Eating Healthy On The Cheap

Photo courtesy of Fresh Market 

So as usual many of my New Years resolutions have to do with food and health and generally eating in a better, more responsible manner.  I also want to stick to our money saving goals which we have continued to do pretty well on in spite of the holidays (although we did see an increase in spending last month as we expected we would). With these goals in mind I signed up for weekly special emails from some of the healthier stores nearby. In particular I want to eat better quality meat and dairy in the coming year but as most of you know this can be really expensive.

So I signed up for newsletters for Harry's Farmers Market, Whole Foods and Fresh Market to get notifications of weekly deals and specials and today I took advantage of some of these savings. I was so excited by this that I wanted to share it on my blog :-) Fresh market in particular has amazing Tuesday deals and that's where I went today. I normally don't shop at Fresh Market because they are SUPER expensive but to my surprise their Tuesday deals were incredible! I got organic, hormone free chicken and ground beef for $2.99 a lb and with the way we have cut back on meat consumption a pound of meat will last us 3 or 4 meals easily. They also had a great deal on milk but I didn't need any at the moment so I passed on that one for now. I can't wait to see what the special is next Tuesday!

I haven't taken advantage of any of the deals at Harry's or Whole foods yet because I'm waiting for the right items to go on sale but I have high hopes for these as well. If you are looking to save money but still eat quality foods I highly recommend keeping track the specials at these places. I have been amazed at the deals you can get. One word of caution though. The stores are trying to lure you in with the specials and then entice you to buy all their other beautiful, expensive items. You must resist and only buy the things that are on sale for crazy cheap. Stick to what you went there for and you'll be good to go.

Cloth Baby Wipes

And we're back to baby stuff, for now anyway ;-)

One of the things Eric and have found since we started making a concerted effort to save money is that it's nice how often being frugal overlaps with being environmentally conscious. I've already mentioned how much we love our cloth diapers and after using those we decided to try cloth wipes as well. Initially I just ordered some online to try them out. It cost about $11 for a pack of 15 flannel wipes. I liked how soft and durable they were but we go through 15 wipes in nothing flat so we definitely needed more. They are just little squares of flannel so instead of buying more I decided to make them out of scraps of flannel from (you guessed it) the remnant bin at Joanne's! For $3 I got enough to make about 20 wipes.

At first I triend just cutting the edges with pinking shears but they didn't stand up to multiple washings.

So I had to hem them

Here they are with my home made wipe solution

 They get softer with every wash and I bet they feel great on the little one's bum :-)

Now when you use cloth wipes you have to use them with a wipe solution to help get the bum area clean and not irritate the skin. My recipe for wipe solution is 2 cups water, 2 tbs baby oil and 2 tbs baby wash. I like Burts Bees brand because it smells so great but any will do. Just mix the ingredients in a spray bottle and spray some on the wipe before each use. I plan to make a bunch more of these wipes once all my Christmas projects are done :-)

Baby Legs DIY

Time has really gotten away from me ever since I had this baby. I feel like the long sleepless nights have kind of messed with my time line and I literally can't believe it's November already. Echo was just born in September, how did a whole month go by without me noticing?

Anyway, I haven't been blogging much due to the obvious reason that I have my hands full with the adorable baby pictured above. I have, however been trying to make time to practice with my sewing machine and I have a few basic projects I wanted to share. 

Baby leg warmers are an awesome idea, I don't know who came up with them but they are great because they keep baby's legs warm but make diaper changes super easy. I know I always think twice before dressing Echo in pants because all I can think about is what a pain it will be to take them off a million times a day to change her. Most baby leg warmers cost about 12 to 15 bucks but I did this nifty DIY for $1 by using some socks from the dollar bin at Michaels.

All you have to do is cut the heel out of the socks and cut the toe off, creating two tubes of fabric. Then sew the two tubes together and hem the remaining edge. Easy peasy! They were pretty huge on Echo when she was first born but they are starting to fit her better now (she's getting to be quite a hefty little gal!). I'm pretty pleased with the results and you can't beat the dollar price tag.

My New (Old) Vintage Brother Charger

My new sewing machine!

I recently purchased a vintage Brother Charger 031 sewing machine at Good Will for $18. I have been interested in getting a sewing machine for some time but I didn't want to invest a lot of money because I wasn't really sure how much I would use it and I didn't want to necessarily do any big projects, just a bit of mending here and there. I knew Brother was a decent brand (they use it on Project Runway after all) and I liked that it had all metal parts, I have heard that vintage sewing machines are better because of this and less likely to break down. I figured for $18 it couldn't hurt to give this one a chance.

Well after I got it home I noticed that it was missing a presser foot, screw and bobbin case so all those needed replacing. Luckily sewing machine parts haven't changed much in the past 50 years so I was able to get replacements for all my missing parts for about $22 (more than I paid for the machine but oh well).

After getting all the parts I needed I realized I had no idea how to thread this thing. I am not an experienced seamstress and while I used to sew a lot when I was a kid it's been years since I have made anything using a sewing machine. This machine is also different from others I have used because it is so old. I searched online and couldn't find any instructions on how to thread this particular type of machine. Finally through trial and error and with some help from my mom I figured out how to get it up and running. I am now posting instructions on how to thread a vintage brother charger sewing machine both for my own reference (in case I forget how I did it) and for others who might be trying to figure this out.

1. put your thread on the thread spool on top of the machine (duh, right?)

2. pull thread through the thread guide on the top of the machine.

This is where it gets tricky. This picture is a bit confusing (my apologies) but this is the left side of the sewing machine. 3. bring the thread down from the top of the machine and wrap it around the tension spool going front to back. 4. pull the thread through the lever as shown. 5. Pull the thread through the little wire thingy (not sure what this is called). 6. Pull the the thread down through the thread guide on the side of the machine. 

7. Pull the thread through the second thread guide on the side of the machine, moving down toward the needle.  8.  Pull the thread through the last thread guide, this is the small wire one just above the needle. 

Sorry this is all blurry, it was a low light situation. 9. Pull the thread through the eye of the needle. 10. Slide the thread through the middle of the presser foot and pull it off to the side, leaving about 2 inches spare. 

I'm so happy I figured this out and I can finally use my new machine! Next up I will show you my first project that I made. It's super simple but being the novice that I am I'm quite proud of it.

Getting our Financial House in order

We have been doing quite a lot of thinking about, strategizing and rearranging how we handle our finances over the past few months. It all started with Eric's discovery of a financial blog that really clicked for him called Mr. Money Mustache. The blog is all about achieving financial independence and retiring early. By retiring I don't really mean staying at home and doing nothing, it's more about being able to do something you enjoy, work from home and work on a part time basis. This would be the ultimate goal for both Eric and I, especially now that we have a kid on the way. It's extremely important that at least one of us is at home full time because we plan to home school but having both parents at home would be ideal.

Of course if both us stay home we need to have some money to live on so that's where the Mr. Money Mustache strategy comes in. It appeals to me because instead of sticking to a budget (which makes me feel deprived) it's just about developing new habits. Here are the steps we are taking to try to save some major money and retire early.

1. Paying attention to where our money goes. This is probably a common sense thing that everyone should be doing but that I haven't really started being hard core about until lately. Eric and I sat down together, went through our Mint.com account and saw exactly what we were spending our money on. This showed us where we could easily cut back. Luckily Eric and I are both naturally thrifty so we were encouraged by how much we were already saving without even trying, there were obviously areas we could improve on though.

2. Reevaluating the way we eat. This is huge for us. When we looked at where our money went food was by far our biggest spending category. Groceries were actually number one and eating out was probably number two. We've instigated a lot of changes in this area of our lives and are seeing huge results already. Eric has been eating a low carb diet on and off for a few years now. Spending all that money on meat was the number one reason that we were losing so much money to the grocery store. I have been wanted to cut back my meat intake for a while now anyway because of ethical reasons and Eric agreed to try alternative dieting methods such as portion control to maintain his health. I'm pretty happy about this change, I get to eat beans and corn again! We are still trying to limit our use of refined white flour and things like that. However cutting back on meat and using things like beans and cheese as alternate sources of protein make it so much easier to buy in bulk and save huge amounts of money. We still have meat probably two or three times a week so we haven't cut it out completely, but just cutting way back has made a gigantic difference in our spending. Eric has also stopped eating out for lunches and will take leftovers or take advantage of free snacks provided by his workplace during the week. We still go out to dinner for the occasional treat but our day to day way of eating has changed and we are both really happy with it.

3. No more big banks. We finally ditched our Wells Fargo accounts this weekend and switched everything over to ING. We had already opened a savings account with ING and when Wells Fargo started charging crazy, random fees for things we decided it was time to make a permanent switch. It took a while to get everything changed over because we had so many things automatically coming out of the Wells Fargo account but it was so worth it. Not only are we getting way better interest rates but we can do all our banking electronically which we love. If electronic banking isn't your thing you can always use a credit union which are also way better than the large banks, there is no way I'm jumping through all those hoops to avoid paying fees just to have a checking account, it's nuts!

4. Rewards credit cards. I am a huge fan of rewards credit cards. As long as it is money you are going to be spending anyway you might as well be getting something back for it right? When I first started using credit cards I wasn't sure I could keep track of everything so I would just use it for gas. That way it was easy to manage and I knew I could pay it off each month. Now that I'm more confident with credit card use I put everything on a rewards card and pay the whole balance off every month. Obviously it's important not to carry a balance on credit cards but as long as you can pay it off each month you might as well take advantage of those rewards. We love our Chase Freedom card because you get 1% back on all your purchases plus you get 5% back on certain categories that change every three months. This quarter it is gas and restaurants so we are wracking up rewards like crazy!

5. Paying down the mortgage. We are planning to pay down our mortgage as soon as possible to avoid paying interest on our loan. Once we get that paid off we will be 100% debt free and our cost of living will be minimal. We live in unincorporated Cobb County so our taxes are very low and once we don't have that monthly mortgage payment we will be saving some serious cash each month. We already had a 15 year mortgage which much shorter than what most people have but we have also probably paid about $20,000 extra on the mortgage in the past year. If we continue at this rate we will have it paid off in no time and can put that money to better use.

6. Buying used. This one is really for me since I do most of the shopping in our family. It's a little hard for me because sometimes I want nice, new things. However I am learning to love consignment and thrift stores and it's been pretty amazing some of the great finds you can score if you take the time to look. It's worked out especially well for baby shopping. Consignment stores are full of brand new and practically brand new (seriously, some of them still have the tags on them) designer baby clothes for super cheap! Sure it takes more time to dig through everything and find the really good deals, but if you think of it as a game it's kind of fun.

7. Learning to love what we have. This one is hard for me too. It's so much a part of our culture to want the next, great thing. we are trying to appreciate the great things we have and take pleasure in the beauty of our home without craving more stuff.

So this is where we are starting. So far it has been fairly painless and the results we are seeing are big! It's certainly satisfying watch our money grow but we don't want to be crazy strict about it either. It's all about balance (as with everything in life). It will be interesting to see how having baby Echo join our family will affect our finances and whether or not we can keep it up. Wish us luck!

Photo Service

As a photographer, I can't tell you how important pictures are to me. I wanted to take a minute to talk about the photo service I use for my prints and online photo storage. I started looking for a way to store my photos online a few years ago when I took a break from facebook for a few months. I wanted a way to still be able to share pictures with friends even when I wasn't using facebook so I researched a few different options. I looked in to picasa, shutterfly and kodak gallery but ultimately ended up going with shutterfly. At the time when I was looking at all this, picasa had limits on how much you could upload and didn't have an easy way to order prints. Kodak gallery requires that you buy a certain amount of merchandise from them each year or they delete your pictures (yikes!). I ended up going with shutterfly for several reasons.

1. they have unlimited online storage and they never delete your pictures. This means they are a great way to back up your photos.

2. They have a photo sharing site template that you can use to easily share pictures. It's not the most professional looking but it's good enough for sharing with friends and family, others can also order prints from your share site so that's a nice feature as well.

3. Ordering prints and photo books is easy, if not exactly cheap. I'll be honest that ordering prints and photo gifts from shutterfly can get pretty pricey. But the quality has always been good and they actually have really good promotions if you are a member. You just have to wait until you get emailed a coupon for 40% or for free prints or cards. They actually have some very good deals if you are patient enough to wait for them.

Here are some examples of products I've gotten from shutterfly.

Photo books from our wedding and honeymoon.

These provide templates but are easy to customize with different layouts and backgrounds. 

For the honeymoon book I used a travel theme for the backgrounds. 

I recently took advantage of a promotion where I got 101 free prints! I was in heaven! I bought this photo collage frame at Kohls (I used my Kohls cash and got it for $6!) to display some of my new prints.  

I also use shutterfly to print my Christmas cards with my own custom designs and I have been very happy with them! The only downside is that they print their logo on everything but it doesn't bother me too much for personal things. In case you're interested here is a link to my share site through thema s well http://audreyalbright.shutterfly.com/.

Does anyone else have an online photo service they love? I am always open to new suggestions but shutterfly has been my favorite so far :-)

Shopping for Baby

Eric and I have always known we wanted kids and that raising a family was kind of the most awesome experience we could share together, it was just a matter of when it was going to happen. The baby urge started to creep up on me when we had been married for about six months and after working with babies for a while and realizing that I could be comfortable with them I knew it was time.

I can remember a time in the not too distant past when I really wasn't interested in babies. I have always always always loved kids (the kind that are old enough to talk to and play with) but I never used to really see the appeal of babies, I mean, what do you do with them? This must have been mostly due to my lack of exposure to babies because once I got a job where I work with new borns every day it didn't take long for me to become totally fascinated with them, now I think they are completely and utterly amazing!

So what I'm trying to say is if you are not in that "baby" place in your life and you find all this baby talk uninteresting I totally get it and I'm sorry to blab on about it. I was just like you not long ago. Unfortunately I am now in super baby mode and it consumes my every thought, and I figure that's probably a good thing seeing as I am having one :-) Not only will thinking about our new arrival help me feel prepared, it's fun for me to think about he/she. I'm not going to be pregnant forever so I might as well enjoy it.

Ok, enough rambling, all this is leading up to the fact that I made my first baby clothes purchase the other day and I'm kind of in love with baby clothing now. Since we don't know the sex of the baby yet I got all gender neutral stuff but it is just so darn cute! Everything comes in the most adorable animal patterns and it's so tiny! Squeee!! Ok, sorry about that, freak out over :-) Here is what the babies wardrobe consists of so far, I'm sure I will be adding many, many more outfits once I know if it's a boy or a girl.

The whole bunch of clothes I got, some of which were gifted from my mom (thanks mom!)

Pandas

Party animals

Raccoons

Umm... a little bit of everything I guess :-)

Aren't the prints just darling? I got all of these at Once Upon a Child, a consignment store for babies and children. I found that some of the furniture in the store was a bit pricey but the clothes seemed like a good deal. most of these onsies cost about $3, definitely worth a look if you are in the market for gently used baby clothes. My mother in law Jody has also been scoring me some great deals on baby gear at garage sales and consignment sales, I can't wait to see everything she's picked up in person!

Sunday Morning Thrifting

Sunday just happens to be our local thrift store's 50% off day (provided you have the right coupons) and man did we score big this week! I couldn't resist a post about all our vintage goodies. I've recently become a passionate thrifter, we got everything pictured below plus some clothes for around $12.

Bowling bags, one for Eric and one for me! They came with balls that actually fit our fingers and mine came with shoes that not only fit me but are super cute!

They also make good dance shoes

My bowling bag, I thought it would make a cute little overnight bag. 

Eric's more manly bowling bag, how cute will we be on little weekend getaways with these things?

Wire basket for kitchen organization, I've wanted one of these for a while but was unwilling to pay 18 bucks for it.

Ikea bread box, we plan to hang it on the wall and using it more like a shelf, I'll post pictures when we figure it out :-)

Speaking Of Good Deals...

I had my first day off in 8 days today and I woke up refreshed and full of energy! I finally had a day to take care of errands that I had been putting off for way too long. There were the not so fun ones like getting my oil changed, and the fun ones like doing some shopping with my Mom. I even ended up with a little time this afternoon to work on some projects that I will be blogging about in the near future :-)

In the course of my shopping day I was able to score some seriously good deals. It's amazing to me how much better I am at watching what I spend now. I used to buy things like groceries for full price and never think twice but now I almost never buy things unless they are on sale. I find getting good deals tremendously satisfying, I'm sure I'm not alone in this. So anyway, I was stopping by Home Depot today to pick up some things and I was amazed by some of the deals in the garden center. Seriously, if you haven't been lately, you should go. They had some plants that were crazy on sale and I walked out with 6 good sized plants for about $17. Below is a picture of the goodies...

Perennials were on sale 2 for $7 

Got a nice palm tree for the living room for $2.50

and the crowning glory is the hibiscus tree for $1.89, crazy!

The hostas were not technically on sale but they are a bit cheaper this time of year (or so I'm told). Besides, I really needed them for a terraced shade garden I'm planning to make in the near future.

 After clearing out the Home Depot garden center we hit up our local Borders which as you probably know is going out of business (as are all of the Borders book stores). It is pretty sad to see them go, I have spent so much time browsing in Borders through the years. That being said I wasn't above taking advantage of their store closing sale. Of course I went straight to the cook book section, I love love love cook books! I almost always end up cooking from online recipes but for some reason I love to buy cook books, lol. Oh well, at least they were on sale and this makes me resolve to cook from my cook book collection more often :-)

It seems like there are lots of amazing deals everywhere I go lately. I think it's an end of Summer thing, they are clearing things out to get ready for a new season. I advise you all to go out there and get some of these deals while the gettings good :-)

More Bargain Hunting

Acquiring all the things you want for your house takes time, and if you want to save a bunch of money on these things then it also takes a lot of patience. You can spend weeks or months cruising yard sales and thrift stores before finding just what you want. After months of looking the perfect wine rack to fit in the space on top of our refrigerator Eric finally found the perfect thing at a thrift store. I'm pretty happy about it, it's great to have a place for our wine and frequently used liqueur bottles and it fits snuggly in the previously unused space on top of the fridge but below the cabinets.

New wine rack, it's simple but the perfect shape and the metal and wood suits us nicely

Another great way to score bargains other than yard sales and thrift stores is taking advantage of coupons. I don't know if this is true of everyone who buys a house but for us one of the perks of home ownership has been the amazing coupons that started showing up in our mailbox. I pretty regularly get all kinds of crazy deals for food or car maintenance and even occasionally for clothes and home goods. I've been getting "Kohls cash" about once a month since I moved in here in the amount of $10. The best part is that there is no minimum purchase so if you buy something for under $10 it's just free! I'm still totally amazed by that.. So I have been wanting a little chip and dip platter for a while now and have been keeping my eyes open for one. When I got my Kohls cash this month I headed up to my local Kohls and bummed around their clearance section. Lo and behold there was the perfect chip and dip bowl. It was regular $38, on clearance for $7. Know how much it cost me? That's right, zip :-) I left the store feeling pretty savvy and proud of myself.

Chips and dips in the same serving vessel, brilliant!

So while it may take a long time to get some of the things we want for our kitchen or our house in general it is totally worth the wait to find these kinds of deals. Besides, if you think of bargain hunting as a game it's pretty fun. Life would be pretty boring if we got everything we wanted right away anyway, the search for great finds is the exciting part.

Bargain Hunting

One of the great things about living in this neighborhood is that it has killer yard sales! Eric found all these wooden bowls at a sale this weekend, he paid $3 for the whole set! They totally fit with our rustic, woodsy style and has inspired us to try to make it out to yard sales more often.