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)

I have been saving seed...

I saved the seed from the melon I showed before and saved zucchini seed. I like them to be good and dry before I put them in a baggie to use next year. I then put these in another container because I don't want to attract mice.

So the first part of having cucumbers this year was great, then as you know we got very hot and dry which made the cucumbers bitter. Hot and or dry is what does that. Don't see how one could prevent the heat we had this year.

We finally have cooler temps. We have had them a couple of days now but today was the first day we could throw open the doors and windows as we had dangerous air quality for the last two days because of smoke from the Canadian fires. I cannot imagine how tired they must be fighting those.

Here's how I save the seed...

I put what seed it is from and year on a few napkins which I set on a plastic lid.

All part of being frugal. It saves money but more importantly, I don't have to find money to purchase the seed.

I thought I would just show you some frugal things I have done.

First, I want to show you a project I did a while back from lids I saved off shortening cans.

I took stamps and stamped on the lid. Then took an X-Acto knife and cut out the outside edges. Then I could stamp the image and emboss it by laying down the cut plastic and lining up the stamped image upside down on a light box or a window during daytime. Then I use a stylus and rub. I find if I rub my hand across first this makes it less likely to poke holes as you have oil in your skin. This gives a wonderful 3D effect with no cost, just time. I tried to show these so you can see the raised effect.

I love that embossed look.

Now this week...

I took one of those annoying DVDs we all used to get in the mail for some dial-up service, it is the taller DVD case. They make this tool one you could purchase but having to be frugal, here is what I did...

I took the center out of the DVD case carefully.

Then I had gotten a white board type of weekly calendar that I got for the pens used at thrift shop (the pens have magnets and my calendar is able to have magnets).

Side note, the green pen had no ink which made me wonder could my dye ink pads be dry erasable?? I tested them and yes, they are. I pulled out the tip and filled it with the ink refill I had that was green, put the nub back in and let it soak a bit and perfect!

That left me with the week version of the white board. You can always use it to hold a pattern on while you do needle work. I took magnetic strips and glued ribbon on and use those for keeping my place on patterns, but I have plenty of boards that I use, so here is what I did...

I take that DVD case and set it on the white board, then I put my card stock in place holding it with the magnets. 

I have this all in the side of DVD that has an edge around it. Then the other (I will call a door) I take my unmounted rubberstamp and put it stamping side down where I want the image, or several, but today just the one. 

Close the door (aka lid) and it nabs the stamp. Open the door and ink the stamp. 

Close the door press down on it open the door and there is your image. 

Uh oh, what if part of the ear does not stamp because of where you pressed? No problem! Re-ink it and repeat, pressing all over. It stays put and gives a perfect image. So that is what I did, I love that I can do this perfect every time.

The other thing I did this week came after reading an article on homemade temples for looms. In one sentence she mentioned how she did this with a floor loom and that was all I needed, just one sentence...

She said she tied a strong string on each side of the loom, back beam to front beam. Then she took sewing clamps to attach to your project. Tie a string on the clamp. Run it over the string you placed on the beams and weight it. Then I knotted the string before and after the intersection. I wove some and really liked what it does. I was worried I would get hung up on the clips but not at all. When I leave the weaving I always loosen the warp and now I take the weights, which are s hooks, and hang on the apron bar and that takes all weight off of the weaving. Then when I am ready to weave again, I tighten the warp, drop down the s hooks, and weave. The pictures will show this better. In the second picture follow from the clamp on the weaving all the way to the s hook, then you can understand my ramblings.  

I had everything on hand to do these projects so that was very helpful as well.

I did have Tippy Longstocking's help at one point while getting the s hook in place. I left the string on while I was adjusting length, I looked down and she had the string in her mouth pulling that s hook sideways, not at all helpful but cute :p

So while these are probably not helpful to you, I wanted to show you that you can think outside the box and find a frugal way of doing things that don't cost as much.

So that was some of what I did this week.

Missy says just take a different way to see things and you can save money.

Tippy Longstockings says be sure to rest after all that hard work.