Lessons from Little Women: Sewing Basket

A few weeks ago I finished Little Women.  It is such a beautiful book.  I love the characters, I love that it's about the female relationships, and I love that it reminds me of my own sisters.  Besides loving all of the many wonderful qualities of the characters, I loved the romantic notion of each sister sitting down at the end of the day with their sewing.  I just found it absolutely lovely, so of course, what did I do?  I decided to sit down with my own sewing.

Except mine is only mending.  Nothing like creating your own clothes, linens, and generally every bit of cloth in your home from scratch.  No, mine was decidedly much easier.  In an effort to keep my clothes going through this year, I mended.

I mended a pair of pants that I tortuously abused while I was pregnant & swollen.

I mended a shirt I've had since the 7th grade, back when tie dye was cool.  In my defense, I still LOVE tie dye, but I do only wear this to bed or under sweaters.

But then, I looked at my sewing box.  So depressing.  My sewing box was nothing more that the box to my first cell phone.  A Cingular cell phone.  Old.  Old & not at all like the lovely sewing accoutrement the little women would have had.  I told myself to be happy with what I had.  I told myself to think of how the little women made due.

But the heart wants what it wants...

And my heart wanted this antique sewing basket and all its antique goodies purchased from Ebay.

Now I know, I realize the irony with mending my clothes, while purchasing a $30 sewing basket.  I know.  I just couldn't help myself.  Once I saw the flower on the top, the thread holders, the tomato pin cushion, and the honest to God wood spools of thread-- I was a goner.

I mean the thread!  70+ spools of BEAUTIFUL antique, silk thread on wood spools!  I. AM. IN. HEAVEN.

And how cute are these business cards/mending kits?!?

Or a needle threader...

Made in Western Germany!  So cool!

I don't know what the little women would say, but I'm pretty sure they would be happy with a sewing basket like this too.

Meatless Monday

We all know that eating less meat is healthier for us.  We hear it in relation to obesity, to cholesterol,  as well as to the environment and our wallets.  With the exception of my pregnancy (eh hem, Taco Bell cravings, eh hem) I've been a vegetarian for twelve years.  While my intention is definitely NOT to push being a vegetarian I just wanted to offer up some relatively inexpensive & healthful meat free dishes.  Whether you're looking to decrease your environmental impact, help your budget, or enter the season of lent, I figured now was the time to offer some meat free recipes. 

Meat Free Pasta Salad:

Ingredients:

• Pasta (I used Ronzoni, which you can get for $0.20 or less when combined with the dollar off coupons they frequently put in magazines and or a sale).
• Veggies--totally your call here, based on what you like.   I used green pepper, celery, and carrot, but you could add onion, olives, cucumber.  Anything really.
• Italian dressing--again, this could just be your favorite vinaigrette or simply oil & vinegar.  

Directions:

1. Cook pasta according to instructions, drain, and rinse with cold water. Set aside.
2. Chop & prep your veggies.  I used a slap & chop to save time...they're amazing stress relief too.  Just know that they will not work on veggies with skins (my pepper) and will make a holy mess of tomatoes.
3. Combine.

4.  Dress you pasta (or in my case dress & shake in my covered bowl).  I made two servings of pasta and poured a 1/2 c of dressing over the veggies.  If you are planning on making more than will be eaten in one serving you will either need to pour more dressing on initially or after it sits in the fridge, as the pasta will absorb the dressing.

It is totally your call here if you keep this meat free.  If you are looking to stretch your meat or use it as a "condiment"--a frugal philosophy, consider adding cooked chicken, canned tuna or salmon, cubbed salami, or any other meat.

If you are looking to keep this veg then you could add cheese or eat with a few crackers and peanut butter (my personal fav). 

And as always, make sure your sous chef has a large teething biscuit so you can both cook happily!

Beauty Thy Name Is Yogurt

Earlier in the week I experimented in making homemade yogurt.  It did NOT go well.  Not. At. All.  I was depressed I had wasted so much organic milk.  I was sad that my sheer determination alone did not make my yogurt thicken.  It was disheartening to say the least. 

After a few days recovery time, I figured I would give it one last shot before asking for a yogurt machine for my birthday.  I didn't take pictures of everything because I was too embarrassed of sharing my failure with the world for a second time, but here's what I did  (This is a take off of the instructions found here):

  1.  Plug your Crockpot in and set to low while you get everything together...just forget about it for now.

2.  Measure out your milk & put it on the stove top on medium heat.  I used 8 cups of milk this time, because I didn't want to have to make it again quickly if it was successful.  You can either make 4 cups or 8 cups at a time using this method.

3.  Heat your milk, stirring occasionally until it is thick and frothy and 190 degrees.  Here is where I think I made one of my mistakes the last time...having never used a candy thermometer before I hooked it on the side of the pot & assumed it was getting an accurate reading.  In actuality it was touching the bottom of the pan, MAJOR PROBLEM.  Make sure you are just taking the temp of the milk and DON'T touch the bottom of the pan, or, you will have a depressing yogurty mess on your hands.

4.  Once milk has reached 190 degrees, remove from heat & place in cold water in your sink.  Do not fill your sink too full, the pan will float & make you nervous (or it did me).  A few inches should do it.

5.  Measure JUST THE MILK TEMP, and once it is down to 100 degrees remove a cup of the warm milk and set it aside.  The rest of the milk can be poured in to your warm Crockpot.  (Keep the heat on low just a few minutes longer).

6.  Pour your cup of warm milk into a wee bowl, and whisk in your yogurt.   You need to use 2 Tablespoons of yogurt/4 cups of milk, so I used 4 tablespoons (approx 1/2 c) of Stonyfield Organic Yogurt.  Make sure to thoroughly incorporate the yogurt with the milk here & make sure your store bought yogurt says LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES somewhere on the packaging.

7.  Once your bowl is well mixed, add the bowl of yogurt & milk to the crockpot of warm milk. Again, make sure to thoroughly whisk it all together.  Your yogurt and milk need to bond and become BFF.

Ok, here's where I used Sofya's, of The Girls' Guide to Guns & Butter's, method.  Girlfriend knows what she's talking about when it comes to yogurt & she's such a believer in making your own that she emailed me with tips to encourage me along this journey.  Give her blog a little love if you're interested.


8.  Turn off your crockpot, cover with a heavy towel, and put it in your oven with the oven light on. 

Photo Credit:  GirlsGuidetoButter.com

That's Sofya's crockpot above.  I put the whole thing in the oven, crock & the outer portion.  I'm still not sure if you're supposed to remove the crock, but whatever.

9.  Walk away, leave your oven SHUT, and let your yogurt chillax for 8 hours.

10.  After 8 hours hopefully your yogurt will be thick, delicious, and lovely.  Sofya goes ahead & eats it then.  I put my crock in the fridge overnight to thicken more.  It's totally your call.  Also there may be little whey at the top, you can either dump it off, or mix it in.  I just mixed mine in and it tastes great.

Here's a pic of E's breakfast:  Homemade yogurt & her great gram's organic homegrown peaches.

Yum!

Thanks for those of you who encouraged me to try again, and for those of you who have had a negative yogurt experience or would like to try...be brave.  If I can do it, you DEFINITELY can!

Swagbucks, Swagbucks, How I Love You...

Look what was sitting on my porch for me today when I got home:  720 baby wipes & 48 rolls of toilet paper.  That's $60 worth of products that I purchased for...drum roll...$1.62 after Swagbucks Amazon gift cards.

**I should digress here a moment and explain that Swagbucks is a search engine, except when you search with them, you occasionally earn Swagbucks.  Earn enough Swagbucks and you can purchase things in the Swagstore.  Things like Amazon.com gift cards or Starbucks gift cards.  It truly does not take much time to start earning things in the Swagstore, and it can be a HUGE money saver!  Currently you can receive 30 swagbucks just for signing up, so if you're interested head here. 

Anyway, back to my purchases...

Even though we use cloth wipes, we still use baby wipes for a number two and travel, so I'm ALWAYS on the look out for a good deal.  These baby wipes were the same deal that I previously stated here, but on this purchase I was actually able to "clip" a $0.50 manufacturer coupon to bring the total down to $1.01.  I have a feeling that Amazon is having a SERIOUS run on these because they seem to be out of stock often, so be sure to wait to purchase when they are sold by Amazon so you can get free shipping & the low price.

I should also mention here that if you haven't joined Amazon Mom (You don't have to specifically be a mom, just a parent) you can get 30% off on select diapers & wipes as well as Amazon Prime shipping...yeah free shipping.

For the toilet paper, that was a whole adventure of its own.

Because we were running low on TP I wanted to use my Swagbucks to buy some.  While I wanted to get a great deal, I was also interested in buying a product made from recycled post consumer content.  As Colin Bevin, The No Impact Man, states, "We need trees to clean our air, not to wipe my butt."  haha.

I have previously used Marcal TP, liked it, and thought that it counted as "green" TP.  Apparently not.  Apparently there is a whole movement of Colin Bevin types on the internet who are obsessed with making sure virgin forest is not chopped down for TP and bringing to light "poser" green TP companies...Marcal being one of those such companies.  After A LOT of research, I found this paper product guide put together by Green Peace.  It's good and definitely worth checking out if you use paper products (facial tissue, tp, paper napkins, & paper towels) in your home. 

After all my research I settled on purchasing Green Forrest toilet paper.  It was ranked the absolute highest in post consumer content, 90%, is 100% recycled, and was ranked high for comfort on the hilarious website Poop Report.com.  BUT, the best part was it was BY FAR the cheapest recycled TP on Amazon.  Here's the breakdown:

I bought a pack of 4-12 roll packs for $30.13.  (Yesterday they raised the price to $37.56.  Crazy right?)  After signing up for subscribe & save, which gives you an additional 15% discount, and can be canceled at any time, my total came down to $25.16.  I then used my $25 worth of Swagbucks Amazon gift cards and wound up paying $0.16 for 48 rolls of toilet paper! 

I now think we have enough baby wipes to last through all of our potential children, and enough toilet paper to last a year, and all for under $4!   Very exciting to a frugal freak like me!  :)

Have a wonderful weekend!




P.S.  I JUST discovered that Swagbucks has a coupon printing feature (it looks to be the same coupons as coupons.com).  If you print your coupons HERE and redeemed them at your grocery store you will receive 10 Swagbucks for EACH redeemed coupon.  Pretty awesome for those of you who clip a lot of coupons.  Yet another way to make your money go further! 

Card Crafting Continues...Gift Tags

After making banner after banner from my lifetime's collection of greeting cards, I was left with some that weren't suited for that purpose.  In the spirit of trying to use everything I could from the cards before throwing the scraps away, I decided to make gift tags.  

 I just took decorative paper scissors,

  and cut the cuter portions of the cards..

and punched holes at the top. 

Emerson especially enjoyed the project. 

I now believe that I have enough gift tags to last until I'm at least 50. 

The Best $64 I Ever Spent

I am an extremely awful housekeeper.  Awful.  I try, I really do, but it seems as soon as I get something clean, I turn my back and it's dirty again.  The biggest bane of my housekeeping efforts have been our wood floors.  I could sweep them every single day of my life and they would still have dust bunnies. 

Enter my new best friend:  The iRobot Roomba.  For those of you who have never heard of such wonderfulness:  this is a vacuum.  The world's most AWESOME vacuum.  It is a self propelled, Jetson's style, Rosey the Robot vacuum.

Our old vacuum has been broken for a while now, and while perusing our local Target, JC happened upon this sucker ON CLEARANCE!  My absolute favorite!!!  This bad boy was once $129 and we got it for the low low price of $64.  I assumed it wasn't going to work very well, but I figured it was worth a shot.

We brought it home, and tried it out on a Sunday morning.  We left for church and left the Roomba going in the living room...and came home to a spotless floor!  It's better than having a maid!  It doesn't clean at all like a normal person (it goes around in circles, goes off diagonally, etc) but it is super effective.  It goes under couches, beds, it gets corners, it does the dishes...I. am. loving. it. Amazing.

After trying it for a few weeks I feel safe recommending it to you lovely readers.  I have read on other blogs that it is on clearance nationwide at Target, so if you are in the market for a Jetson's like robotic vacuum, the iRobot is your gal. 

DIY Jewelry Holder

My sister gave me this shirt when she was cleaning out her closet.  I didn't try it on until I got back to Arkansas, and just didn't like the cut.  

I also had this frame sitting around.  It actually belongs to a digital picture frame that JC's aunt & uncle generously gave us; it came with two, and this one has been sitting around ever since.  In keeping with the use it, or lose it theme theme this year, I figured I needed to do something with the shirt and frame...like make a framed jewelry holder.

DIY Jewelry Holder Items Needed:

*hot glue gun (how cute is this?  $4 @ Michael's!)
*frame
*scissors
*lace

Steps:

1.  Cut the lace to fit the frame

I taped down any excess lace

2.  Glue the lace to the frame.  (I used a metal cuticle pusher to push the lace into the glue so that it was taut)

3.  String up frame--Because this was intended to go on a digital picture frame, it did not have any sort of nail hole, etc, so I had to hot glue a ribbon (saved from a gift) onto the back to secure the frame.

4.  Hang & enjoy!

For hanging the necklaces, I simply took a paperclip, unfolded it, and hooked it or the very bottom of the frame.  I wouldn't suggest really hanging a necklace from the lace, as I think it would tear the fabric.

My total cost for this project was $0; and, to avoid any waste, the t-shirt has now been cut up for rags.  It was an excellent day for repurposing if I do say so myself. 

Have you done any DIY projects lately?