Our FI Nest

Prior to leaving on our trip to Mexico I realized we had way too much food to eat in time. As one of my frugal goals this year has been to keep our food costs down I didn't want to waste a bunch before leaving. We were only going for a week so I could have chanced it and most of it probably would have been ok when we got back, but instead I got to doing a bit of batch freezer cooking to preserve the food.  Part of the problem was also taking out some meat I'd planned to cook for dinner, but we had car troubles that day so were were running around getting that sorted out and by the time we go home, everyone was starving. So I didn't end up making the sweet and sour pork I'd planned and ended up with ham and veggie omlette. With only 1 meal left to prepare for the week my fridge looked like this: One of the sour cream containers contained some chicken broth made the day before with left over chicken bones and the other home made yogurt. The cardboard box had som...

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...

My kids, like most kids are tough on their pants and usually put a hole or two in the knees before they out grow them. We had accumulated quite a few pairs, so in an effort to check a few easy projects off the to do list and to be ready for warmer weather (wishful thinking in the middle of a January deep freeze) I cut them off and hemmed them make a few bike shorts for my daughter to wear under her dresses and a pair of shorts (not shown in the before picture) for my son.   Ta-da!  5 pairs of shorts for my daughter and 1 for my son. Done is less than 30 minutes and a 1.5 m moved out of the stash ( I included these tasks/recycling projects as 0.25 m each in the stash to feel like I'm making a dent in it). Little less so as I added 3 m recenly for a couple sweater projects when I found some fabric I'd been lusting after and was suddenly 70% off. I'm trying to be mindful of any purchases I make to ensure that I'll really love what I make out of it and craft I w...

It's cold season over here and we've been going through Kleenex like mad. I had previously sewn up some flannel scraps to use as re-usuable tissues but many seem to have disappeared over the years. Using some leftover fabric from some PJs I made my eldest I made about 30 mini-hankerchiefs. This definitely isn't huge savings or a big environmental win, but little things can add up. The other things that make me happy about this: Kids are excited to blow their nose now and run off to grab one from the drawer. They are much softer than Kleenex so less nose irritation Reduce the waste from the leftovers and reduce some disposible products in our life My favourite benefit is fewer (hopefully none) kleenex going through the wash and disintegrating into a million little pieces. If these get forgotten, I just pull them out and put them in the dirty laundry pile to re-wash properly.  The mini-hankies and small amount of leftover waste.  Stash busting notes :  0.5...