Frugal Babe

My husband is building a greenhouse.  Our hydroponic garden is doing so well that he was inspired to increase our growing capacity by making our outdoor garden a year-round venture.  We got a book called Solar Gardening from the library, and he used it as a guide for the small greenhouse he’s building over our [...]

A patron at our library gave me the idea to mix watermelon and tomatoes in a salad. Sounds odd, but tastes fantastic. I added a few other ingredients, and we loved how it turned out, so I thought I’d share. And if your garden has tomatoes, basil, and watermelon, this will be [...]

Our son is almost four months old.  He’s been in cloth diapers since he was three days old, and as I’ve mentioned before, it’s been much easier than I expected to use them.  One thing I had read about was how detergent can build up in diapers over time, creating a residue that makes them [...]

I’ve written before about how much I love sprouts.  They’re about as close to a perfect food as you can get, as far as nutrition goes, and most of them are pretty tasty as well.  I eat small amounts of sprouts on sandwiches and salads, but by far the majority of the sprouts we grow [...]

My husband has been working every evening for the last couple weeks, getting the hydroponic garden up and running.  The goal is to automate as much as we can, so that the upkeep going forward is minimal.  Tonight he plumbed in a water line coming from our under-sink water filter, going into the crawl space.  [...]

I’ve always struggled with tossing stuff and getting rid of things.  If I spent money on it, I somehow feel like I have to keep it, even if I’m not using it anymore.  I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but it’s something I’ve been working on, and lately I’ve been making a lot of [...]

I’ve been environmentally conscious for years.  But ever since my husband and I started talking about having a baby (and especially since I got pregnant last year), I’ve been more and more concerned with avoiding toxins and chemical crud.  If money were no object, I’d love to build a super-green house with no chemicals in [...]

It’a Thrift Green Thursday time at Green Baby Guide.  They want to know what we’ve done to be thrifty and green, and I figure that fits my life just about perfectly.  So what have we done?  It’s been an evolving process for us over the years.  I was raised to be very thrifty, and pretty [...]

We’ve almost checked everything off our financial goals list for the year. Not bad, since we still have almost five months to go. We’ve maxxed out the HSA, and my husband’s IRA is on an automatic deposit schedule that will reach $5000 by December. We’ve paid off $5000 in our HELOC, which [...]

The All Things Eco Carnival is up at Focus Organic.  Here’s a great post about making shipping mailers out of old paper bags.  Green and very frugal!  I can’t remember the last time I bought a padded mailer.  Whenever we get something in the mail in one of those things (the ones with all the [...]