Thrift finds and freebie economics.

This past Sunday I went for a ride with my younger daughter to a baseball game for my youngest grandson. He had to be at the field an hour before the game, which his team won, so we took a few minutes to head to a local thrift store. Lots of great things and plenty available, but I continue to purchase needs and not wants. When I walk through a thrift store I wonder why everyone doesn't have everything they need. 

I purchased the salad spinner and the vintage Mickey and Minnie contact paper. The salad spinner was on my list and the contact paper will be sold. My younger daughter got the quart size canning jars for $2 at a yard sale for me and they are all cleaned and ready for canning season.

This large bundle of bath tissue was free. My eldest daughter got an eBay coupon for $25 and this was purchased and shipped free.

Bourbon was on my wish list. I wanted to make extracts and barbecue sauce with it and sure enough the message was heard through the universe and we were given this bottle of Kentucky bourbon. I love how the universe works.

These two divided wooden cubes measure 18x10x8 and were salvaged from a renovation project at my daughters place of employment. They were going to demolish these and many more, but she convinced her supervisor to take them down and either sell them or give them away. They were all saved and my daughter took these for her future home. They are small enough for her to use for now until she resettles. This is not bad for living frugal and taking advantage of what comes your way. We are very grateful for all things good. Thank you for stopping by and have a great week. 

Townhouse Homestead Tuesday

This week was a shop at home week. Although we did pick up some groceries for my daughters lunches and things to cook with we are shopping at home first. It's becoming a waste not want not kind of life we are living but with the high cost of "everything" these days how can a person not become frugal. In doing so I think we are eating better and eating a better variety of good food. 

This is turkey noodle soup made of turkey and stock from Thanksgiving. I used no yolk noodles to make it a bit healthier and I have control of the salt and yes that is a home made roll. I like knowing what's in my food even though it's not always easy these days.

Over the weekend we had breakfast for dinner. From scratch home made waffles with home made triple berry syrup. Oh such a luxury.

I had a large bag of clean vegetable scraps in the freezer that needed to be boiled down for stock. With my new pressure caner I could now can it and not use my valuable freezer space. I knew I wouldn't have enough jars to fill the caner so I got to work preparing potatoes too. The clean potato skins were added to the stock pot. I had a great abundance of them because I bartered for them over the holidays for a sewing project. I also had a small amount of beef stock taking up space in the freezer that I knew I could cook down a bit and also put it up.

In the end I had seven pints of vegetable stock, two pints of beef stock and eight pints of potatoes. There was one pint of vegetable stock that wouldn't fit in the caner, so it will be vegetable soup one night this week.

This is a jar of ground dried orange peels. I have been working hard at including fresh fruit in our diets, but since I can't compost in the apartment I am always searching for uses for my scraps. These I will add to some soups and smoothies or make a citrus tea. I added some to sugar and made citrus sugar for my friends to add to their tea. In a special bottle it would make a lovely gift. 

I am enjoying my frugal life, having less yet having more.
Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week. I hope I'm inspiring you to be frugal and thank you for inspiring me to live better.

Vintage table cloth being re loved.

ON THE CUTTING TABLE

 

I just couldn't do it. It would have taken a life time to soak the stains out of this well loved vintage table cloth. I'm usually good at soaking items to give them new life. Even things everyone else would have thrown away years ago. My success rate has been great with soaking. This, however, I couldn't do. Instead I used it as a cutter for new projects. It was my goal to give myself time to get back to some sewing and I finally did this past week. There was so much that I salvaged from this table cloth.

 

 

The four corners of the table cloth were in almost excellent condition and I attached them to white muslin and cotton batting to make four place mats. I backed them in yellow checkered gingham. I had recently reclaimed a bed skirt for the eyelet lace trim and saved the 100% cotton fabric from it. From this I managed one dozen twelve inch napkins and just simply appliqued salvaged fruit pieces to them.

 

 

I made two fry pan handle pot holders and there will be two round pot holder/hot plate pads. So far that's twenty new items from this table cloth. I went through my stash and the two new curtain panels I found a couple of weeks ago with a bright colorful trim will be turned into aprons. I searched through my stash of fabric and found some fruit print fabric that I'll use for pockets and ties.

 

 

These items are not going to be sold or given away. They are for me. The next rebuild in my life is to get back into traveling and these will go in my camping, glamping, trailer or may I just call it my dream chest.

 

There was a trip to a neighborhood sale and I found two items. I spent all of $4 for both. I also got to the thrift store and found a few items. I know I took time for myself this past week and the stats on my stores show it, but it was a great mental health week and I did something green and kept stuff out of the landfill. It's back to work today and I would love for you to stop by and visit my stores and visit my Facebook page and check like to see my future updates. Have a great week.

 

butterflyplace.etsy.com

butterflyplace.storenvy.com

 

https://www.facebook.com/TheCraftZone1

 





Christmas ornaments from scrap fabric.

For those of you who follow my blog you know how addicted to fabric I am. I just love it and yes I sell it and yes I sew with it, but there's always those scraps. These are made from reclaimed trim and a yoyo and bead in the center. All of these are about four inches in diameter and required fabric no longer than 18 inch strips or eight inch squares or circles.

Yoyo's are easy to make and these became ornament bells with a jingle bell to finish them off. A star can go on the top to make it a small tree also, but I like the bell.

 

Inspired by Kumiko Sudo (Flower Origami) who is a fabric origami artist,  I folded these pieces of fabric to make these ornaments and added the bead to class them up a bit.

 

 

Also origami folded fabric, just a little more folding. These are my favorites and the red and white one's looked the best on a green tree.



These are also folded fabric but a log cabin pattern. I found the direction in a booklet I bought in Lancaster PA. I have been fascinated by folding fabric for several years now.

I added some folded origami to my Christmas stockings and made them look better than just plain white and green. This is how I use my scrap fabric and I hope to be semi retired to do more of the things I like some day. Scrap fabric is always for sale on my stores. butterflyplace.etsy.com and butterflyplace.storenvy.com. I hope everyone has a great week and a wonderful holiday.

What to do on a rainy day.

No I didn't bake. I ate. I sat back in my big chair and had a cup of coffee with a piece of my zucchini walnut chocolate chip bread. I actually baked Saturday to take some goodies to a friends graduation, but not wanting to waste a beautiful zucchini I decided I needed something sweet. I mixed what the recipe said was equal to two large loafs. When I filled my canning jars I ended up with eight pints and an extra small loaf. Just enough for a single woman to enjoy. It was so good. I think it was the chocolate. Baking in the jars is working out well. I get about six slices per jar and when I need to take something to work for my break one jar works out well for the week. It keeps better in the refrigerator this way also because it is kept away from other aromas in the fridge. It isn't any extra work to bake this way. I'm glad I do this. I will enjoy summers' bounty all winter. Can't wait for pumpkins to make spicy pumpkin cake. Yum!

Banana Walnut Bread

Having had my share of unemployment and underemployment for the past three years I have not thrown too much food away. Call it frugal or panic it never makes sense to me to waste what I can use. Ever since I started baking in canning jars I can tell you that I've had good luck and bad luck with it. I decided not to throw away aging bananas this week and bake them into banana walnut bread. Reason one being that if I just baked it in pans it would take up room in our apartment size freezer that I couldn't spare and the other reason was the length of time I could store it in the jars. I also wanted to add walnuts and they are so expensive now that they would not be as fresh if frozen. I got good seals on the lids and I added bright labels. I can now put these in our storage closet that we put shelves in for our canning and have the goodness of home baked on the shelf.

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