A mop does not have to be pretty to work

I've seen those pinterest pages with very nicely done Swiffer-style mop heads that can be washed and reused. They're neatly sewn and look so professional. For a while,  I felt like my sad-looking mop head was put to shame. (Yes, I do sometimes catch a case pinterest-envy.) Then I realized, there are some things that don't need to look pretty to be functional. And to me, mop heads fall into that category. So, stand tall, old-rag-become-mop head. You're doing a fine job!

This is my reusable mop head. I fell into the same trap as many, and about 15 years ago bought a Swiffer because "it would save me so much time". For many years, I used rubber bands to hold rags onto the Swiffer. That did work. This past January, though, I got serious about mop heads (said, tongue-in-cheek). I grabbed one of my old pre-married life towels and turned it into a mop head that didn't require rubber bands.

I took a hand towel, folded it over, then folded this into almost thirds, measuring against the Swiffer head. Next, with my sewing machine I straight-stitched the ends to hold everything in place. I did this all rather hurriedly and spent at most 5 minutes. I didn't even bother with trimming the ends. I used an ordinary sewing needle, and my machine is nothing fancy, but it was still able to sew through all the layers of towels.

To use it, we slide the Swiffer into the opening and just line up the edges so the Swiffer is centered in the folded and stitched towel.

I didn't blog about this at the time, as I wanted to give this mop head a chance to prove itself. Six months of weekly mopping, and it's still holding up fine. The stitching hasn't broken. The mop heap still slips onto the Swiffer and stays on.

When my husband mops, he'll hold the whole thing under the kitchen faucet. When I mop, I spray the floor with a bottle of vinegar and water then mop. After each mopping, we put the mop head through the washer and dryer.

Part of me was expecting to have to mend this by now or have trouble keeping the mop head on the Swiffer. So far, no troubles.

Even if she isn't the prettiest of mop heads, she's doing a fine job.

The beauty of making this mop head with an old towel is that I have no shortage of old towels. When this one falls apart, I'll be able to make another.

Thought I'd show you what's going on on my deck -- the frugal stuff

Welcome to my back deck. The deck is on the south side of the house and gets quite a bit of sun, even with a yard surrounded by enormous evergreens. 

This is the one place on the property that I can successfully grow basil. I plant this trough with basil, started indoors from seeds, every year. Before I planted out the basil, this year, I was planting the tomato plants that I started from seeds, and I had these 2 leftover tomato seedlings. Not knowing what to do with them, yet, I just popped them in the trough. They've grown well and now I don't have the heart to rip them out. So, to the left, a bunch of basil, doing well now that it has warmed, and 2 tomato plants to the right. Battle of the Mediterraneans. We'll see who wins out.

Also, due to being the sunny spot, I have a couple of heat traps on the deck. I can't grow peppers worth beans, in the garden, so I'm trying some pepper plants, started from seeds, indoors, in these large pots. I will be thrilled to get some peppers this year. I'm sure you'll hear about it if I get any.

 Over near the shadier side of the deck (though still sunny for half the day), I have this small area, marking the entrance to the sitting area.

In the large trough, I have English thyme, started from some old seeds (about 6 or 7 years old), indoors. Thyme is known to be difficult to start from seed in the garden, itself. So, I seeded these into a small container and kept under lights for early spring, and moved out to this trough about a month ago. The thyme seems be to doing well, so far. My other thyme is in the herb garden, in a pot. I never get quite enough thyme from that pot, so this trough will provide the rest of what I need.

Just in front of the trough is a terra cotta pot with a begonia plant in it. Begonias are not hardy in our area. They either have to be dug up in fall, and stored in a dry place for winter, or started new each spring. I bought 2 tubers and planted 2 pots of begonias a year ago spring. I didn't have time to dig them up, last fall. So one day before a heavy frost, I pulled the 2 pots into the garage, and just kept them there. I didn't water them until I moved them back outside in early spring. I didn't know if they would survive, but they did. Surprise, surprise. So, moral of the story is if you can't do the best thing for the plants, do the next best. The other pot doesn't look quite as good. It's suffered with an infestation of slugs. Every time it gets one little hint of a flower bud a slug comes along and chomps it down. I slug baited yesterday and hope to bring that pot back to full life again this summer.

And behind that spot is the sitting area. It's a pleasant place to sit in mid-afternoon, when the full heat of the sun  has passed.

In the back corner of the sitting area are 2 more troughs, one planted with rosemary, the other with lavender. In front of the troughs are the pots of geraniums that I brought indoors for last winter. The pink geraniums I brought inside, pots and all and kept in a south-facing window all winter. The white geranium, here and in 2 other pots, I dug up and put several into a pot together. Then in spring, I divided the clump of geranium plants and repotted. They were leggy in spring, so I trimmed them back and they've been doing well.

 

The rosemary, in the left trough, I bought as plants a year ago, spring, after unsuccessfully trying to start from seeds. In fall, I dug them up and potted in smaller pots to bring indoors for the winter. IN spring, I replanted them, gave them a trim to remove legginess and they've popped back to freshness, nicely. The lavender, I left in the trough (also planted last spring), as I simply ran out of time last year. I just hoped for the best, and pulled the trough right up against the house. It survived, and gave me a lot of buds to cut this year.

At the top of the steps to the patio, I have my 2 4th of July pots. At Home Depot, a month ago, I found some potted petunias on the clearance rack. In each pot were 2 red, 2 pink and 1 white. So, I bought 2 of those pots, plus a small pack of blue lobelia. I planted the all of the pink petunias and 2 of the red petunias in urns in the front yard. And with two of the deck pots, I planted red and white petunias, plus blue lobelia (red, white and blue). Sadly, I only have the one little flag, so I'll be keeping my eyes open for a second for the other pot. (I got this one as a freebie on the 4th of July a couple of years ago.)

The clearance pots of petunias did not exactly scream 4th of July to me. I had to think, a moment, how I could use the red, pink and white flowers. And as I also came for flowers for the front urns, it occurred to me that I could put the pinks out front, and the reds and whites on the deck.

Just below each patriotic pot is a pot of Asiatic lily, violas, and the mums that I bought at the end of last summer.

Again, I brought the pots of mums indoors for the winter, and kept in a sunny window, until it was warm enough in my plastic greenhouse on the deck, where I put them for March and April. I trimmed off their legginess, and am hoping for pots of blooms for fall.

And this is one of the white geraniums that I had dug up and put in a pot with several others, for the winter. they're in a small-ish trough which is too big to bring indoors, as is. So I'll have to dig them again this fall.

I'm guessing you see a couple of frugal themes, here. One, as much as possible, I start plants from seeds. It's the cheapskate way to grow veggies and herbs. Two, as much as I could, I brought flowering plants, which are supposed to be annuals where I live, into the house for the winter, so I wouldn't have to buy the same plants for this summer. And of course, three, I always check the clearance rack of plants at Home Depot for annual flowers. You just never know what you're going to find.

You know, you really should have seen my kitchen and living room windows -- filled to the brim with plants for winter.

Cheap 4th of July decor -- 3D star decorations made from magazine or catalog covers

If you'd like to see how these stars look spray-painted in silver for Christmas decor, check out this link.

Remember a while back I showed you a 3D star I'd made from a catalog page (well, 2 pages actually). These make great and *free* 4th of July decorations, to hang from a tree's branches, or the eaves of your house, or inside, from the kitchen or dining room chandelier-style light fixture.

Catalog (or magazine) covers work best, as they're stiffer than the pages inside. you could also use craft paper, like construction paper or scrapbook paper. But I used catalogs. (Go search your recycle bin!) I saved catalogs for a few weeks, to amass enough covers to make several stars. You'll need 2 pages to make each 3D star. And with a catalog or magazine, you're in luck, as you'll have 2 matching sized pages to use for each star (front cover and back cover). Different sizes for the stars make an interesting arrangement, so don't feel like your catalogs have to all be the same size. Get your older kids to help, as this is a fun project (and keeps them busy for a little bit).

What you'll need:

old magazine or catalog covers (thicker paper works better)
scissors
glue stick
hot glue gun

Here's the how-to:

Tear off the cover, front and back of a catalog. Fold one edge over, on the diagonal, as so:

Unless you're working with a square page, you'll have a rectangular section that is single-thickness, with a triangle that is double-thickness. Cut off the rectangle section, leaving you with a folded over piece in a triangle shape.

Open up your page, and fold/crease in the opposite diagonal direction

Open up, turn your paper over so the nice side of the page is facing you, and fold that nice side to the inside, on the rectangle, this time.

Open, and fold on the rectangle in the other direction.

When you open this again, you'll see that you have a square divided into 4 squares, and each square divided into 2 triangles,with folds.

Use scissors to cut, almost to half-way to the center (so only about 1/4 the way across the page) on all 4 of the straight folds (not diagonal folds).

Turn paper over (nice side down), and fold points on all 4 corners, bringing edge of paper to diagonal fold lines, crease.

Now, take your glue stick and cover one flap of each point with glue,

and pull the edge of the unglued point over the glued point, completely, and stick together. Use a pencil or tip of scissors to press the inside of the glued point together, if needed.

When you're done, you'll have something that looks like this on the underside,

and this on the top side.

Okay, with me so far? Now take the back of that same magazine or catalog cover, and repeat. You should have 2 matching, 4-point stars. (I timed myself on one of these 4-point stars, and it took me about 3-4 minutes. It only takes making a few to get the hang of them and be able to do them this quickly.)

Now, heat up your glue gun. Take your 2 stars, put a dot of hot glue in the 8 places where I've marked the underside of one star with a pen in the photo.

Working very quickly, put the other star's underside up against the hot glue spots, but with a point radiating out from an indented place between two points on the opposite star. What you wind up is a complete star with alternating points, with the 2 undersides of the stars attached.

Use thread or fishing line to suspend from overhead. Simply thread a needle and stitch through one of the points, leaving a long-enough thread for suspending. That's it! If you want them to all look uniform, you can spray paint them. That's what I had thought I would do. But I changed my mind once I got them all finished.

I did these assembly line fashion, making all the folds at once, all the cuts at once, all the glue stick for each star at once, then all the hot glue for each star at once.

The wonderful things about these stars is they cost practically nothing (glue stick and glue gun),  they don't need to be perfect to look good, but if you mess one up, no biggie as they were practically free to make. And they're like everything else in life, the more you do the faster you get.

Happy folding!

p.s. if stars for the 4th of July aren't your thing, you may want to hang onto this idea for Christmas. Smaller versions of these are beautiful in place of bows on gift packages, especially if made with white card stock, or silver or gold scrapbook paper.


Again, here's the link to these stars used as Christmas/New Years decor, painted in silver.

Making jams last week

Three different jams, may look alike, but have distinctly different flavors

We had a lot of rain and overcast last week, keeping me indoors in the afternoons. Afternoon-time is when I usually tackle an extra project for the day. If I can, I get outside and do some gardening. Last week, I didn't have as many opportunities for gardening, so on 3 different days, I decided to make 3 different jams.

In our house, with what we get in abundance, we have our "ordinary" jams, most notably, the wild blackberry jam and the plum jam. I also make jelly every other summer with either red currants or crab apples. Those are ordinary jam/jelly flavors for us. Perhaps because of the abundance of their availability, those flavors hold no special appeal to me, and I just don't eat them.

But I do have a couple of jam flavors that I find truly divine. I love the flavor of homemade strawberry jam, really delicious stuff. And my all-time favorite jam, from my childhood, is raspberry. And now, I have a new extra-favorite flavor, Vanilla-Rhubarb Butter.

My husband has been picking the wild strawberries that grow on our property, and leaving them in the fridge for me to use. Early in the week, I had about a quart of these strawberries to use up, so I made a batch of wild strawberry jam. Wild strawberries have more of the strawberry flavor than cultivated strawberries (especially more than the ones grown for shipping  out of state). So these made great jam. I'm not fond of the whole-strawberry-in-my-jam thing, so I rough-chopped them with my immersion blender before cooking (hence the appearance difference from traditional strawberry jam).

We do grow raspberries in our garden. And almost every year, I put off making the jam until too late, and we've eaten almost all of the raspberries, fresh. This year, I just said to myself, "why wait to make the jam?" So rather than having lots of fresh raspberries a couple of nights in a row, I made a batch of jam with almost a quart of the fresh raspberries. I know we'll get out fill of fresh ones, but now I'm certain of some jam for later in the year.

And then on Wednesday, I was working n the garden for part of the afternoon, out weeding by the rhubarb. You know how it is when you're pulling weeds, you have lots of time to think and plan. And that's when I thought to make some Vanilla-Rhubarb Butter. I've seen lots of recipes online for variations of vanilla-rhubarb jam, but I wanted something smoother in texture. As I was thinking there in the garden, I decided I would puree my cooked rhubarb/sugar, and make it into a butter.

Anyways, I made the butter by tossing chopped rhubarb and sugar together in a stainless saucepan, and leaving to sit for a couple of hours. Sugar is a natural humectant, so it draws the water out of fruit. The end result is not needing to add any water or other cooking liquid to the jam. Some recipes will say to allow the fruit and sugar to sit, macerating, overnight. I've found just a couple of hours does the trick. Maybe it's better to allow it to sit overnight? It works for me, this way, so why fix it?!

Okay, back to making Vanilla-Rhubarb Butter. I had a couple of vanilla beans as well as extract on hand. My initial thought was to use the extract. My second thought was to save the extract, as vodka is so expensive in our state, my extract is costly to make. So I bypassed the extract, and just used half of a small-ish vanilla bean.

So, when my rhubarb was ready to cook, I took half of a vanilla bean and pulled it apart, lengthwise, to expose the interior of the bean and infuse more flavor. I stirred the mixture while it cooked. When all was cooked, and the sugar was syrupy and thick, I pulled out the vanilla bean pieces and pureed the whole batch with an immersion blender. I found with the vanilla flavor, that not as much sugar was needed, as a recipe for plain rhubarb jam called for. My initial recipe called for equal parts of sugar and rhubarb. As butter, it was too sweet. So I cooked up some thin-sliced rhubarb stalks until I had a ratio of 3 parts rhubarb to 2 parts sugar. When all of that was done cooking, I pureed once more, until I had just the right flavor.

If you do make a vanilla-fruit jam or butter, while the vanilla bean would look pretty inside the jar, you can also rescue that bean to reuse in subsequent batches throughout summer. I pulled my bean pieces out, rinsed with a bit of water, then bagged up for the freezer. I'll be able to use this same beans a few times this summer. It's flavor may weaken a bit with use, but towards then end, I can always add a bit of extract to subsidize the flavor from the bean, at that time. I kind of think I'll be able to get a lot of flavor from that one bean, though. considering how much flavor you can get from a couple of vanilla beans, when making your own extract.

As for the flavor of this butter, one of my daughters said it tastes like pie filling. It's flavor is divine.

Rhubarb is one of those plentiful garden items, with only a handful of uses in the kitchen. So, this recipe is definitely a keeper for us. I have more than enough rhubarb to make several jars of this butter, give some away, and then have more left for us to use.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for mid-June (lots of berries!)

Friday

Huevos Rancheros
Warm corn tortillas
Spinach salad with creamy salsa dressing
Chocolate pudding

Saturday

Homemade veggie pizza, w/onions, tomato, and green pepper
Large tossed salad (given to us)
Fresh strawberries from garden
Brownies (given to us)

Sunday (Father's Day)

Hot dog cookout, hot dogs on
Homemade buns
Carrot sticks
Tossed green salad
Fruit salad
S'mores

Monday

Black beans, tomato and rice
Tossed salad
Fresh strawberries from garden
Leftover brownies (given to us on Saturday)

Tuesday

Kale-tomato frittata
Soybean falafel
Fresh-baked whole wheat bread
Leftover sausage, gravy and biscuits (from Sunday brunch)
Tapioca pudding (I found 1/4 cup of tapioca pearls in the cupboard, the day before, so soaked overnight to make pudding for Tuesday night)
Fresh raspberries from garden

Wednesday

Black bean chili (vegetarian, mostly, but flavored with chicken fat/stock)
Asian noodle and veggie salad over lettuce leaves
Fresh berries from garden (raspberries and strawberries)
Bread and fresh vanilla-rhubarb butter

Thursday

Marinara sauce over steamed kale and pasta (and a bit of leftover rice), topped with mozzarella and baked
Mixed green salad (saving the greens for tonight. It turns out I made too much dinner last night)
Steamed carrots
Vanilla pudding, topped with almond slivers and fresh berries


It's been one of those weeks where I keep finding things to use up in the fridge and pantry. Little bits of this and that, like the soybean/almond/coconut okara (from making soy-almond milk), a small amount of green pepper needing using (put on homemade pizza), a small handful of tapioca pearls in the cupboard, canned tomatoes from a large can that had been opened about week ago, olive liquid (went into chili), and various leftovers. A couple of the dinners sound like large meals, but in reality were lots of small amounts of many things. And we continue to eat a lot of eggs.

How was your week? Anything especially delicious for dinner this past week?

Have a wonderful weekend!

An indulgence on a budget -- a bouquet of a dozen roses

June is the month for the pink hybrid tea roses in my garden. As I was tending the garden, the other day, I was noticing just how perfect they were looking this year. The leaves look clean of spots, and very few aphids on the stems.

I just couldn't resist. I cut myself a lovely bouquet of 1 dozen plus (there are actually 13 in this bouquet), for a vase on my dresser. I wasn't counting, but my daughter commented that I had a dozen roses.

I can count on one hand the number of bouquets of roses that I've received in the last 30 years. A purchased dozen roses is quite an extravagance. So this is really a treat for me.

I was curious what a dozen pink roses was going for this week, so I checked out FTD and a few other online florists. Avas Flowers has a dozen pink roses for $34.99,  GlobalRose has them for $40, FTD is selling them for $49.99, and Teleflora has them for a whopping $63.71!

Five minutes of cutting, and I've saved $63.71! Of course, I would never dream of spending that much money on flowers for myself. So it's not a true savings. But I'm enjoying this bouquet, nonetheless.

Happy June, everyone! Don't forget to stop and smell the roses.

With whatever you have, do something nice for yourself. A lovely tea poured over ice. A bowl of fresh raspberries from your garden. A nice foot soak in epsom salt at the end of the day. Lunch, al fresco, on your patio or deck. A honey-oatmeal face mask. Or a bouquet of your garden-grown flowers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alice sent me a couple of photos of her rock garden, where she has her potted herbs and veggies, as well as some ornamentals (day lilies, a flowering ground cover, 2 pink-flowering shrubs and some evergreen shrubs). She has a lovely little pathway set through her garden, so she can stroll through there, or tend her plants. I can see green beans, tomatoes, green onions and chives, all in pots. What else is in the pots, Alice? They look to be thriving. Have you been working on this garden for a while, Alice? It looks lovely.

Anyways, she and I wanted to share her photos, so I've downloaded a couple of them, here. Enjoy a little tour of Alice's garden.

the view approaching one end of the walkway

near where the other end of the pathway meets up with the house

English Toffee recipe

This is for Ruthie (and anyone else who enjoys making candy). In the comments last week, Ruthie said she buys English Toffee locally for about $16 per pound. My cost per pound is a fraction of that. I did the math at the bottom of this post. Ruthie, enjoy!


A good friend of mine has a sister-in-law who is a local chocolatier. When my friend expressed interest in making some candy at home, her sister-in-law gave her this recipe.

The is the full recipe. It makes about 3  1/2 pounds of candy (good for giving gifts, not so good for my waistline). I make a half recipe when it's just for my family. Next time, I plan on making a quarter recipe.

It's simple, just 4 ingredients -- granulated sugar, salted butter (not unsalted and definitely not margarine), almonds, and milk chocolate (the better the quality of chocolate, the better the quality of the finished product, just sayin').

equipment:

• 1 jelly roll pan (baking sheet with raised edges)
• 1 medium-sized saucepan and large spoon
• candy thermometer

ingredients:

• about 12 to 14 ounces of milk chocolate, finely chopped, divided in half (if you buy chocolate chips, chop them up into smaller pieces. They will melt better.)
• 9 ounces almonds, chopped fine, divided in half
• 1 pound of salted butter
• 2 cups white sugar, granulated

Lightly butter the jelly roll pan. Sprinkle half of the chopped nuts over the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle half of the finely chopped chocolate over the nuts. Set aside.

In a medium-sized saucepan, melt the butter with the sugar. Cook to 300 degrees F, stirring constantly. When it reaches 300 degrees F, remove from heat. Quickly pour the cooked butter and sugar over the layers in the prepared jelly roll pan.

Sprinkle with the remaining chocolate and spread to the edges of the toffee with a knife or off-set spatula. Sprinkle with remaining nuts. Cool.

Break into pieces. Store in an airtight tin. Keeps for about a week at room temperature, but a month in the fridge.


Since gifts are largely about presentation, I think this looks nice, one of two ways, when given as a gift. Either in a single, large chunk per box or tin, wrapped in a large sheet of parchment inside the box, or, if broken into single-serving bites, in mini-muffins liners or candy paper cups, as you'd find in a box of chocolates.

I buy my ingredients fairly frugally, butter under $2 per pound, sugar under 40 cents per pound, chocolate as milk chocolate chips in bulk at WinCo for about $3 per pound, and whole almonds under $6 per pound. Making a half-batch (about 1  1/2 pounds of candy) costs me about $3.50. That's about 15 cents per ounce, or $2.40 per pound. (BTW, an ordinary candy bar at the grocery store, weighing about 1.50 to 2 ounces, costs between 40 and 50 cents per ounce, or $6.40 to $8.00 per pound, on average.)

Nature, nurture, or something else altogether

Sometimes I like to quantify my day by adding up how much money I've saved the family. I think a lot of us do this. Maybe it's because we've felt we needed to defend our frugal choices to others. Or, maybe it's our personality to want to count money, you know, we're the ones who always HAVE to be the banker in the game of Monopoly. Or, maybe it was our parents's training instilled, very thoroughly,  in us. Whatever the reason, I find the counting part to be very fun.

Yesterday was one of those "making and doing stuff" days. I made soy milk, strawberry jam with the wild strawberries, cut lavender for drying and using in some Christmas gifts, pulled the leaves off of a large cutting of dried oregano (will use some in a housewarming gift later this week) and a smaller cutting of dried thyme, did the laundry in cold water, had a meatless Monday sort of dinner, salvaged some purple tissue gift wrap before someone wrinkled it too badly to reuse, etc. I haven't added up all of the savings. But it sure made me feel good to know I'd been productive for the day.


I really think that for me, it's been a matter of having to defend my choices to others, as well as myself. And of course, keeping a tally like this really helps when one of those big bills needs paying. As I know I've done what I can, to be a good steward of our family's resources.

How about you? Do you like to keep a tally of how you've saved money for the day? Do you attach a number to the money that you've saved?

A little shopping last week -- frugal-style

With one daughter home most of last week (before her summer job began), we took some time to do a little shopping.

There are a couple of areas nearby with a selection of thrift stores. So, on Thursday, the two of us went thrifting. We hit 5 stores, and bought a total of 4 items between us, 2 of which were mine.

Here's what I bought:

A really great condition bath mat for the upstairs bathroom, to replace the fraying 15 year old mat. ($1.99) A good deal, considering it was in great condition.

And a butter warmer, by Farberware. Butter warmers are small saucepans, with a pour spout. Not just for warming butter, these are great for heating a cup of milk, cocoa, making fudge sauce for ice cream sundaes, or making small batches of gravy. A while ago, I had been looking at one of these by All-Clad, but priced at about $100, I nixed that thought. So I was delighted to find this one, by Farberware, for just $2.99. This model retails for about $20, and can be found on sale, or at Amazon, for about $10. It just needed a good scrub on the bottom, and good as new. For $2.99, I think I got a good deal.

I suppose I'm a rather particular shopper. In 5 stores, I only found 2 items (and spent just $5) that I wanted to buy. But we did have a great time shopping together.

Then on Friday, I had another $10 Kohl's coupon to use before the end of the weekend. I first hit the accessory department, where I found these sunglasses on clearance for $6 (originally $30). I've been needing sunglasses for a long time. And with summer just beginning, these will come in handy.

Next, I went up to the home decor department. The last time I was at Kohl's, I saw Christmas season door mats that I liked. But they were only marked down to $5 on that last shopping trip, so I had passed them up. Well, on Friday, they'd been marked down, again, to $2.49 (originally $24.99). "Pretty cheap" seems to be my price, so I picked up one of those.

That put me at $8.49. Needing to spend $10, before tax, I checked out the clearance candles and found a box of ivory tapers (6 tapers). I use tapers on the dining table for special occasions, so I knew these would be useful. The box was 70% off, at $2.99.

After tax and coupon, my out of pocket cost at Kohl's, for these 3 items, was $1.63. Not bad. What I love is how the receipts read. It assigns a portion of the $10 coupon to each item. So, the Christmas door mat cost 32 cents, the candles cost 38 cents, and the sunglasses cost 78 cents!


And finally, on Sunday. My daughter needed to return a purchase at Value Village. So I offered to drive her, and while there, we also went into St Vincent de Paul.

At Value Village, I found this linen pillowcase. I'd been pricing linen this past week, and one of the things I'd been looking for, while thrifting, was a linen table cloth, to use for the yardage, for a project for Christmas. Well, this linen pillowcase about jumped out at me. At 20 inches wide by 33 inches long, it's the perfect size to make 2 good-sized linen tea towels. I'll show you more about that project as I work on them. Anyways, $1.99 at Value Village, at not quite 1 yard of fabric. Plus the front hem is already done for me, with nice hem-stitch detailing.

And at St Vincent de Paul's, I found a cloth napkin to replace the one which went missing, months ago. Somehow, one of our burgundy cloth napkins has disappeared. 30 years ago, I bought 8 of these. They are a good color to go with the Toile de Jouy table cloth that I bought this winter. Twice now, I've used that new tablecloth with 8 at the table, only I've been short one cloth napkin. So, now I have a replacement and am back up to 8 in the set. To show you how close a match my find was, the napkin on the left is from the old set, and the one on the right is the "new" napkin. 49 cents plus tax. And if the lost one ever shows up, we have a spare to use in a basket for bread at the table.

A week's worth of shopping, and I spent less than $10, out of pocket.