Three Things and a Request

• How did the peanut butter cookie dough fare in the crock pot, you ask?  Eh.  It was fine.  I was never that big of a peanut butter cookie fan until I began making them for myself as an adult, and last night's final product reminded me of any mediocre peanut butter cookie you can get from a deli or grocery store.  Cookie snob that I am, in the future I'll be channeling Lord Capulet and keeping these ill-matched parties separate.  

• It's well-established that I'm just the tiniest bit frugal and that I'm on a lifelong quest to eliminate excess waste from our household, which makes this a beautiful, beautiful thing in my starry eyes:

I've been cutting open our lotion bottles to get all the extra lotion out for many moons, but it didn't occur to me to do the same to my facial moisturizer until a few months ago, and behold!  I discovered an extra 3-4 weeks' worth of lotion in there, coating the inside of the bottle, hiding from the pump, hoping to remain undiscovered.  Of course, you have to keep the bottle you're slowing disemboweling in a container of some sort- I use tupperware- to keep the lotion from drying out, but I was inordinately excited by this whole thing.  For some reason, Derek didn't share my level of enthusiasm over this.  He's a strange man sometimes.

• Something neat that is commented on every time I take this crock pot somewhere:

That little rubber band-thingy came with this, the biggest of my crock pots, and it is so simple but so genius:  It does a marvelous job of keeping the lid on when I'm transporting food from the house to the car to another house, and never slips off.  I assume you could do much the same thing with a regular rubber band of some sort, although the handles on this one have notches on their undersides for the band to slip into.  Who on earth comes up with these things?  Not the likes of me.  

For the curious, that's not the C-grade cookie dough in there but tonight's supper, which has the benefit of being easy, and delicious, and doesn't require the use of our angry oven.  Like all true chefs (lolololol), I began supper prep at 7:30 this morning when I threw a roast in the crock pot and then dumped the contents of this package on top.

Lid on, switch on low, and that's it.  I'll shred the beef and discard the fat about twenty minutes before we eat tonight, but other than that, it's as far as I'll come to slaving over a hot stove today.  Served on warmed tortillas with some cheddar and salsa and sour cream?  Delicious.  I'll throw the leftovers on a bed of spinach for the lunch the next few days, show my anemia who's boss.

I have exactly six more great crock pot recipes, and then I'm tapped out, which doesn't exactly work with our oven being out of commission for the foreseeable future.  As such, I'm asking for your help:  Do you have any tried and true crock pot recipes?  Would you share them, or are they state secrets?  Please?

Three Costumes, One Halloween

It's that time again, friends: That magical holiday that, more than any other, brings out my desire to be proclaimed the Cheapest of Them All.

Yes.  It's Halloween.


For whatever reason, last night was our little town's night to Trick or Treat (also known as "Beggar's Night" 'round these parts- I do not remember this label from my childhood.  Is this an Iowa thing?  An upper midwest thing?  A thing they don't do only in southern Kansas?  What say you?), which actually worked out rather well, as tonight- Halloween night- is supposed to be cold and windy and really rather miserable for walking around with small whiney-ish children.

That means it's time for- duh, duh-duh DAAAAH!- our Annual Cheap Halloween Costume Round-Up!

Adelaide's costume took me zero time to execute, as we already owned all its incipient components.

Child:  Adelaide

Costume:  Vikings Fan

Materials:  One of Derek's old Vikings jerseys, one of Derek's old Vikings stocking caps, and stickers meant to look like those black marks football players put under their eyes.  I obviously don't know what they're actually called, but we already owned those, too; they were the souvenirs we picked up for the kids on our recent trip to Minnesota.

Pros:  Easy.  Fast.  Made from materials we already had in the house.  Warm.

Cons:  None that I could see.

Total cost:  $0

Caedmon decided to be Batman (exactly zero people keeled over in shock when they learned this).  For the record, I offered to finagle some sort of Batman- costume out of clothing he already had, but he was adamant:  He wanted to wear the hole-y, worn, nearly too small Batman jammies he got a year ago for his birthday.  We compromised (read:  I cruelly imposed my will upon our poor, abused son) and he wore regular pants with the pajama top, as I didn't believe his four-year-old bum needed to be exposed to the October evening air via the aforementioned holes.  After I had broken his spirit, however, it was relatively easy to force him to wear another shirt under the Batman top for warmth.

  

Child:  Caedmon

Costume:  Batman

Materials:  Batman Pajama top, t-shirt cape I made last summer, Batman mask-glasses-thing borrowed from a friend (thanks, Shayla!), Batarang that I think was a kid's meal toy or something, toy sword we already owned which he insisted on carrying despite Atticus's stance that a sword is not, in fact, part of Batman's arsenal, random belt he pulled from my drawer for holding that sword.

Pros:  Easy, fast, warm, Caedmon was pleased with it, we already owned all the pieces except the one that was kindly loaned to us, plus Cade can make just about anything cute.

Cons:  It looked like a costume that had been thrown together from disparate elements, probably because that's exactly what it was.

Total cost:  $0.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was afraid Atticus's costume was going to turn into Robin Hood in Drag, and never was this fear so real than yesterday when dressing him in all the random items of clothing I'd dug out of my scrap fabric bin, hoping enough green and brown layers would magically turn him into a robs-from-the-rich, gives-to-the-poor woodsman.  Mercifully, by the time I'd added all the little accessories, it ended up working rather well, although there was a bad moment when Atticus was freaking out a little about wearing his sister's leggings; he had no pants that I deemed worthy of the rest of the costume, but it turns out six-year-old boys care very little about whether or not their pants "go" with the effect their mother is trying to achieve.  I did some very fast talking about how Robin Hood lived in the woods and needed lots of layers of clothing to keep warm and all these (um, women's) clothes were exactly the type of thing Robin Hood surely wore.  He, thankfully, believed this claptrap.

Child:  Atticus

Costume:  Robin Hood

Materials:  Green Goodwill sweater I bought years ago for some long-abandoned craft, black leggings of Adelaide's, brown cardigan that was once mine, but which the, uh, washer shrank (yes, that's why it's too small now... the washer did it), but I couldn't bear to get rid of because I still loved the fabric; for the costume I cut the sleeves off to make a vest, then took the sleeves and pulled them on over Atticus's feet to partially cover his tennis shoes and further the scrappy-woodsy look, tan cord randomly wrapped around sleeve-leg warmer-things, left over from another long ago craft project, braided belt of mine I bought at a garage sale for $0.50 a couple summers ago, paper towel tube for quiver to hold (broken) arrows, leftover felt rubber banded on the bottom, twine threaded through to wrap around Robin, hat sewn by me via this helpful tutorial, although I had to use more felt than it called for, as our children have large adult-sized heads, feather in hat hurriedly cut by me out of paper ten minutes before we left and pinned to hat, bow and arrows a past birthday present, broken sword also a past gift.  Whew.

Pros:  Cute as a button.  Already owned everything but two of the three pieces of felt needed for hat.  Warm.

Cons:  Took me around 30 minutes to make the hat, then another ten whole minutes to put the outfit together, five minutes more than the other two children's costumes.

Total cost:  $0.54 for the two pieces of felt.

Candy was gathered.  Cute children were observed.  Trick or treating done in one hour, both boys asleep within another thirty minutes, Adelaide off to bed after stern warnings to both parents not to eat her M&M's.

I'm going to declare this a successful Halloween Most Frugal, so I can get on with the important business of stealing our children's candy.  

Home again, home again

Waste Not: Laundry

My bible study is currently embracing that one book I've told you about two or three hundred times (7 by Jen Hatmaker, which is about creating margin and the concept of the biblical fast but is somehow simultaneously hilarious), which means that each week, following along with Jen, we find a way to create a personal fast around that chapter's topic.  The first week I only ate 7 foods.  It was hell.  The second week I only wore 7 clothes.  It felt embarrassingly easy, given how hard the Foods week was, although I was cold a lot.  The third week I abstained from social media (although I did have a couple scheduled blog posts), which was harder than I thought it would be- I learned some hard lessons that week.  So now, here we are, Week 4: Waste.  Reducing waste in your life, understanding that taking care of God's creation isn't just for hippies, etc, etc.

The thing is?  I'm already good at this.  I'm struggling to figure out what I'm supposed to learn from this week.  I know, I know there are further ways to reduce waste within our family, but I'm having trouble identifying them.

This is not because I'm just so, so awesome.  We are a frugal family who lives on a budget, and that more or less forces you to eliminate as much waste from your life as possible.  It's not hard for me to pare down on wasted trips to the store when our van gets 16 miles per gallon.  It's easy to tell our kids to put another layer of clothing on instead of turning up the thermostat, because heating costs are expensive, especially in a winter like the one we just survived.

I've been thinking about writing a series of posts on this, the topic of waste, for quite some time now; what you'll find below is actually a draft of a post I wrote back in December (I think I entitled the series Frugal in '14, which I still can't decide if I want to find that embarrassing or clever).  I got three posts done in the series, reviewed them, decided that THIS ALL SUCKS, EVERYTHING I WRITE IS PURE CRAP, which I do a whole lot of the time but post it anyway, but for some reason for this I decided to shelve the series.  Anyway, given the discussions my friends and I have been having on reducing waste, I thought I'd go ahead and post the drafts, crap or not, plus write fresh posts, finishing out the series.

HERE'S WHERE YOU COME IN.  I'm seriously having trouble figuring out how to reduce waste in our household.  I know there are things we're not doing, but I can't seem to identify them.  So if you know of some trick corresponding to that day's topic, could you please, please, please, let me in on your secrets?  Please?





[Frugal in '14, Draft]

Ah, laundry.

I have three small children.  I do lots of laundry, which often includes re-washing the same load because there were M&M's/rabbit poop/ladybugs/crayons in their pockets.  (I check their pockets, okay?  I do.  But at some point children's clothing designers decided it would be a fantastic idea to put right around ten million pockets on little boys' pants, probably because they hate me.  I sometimes miss a pocket or two.  Obviously.)

I don't even know how people who live on a ranch/farm/anywhere near sand do it.  I'm pretty sure I'd give up the laundry ghost.  

But because so much of my life is spent doing laundry right now, I have spent considerable time considering all the ways to save money doing so.  Here's the list:

• Only wash full loads of laundry.  It's the most efficient, which is code for 'saves money.'  P.S.  I'm a little jealous if you only have enough laundry to do a partial load.  And by "a little jealous" I mean "trying not to hate you."

• We regularly receive a little pamphlet from our energy provider (which I'll go on and on about ad nauseum tomorrow- who's excited?!); one month it told me that the average dryer cycle costs around $0.50 to run.  This, of course, was all the incentive I needed to air dry as much of our laundry as I can.  4 loads of laundry this morning currently drying on the drying racks = $2 in my pocket.  $0.50/load may not seem like much until you look at how much laundry you do every week and multiply it times 52 weeks per year.  In the winter, this obviously takes longer because I'm drying everything inside on the drying racks, but when it gets anywhere above 50 degrees F, I put those racks on the back deck to dry in the sun.  It's amazing how fast a load will dry in the middle of summer.  I'd love to have a clothes line in the backyard, or possibly one of these beauties one day:

It's an indoor clothes line!  I found it at zorotools.com.

• If you're dead set on drying your clothes in the dryer (my family has threatened to revolt the times I didn't dry their towels in the dryer; something about "cardboard" and "sandpaper."  My insistence of "feels like money saved!" fell on deaf ears), make sure you're drying a full load as often as possible; it's the most efficient.  You're also supposed to try and dry one load after another, capitalizing on the fact that the dryer's already hot, so it doesn't have to waste energy reheating every time you put a new load in there.

• Make your own laundry detergent.  This is the one where people usually start to say things like, "Funny, you don't look like a hippie," and "Oh, so you're one of those people."  It's true.  I make my own laundry detergent.  And I am not ashamed.  It's easy, relatively quick (takes me about half an hour to make a batch that lasts around six months), and is ridiculously inexpensive.  I use the Duggars' recipe (you know, the Duggars?  Live in Arkansas?  Have a million kids?  Or 19, anyway?  See, you do know who I'm talking about!), which I found in one of their books but you can also find on their website (which I've so helpfully provided via that linky-thing back there).  I find all three ingredients- Fels Naptha soap bar, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda, and Borax in the laundry soap aisle at Wal-Mart, all for around 7 or 8 bucks, and you're not going to need to buy new boxes of Washing Soda (NOT the same as Baking Soda, trust me on this one) and Borax for a long, long time.

• As for dryer sheets- I don't use them.  We have certain friends, ahem, who claim to have static cling problems (that was hilarious conversation, let me tell you), but as I hang-dry most of our clothes, this isn't a problem.  As for softness, I've found a little vinegar in place of fabric softener in the washing machine works just as well, and no, does not leave a smell.  I do know people who swear by those dryer balls; Derek's parents have some, I tried and liked them, but just haven't remembered to hunt them up at Wal-Mart yet.

Okay, Laundry Divas (ugh.  Do me a favor and please don't ever call me that.), how can I reduce or even eliminate waste in the laundering areas of my life?  What am I forgetting?