Our FI Nest

My husband has been bugging me to get some bar stools since we moved into our house. We sold our old ones with our house before moving cross-county so have been bar stool-less since moving in. Really it comes down to the fact that I haven't found any that I really love and I don't want to buy something just to fill the void. Much to my husband's chagrin, I noticed some neighbours put some stools out for large item pick up day I went and grabbed them (well after they sat there for a day or so because I was a little embarrassed to do so. I eventually got over it and got them before the truck came round). They were in rough shape and were obviously put out due to the cracking pealing fake leather. This got worse with time as it took me awhile to get around to making some covers. I finally did that this week. One of the things that makes my frugal and environmental soul sing is that I was able use fabric salvaged from hemming our curtains. I had about 12 inches that I cut off...

Recently it was my daughter's 5th birthday. As with most things in life I try to keep the costs in mind without scrimping on the overall experience. This year I've been trying to move towards more experience gifts rather than more stuff. We royally failed on that account at Christmas but her birthday gave us the chance to make up for it. We did discuss coming up to her birthday that we would give her less gifts but do a fun experience instead and she was excited about that. I did still want her to have a gift to open so we got her a new story book collection to expand bed time reading, which I picked up at Winners for $10. I also made her a dress that matches the Minnie mouse one I'd previously made her  using the free Love Notions   Doll dress . I'm really pleased with how it turned out, however she has yet to put on her and the doll's version. Hopefully that will come. The pattern is very cute and easy to sew together. I did change it a bit as I was usin...

When you start a blog in January you have lots of back projects to blog about, including back to school sewing! My 7 year old didn't need a ton of clothes, but he was definitely in need of some sweatpants so I sewed him up 3 pairs using Jalie 3355 . I've lost count of the number of times I've made these pants for him now. I love that I can make him pants that actually fit properly as he's about 2 sizes smaller than his height so I sewed him the equivalent of a size 5 waist with size 7 length. When I'm feeling lazy I'll often leave off the pockets, but my son has told me how much he likes them so I made all these ones with the pockets. The patch pockets are quite quick to make. All in all the pants now take me about 45 minutes to make so it definitely feels like an instant gratification project. I managed to pick up the sweat shirting at a charity sale for $1/m so added bonus that each pair of pants cost me about $2 to make! For the splurge, as my...