Yep, I knitted dead fish hats for my three sons and one of my nephews for Christmas.  I’m not the fastest knitter in the world by any means but they worked up pretty quickly and this is a great yarn stash project that uses up any amount of leftover colors so other than having to buy a set of double-point #7 needles (used a 40% off coupon at Joann’s to get them cheaper ) these fish didn’t pull anything else out of my pocketbook!

Here is the complete site to Dead Fish Hats.  The link to the pattern is in the top paragraph and is found at Knitty, a fantastic website for knitters!

Here is a great picture of my guys with their dead fish hats:

Now that website also provides you with some great ideas for colors and designs plus you can see pictures of “live-fish-hats”.

My dad, the fisherman, has put in a request for his own dead-fish-hat and I have to admit that I could totally see myself ice fishing with my dead fish hat on, so I think I’ll be making one for myself.

A fair number of my forum members make their own laundry detergent.  Some make a powder version and others, a liquid version.  I hadn’t considered the option simply because from a money standpoint, I was buying my detergent for a good price considering I didn’t have to put in time to make the product.  Then I started buying Fels Naptha soap to help me get the grass stains off of my work jeans and the boy’s baseball pants.  The grass and dirt always came off with the Fels Naptha which made me wonder if homemade detergent would just be easier and more effective.  I also had concerns about some of the ingredients that were in the store-bought brands and relished the idea of keeping the basic 3 ingredients on hand to do multiple jobs around the house (fels naptha, borax and washing soda).

A favorite company of mine sells a “homemade laundry detergent kit” for almost $50!  I love this company but you do NOT need to spend this much!  Their kit includes a large, lidded bucket, a hand-grater, 5 bars of fels naptha soap, a box of borax and a box of washing soda, along with a wooden spoon and measuring cup.

My homemade “kit” consists of a recycled frosting bucket from the local grocery store.  Cost:  free.  I use the grater attachment to my Kitchen Aid to finely grind my soap but a hand-grater can be had at your local dollar store for a dollar if you prefer or need to use that.  Wooden spoons can be found at the dollar store as well.  I regularly get a 3-pack of spoons for $1.  Cost of one spoon:  33 cents.  I’m up to $1.33 for my kit.  I have found my fels naptha soap at my local hardware store for $1.29/bar.  I only use 3 bars to make my batch of detergent but I’ll figure the cost based on their 5 bar kit.  Cost of 5 bars of my soap: $6.45.  I use one box of borax which I can generally find for $4.79.  I also use one box of washing soda (NOT baking soda) which I just found online for $2.50/box!

Total for my homemade kit is $15.07.  A far cry from my favorite company’s $49.99 and you can easily assemble a kit for yourself!

My basic homemade laundry detergent recipe for powdered detergent:

-3 bars of finely grated Fels Naptha soap (finely grated dissolves more easily than thickly grated so don’t rush this process by grating the bars with too big a grind)

-1 box of borax

-1 box of washing soda

Variations:

To the basic recipe you can add a box of powdered bleach for colors, if desired.  I have added a container of Oxiclean to batches that were made for summer months (when our camping clothes can get beyond grungy!).  I read about one person who added a handful of water softening salt to her basic recipe because of her hard water.  I have hard water and the basic recipe seems to work fine.  Some of my forum members also add some baking soda to their batches to help combat odors and soften the clothes but again, that hasn’t been an issue for me.

I thoroughly mix the grated soap, the borax and washing soda in my bucket.  I make a point of making my detergent on days when I can pour and mix the ingredients OUTSIDE because I don’t want to inhale the dust from pouring and mixing.

This recipe is low-sudsing and I use it in a HE-type machine with no issues.  I have noticed that the body odor that lingered with commercial detergents is now gone with the homemade detergent.  I’ve used all water temps (except hot) with no problems although I’ve heard members say that they didn’t grind it fine enough and it didn’t dissolve well (thus my stressing that you grate the soap fine).

I use 2 tablespoons of detergent for a full load.  A full batch of homemade detergent costs me $11.16 to make.  I haven’t figured out how many loads I can get from a full batch.  I should weigh out my 2 tablespoons and get a rough estimate of how many loads I’m getting so I can’t honestly tell you how much each load is, but I do know that it’s cheaper than store-bought detergent AND is more effective.

It’s not enough to just lather on the moisturizer.  The outer most layer of your skin is a layer of dead skin cells.  If you don’t exfoliate off the dead skin cells regularly, it’s like trying to water your grass with a thick layer of dead leaves on top;  the water will sit on top and not penetrate down to the soil.

One of my favorite ways to frugally pamper myself is to do a hand treatment in the evening once I’m ready to settle down for bed.   First, I exfoliate my hands with a sugar scrub.  I put a teaspoon or so of my favorite liquid soap in the palm of my wet hand with a teaspoon or so of sugar (yep, regular white sugar).  All you do is gently begin washing your hands with your nicely scented sugar scrub.  I make sure to focus on scrubbing my knuckles and other areas that begin to get dry and sad looking.  After thirty or so seconds of scrubbing, I rinse it away with lukewarm water (don’t use hot water as it will dry your skin even more).

I gently pat my hands dry and then massage in a moisturizing cream.   Then I slide my hands into a pair of clean tube socks.  You can also use a pair of cotton gloves designed for just this purpose, but if you don’t have the gloves, then the socks will do.  You’re basically allowing your hands to stay warm and the pores to be open to the moisturizer.  Oh and about the moisturizer:  don’t spend lots of money!  When you exfoliate and use the sock technique, even a cheap moisturizer works well.

In the morning, my hands feel so soft and pampered.  This technique also works beautifully for dry, cracked feet!  Remember to exfoliate (either with a pumice stone or with the sugar scrub technique) and then moisturize and slide into warm, clean socks.  Exfoliating your feet with the sugar scrub allows you to get out dead skin from between the toes, too.  This can help with reducing foot smell which is kind of nice when you keep your feet in snow boots all winter! 

Pampering yourself doesn’t have to be pricey which makes it even better!  I love feeling like a million bucks for only pennies!

I spent the better part of an afternoon pulling up my tomato cages and removing the tendrils of the sugar snap peas and pole beans from the vertical fences.  I had watched the tendrils climb slowly, and then more quickly up the galvanized steel all summer.  We had enjoyed the fruit of those vines into the late fall until the deer ate them up!  Now I had to unwrap the stalks and clean the slate for spring.

I’ll miss all the green in my garden.  I’ll miss harvesting the vegetables and fruits.  I have my cold-frame this year to help feed my gardening addiction.  I know the seed catalogs will begin arriving just when I get desperate.  Those clean, empty vertical fences speak to the promise of another spring when little green shoots can begin climbing up towards the warmth of the sun.  They’ll carry my spirit up with with them after a long winter.

The forecasters had warned us to expect power outages in our region.  The day before we lost power, I made a triple batch of  no-knead artisan bread and put it in the fridge.  When the power was out, I was able to place my pizza stone in the grill and turn my grill into an oven.  I was able to make artisan bread just like I normally did with the exception of sliding the dough into the grill.  My girlfriend had made pasta for her family and I shared the two loaves I had made with her family.  She couldn’t believe I could make bread without electricity!  I do admit that I didn’t get daring enough to make anything like cookies on the grill but I suppose if push had come to shove, I could have done it.

I cleaned!  A lot!  I didn’t have distractions like kids to get off to school (school was canceled), laundry to do, phone calls, work , the internet and television.  My main responsibilities were keeping the generator running (and making sure to alternate things we needed to plug in), keeping the fire going and the kerosene heater going as needed.  The boys had fun playing outside and took responsibility for keeping the buckets collecting the snow melt for the toilets.  I wanted to make good use of the daylight hours while I had sun so I cleaned.  I organized.  I sorted through piles of paperwork that I kept meaning to get to.  Once the electricity came back on, the house looked good!

I sewed and knitted.  I had two pairs of pants I promised to hem for a friend.  In the rising morning sun, I was able to cut the pants and pin them in my sewing room downstairs.  The afternoon sun gave me plenty of light to sew by in the upstairs living room.  I was able to knit by the same afternoon light, slowly but surely working at a vest that’s been on my needles since last winter (I’m still learning how to knit so it’s slow ). I did think on working with my treadle sewing machine seeing as it doesn’t require electricity but I honestly found it a bit hard to focus on the detailed seams required of piecing together quilt blocks.  Still, I took satisfaction in knowing that I could have been productive with my quilting without electricity.

I was able to spend extra time reading my Bible.   It’s easy to see how the world and it’s business can draw us away from God.  Without electricity, you quickly get down to the basics of living and find time for other things.  When the house is so still and quiet without the hum of the computer, the spinning sound of the washing machine, the phone ringing and the television blaring, you can hear God clearly speaking to your heart.

Then came Alfred.  The freak early fall snow storm hit us hard.  Our trees are used to the the high winds and heavy snows of our Nor’Easters but the storm came early in the season with the trees still heavily laden with leaves that they hadn’t shed yet.  Each leaf was like a hand, held out to catch the heavy, wet snow.  With barely an inch of this snow, the branches had started to bend under the weight.  We were watching TV and listening to the electrical outage numbers grow and grow and grow.  We knew to expect the outages and I prepared for another four days like during Irene.  We lost power around 3:30 on Saturday, the 29th.

I had an interesting problem develop with the second outage.  I had restocked my supply of lamp oil well before the storm hit.  My oil lamps burned beautifully during the first outage but I was running low on the oil.  Well, apparently, there is a difference in lamp oils!  I had decided to buy the paraffin oil which claimed to burn, “cleaner, smokeless and brighter” but I didn’t know that you can’t mix regular lamp oil with the paraffin oil.  It messed up my wicks and they didn’t burn well at all.  My husband made a trip to town trying to hunt down new oil and wicks.  We managed new wicks but oil was in big demand.  We  managed some oil from my folks and his mother to hold us over until we could find more.  I replaced the wicks, dumped the paraffin oil mixture and started fresh.  Between the new wicks and new ‘old’ oil, we had brightly burning oil lamps once again.  In addition, I was able to buy up THE last bottle of the original oil at the hardware store when it reopened after the storm (I was waiting in line outside to get in and had cash).

Another interesting dilemma was heat.  The temps dropped dramatically after the storm, dipping into the twenties by Sunday night.  We were forced to send our boys to my folks house because it would get too cold in the house and they never lost power.  We have a fire place downstairs but it drafts badly, like any fireplace and could only keep the family room livable.  There wasn’t enough room down there for five of us.  By Tuesday morning, it was a mere 43 degrees Fahrenheit in the house!  I could see my breath!

My husband went to work on Tuesday and I went visiting neighbors with hot coffee brewed in my camper coffee pot on the portable camper stove (DONE OUTSIDE TO PREVENT CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING!).  One neighbor shared the warmth of her wood stove with me and I shared hot coffee with her.  At my other neighbor’s house, he asked me in to visit with him and his wife in their “warm” home.  THEY had a kerosene heater!  Bob was sweet and offered to bring the heater to our home to take the serious chill off but I asked him if he might know where I could find one to buy.  My dear neighbor ended up driving to a Lowe’s about 2.5 hours round-trip with me to pick up one of only three kerosene heaters they had left and I had bought and paid for by phone.  Then he shared one of his two, 5-gallon containers of kerosene with us until we could find a kerosene storage container of our own AND a supplier who had power where we could fill said container.  That kerosene heater was a God-send!  The house went from 43 degrees  F. to 70 degrees F. in about six hours!  We were finally able to get the boys back home (although giving up cable and electricity at the grandparent’s house was tough ).

Living off grid isn’t hard but living off-grid in an on-grid home is harder.  We saved melting snow from the roof in buckets for the toilets.  Then we hauled the buckets up the stairs, poured them into my large laundry bucket and used the water, as needed, from there.  There was the constant need to haul wood from the main wood pile to the garage’s wood bin and then eventually inside.  We stretched our kerosene supply by turning the heater off during the day upstairs and keeping the downstairs warm with the fireplace (I put up a curtain across the stairs to cut down the draft caused by the fireplace).  After four days, the fresh water supply was more of an issue and I was able to fill our fresh water jugs with water at the local community center. I had given up on the fridge and had the boys pile the snow on the deck and we kept everything cold in our “snow-pile-fridge”.  Ice cold milk with cookies is truly a wonderful treat!

We did treat ourselves to movie nights!  We hooked the television and DVD player to the generator and watched the newest “Transformers” movie by fire light one night.  I made popcorn in a pot on the portable camp stove.  The fire, the “old-fashion” made popcorn and our family together was almost as much fun as our camping evenings!  Well, the boys thought it was even better than camping simply because they had a movie, too. 

I do admit that having the power come back on is a mixed bag of emotions.  There is something simple and wonderful about oil lamps in the evening but having flush toilets without running water is hard work.  I missed my microwave!!!!! I missed my microwave more than I missed my internet which is saying something!  I really do love how these major outages have brought neighbors closer together.  You really learn who you can count on when the going gets tough.  You get to sit around more and chat and let life slow down.  I miss that.  I still missed my microwave more. 

Quite a few of our Frugal-Families forum members make their own vanilla extract.  I kept thinking I would try making my own vanilla extract but I was honestly in love with my purchased vanilla and the fact that it can take months for a good batch of homemade vanilla extract to come to fruition kept me from going for it.  I’m also not a big online shopper when it comes to some things like vanilla beans and I kept forgetting to buy vanilla beans at my local food co-op, where I am a member.  Then there was the vodka.  We enjoy beer and wines (usually purchased from local wineries when we’re camping all around) but I don’t think about buying large bottles of vodka when I visit a package store.

Well, that has all changed.  I just put together my second batch of homemade vanilla and I still chuckle when I think about the money I spent buying vanilla extract from my other company AND how “hard” it seemed to pull two ingredients together to get my first batch going.

You only need two things to make homemade vanilla extract:  vanilla BEANS and plain vodka (although one of my forum members swears that rum tastes great, too).  First, vanilla extract (and most extracts) are almost all alcohol.  The alcohol is used to draw the flavor infusing oils out of the vanilla beans (or whatever extract you’re making) and when you cook or bake with the extract, most of the alcohol evaporates out.  Vodka works nicely for making extract because legally, vodka is suppose to be void of flavor and thus lends itself to being ‘flavored’.  I buy the LEAST EXPENSIVE vodka I can find in the package store.  My first bottle came with a rebate slip if I bought the larger bottle, so I did.  This last bottle was on sale and again, the least expensive.

Now, vanilla beans aren’t as easy as vodka.  Don’t buy those skimpy, dried out beans in little jars in the grocery store that have quite possibly been there for months, and months and months.  You should buy vanilla beans that are aromatic and flexible.  Old beans are dry and brittle, with little of that aromatic vanilla smell.  Several of my forum members have bought their vanilla beans from this eBay supplier with great success and product satisfaction:  http://myworld.ebay.com/vanillaproducts/     I buy my Madagascar vanilla beans from my food co-op.

All I do to make my vanilla is place the bean on a cutting board and carefully slice down the full length of the bean to gently open it up and expose the vanilla seeds inside to alcohol and then just drop the bean into the bottle.  I use two beans for the large bottle of vodka.  Then, put it in a cool area to sit and mellow.  You can give it a gentle agitation every week.  You’ll see a gorgeous caramel color develop over six weeks or so.  Some will tell you that if it smells like vanilla than it will taste like vanilla and you can use it.  It definitely improves with time!  I didn’t use my first batch of vanilla extract for almost eight weeks and I’ve noticed it’s grown even darker in the past four months since I first started using it.  The aroma when I open the bottle to refill my smaller bottle is incredible!

Honestly, it took me all of two minutes to slice open two beans and drop them in the bottle of vodka.  It might have taken me only one minute.  I’ll generously say two.  My bottle  sits in my pantry and it gets the gentle agitation when I’m in the pantry getting other supplies.  It’s so easy!  The results are gourmet quality BUT the cost is a frugal gourmet’s dream.  I researched PURE vanilla extract (remember, some of that cheap stuff is only vanilla FLAVORING!) and found that pure extract made from Madagascar and/or Tahitian vanilla beans ranges from $15-20 for an 8 oz bottle!  I bought my 1.75 liter bottle of vodka for about $25 and two vanilla beans were $2.50.  My 1.75 liter bottle is about seven-8 ounce bottles which would cost me $108 to $140 if I bought the extract in 8 oz. bottles.  By doing the “work” myself, I bring my cost down to about $3.93 for an 8 oz bottle of pure Madagascar vanilla extract!

Yep, really hard work.

My raspberries are moving past the peak of their harvest but being that they’re an ever-bearing variety noted for their production right until the first frost, I’m still getting quite the daily haul.  I’ve had such a bounty of berries this year, I’ve actually splurged and made raspberries dumplings one day!  It seemed like such a decadence to have all those raspberries make one dessert, but those dumplings were delicious!

My french filet green beans seemed to have finally decided to produce.  Although recommended by a favorite gardening book, I don’t think I’d plant them again.  They are small and have taken forever to give me about 6 beans/plant.  I hope they blossom and produce a bit more.  My pole beans are coming into full production as well.  My only issue with them is that I can never find anything tall enough to allow them to grow up all they want and still have some way to reach the harvest.  They are currently a green cascade haphazardly balanced on a line stretched along the support poles to the vertical fences. You can see their greenery on the left fence in this picture:

My tomatoes have finally decided to turn red.  In this pictures you can see my red globes, chocolate cherries and grape tomatoes next to my purple basil.

The green beans on the left side are those french filet beans.

You can see the two cups or so of raspberries I picked as well.

Tomorrow I’m taking the kitchen snips to my sage and lavender.  I still haven’t replaced my dehydrator yet.  I did a test drying of both by simply hanging them by strings in the kitchen and it worked like a charm (why wouldn’t it considering people have been drying like that for generations).

I should have started planting my cold frame but I’m honestly both terrified by the large spiders that created a fine summer retreat in there and put off by the blood suckers I’ll have to beat off to get things planted in there.  Okay, it’s  more about the spiders than the mosquitoes.

Where to begin?

A quick update from our homestead. The summer has been an exceptionally busy one with our normal camping and my working more outside the home now. I’ve picked up quite a few per diem hours plus one guaranteed day every week with a pediatric dental office. Working with the kids is both exhausting and rewarding and just plain fun. On the downside, working more outside the home means less time for the homestead projects but we’re still managing to accomplish things and I’ve tried to have our sons step up to some of the responsibilities, as well.

Despite working more, I still have a large garden. One of my homesteading goals was to have some type of fruit producing plants and had decided on raspberries. This year, they’re producing beyond my wildest expectations, providing cups and cups of fresh raspberries on a daily basis and yet taking up relatively little room in the garden (so long as you teach them who’s boss when it comes to where they want to spread to!). I’ve already put up 14 half-pints of seedless raspberry jam!

One issue with our garden production this year was a cool, wet spring combined with that VERY snowy winter. The heavy snows provided ample protection for voles and chipmunks over the winter and my garden has been heavily raided by said voles. This seems to be an issue for a lot of gardeners this year. It took a very long time for my sugar snap peas to germinate in the cool, wet spring only to have them sucked down into a hole and devoured by voles costing me four weeks of planting time! I went so far as to over plant my sugar snaps by DOUBLE on the second planting, only to have the same thing happen and doubly happy voles. Snap traps set by the vole holes DID remove a few of the most aggressive voles but it was a constant battle. I had to plant green beans in three different areas in an attempt to confuse and overwhelm the voracious little beasts! Cruel as it sounds, I’m hoping for an intensely cold winter with little snow cover in order to reduce the populations. We’re in absolutely NO DANGER of our voles and chipmunks becoming endangered around here any time soon.

So with the voracious garden critters, I’ve struggled to provide even daily vegetables for the household. I haven’t been able to put any vegetables into the freezer. I just used the last of the previous year’s freezer pickles. I might actually have COUGH*SPUTTER* BUY, cukes for freezer pickles.

Our boys are growing quickly! I’m always thankful that I can bake and cook like I can! Our oldest is 15 now and can eat an entire loaf of homemade bread as a ‘snack’ after school and STILL eat twice as much as my husband at dinner a few hours later! Even with working more hours, I’ve been able to keep homemade bread in the house using a no-knead artisan bread dough that you store in the refrigerator (have I told you about that bread recipe? I’ll have to check).

We’ve been slammed with some high priced repairs and issues this year. I’ve been grateful that even though the money has been going out, that God saw fit to provide me with more work to bring the money in cover it all with minimal impact on our emergency fund. Sometimes the repairs came as fast as the paychecks, but again, at least we had the extra paycheck.

That was a pretty quick and smoothed over update. From this point forward, I’m going to be working hard at giving you more about our frugal life. In my own defense, I share so much of what I do within the forums, that I don’t think I have much to write about here but not all of you are members of the forums (you should be though ) and you wouldn’t feel it redundant to read it in the blog. So, no looking back, we’ll look forward!

Hello,

For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of Connecticut residents. Unfortunately, the budget signed by Governor Malloy contains a sales tax provision that compels us to terminate this program for Connecticut-based participants effective immediately. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by Connecticut-based affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.

We opposed this new tax law because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It was supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside Connecticut, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.

As a result of the new law, contracts with all Connecticut residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program will be terminated today, June 10, 2011. …”

I wasn’t the only one unhappy with the decision (or the swiftness of their ax!) http://somethinginteresting.com/2011/06/10/amazon-drops-ct-associates/#comment-99

Generally, I try to avoid politics because simply put, I don’t think that most politicians really have a clue (about anything). Malloy is claiming that the state is losing millions in tax revenue because online companies like Amazon won’t collect sales tax. Isn’t it bad enough that the state has a use tax and somehow thinks it’s their right to tell me that if I buy a $30 pair of sneakers for one of my boys out of state (we do a serious amount of camping out of state and this isn’t uncommon), that I’m expected to come back to CT, confess my purchase and give them 6.35% sales tax! The store AND the purchase were not in CT but they still want my money! Even more of a hassle is that if I pay 4% sales tax in the other state for the sneakers, I’m suppose to pay the difference to the state of CT!

So, back to being fired. Malloy and the legislature must have decided that losing my income tax (and that of hundreds and maybe thousands of others) was an acceptable ‘shared sacrifice’ (the new catch phrase around here) to the money that will be generated in sales tax (not sure how they’ll generate that tax now that Amazon no longer has the suggested physical presence in the state with all of us fired).

I didn’t make a ton of money as an Amazon associate but it was growing as I put in my affiliate ads and wrote more articles and got more traffic here. BUT it was income that I was making with MY website! This is money out of my pocket and I’m angry! Can I take income out of the state’s pocket???

Oh yeah, if I take money out of their pocket, it’s because I didn’t file my state income tax and I’m breaking the law! I’m the thief! They call themselves politicians. Same difference I guess.