Monday Message

"Can or bottle fruit and vegetables from your gardens and orchards. Learn how to preserve food through drying and possibly freezing. Make your storage a part of your budget. Store seeds and have sufficient tools on hand to do the job." (President Ezra Taft Benson)

It is time to be thinking about your gardening - whether in the ground or in pots. I saw seeds out already at the Dollar Tree.

April 1st is when I start my garden seeds inside, so that is four weeks away from the writing of this post.

I wish I could say that prices have gotten better but they have not. We need to continue to be as frugal as we can be.

I have continued to work in the sewing room getting it just so.

This ironing cart has been very useful. I recovered it from a sheet. I used the same sheet to make the little pin holder that is on the spool.

It has three canvas drawers - the big one I put all the cone thread in, then the two smaller I put patterns I am wanting to make soon, in the bottom one above it I put all the zippers in.

I put all my scrap fabric in these drawers. All yellow in one, red in another, and so forth. This made better use of these drawers and freed up all the canvas cubes.

So a huge consolidation of the sewing room has been going on.

The picture hanging up I made out of directions from an old pattern and framed it. I had both on hand when I made this.

I have been working hard getting this tended so that I can more easily find what I need and to have a better work flow. The ironing zones are on both ends of the sewing room, both to the right of the machines as I am right handed. This makes this work a lot smoother.

Years ago my mother-in-law made curtains out of white sheets and crocheted lace edging for them. I always loved them. Later she made those curtains into a bed skirt for a regular sized guest bed then gave it to me. This week, I made them into short curtains for our bedroom. I like to think she would be happy to know I made this back into curtains for our room.

That is what frugal is - we just keep using the same thing in different ways. Thinking outside the box.

One day this last week, I was having a rough morning and my husband was needing to run an errand so I grabbed some change to get a chocolate bar (only one kind - Lily's milk chocolate salted caramel, as it does not raise my blood sugar). And I thought it was a good day to do this but then I stopped into a thrift store which was next to where my husband had to go to. It was afternoon by then. I thought there would be nothing good left for the day but I was wrong. I got three gallon bags stuffed with stamping things.

Some of these things are here. There is a small wooden stamp and two ink pads that I did not have in the picture. The basket is full of things that can be used to put on cards. The other things shown I just put in envelopes I had that I use to put my stamp sets in. 

But these are what I got instead of chocolate. Not as tasty but it sure was worth the trade off. One stamp set is $25.99 out six months ago just one but there were many and die cuts too. The bags were crammed so tight I could not make out what was in them. I saw at least one thing in each of the bags that cost more than the price of the bag but I had no idea how much was in those packed bags. I could not afford even one of the items in the bags at their brand new price, so this was a very frugal find.  

I urge you to shop your thrift stores to stretch your budget. I have found buying used items to have helped us to stretch our budget.

So these are a few of the frugal things I have done this week. What frugal things have you been doing?

Missy says keep looking for ways to stretch your budget - even reusing a bag is frugal.

Tippy Longstockings says put seeds in the the dirt to grow yummies!