It’s been a good weekend around here so far.  We got a Christmas tree last night, for the first time since 2003.  Our son is fascinated by the lights on houses and trees when we go for walks, and we decided a tree would be fun.  We got a Charlie Brown sort of tree that was cut from forest land to prevent overgrowth, and my husband set it up in our living room this morning.  We spent $18 on our tree, and that will be all we’ll spend as far as decor goes.  We have a box of decorations in our crawl space that we’ll drag out tonight, and a stocking for our son that my MIL sent us.

I also got our Christmas cards, and I’m thrilled with how they turned out.  We’ve been doing photo cards for several years now, and I’ve usually used Snapfish along with a couple other places that I can’t recall.  I know that I’ve had to order sets of 20 cards, and I send out about 50, which means we have 10 cards left over each year.  I think I’ve usually spent around $30 for our cards in the past.  This year, I used Costco, and I don’t think I’ll ever get pictures printed anywhere else.  If you have a Costco membership, their photo processing center is amazingly inexpensive.  39 cents for 5×7 pics, $1.49 for 8x10s and 13 cents for 4×6 prints (I’ve found similar deals on the 4×6 pics, but I get a lot of enlargements, and I haven’t found anything cheaper than Costco for bigger prints).  Anyway, they also do photo cards.  They print cards that are 6 inches by 7.5 inches (still just one stamp to send), and the option we chose allowed us to put three pictures on the card.  We put a large picture of the three of us, and then two smaller photos of our son.  I uploaded the pics to their website on Thursday night, created our card online, and then picked up the cards yesterday at our local Costco.  50 cards and the total price was $16.21 including tax.  Feeling very happy about that.

I’ve been working on a scrapbook for my MIL, and I finished it last night.  Lots of hours of work involved, but the only money I spent was on the book itself (which I bought half price last summer at Hobby Lobby when they were having a sale) and on the photos I printed.  My MIL gives me scrapbook supplies as gifts, and I tend to use simple embellishements (lots of paper, embroidery floss, pens, etc.) that are inexpensive.  So while it turned out fantastic and I know she will love her gift, it didn’t cost me much at all.  Overall, I’d say we’re on track for spending less than $200 on Christmas, including cards, gifts, postage, tree, and food for Christmas dinner (we’re having my family here, and will be feeding 9 people).  So that’s going well.

It’s Sunday, so that means it’s time for my weekly round up.  Here’s what’s been going on in the Frugal Blog Network this week:

Frugal Zeitgeist has an article about why she hates shopping for suits.  I used to wear suits to work every day, and I agree with her style (the stuff she found in the closeout store sounds horrible).  I wore black, dark brown and grey, and nothing trendy (if bows are in style this year, they won’t be next year).  I shopped at second hand stores and consignment shops though, and rarely spent more than $20 or $30 for my suits.

Not Made Of Money has an article with tips for inexpensive stocking stuffers.  Our son will have a stocking this year (courtesy of his grandmother) but we won’t worry much about putting stuff in it, since he’s only seven months old.  But if you have older kids, check out this article.

The Frugal Duchess has written about Swaptree, where you can get free books, music, movies, and games.  Sounds like a winner to me.

Tight Fisted Miser has an article about frugality as the new trend.  I agree that it’s a lot more common these days to see people starting to adopt the sort of habits that we frugal folk have had for years.  But I think Andy makes a good point when he says “My guess is that once the economy recovers the vast majority of these people will abandon their frugal ways and return to being regular consumers.”  But there will be a few who retain the frugal spirit, and it will stand them in good stead regardless of what the economy is doing.  It’s ironic that my husband and I were struggling mightily five years ago, when the economy was booming, and now we’re doing ok financially during a recession.  I think that the frugal habits we developed during our own hard times make it a lot easier for us to weather a recession.

Almost Frugal has a very insightful post about how becoming frugal is like quitting smoking.  Even for those of us who have never smoked, this article resonates – we’ve all encountered situations that are harder than we expect, and where the payoffs don’t happen overnight.  Good reading.

Have a great frugal week!

I’ve made two more diapers this week, and retired two that were getting a bit too snug.  This evening I made a diaper cover out of an old, wool sweater that had been felted.  It’s not the fanciest thing ever, but it will definitely get the job done.  I cut the cover out as one long piece, folded it over, sewed up the edges, and cut leg holes.  But then I decided that the leg holes needed some work.  With just holes, we were begging for leaks.  So I cut a cuff off the sweater, cut it in half, and sewed one half to each leg hole.  Instant "poop guards."  The whole thing took me about 30 minutes to make.  The sewing wouldn’t win any awards, but that’s ok.  I used the back of the sweater and one cuff tonight; tomorrow I’ll use the front and the other cuff to make another diaper cover.  I love little projects like this that don’t cost anything and provide tangible benefits for our family.  And recycling materials into new projects always makes me feel good.  Another benefit is that this whole diaper experience has been good practice on the sewing machine.  A year ago, my skills in that department were non-existent.  They’re still not particularly great, but I’m getting better. 

I also came up with a free sleep-sack solution for our son.  He just started sleeping in his own room a few weeks ago.  It’s going great, but his hands are always cold in the mornings.  It doesn’t seem to bother him, but it bothers me.  He wears footsie pajamas with a sleep sack over them, and the rest of him is toasty warm.  But his hands stick out, and I hadn’t figured out a way to cover them.  He’s too young for a blanket, and even if we could put one on him, I’m sure he’d just kick it off.  I tried mittens, but he just pulled them off and chewed on them.  I considered putting him to bed in his snowsuit, which has attached mittens, but he’s basically immobile in the snowsuit (picture the little kid on "A Christmas Story") and I decided that wouldn’t be very comfortable.  But then I came up with an idea that has been working great for the past couple nights.  I dug out a very old sweatshirt from the bottom of my closet.  After I got the baby into his PJs and his sleepsack, I put the sweatshirt on him with just his head sticking out.  The neck is way too big for him, so I safety pinned it closed off to the side.  His hands are inside the sweatshirt, and stay nice and warm.  I pinned the shirt to the sleepsack at the bottom, to keep it from riding up or getting in his face.  So far it’s working great.  I had planned to sew a sleep sack without arm holes, but I came up with the idea of using an adult sweatshirt and I love the simplicity of it.  And that sweatshirt was just taking up space in our closet – now it’s got a second wind.

Last Saturday, I spend the afternoon with one of my friends.  We went to lunch at a very tasty and inexpensive Mexican restaurant that we both love, and then she mentioned that she wanted to get a jump start on her Christmas shopping.  I’ve pretty much got all my holiday gift giving sorted out (without buying anything), but I’m always up for wandering around a store chatting with a girlfriend, so off we went.

We went to a shopping center that had a Ross, Marshalls, and Michaels all in a row.  My friend found four gifts, and I ended up with a packet of velcro from Michaels (so that I can make more diapers for my son) and a really cool woven cloth basket for $3 from Ross, which we’re using to corral our son’s toys in the living room (those wooden train cars I bought for him last week are not good if you step on them on a wood floor).

I used to love going to stores like Ross and Marshalls.  Great deals for sure, and I could always amuse myself in there, and end up with several new things.  This time, as I wandered around the kitchen section, I kept noticing that I didn’t need any of it.  New stainless steel measuring cups – nice, but I already have measuring cups.  They’re not a matching set, but they work just fine.  Pretty china bakeware – also nice, but the bakeware I have (again, not a matching set) works great.  It was the same in the clothing section.  I just pictured my very full closet, and didn’t even look at new stuff.  And housewares, a section that I used to love (pillows, towels, candles, rugs, etc), no longer holds any draw at all.  We have everything we need as far as possessions go.  Of course we do still buy things, but for the most part they’re wants, not needs.  I know we’ll need things for our son as he gets bigger, but my husband and I could get along for a good long while with just the stuff we already have.  That’s a very freeing realization.  It makes a trip around a store like Ross seem more like a sightseeing adventure rather than a shopping excursion.

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.

For the last four years, my husband and I have had memberships at our local rec center.  I get mine for free as a perk of working for the city, and we pay $350/year for my husband.  We love our gym, and the price can’t be beat (we checked out some other gyms before I got my job at the library, and were quoted about $600/year – each – at most of them.  We’ve gone pretty consistently 3 – 5 times per week for the last four years, although over the last few weeks we haven’t been as much.  I barely left the house for the first week after our baby was born, and then spent the next week just going for walks.  I’m feeling great now, and we’ve started going back to the gym, but we can’t go at the same time anymore, because one of us has to stay with the baby.  For the most part, I prefer outdoor exercise whenever the weather is nice.  I’d rather go for a run or a bike ride outside as opposed to using a treadmill or a stationary bike – I generally just use the gym for weightlifting and yoga.  I love my yoga classes, and I am so excited to be able to get back into my normal yoga routine after the modified pre-natal yoga I’ve been doing for the last several months.

I went back last week, and it was great.  The only thing I felt bad about was the extra use of the car.  I drove to yoga, and then came home to switch off with my husband – he went to the gym after I got home.  The gym is about 4 miles from our house, and I didn’t like the idea of an extra 8 miles of driving every Thursday night.  So tonight I rode my bike.  And it felt good.  Giving birth and needing stitches afterwards makes one a bit wary of bike seats, but I rode my bike to run errands a few days ago, and it felt pretty good.  So tonight I rode to the gym, went to my yoga class, and rode home.  I was on my cruiser bike with a big wide seat – it might be a bit longer before I feel like riding my mountain bike with it’s skinny, hard seat.

My car gets about 26 mpg in town.  So three trips to the gym is a gallon of gas.  If I bike to the gym twice a week, that means I save over 30 gallons of gas in a year.  I’ve been riding my bike to my job at the library for years, and I’m pretty consistent even when the weather is bad, so I should be able to do the same thing for the gym.  At $4/gallon, that’s $120 that we can put towards the principal on our HELOC instead of into our gas tank.  And of course it’s better for the environment and better for me – I love when exercise just happens as a result of the stuff you’re doing anyway.  Walking and biking to save gas is also a great way to coax your body back to its old self after having a baby!

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 outside, and I made oven fries and baked apples.  Then this morning I made pancakes for breakfast before our friends left.  Our total food bill for their visit was about $25 – quite a bit less than we would have spent if we had gone out to dinner/breakfast with them, even splitting the tab.

Now we’re about to start in on the floors again.  We moved everything except the bed out of our bedroom a couple days ago, so we’re all set to start putting down flooring in our room.  Hopefully by the end of the weekend we’ll have this project behind us, although it may take longer than that to get everything put back where it belongs.  I’m determined to keep the house as clutter-free as possible, which means we’re going to be making a trip to the thrift store with a car-load of donations before all the stuff goes back in our room and the baby’s room.  We have some stuff that I had been planning to sell on Craig’s List, but I think I’m just going to donate it instead, just to get it out of the house.  It will be nice to have lots of wide open spaces and clutter-free surfaces. 
Ok, the floors are calling, I can’t procrastinate any longer…

My parents live near a Habitat for Humanity home store (a thrift store that only carries remodeling and building supplies – quite the score if you happen to be working on a house). This morning they went to the store to see if they could find any cabinets that would work for our new kitchen. We’re leaving all of our existing cabinets in place, but needed to add cabinets in the area that is currently dining room and going to be annexed as kitchen. We had found a lazy susan corner cabinet at the Habitat for Humanity store near our house over the weekend, but we needed another corner cabinet, a regular cabinet to go along a straight wall, and a couple smaller cabinets to go at either end of the bar we’re building.

My mother called a while ago and said that they had found another corner cabinet, a double cabinet that will go in the straight section between the two corner units, and a narrow cabinet for the end of the bar. Total cost? $90. We priced similar cabinets at Home Depot and those three units would have been about $470.

Because we’re so accustomed to shopping at thrift stores and buying second-hand whenever possible, we’ve just continued that mentality into our kitchen remodel project, and it’s saved us a whole lotta money so far. We’ve bought a dishwasher, stove, sink, pot rack, pantry door, and four cabinet units used. We’ve spent $435 on all of those items together – less than the dishwasher alone would have cost if we had just headed to Home Depot with our shopping list.

And we’ve found all of these items in less than two weeks, and with just a few trips across town to buy things from people selling them on Craig’s List. It really hasn’t been inconvenient at all, and it’s been like a scavenger hunt – much more fun than just plunking down our credit card for $5000 worth of new appliances and cabinets.

If you’re considering a home improvement project, I would highly recommend shopping for used stuff first, and only paying retail for the stuff that you can’t find second-hand. It’s amazing what people will get rid of just because they want to upgrade to a newer model or a different color. And a home improvement project is much more fun if you’re not stressed out about how much it’s costing.

000-223 is an IBM certification designed to polish your skills learned through other Citrix or IBM tests. The SNRS 642-503 test is among the tests needed to be a Cisco certified security professional. MCDST 70-272 gives knowledge to handle users and troubleshooting desktop applications on a Microsoft Windows XP operating system. The 642-164 UCCX test is linked with the unified communications contact center express. JN0-521 is Juniper networks certified internet associate test.

Our kitchen remodel is off to a great start.  We spent all day yesterday gathering supplies, in true Frugal Babe fashion.  We bought a stove on Friday night that we found on Craig’s List for $175.  It was in a town about midway between my parents and us, so they met us at the lady’s house yesterday morning with their wagon so that we could haul it home.  We brought it home and moved it into its new spot, which seemed like more fun than leaving it in the garage for the next month.  We took the old one out to the curb and put an ad on Craig’s List saying that we had a free stove.  Someone came and took it today, so now we don’t have to haul it anywhere, which is a bonus.  And we have our new stove and dishwasher for a total of $275.

After we installed the stove, we stopped by our two local thrift stores to see if they had anything we needed.  We ended up with a beautiful wooden door for our kitchen pantry (currently a lovely plastic wood-looking material from the mid 80s) for $10.  We also got a corner cabinet with a lazy susan that almost exactly matches our current cabinets for $15 (I looked later at HD, and similar cabinets were $212).  The one we got needs a little bit of work, but it will end up being perfect in the corner of our current dining room that is being converted to kitchen.  And to round out the thrift store shopping, we found a pot rack for $15.  It’s still in the original box, and will be perfect hanging from the ceiling in our new, bigger kitchen.  Just those three things would have cost us about $400 new, and we spent a total of $40 on them.  So a very good start.

At Home Depot, we bought just about everything we need for the kitchen, as well as enough click-together laminate wood flooring to do all three bedrooms in our house, and new wooden doors and nice door handles to replace the fake-wood doors in our upstairs.  After the 10% discount that we got for opening a credit card at the store, our total bill came to $2086.  We have 12 months to pay it off with no interest.  We could have paid for the whole order without opening a credit card, but we wouldn’t have qualified for the $200 discount, which seems like a significant amount to us.

The counters ended up being much less expensive than we had originally budgeted, which is why we were able to afford the flooring and doors in addition to the kitchen stuff.  We had been looking at laminate counters that had to be custom ordered, but my mother mentioned that the counters are available straight off the store shelves if you’re willing to choose from just a few colors that they have in stock.  We found a color that we actually liked even better than the one we had settled on in the $15/sq foot options.  And it was about $6/sq foot.  Exact same brand name, but dramatically less expensive, and we love the color we chose. 

Today we bought a stainless steel kitchen sink that we found on Craig’s List.  We paid $30 for it.  The only thing we still need is a new microwave/range hood, which I see on Craig’s List all the time, so I’m sure we’ll find one we like.

All together, we’ve spent $2400 so far, and about $750 of that is for doors and flooring for our upstairs rooms.  So we’re still well under $2000 for the kitchen, and we have bought just about everything we need.  We’re so excited to see this project come together, and to know that we’re staying well within our financial means to do it.

Our house has a very small fenced back/side yard.  We have a white picket fence, less than four feet tall, so the view of the open space behind our house is not blocked at all and makes the whole area feel bigger.  But the fence is about nine feet from our house.  It goes along the south side of our house and then across the east (back) side to about the middle of the house.  The rest of the yard is not fenced.  When we moved in, there was a four-foot wide band of gravel around the house, with a narrow stip of grass between the gravel and the fence.  We shoveled all the gravel out and turned that area into a garden, which we’ve kept every year since.  So we have a garden that wraps around two sides of our house and is about four feet wide.  Then we have a strip of grass about five feet wide, and then the fence.  The narrow strip of grass isn’t much use to anyone, but it’s a high-maintenance grass, so we have to water it along with the garden.

We had thought about building a deck in the back yard, but the materials were going to be pretty expensive.  Then my husband came up with a fantastic idea.  While I was helping my friend last week, he spent his evenings renovating our backyard. 

First he transplanted the remains of the east facing garden over to the south side of the house, next to the current garden there.  Then he dug up all the sod and spent hours breaking up the clay soil behind our house.  He added in compost and worked until the entire section of our yard behind our house was flat and smooth and rich.  Then he planted a highly drought -resistant fescue grass seed all over the whole area.  It’s sprouting like crazy right now, and it’s going to look fantastic by next summer.  He spent $30 ($10 for seed, and $20 for extra rich sheep manure compost to use in addition to the compost that he makes himself).  Yesterday he spent another $25 on three ornamental grass plants – two of them will get to be 12 feet tall and he planted those just outside our fence between our house and our neighbors’ somewhat unkept deck.  The third grass is a much shorter variety, and he split it in two and planted it in the corners of the new yard, next to the house. 

So for $55 and several evenings of work, we’re going to have a great backyard.  Instead of having a narrow strip of garden and a narrow strip of useless high-maintenance grass, we’re going to have a short, wide garden on the south side and a fenced 20′ by 9′ area of low water grass where we can have a picnic table or just hang out.  We hadn’t priced all the materials for the deck yet, but I don’t think it was going to come in under $55. 

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.