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It's been awhile since I was able to post. My mother finally passed the veil on Friday Nov. 21 2008, after two years of illness. We have been dealing with the arrangements for several weeks now, and finally finished up this week. I'm getting back into work and research, will post more next week sometime. Thank you for all those who gave their love and support during this stressful time.
So, I'm cruising the Net reading other ppl's frugal ideas, and I finally run across one that uses waste paper in a good way. Now, I've already got several uses for waste paper (junk mail, phone books, sale papers), such as hand made paper (fun, but really only usable for crafty stuff), worm bedding (White paper only), compost, filling in holes in the yard or putting in the bottoms of potted plants to keep the dirt from getting out of the holes. Still, we have bags and bags of paper lying around. Enter home made kitty litter! I ran across a website that uses waste paper to make kitty litter. So you are asking about now, "What's the deal, kitty litter isn't THAT expensive!" It is, when you have 11 cats. And with any luck, it won't track all over the place from the 3 cat boxes. I'm trying it today, I'll post more once it's done.
For those of you who are looking confusedly at the date right now, It's Samhain, the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. If you really want to know more about it, here's the Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SamhainNovember is our second frugal month. Until December 1, we will not spend any money except for bills, food, gas and medical needs. This one's gonna be a bit tighter than the previous one, since our food stockpile is running low. The chickens are cutting back on egg deliverys due to the shorter days, the fall garden's barely got a start, and no more freebie produce from the local natural foods store, as they've been bought out by a corporation in CA, and corporate policy is all culled produce must go into the dumpster to be taken to the landfill. They throw out at least 50-100 pounds of perfectly edible produce every DAY. Staggering to think of how many people that could feed. So, it probably won't be till tax refund time until the food stockpile is totally restocked. At least gas prices are dropping, thank the Goddess!
So the feds decide to cut the interest rate yet again, to "stimulate the economy". Yea right. I'm pulling my $$ out of savings and putting it under the mattress. Not like I'm making anything off it anyway.
As we continue on our frugal lifestyle, I can see where many people are blindsided by all of a sudden loosing their lifestyle and having to adopt a more frugal one. I'm really glad I'm not one of them. I guess I'm just an old hippy at heart, I'm enjoying raising my own food, cooking from scratch, riding my scooter instead of driving the car. For the most part, my family seem healthier and happier, and definitely more appreciative of the things we do have. We're actually living better on less. I do get tired of it on occasion, but there are enough windfall periods that we don't really feel like we're missing out on much of anything. Of course we're worried about things, but we're doing a lot better than many people. We are still enjoying our life, but then, we've always been a little different. ;)Gonna try to do the frugal month every other month. November is the next one, which means holiday shopping is put off till December. No biggie really, since most of our gifts this year are home made, and it'll be a good time to work on them.
Our month of frugal living went very well. We were able to sock away a fair amount of $$ in savings, and it definitely helped us see where we were wasting money. A good $50-$100 a month was going to Half-Price Books for dvds and books. While we still love our dvd and book collection (we re-read and re-watch everything we own), we've gotten used to using the Net for free entertainment. W has discovered his fav show, Avatar:The Last Airbender on Nick.com, S and I have been using Hulu, plus channel websites to watch alot of shows. S has class 4 nights a week, so he uses it alot more than I do. The downside: having to watch on our computers. We get a little closer to getting rid of cable every month, but just can't bring ourselves to do it just yet. We have a great t.v., a freebie from a friend who never watched it, that won't use a remote control, so the digital box is on it, so we can change channels. Still, if we have to get rid of cable altogether, that tv will probably be used for the Net thing. Broadband is the one thing we all agree we are not willing to give up. We have three computers (All build by S for much cheaper than buying a prebuilt) and we all game online. Another thing we are not willing to give up is our WoW accounts. We play evry day, and would rather give up cabvle than these. It may yet come to that, seeing how the economy is heading south in a hurry. Food has been one thing that is easiest to deal with. Since I cook, and cook well, I know how to use cheaper ingredients to make scrumptious meals. Some are healthy, others not so much, but we don't lack for good tasting food. Do I get tired of spending 3-6 hours a day just on food prep? You bet! It is a hassle and takes up alot of time, but saves us so much money that it is totally worth it. We also have our chicken women, 4 lovely hens I got for my birthday last year. They give us the most marvelous eggs, and eat all kinds of things like peels and stale foods that would otherwise go into the compost or trash. Don't worry tho, the compost still gets its share of stuff, like shredded junk mail, leaves and citrus, which the girls don't care for. We also have a garden, altho we lost most of it this year to extremely high temps coupled with massive drought. We're looking forward to planting the fall garden, hopefully it'll do better. One thing we've done in put every electronic on a plug strip and turn it off when not in use. We even unplug the microwave every time we use it. Sure, we no longer have a clock in the living area, but so what, we can walk a few feet to another room and look at that one. We also use a clothesline for drying, and then run the clothes through the dryer for 10 minutes to remove the animal hair from the 11 cats and one Chow dog. These few things have saved us about $30 a month on our electric bill. Pet food does make up a fair amount of our monthly expenses, but we've found feeding the cats a better quality food results in healthier and happier kitties. We don't advocate dumping pets when times get tough, they are living beings with feelings and you CAN keep them and cut back elsewhere. All of our cats are strays or rescues, and they bring us much joy, and sometimes are a hassle (like our last housemate who left her cat, and he sprays), but we do like having them around. The dog is more of a worker than a pet, he is a guard dog, and living in a city, is something we need to help protect ourselves. We will be continuing the frugal lifestyle for the foreseeable future. Xmas is taken care of, my surveys net us between $200 and $400 a year, all used for Xmas presents, and none of us want a whole lot, so we don't go overboard on spending like we used to. So, things are going well, and while other ppl are having major problems hanging on to their homes, cars, etc, we are doing well so far!
I made two batches of nut/seed milks, which came out ok. The resulting leftover pulp was used for raw cookies and crackers. Batch of cookies #1 had shredded raw carrots and dried cranberries added to it, and it was ok. Chewy, with a nice mellow flavor. W, however, asked if they could be made with chocolate chips. (Of course!) So Batch #2 had brown sugar, flax seeds and chocolate chips in it, and were excellent! I will definitely be making them again. The crackers were very tasty, if fragile. I added lemon pepper, garlic powder, flax seeds and Italian seasoning to the mix, and dried them until they were crisp. They kept well for the couple of days it took to make them. I'll need to find out how to make them a little less delicate. I did some reading up on raw foods, and the recipes I found were amazing. Unfortunately, most would be rather expensive to make, so I will keep reading and see what I can find that is more practical. I would like to try raw bread, and a few other things. At least if I should have to go on a raw diet for health reasons, I'll be semi-prepared!
