Five Frugal Things

I began my more frugal journey with Rhonda Hetzel's Down-to-Earth blog and book and since then have gathered lots of ideas from many more blogs and books. I really enjoy reading about the simple everyday savings that people make and that I can do in our home too. Here are five frugal savings I've made of late:

Homemade lavender room spray.

I made up a simple and fragrant lavender room spray following the instructions I found on Wendy's blog, My Abundant Life. I mixed up cooled, boiled water and a small amount of water soluble lavender oil (from the supermarket) in a little spray bottle that once held a face toner. This room spray is simple, cheap, took very little time to make and smells beautiful without all the chemicals one would find in a tin of air freshener. I 💜it!

Delicious home baking.

There's always something baking at our place. Lately, some of the delicious mulberries from our dwarf tree, which we picked and froze by the handful, have found their way into homemade apple and mulberry pie. Mmm! The sweet orange juice, squeezed from my friend's homegrown fruit, has been the star ingredient in batches of orange breakfast muffins. A delicious way to make the most of gifted produce. Not one, but two chocolate slices were baked while the oven was already on. One was shared with friends for afternoon tea and one was sliced and frozen for another day. Everyday, inexpensive pantry staples, like flour and cocoa and coconut, became a home baked treat with a simple recipe and some time. 

A little sweet gift.

I made a simple little notelet card, for a loved one in lockdown, by reusing the front of an old greeting card, some homemade paper and a piece of ribbon from my stash. A tiny bar of chocolate was wrapped in some saved tissue paper and, together with my notelet and message, was sent on its way in a salvaged envelope. 

Magazines from the library.

Many years ago, I would faithfully buy this magazine every.single.month. I still enjoy reading it and looking at all of the beautiful country-style homes inside the pages, but I no longer buy it. Instead, I borrow it from the library. This magazine costs $8.50 at the supermarket so over the course of a year not buying it saves $102. I still get to enjoy it but for free!

A second hand bargain!

Two sets of this children's construction material were purchased second hand. Both sets are in excellent condition and cost at total of $50. A single, new set can cost more than that! All these plastic pieces will be used and enjoyed often instead of ending up in landfill. As I use this material regularly, in my work, I consider this a bargain as well as a saving of resources. 

None of these things, on their own, lead to jaw-dropping savings but a more frugal mindset has made me more resourceful, creative and conscious of what I do spend money on. That does lead to healthy savings over time, for us and for the Earth too.

I'd love to hear about the ways you save at your place.

Meg

Some Simple Savings

The simple savings we make here don't usually come via a flashy sale with price tags advertising huge discounts. Instead, they tend to reveal themselves in the everyday things we do over and again. These are some of the little savings we've made of late by making, growing, reusing, mending and finding our own:

This plant, grown from a cutting I brought home from my Mum's garden, has filled out its hanging basket. Both the wire hanging basket and its liner were 'rescued' from my stash of old pots that I keep on a table under our house. I am not sure what this plant is called but it has pretty tangerine bell-shaped flowers. A free plant from my Mum's place that's now growing here too.

I stamped a plain piece of brown paper, which came wrapped around a little bunch of flowers I received, with tiny flower heads. I added it to my ''saved" gift wrap along with this silver and black piece that came with flowers too. I think both will look lovely once re-used and tied with black ribbons.

A large dish of lasagne was baked to share as a meal with friends. I used grated zucchini and carrot and pumpkin to add to the very small amount of meat I had to make the filling. I sprinkled the creamy sauce on top with a little parmesan cheese and baked it until golden.  I served it with steamed veg. Warm and chocolatey prune muffins, from a recipe I found in a Grass Roots magazine, with homemade vanilla ice-cream, made a lovely dessert too. As we were feeding two extra hungry teenage boys, this homemade meal saved us quite a bit as I'm sure you can all imagine just how many takeaway pizzas growing boys can eat!

Little harvests from the garden are finding their way into lots of our meals. There are handfuls of crunchy snow peas for stir fries, juicy yellow tomatoes for salads that are also lovely and sweet when roasted. I've made two Silverbeet Impossible Pies now, with silverbeet and spring onion and parsley from the garden, which is just delicious hot or cold, for lunch or for dinner. The little limes, from a tree that I walk past almost every day while out with Sir Steve dog, are destined to become lime curd to dollop onto our homemade scones. At one of the big supermarkets, limes are 72c each. These were foraged and free!

 

One of my favourite op-shops is open again now and I found this black button-up cardigan amongst the racks of clothes. It cost me just a few dollars. I will get a lot of wear out of it because it's lightweight and thus perfect for our mild sub-tropical Winters. I also mended one of my son's favourite t-shirts to extend its life a little longer. 

Making things last that bit longer, reusing what we already have, growing and making our own, buying second hand and keeping an eye out for that which is free or a good bargain saves a little here and there which, over time, adds up to dollars and cents not spent but saved.

Meg

First Succulent Pot

For a  long while, I had resisted the appeal of growing succulents ... until I saw the amazing  amazing array of succulent pots that Joolz has at her place. Then I just had to grow a succulent pot of my own. 

My first succulent pot.

My first succulent pot cost me next to nothing to get growing. My neighbour kindly gave me a few succulent leaves to propagate from one of her plants and I re-used a little blue glazed pot I already had. I simply filled it with a bit of potting mix, that I added just a bit of sand to, and then pushed the succulent leaves down into that mix.  A bit of water and a sunny spot on the verandah and tiny "pups" grew.  After the pups sprang up, I found some little rocks to fill in around them and added an old lizard ornament. That poor lizard is missing one leg but you'd never know now!  

I  💚 my first succulent pot and am keen to grow a few more out on my verandah. It's quite the addictive thing! I'd like to find and reuse some unusual containers, maybe even an old teapot. Here are some ideas I've found:

Succulent Teapot Collage

A Hanging Succulent Colander

Old Boots, Bathtubs & Other Unusual Containers for Succulents

(Scroll down past the succulent garden tutorial.)

A Tea Cup Succulent Garden

Seeing as teapots are scarce around here (we are not tea drinkers) I think I will rummage around and find that old colander my son used to play with in his paddle pool. About time it was given new life as a succulent pot!

Do you grow succulents? What do you grow them in?

Meg

p.s. I think little succulent gardens would make lovely gifts too. 😊

A Skirt with Pockets

Some lightweight, deep blue denim fabric, bought on sale ages ago, has been waiting in my fabric stash for me to sew up into a skirt with pockets. 

My new home-sewn skirt.

(The colour varies in the photographs ... it's actually a brighter blue than this!)

The pattern I used is Frankie & Ray's West Coast Skirt. I chose this particular pattern because I thought it was a simple one even though it included two things I hadn't attempted before. Pockets and elastic! I found both the pockets and the elastic easy to sew in.  The trickiest part was turning the long and narrow skirt ties, which I made with the striped fabric of an old cot sheet, right side out. In the end, this simple technique demonstrated on this YouTube video, made it much easier. (Thank goodness!)

Drawstring in & pockets pinned on.

(This blue is more an accurate capture of the colour!)

Elastic at the back.

Turning over a "waistband"  to hide the elastic.

I really like this skirt! I love the gentle A-line and the deep side pockets.  I did shorten the length by adjusting the pattern so that it sits just below the knee rather than mid-calf.  It was easy and quick to sew and I know that I will wear it a lot because it's very comfy. 

 I love deep pockets!

Sewing has become a real joy. I have been pleased with everything I've made so far and wear them often. What I find quite funny is the number of people who comment on my home sewn clothes and ask where I bought them! 

Meg

Here & Now 17

Our days here of late have been punctuated by showers and the odd thunderstorm; all bringing beautiful rain. The soil is moist to a decent depth and the water tanks are full, ready for the hot Summer weather that I'm sure will come. For now, I am relishing these milder days, overcast skies and the lush growth and blossoming in the garden after rain. 

A little pink puffball on Bees Ruby (Armeria).

 Simple & sweet homemade shortbread.

A vintage doily sewn onto a re-purposed bag. 

My favourite grevillea in bloom.

Loving //  All the native flowers that are out in bloom now. Grevilleas are a favourite!

Eating //  Our own crunchy  cucumbers. So fresh!  Homemade shortbread too. So yummy!

Drinking //  Lots & lots of water!

Feeling //  Content after a day working in our garden.

Making //  Simple things like wrap skirts & little  bags with lovely fabrics & vintage linens.

Thinking //  How wonderful this cool & rainy weather is!

Dreaming //  Of  being in Sydney soon with two of my oldest & closest friends.  

                      

Sarah, over at Say, Little Hen, hosts this lovely little link-up beginning on the 10th of each month. Whenever I see each of her new Here & Now posts, I find myself wondering how it's been a whole month since the last one. It seems time flies!

I hope the early days of your November has been a happy ones.

Meg

                           

Wrapping without Paper: Very Simple Furoshiki

We haven't bought a roll of wrapping paper for a long time now! Instead, we've wrapped presents in the paintings that have come home from kindy, in the pretty papers we've reused from the gifts we have received and in the printed wrapping paper we've made ourselves from recycled brown paper. From time to time, I also make drawstring gift bags out of the calico bags I sometimes buy my flours in. 

Over the weekend, we celebrated a very happy birthday with one of my son's lovely friends. With the days of kindy paintings and cookie cutter printing long gone now, and no suitable salvaged wrapping paper in our stash, we decided to wrap our gift, furoshiki style, in fabric instead. Here's how it turned out:

Ready for giving!

From the very soft cotton of an old pillowcase, that I bought at a market for small change, I cut out this piece of printed fabric. I think the dolphins are lovely!

 Repurposing the soft cotton of an old pillowcase for the furoshiki wrap.

As the instructions said to begin with a square, I then trimmed the fabric down to the required shape. I made sure the dolphins were in the centre of that square! I used pinking shears to do the cutting so the fabric will not fray and can be more easily reused by the recipient.  The excess fabric I trimmed from the edges will make great garden ties too. (No waste!)

These dolphins added a little touch of nature.

Wrapping up our gift, with a few easy folds and a finishing knot to hold it together, was very easy. I just followed the few very simple steps from this You-Tube tutorial. It wasn't tricky at all!

  Ta-dah!

There are lots of ways you can jazz up a Furoshiki wrap with trims and ribbons and such but, as we were giving a little collection of art supplies, I decided to push two graphite pencils through the knot at the top. The birthday boy will be able to use these for drawing so they tied in well with the gift inside our furoshiki wrap as well!

Have you ever tried furoshiki? 

Meg

Flower Pot Hearts

Pretty beads and some thin, flexible wire is all you need to make whimsical flower pot hearts. (A pair of pliers comes in handy too!)

A flower pot heart ... in a flower pot!

I came across this tutorial, for Whimsical Floral Sticks, when searching for something my son could make for his Grandmothers for Mothers' Day with materials we already had here at home. 

The pretty beads we used for our flower pot hearts.

We made our flower pot hearts with beads, rescued from broken bracelets and last Christmas' fancy bonbon ties, and some wire from hubby's stash. (Pliers came in handy for cutting and twisting the wire.) This is the result of our crafting:

Two pretty flower pot hearts. 

This is a very simple idea that is easy for a child to make with minimal help. They make a sweet little gift and add a touch of extra love to a potted flower or herb. 

Meg