Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, Or do without

Day Twenty-five - Thirty Days of Thanksgiving

Today I'm grateful for all the things I've learned living by the pioneer motto above. Creativity, ingenuity, substitution, and such. Being a one income family has honed my skills. And for that I'm thankful.

What I Made Last Spring

Our daughter, Noble, asked for help making a book bag, specifically for carrying large hard cover books. She was already carrying a large shoulder bag with computer, etc., to school and wanted a special bag for the book she was reading.

Hence:

Noble chose this fun lime green with elephants cotton duck for the bag.

With a cheerful orange polka dot lining; it's just the right size!

A little bit of decorative stitching!

Noble modeling the bag, and declaring it perfect.

Noble, the college senior, all ready to go to school.

I enjoy creating! What have you made or done recently that's felt creatively joyful?

Frugal Round Up

I could keep posting pictures of our weekly snowstorms, but that's just boring. I'm not sure what the date is; the calendar says April 16, but the weather and landscape say "February 75th".

I kept a list of all (or most) of the frugal things I did last week so I could at least feel that I was making progress.

In no particular order:

Combined errands on one day: bank, store, P.O., etc.

Used the end of the pot roast, and rinsed out a finished salsa bottle to simmer in the crock pot to make beef burritos.

Made cards from card stock and pages from last year's Sandra Boynton's page a day calendar.

Took drinks (water for me, Cokes for TopDad) with us on our trip to the Twin Cities.

Stuck to my menu plan.

Stuck to my grocery shopping list. Took my own bags for $.05 off each bag.

While the temperature was well above freezing I turned off the space heater on the enclosed porch where Calico the Cat lives. (I had to turn it back on when the temps dropped.)

I didn't renew my Amazon Prime.

We didn't renew our Sam's Club membership because we don't use it often enough to justify the cost.

Added leftover canned corn to a pot of chili. (Yummy!)

Since the New Year I have attempted to get into a good weekly routine but even with all our children gone there seem to be plenty of interruptions that get me off schedule. I'll keep trying!

What have you done lately to use resources wisely, save money or otherwise be frugal, thrifty, and provident?

January's Frugal Report

One good thing to be said about surgery is that it keeps one from over-shopping!

I did well in keeping within budget for January, ending the month with almost $59.00, which rolls over into the next month.  The goal is to keep accumulating an excess which then can be put into savings or used to pay off something.

Here are the numbers:

tithing and offerings - $160
food - $179.80
gifts - $50.25
postage - $76.82
storage unit - $25.00
eating out - $44.33
bank fees - $1.61
other - $205.27

I was able to eat out of our pantry and freezer and was careful to use up things and not waste. I don't get tired of eating the same thing everyday, but my husband does so I get creative remaking foods, incorporating them into something new, or packaging up leftovers for the freezer to be brought out later.

Gifts ended up being less than I expected because of a change of mind. Not being able to drive limited me on what I could do.

Postage cost lots more than I expected, but in my defense I did finished some projects and got them sent off to far away children, so I felt good about that.

In my January post I forgot about my portion of the storage unit we rent; two children pay the other portions.

I hadn't thought about the meals we'd need when I had my surgery. It was out-patient surgery on my right eye; Mr. Movie accompanied me as he had time off work to do so. While I was in surgery he ate brunch, then we had dinner that night, and lunch the next day. Even eating cheaply it adds up.

Bank fees are exactly the same every month; a fee for the ATM and tax on the fee.

The "other" was where I broke in my resolve. I did well until the third week when I was going stir crazy so I surfed the net and spent money for books and sewing patterns (as if I didn't have enough already!). Other also includes the cat food, toiletries, treats, and things I bought when TopDad took me to Chinamart and a thrift store or two.

Overall, I feel I did rather well. It wasn't all deprivation. I like being creative, and I like feeling a little bit of pressure to be so. TopDad takes care of all the other household bills, debts, and such. I am responsible only for food (for humans and cats), laundry and toiletries, gifts and holidays, personal expenses (subscriptions, donations, clothing, grooming), storage unit (for me mostly books, and our crib awaiting grandchildren), and anything I don't want my husband to know about (which isn't much).

How did you do in January? Did you reach your month's financial goals? What do you find most difficult?

Really Good Food

Breakfast on Friday, prepared by our hostess:

A bowl of rice, a bowl of soup; upper left is eggplant, very delicious; upper right, salmon, below it is fish eggs, the yellow is a rolled omelet; the two red spears are crab; greens, shredded cabbage, melon and grapefruit. All of it fresh and delicious. I wish I knew a better word to describe it; it was all really, really good. Some of the tastes and textures were new to me, and fish eggs were an absolute first! But I didn't feel like spitting anything out. I ate it all and enjoyed it.

Breakfast on Saturday.

Yogurt, the small square dish held a seaweed mixture (like gelatin); rice porridge; on the long rectangle dish: citrus (some kind of Japanese cross), shredded cabbage, broccoli, avocado, one wedge of tomato, two difference kinds of fish eggs; tempura-green bell pepper, pumpkin and a couple of things I can't remember; two ham rolls. Again, totally delicious!

I didn't think to take a picture of breakfast the first day, but want to say that the soybean soup was the best way to start a cold morning. It was creamy like half and half, and tasted like sweet corn. I enjoyed the whole heavenly bowlful. That was just the beginning; then we were served a plate of an omelet, two 'lil smokie type sausages, and the shredded cabbage, veggies and fruits. There was also a tiny cup of soybeans that we were instructed to stir rapidly with our chopsticks; the stirring produced a stickiness to the beans (not sure how they were prepared) then we slurped them up, sort of like slurping jello. At this point I wasn't very adept with the chopsticks so we all had a good laugh as I tried to maneuver food from the plates and bowls to my mouth.  

The three delicious breakfasts, all plated so beautifully, and presented so elegantly (I experienced dish envy big time!) inspired me to put more effort into making the breakfasts I serve every morning more visually appealing. It takes just a few minutes more and a bit more thought but makes the meal so pleasant and interesting. 

Frugal Friday

Recycling an ordinary item

I got excited when I found this bundle at the thrift store recently:

I carefully broke off the clip ends of each one:

And they became these:

Just wanted to share in case you hadn't thought of this one yourself.

Mrs. Use it Up Strikes Again

I did so well in February with groceries that I'm going to keep going for March. I started the month buying only dairy, (milk and eggs), lots of fruit, some veggies (still have some to use up), and a little bit of meat. My stock up item this month is cleaning supplies because that's what I was running low on. It feels so good to have a cupboard full of supplies again!

So, the use it up deal; I foraged around in the freezer for all the odd pieces of bread I had stuck in there and found an assortment of pieces which I laid out on a baking sheet and popped in the oven to toast. When they were nicely dried out I broke the pieces into the blender (I don't have a food processor) and whizzed them up into bread crumbs, which I then put into an old plastic container with a piece of masking tape for a label and back it goes into the freezer so that the next time a recipe calls for bread crumbs mine are all ready. Whew!

Lunch today was a salad of grated carrot, some leftover green peas (frozen kind), a spoonful of leftover white rice, a spoonful of feta cheese, the last of some Romaine lettuce, a pinch of basil, and some homemade Italian dressing (well, sort of homemade, the kind with water, vinegar, oil and a packet of mix). For an experiment in combining flavors it was really good. But then I like oddball salads.

I had plans to make some baby bibs and burp cloths for a friend but got called out to do some church work so my plans got bumped a day. These items will also be made from leftovers in a use-it-up effort.

Supposedly the weather is warmer, but without sunshine it still feels cold to me.

NaNoWriMo

Day Twenty of Count Your Blessings - 2013

Noble introduced me to the NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth or NaNoWriMo in 2009. TopDad and JET had already moved to Iowa and it was just me and our other four children wrapping up things in Utah. She cajoled and wheedled and I gave in. I wrote a novel (that I'm still working on) and had a lot of fun doing it. The next year I attempted it again, but didn't win (making it to a 50,000 word count is considered winning) and hadn't participated again. November is just too busy a month for me being right before December and Christmas. But Noble did it again (cajoled and wheedled) and I'm again feverishly writing when ever I have some time. Last night she arranged a "Write-In" over Skype. We simply sat together and wrote in 25 minute bursts with five to ten minute breaks to relax and chat. I had a blast!! And I got 4,000 words written in the three hours we did it.

Thank You Noble aka Te Ah Rheum in Korea.

The other thing I'm thankful for today (I need two things because I missed yesterday) is the beauty of the night sky. For the past few days the night sky has been clear and the Evening Star is just gorgeous and then the full moon rising over the bare trees is another beauty to behold. Moonlight and star shine! Hey, maybe that can be the title of my next novel. Or should it Moonshine and Starlight?

Gourmet Lunch

Sometimes I surprise myself. Today was one of those times. I made lunch without a plan and it turned out absolutely delicious.

I started with the last of the Spring Mix salad from Sam's Club that I had taken to the church potluck on Sunday. I've been eating it all week and there was just enough left for one more salad. To that I added some fresh cherry tomatoes and cucumber from a church friend's garden (thank you John); then I sliced a string cheese stick. I wanted something more and was looking around when I spied the leftover salmon filet from last night. I love salmon so I flaked that onto the salad then drizzled some Italian dressing over the whole thing. (I use Good Seasons Italian packets and make it up with apple cider vinegar and olive oil.)

I'm telling you it was the best tasting salad I've ever had. I must remember and write down this recipe! This is an example of creativity in the kitchen!

How to Be More Creative - Part 2

Yesterday was the background, today is Amy Dacyczyn's ten step program to more creativity.

TEN STPS TO A MORE CREATIVE YOU

Step 1. Realize that you ARE creative. Look for it in your daily life and nurture that part of yourself.

Step 2. Give yourself mental space, a clear field. We tend to fill up our days with the TV, car radio, reading the paper, chats with friends on the phone. [This was written in 1990 before the internet was widely available, so she didn't include all the mind numbing activities of the web.] Instead do that "mindless task" in quiet. This type of activity dominates my life . . . housework, mowing lawn, scraping paint. Boredom never strikes as the mental gears whirl continually. I write only after mentally rehearsing paragraphs a dozen times. When someone says "I'm just not creative like you," I reply, "No, I just thought about it longer."

Step 3. Never, EVER compare yourself to others, but rather enjoy your own innovations. I stumbled over this block working in the shadow of many award winning designers. No matter how good I could become there would still be someone better. Later I realized that no matter how bad I was there was always someone worse. Compare yourself only to yourself. "This is how good I am today. I am better than I was yesterday and I will be better tomorrow."

Step 4. I use a strategy I call "putting the problem into the mental computer." Your brain functions continually, even as you sleep. Study the parameters of your problem and then let it rest for a few days. Very often your mental computer will spit out the solutions unexpectedly as you shower or drive to work. This works much better than trying to perform as the clock ticks away. If you are trying to come up with a great party idea give yourself a couple months of mental back burner time. [She was famous for wonderful children's birthday parties.]

Step 5. Brainstorm. Toss the idea around with another person. Be flexible and say or write down every "stupid" thought that comes. Very often another person can take your idea and add a twist that makes it great. Jim [her husband] is my brainstorming partner. He is very good at telling me when my idea is good and I should run with it. Sometimes something isn't working just right and he can look at it and come up with a better sentence or illustration idea.

Step 6. Find a springboard, a starting place. For the tightwad this usually means determining which resources are cheap or in surplus. Build from that point.

Step 7. Do not share your creative ideas with anyone who continually tells you they are dumb. This is often a spouse or a parent. Professionally I should have switched jobs until I found an art director who shared a similar creative style. The art directors that didn't like my ideas were not more creative than me. Often they were LESS creative. Mostly it was a matter of seeing things differently. However, the constant message that I was doing it wrong took its toll.  A mouse does not go down the same hole over and over if he fails to find cheese.
           After I stopped working under art directors and created for myself, or for my clients in my own way, I began to realize that I was creative after all.

Step 8. Practice. Like any skill, accessing your creative ability improves the more you do it. You will develop your own methods and strategies to fall back on when tackling new problems.

Step 9. Avoid negative stress. This also tends to block creativity as your mind focuses on that problem instead. Try to limit contact with individuals who bring on these problems. If it is someone within your household, try to limit your reaction to their actions.

Step 10. Start small. When you bite off more than you can chew you set yourself up for failure. Instead set small easily attainable goals to build a sense of success. In subsequent projects stretch yourself to slightly more ambitious undertakings.

           Sometime as you were reading the first [part] you thought, "What the heck does creativity have to do with thrift? Tightwaddery without creativity is deprivation. When there is a lack of resourcefulness, inventiveness, and innovation thrift means doing without. When creativity combines with thrift you may be doing it without money, but you are not doing without.

Amy Dacyczyn
AKA The Frugal Zealot
October 1990

How To Be More Creative

In the spring of 1991 I read an article in Parade magazine that changed my life. It was about Amy Dacyczyn and her newsletter The Tightwad Gazette. I subscribed to the newsletter, bought all the back issues and began putting into practice things I learned in them. One article has had a more profound effect on me than any other: How to Be More Creative. Today I'll share it so you can experience it for yourself.

"My own creative journey began nearly twenty years ago. My mother forced me to take an art class in high school. I recall tortured occasions of sitting before a blank piece of watercolor paper without a clue as to what I should paint. I was not the most talented student and receiving the art award in my senior year was unexpected. (So much so that I was delinquent and absent during the awards ceremony.)

"I went on to art school in Boston. At times ideas came easily but often it felt like beating my head against the wall. I did snag a couple of merit based scholarships and graduated as one of three in a dead heat at the top of my class.

"After art school a large advertising agency gave me my first job. There is a clock in the real world. You sit before a drawing board, working under an art director who has a different sense of what is good. The task before you is to second guess how the art director interprets the needs of the client. It is not kindergarten, where the teacher understands the fragile nature of creativity and tells you every idea is wonderful. The real world is where creative failure costs money.

"During my professional peak my creative effort satisfied art directors only 50% of the time. As a result I designed very little and did pasteup, type-specking and layouts most of my eight years working full time.

"Occasionally I obtained a freelance job, such as a logo for a small company. I always negotiated a fixed price and worked tirelessly to come up with the best design possible. My success rate with no clock and no art director was about 90%.

"After I married and my first child was born I freelanced only from home. I had a few jobs but for the most part put my creative energies into personal projects. Christmas cards, birth announcements, children's birthday parties and homemade presents.

"This freedom from the professional grind helped greatly. Some years later, at a business women's dinner, I related the details of recent personal projects to a lady who was one of my clients. She turned to the woman at her side and said "Amy is creative, creative, creative."

"This is a long story to tell you what I have learned about "How to be more creative." My credentials are the years of success and failure. If it had always come easily I would not have been forced to analyze. But through my roller coaster ride I have come to understand something of the nuts and bolts process of creativity.

"People tend to believe that creativity is a mystical gift reserved for a few. They think this mistaking creativity for "craft." Creativity is the process. Craft is the product. When there is a lack of a recognized outlet, such as writing, art, or music, creativity goes unnoticed.

"Creativity is nothing more and nothing less than solving a problem in an original way. As humans we all have this spark. We string together words to express our thoughts. We do not memorize and repeat the sentences that we speak. [Except maybe for Mr. Collins!] We put together new word combinations continually.

"Creativity occurs in subtle ways. While preparing a familiar recipe and you realize that you lack an ingredient and make a substitution. Or while folding laundry the way your mother taught you twenty years ago you discover that by rearranging piles in a different order you can save time. Or you have a problem with a coworker and attempt a new strategy to make the relationship work better. Or you figure how to build a lathe out of salvaged materials and a washing machine motor. These are all forms of creativity."

TO BE CONTINUED! Tomorrow - Ten Steps to a More Creative You.