makes us happy (chances are it’s free), rather than frantically searching for the latest and greatest in an effort to feel happy.

Moolanomy is doing the 100 push up challenge.  I found the challenge a few days ago, and did my initial test today.  I was able to do 20, which is a lot less than I was able to do a year ago – I suppose 9 months of being pregnant takes a toll on push up ability…  But even at my strongest, I’ve never come anywhere close to 100  pushups, so I’m excited about this challenge.  Week 1, Day 1 starts on Monday…

Banker Girl has an interesting article about splitting parenting duties.  My husband and I both work at home for now, although I’ll be going back to the library on a very part time basis in the fall (about 12 -16 hours/week).  So for now, we’re both home all day and we’ve got a pretty good routine figured out.  I get up with our son at night.  My husband has offered to get up to change diapers, but if I have to wake up anyway to feed him, what’s the point in both of us getting up?  I might as well change the diaper, since I’m awake anyway.  I wake up 2 or 3 times in the night to feed and change our little guy, which is pretty easy since he sleeps in our bed and I’m breastfeeding, so I fall back asleep about two minutes after he starts feeding.  Then in the morning, my husband takes our son downstairs and hangs out with him – and makes our breakfast – while I get a little more sleep.  During the day, I mostly keep our son with me in his sling and do whatever work needs to be done on the computer, while my husband talks on the phone with clients (this can’t really be done with our son around, since you never know when he’s going to make noise).  We each feel like the other one works harder, so I’d say that’s a good sign.  I do the laundry, he mows the yard, we each do dishes, sweep, cook, etc.  It works for us.

And I loved this post from Plonkee Money about how credit cards are like alcohol.  Yes!  I agree completely.  We put everything on our credit card and pay the bill every month.  Love the convenience, love not having to go to the ATM for cash, love having all our spending tracked in one place for us every month.  While I know that credit cards can cause a world of trouble if they’re not used responsibly, they are a huge convenience for people who are able to spend wisely and pay the balance in full every month.

Enjoy the rest of the first weekend of summer!

My parents go thrift store shopping every Monday.  It’s mostly a hobby for them; they enjoy the scavenger hunt that ensues in a thrift store.  And Savers stores – in our state anyway – have 99 cent sales every Monday.  Items with particular color tags are 99 cents on Monday.  So the goal is to see what they can find with that color tag.  My father likes to work on old clocks, and has found several treasures (his most recent is an old-fashioned alarm clock made of mahogany and brass).  My mother likes pretty china, and has found several complete sets of Pfaltzgraff and Lenox that retail for hundreds of dollars.  Yesterday they got a walnut table and matching china cabinet for 99 cents each.  They found my sister a couch for 99 cents a few months ago.  I think they’ve furnished half a house for about $20 over the last six months or so.  They’re remodeling two houses at the moment, so they have a place to store all the stuff they find, and they’ll have plenty of furniture for the houses once they’re remodeled.

One of the clocks my father found is a beautiful pendulum clock, but it was missing its pendulum.  Ever resourceful, he bought it anyway and made a pendulum for it.  He used a piece of metal out of the back of an old computer as the part that hangs down, and then used a flat jar lid (the kind that fits into a canning jar style ring) as the bob on the pendulum.  It looks fantastic, and when we complimented him on how good it looked, he gave it to us!!  He was planning to use some gold paint on the jar lid, but I told him I like it the way it is.  It has a “use by” date stamped on it, so if you look closely you can tell that it’s a lid – I love it!!  You can’t cover up that sort of creativity.  So now we have a beautiful clock in our living room, thanks to my parents’ thrift store outings and my dad’s creativity.

I’m not sure if all the Savers stores around the country have the 99 cent Mondays – all the ones in our state do.  If you live near a Savers, check it out and see what you can find for a buck.

Yesterday I put the baby in his sling and we walked over to Hobby Lobby. I was on a mission to find a scrapbook to use as a baby book for him, and I wanted to get a couple of 8.5 x 11 scrapbooks that are going to become Christmas presents. When better to buy them them than when HL is having a 50% off sale?! I ended up finding a perfect album for my son. It’s green (I like that it’s not blue!), and in a three-ring binder style, which I’ve never tried before, but I think I’ll like. It came with 20 pages, but I bought enough additional page protectors to have a 60 page book… I’m a little obsessed with baby photography right now! I also found two perfect albums to use for the gift scrapbooks I’m going to be making this year. My total bill came to $30.26 which is $2 less than I had spent on just the one scrapbook the week before. And that one only had 40 pages. So glad I returned the first one, and what great timing that Hobby Lobby was having a sale just when I happened to be looking for scrapbooks!

I had a good money day today.  I went to a maternity clothing consignment store and sold three items that never fit right while I was pregnant.  I got them for a total of $7 in thrift stores, and the store I took them to gave me $15 for the three.  Sweet!  I have a pretty good collection of maternity clothes that I found at various thrift stores over the last year or so.  I put them in a storage bin and stashed them in our crawl space for now.  I have no idea if we’ll ever have another baby, but I’m not going to get rid of all my maternity clothes just yet.  In a couple, years if we’re still happy with just one child, I’ll get rid of them.  But for now, I might as well keep them.

Last weekend, a friend was in town and we went to a huge scrapbook store near my house.  It’s a crazy place, and I never go there unless friends or family are in town and want to go.  Well, last weekend while my friend was shopping, I started browsing the scrapbooks.  I needed a book for my son’s baby album, and I found a really nice one, for $30.  At the time, I knew it was expensive, but for some reason I bought it anyway.  Very unlike me, but that’s how it was.  I guess I knew it wasn’t a good idea because it sat on the counter in the bag with the receipt all week.  So tonight I took it back.  I had decided that I could get a less expensive one at Hobby Lobby, and use their 25% off coupon that’s always on their website.  Well, after I took back the expensive scrapbook, I went on the Hobby Lobby website to print the coupon, and guess what?  All of their scrapbooks are 50% off this week!  So tomorrow I will be walking over to Hobby Lobby to get a scrapbook, which will probably cost less than $15.

And to finish off my money hat trick for the day – my husband and I went on a date with our baby tonight.  For $8.  It started with my husband driving to the gym while the baby, dog, and I walked to the gym.  The walk took a little over an hour, so it gave my husband time to get in a good workout before we met him there.  And it was a good walk for me and the dog, and the baby got in a nap in his sling.  From the gym, we drove to a nearby restaurant where we had a coupon for a buy one get one free meal.  With two free glasses of water, our bill came to $8.

So that makes a good money day.  $15 for the clothes, $30 back on my credit card for the scrapbook – (another one will cost me half that much), and a nice Friday evening for $8.  Lots of little things that add up to a good frugal day.

Last Sunday, I had to work a 4 hour shift at the library, but I was off by 5pm.  I rode my bike the one mile to our house, and was loving what a beautiful afternoon it was.  We ate dinner on our front porch, and then decided to go for a bike ride together.

Normally, my husband and I spend most of our free time in the summer mountain biking.  We have to drive at least 30 minutes to get to the nearest good mountain bike trails, and some of the ones we like are nearly an hour away (we don’t go to those very often though).  We like really challenging trails – the steeper and rockier, the better.  But when my husband hurt his kneein May on his unicycle, it put a bit of a damper on our mountain bike season.  His knee is pretty much back to normal now, but he’s been actively rehabilitating it for 3 months.  He can walk and bike just fine, but he’s still a little nervous about needing to come off the bike or unicycle in a hurry and put that foot down on uneven terrain.  He’s afraid that he could undo all the work he’s done to get the knee healed. 

So all summer long, we’ve been going for bike rides on the urban trails near our house.  We’ve both been missing the mountain biking, but we’ve gotten to the point where we really enjoy our trail biking.  At first we were just doing it as a rehabilitation for his knee, and for something to do.  But then I started thinking about how much easier it is to actually go for the rides around here.  We just get on our bikes and ride from our garage to the trail.  There’s no loading bikes on the car, no extra hour spent in the car getting to and from the trail, no gas to buy.  And the trails really are beautiful.  They go past lakes and open spaces with lots of wildlife.  We’ve seen some beautiful sunsets, since we always go in the evening.  On Sunday, we took a detour through some beautiful neighborhoods that we had never seen before, and found a section of trail that went for miles and miles – we didn’t even know it existed, and we’ve lived here for 5 years!

We’re both still looking forward to the day when he can ride in the mountains again, but for now, we’ve found a new form of entertainment that’s free, fun, and good for us.  Since we spent the whole evening on Sunday riding our bikes, there was no time to spend any money – so it’s a perfect budget-friendly activity.

I just got back from taking my card samplesto the store I found on Sunday… now I have to wait a week for them to look over my stuff and get back to me about whether they want to carry my cards in their store.  I decided to hold off on the other two stores for now, until I get some feedback from the first store.  The three stores I checked out on the weekend are all on the same pedestrian mall, within 10 blocks of each other.  The store I left samples with today was the only one that was able to give me concrete info last weekend – the others just gave me a name of a person to talk to, but in two attempts now I have not been able to get ahold of either person.  The first store said that they prefer that their artists don’t have stuff in all the other stores along the mall, although it’s not necessarily a deal breaker.  But if they’ll sell my cards, I won’t pursue any other stores on that mall, and might even go to another town to check out other stores.  We’ll see.

Another little venture that I tried today… We have friends who own a consignment store on the same pedestrian mall with the art store.  I’ve never consigned any clothes there, but we were in there last weekend and it got me thinking.  We live very close to an out-of-the-way thrift store that sells all of their clothes for $2.  Doesn’t matter whether it’s a Wal-Mart t-shirt or a pair of Armani pants – everything’s $2.  So yesterday I went in and bought several things – all upscale stuff with good brand names.  Today, I took it all to the consignment store, along with a bunch of stuff that I weeded out of our closets.  But alas, I forgot about the seasons that clothing retailers work with.  Turns out a bunch of what I had was winter stuff, which they don’t start taking until September.  And a bunch of it was summer stuff, which they have stopped taking until next spring (strappy tank tops and the like).  Aaaagh! 

They took 3 pairs of jeans and a pair of boots, and told me to come back in a month with all the winter stuff (and in about 7 months with the summer stuff….)  So, lesson learned.  But I’m excited about it anyway.  We still have more stuff in our closets that we canconsign (in the past we’ve always just given it back to the thrift stores as a donation, which we can still do with the stuff that’s not high-end enough for the consignment store).  I go to the $2 thrift store about once a month, so I’m sure I’ll find other good stuff.  There have been lots of times that I’ve seen great stuff in there that isn’t my size – now I can just get it anyway and consign it.  I just have to remember my seasons!

For the last few years, I’ve been making greeting cards for our family and friends.  I’ve also made sets of photo greeting cards and given them as Christmas presents, with 10 cards and envelopes tied in a bunch with pretty string.  Time and again recipients have told me that I should sell my cards, but I’d never given it much thought.  Recently however, I started thinking more seriously about it.  I love making cards, and if I could earn us a little extra money by making more of them, it would help us meet our financial goals faster. 

Yesterday, we went to a nearby pedestrian mall, and I inquired at three crafty/arty stores about how the whole process would work.  I still have to contact the people who handle cards at each store, and submit samples, but I’m optimistic after my initial meetings.  It looks like in general the artist gets about 50% of the sale, and handmade cards sell for between $2 and $7, depending on the complexity.  I have a pretty wide range of cards, and I would probably sell the photo cards for about $2.50 ($1.25 for me), and my more ornate, stitched cards for about $4 or $5 each.  The photo cards are very quick to make, once I take a good picture.  The hand stitched cards take a lot longer to make, so I wouldn’t make as much money on a per hour basis with those.  But if I were able to have about half photo cards and half stitched/papercraft cards, I could probably end up with about $20/hour for my time. 

This is of course assuming that the people in charge like my cards, and that customers buy them.  I looked at the cards on display in the stores yesterday, and my designs are very different – I didn’t see anything that looks like what I do.  I really like my cards, and hopefully other people will too.  The nice thing about this particular pedestrian mall is that it’s in a high-income town and there are lots of tourists, pretty much all year round.  And it seems that they are all spending money, judging from the shopping bags we always see people carrying and the prices of the stuff in the stores.

I’m going to work on this project this week.  I have to take samples to one store, and contact managers at the other two stores to see what they’d like me to do.  I’ll let you know how it goes after I get through the “interview” process.