Frugal Babe

My parents helped us build a set of shelves for our bedroom yesterday, and we spent part of today putting on the finishing touches.  We used high-grade birch plywood to make the shelves, which cost about $120 (as opposed to $1000 if we had used solid oak - the shelves are 6 feet by 8 feet [...]

My husband and I both currently work full-time (probably more than full-time if we were to actually keep track).  We don’t make a huge amount of money, but it’s plenty for us.  I know we could be earning a lot more money if that were our primary focus, but we decided a long time ago that [...]

Our shower got a bit of a make over yesterday.  It is lined with four inch white tiles, and the grout between the tiles had seen better days.  Most of it was still secure, although there were a few places where I noticed that it was coming loose.  And almost all of it was discolored; no [...]

I have a guest post up at Being Frugal today.  I wrote about all the money we’ve been spending lately to remodel our house, and how we’re getting back on the frugal wagon.  We still have to get some stuff this weekend (lights, rugs, window blinds…) but we’re just about finished spending money on the house, which [...]

Every year about this time, I start thinking about spring and flowers and gardens.  Normally that would mean a trip to the nursery to buy a wide range of annuals, and sometimes seedling vegetable plants.  But last year, we xeriscaped most of our yard with perennials, rocks, and mulch.  So we won’t be buying any [...]

We had friends staying with us last night, which was a nice break from all the home improvement we’ve been doing most nights lately.  We did manage to have the guest room all put back together in time for their visit, which was a plus.  The weather was really nice, so my husband grilled burgers [...]

We didn’t get our floors finished this weekend, but we did make a lot more progress on our house.  We’ve finished the hallway, which involved lots of funky angles and doorways.  Last night we finished putting the baseboard molding down in the guest room/office, so it is officially complete.  We had been using that room for [...]

When we bought our house five years ago, we assumed it would be a starter house, and that we’d need a bigger home when we were ready to add to our family. We browsed real estate fliers from time to time and wandered through the neighborhoods with bigger houses, but never seriously considered moving, [...]

This month we finished paying off the dermatologist and the computer we bought last summer.  Our corporation paid for the computer, so technically it wasn’t our debt, but since we own the corporation, any money it spends is money we don’t get paid.  So now that the computer is paid for, our paychecks will be [...]

We continued our remodeling projects this weekend. We’ve finished two of the bedroom floors - just the hallway and our bedroom left, although the hallway will take quite a while since it has so many doorways and angles to go around. The flooring process is much faster in a big square room - [...]