Frugal February- day 11

I pack this little cooler for my husband before he goes to work. It is pretty much the same thing every day -

2 servings of fruit

1 serving of nuts

1 string cheese

A sandwich on a homemade bun with a few chips and pickles

Coffee and a bottle of water, an ice pack and a cloth napkin

This keeps him fed for lunch and breaks.

I like these Ziploc 3 compartment containers as they keep the sandwich and chips from getting squashed. 

The nuts are in a reused baby food container. 

I try not to use many sandwich bags -they only cost 2 cents at Aldi though.

All of his coworkers but 1 buy their breakfast and lunch at nearby fast food restaurants everyday. Those coworkers also complain about being broke too. They think my husband is spoiled because I pack his lunch too.  Silly men! 

Packing a lunch like this is not really any trouble, it just takes a little planning. 

When I was younger and living at home, I packed my dad's lunch pail. He did not care what was in it, he was just happy if I would fix it. He liked fruit and homemade cookies and crackers spread with peanut butter. I remember one time that we needed to buy groceries and all I could come up with for dad's entree was a stale hotdog bun with cheese and pickles. When he got home from work, he told me it was a delicious sandwich. 

When I was just a baby, my dad and his uncle worked at a petroleum refinery in west Texas.  All the men took lunches.  One man, a real creature of habit, always had the exact same lunch- a bologna sandwich, a banana and a Hershey bar. The men at this plant were jokesters, especially Uncle Jesse. One day, he convinced all the men to bring that same lunch and to eat it at the same time as the creature of habit man. Dad said all the men had a great time doing it but the guy did not realize he was being pranked until all the men were eating Hershey bars at the same time. 

The contents of my husband's cooler costs less than $2. 

If he ate fastfood, I am sure it would cost at least $10-$15 every day.

Sunday stitching

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts- Sunday slow stitching HERE

All the animal squeezums were finally finished today.
They are made with an old pattern from plastic canvas and yarn, with silly google eyes.

This quilt top is from This Crate full of WIPs and UFOs.
I felt so good about just finishing the string quilt that I went to this box and pulled out a couple of quilt tops. My husband voted to finish this scrappy one first. It is really scrappy, isn't it? Many of the sewing pieces in that crate were made by mom, but not this one. I think it must of been a thrift store find or something my dad got at a yard sale.
I can imagine a woman piecing it with just whatever small fabric scraps she came by. Did I mention it is really really scrappy?

 I plan on just tying this one.  I had to piece a backing and I will show it when I finish it.

 

I'll be siting here hand tying for much of the remainder of this Sunday. 

If you like to sew, I hope you have had some pleasurable sewing time this weekend too. 

Frugal February day 8- sewing and thrift stores

The first quilt of 2014 is finished. It was made with all scraps except for the batting and of course the thread. I bought the batting and thread on sale and with a coupon at Joann's. They have great sales.

I had the quilt spread out in the living room and my son is here, trying it out.

I wanted a dark backing for it and used these 2 fabrics, neither was big enough so I pieced them together.

I thought it be fun to make 12 quilts in 2014 but realistically, I am shooting to make 6.  So 5 more quilts in almost 11 months, maybe!

Sewing is especially thrifty if you end up with gift fabric. 

With the cold front here, I have pretty much stayed home all week.  This morning, we did a couple errands and I went to a thrift store while my husband went by the bicycle store.

The kitchen things were all 1/2 price. All this stainless steel Farberware was $16.  There is a huge covered skillet, a small skillet, a double boiler, a steamer, 3 1 quart saucepans and a 4 quart stock pot. My daughter wants new saucepans and was going to buy some today. I think I got all the saucepans she could need. I am keeping the big skillet and maybe the steamer.

I always look at the children's clothes. All of these were $6.75

This little blanket was $1. Two of my grandsons live on a farm. This farm theme fabric is so cute, I think they will like it.

My town has 5 nice thrift stores but they do price things differently. I like to shop at the one with low priced children's clothes.  I "like" them on Facebook and knew from a post this morning that their kitchen stuff was half price so when I saw the cookware, I knew it was a very good deal. 

Frugal February -day 7- Pretty up the trash cans

The trash cans have been bugging me. We had several plain white plastic ones that we keep lined with white trash bags, but they just looked messy the way the bag hangs around the top and plain white plastic is just blah....

After - 4 pretty trash cans that don't make me frown when I look at them.

So, I got out  the Mod Podge, recycled brown shipping paper and some decorative quilt print paper. 

That trash can below, under the sink, is how they all started out.

The quilt paper is from a bargain thrift store purchase years ago, it had lots of paper in it and I've used it for several projects and to wrap gifts.

After I decopaged them all. I sewed big garters to camouflage and hold the trash bags in place.

These 2 are in the breakfast room. One is for ordinary trash, the other is for recycles. 

The birds were cut with a Cricut.

This one is the play room.  I actually decopaged this can a few years ago but it never looked quite as pretty as I wanted it too.  It really needed the garter at the top.

The crazy quilt one is for the master bathroom,

The garters are just long strips of fabric, about 2.5 times as long as the top circumference of each can. I sewed them right sides together and left both ends of the tube open to turn it right side out. Then I sewed a 1 inch casing down the center and added the elastic to fit the can. Then just secure the elastic and finish sewing the end seam. 

The small cans ruffles are 3 inches wide finished, 4 inches for the bigger cans. 

Frugal February -day 6 - do stuff yourself

Just like in so many parts of the USA, it is very cold and snowy. No grands here today so I got started on laundry and kitchen chores first thing. Then I worked on this quilt, hoping to finish it today. It just needs all the tying finished and the binding sewn down by machine.

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I did about 1/3 of the tying, then I thought I would go outside and sweep the sidewalks and clean off the driveway. Like I said, it is really cold, 12 degrees which is really cold for Oklahoma but I was bundled up. The fresh air felt good as I got the job done.

Then, I was getting a different broom from the garage and noticed my vehicle had a little water under it even though it has not been driven in days. I park right in front of the hot water heater and I knew right away that if the hot water heater is leaking, it is usually ruined from a rusted out bottom.

So I texted my husband and then tried to turn off the gas and water supply. 

The gas was easy but I could not find the water shut off. So, I did an internet search and found out. The shut off is way on top, in the very back. 

So I trudged out to our little storage building and got the big ladder.

But even with the ladder, I could barely reach the shutoff and could not get it to turn. 

Thankfully our tall neighbor came home for lunch just then and he came over and turned the valve. 

In the meantime. My husband and handyman extrodinaire son had been texting. They asked me for photos of the heater and they will both be taking off work this afternoon to come home and replace that 14 year old hot water heater. 

It should be a piece of cake for them, as they just changed out another one for our daughter. 

My husband and son both say changing a hot water heater is easy.  We are all pretty willing to try to make or fix or do most anything around the house. We are usually successful and I know it is has saved us lots of money.  

In the meantime, while I am waiting for my 2 handymen, I brought that tall ladder in the house and cleaned the living room ceiling fan. I use an old pillow case, a trick I also learned on the Internet and it is a great one. Just open up the pillow case and slip it over each blade and gently rub the case over the blade,  all the dust and dirt will come off and be contained in the pillowcase. 

I hope I can finish up my quilt while they work on that heater. 

 

 

 

 

I love these little guys but I am really glad neither of them were here today so I could discover that water leak before serious damage was done. 

9 month old JJ

 

 

18 month old Braeden