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.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the first week of summer break

Friday

Black bean tacos
Carrot sticks
Fresh strawberries and sliced bananas

Saturday

Scrambled eggs
Fresh-baked bread and butter
Fresh strawberries

Sunday

Herb-crusted roast pork
Potato salad
Roasted vegetable medley
Strawberry, almond and mixed green salad
Dinner rolls
Watermelon pickles
Rhubarb-blackberry pie

Monday

Leftovers from Sunday

Tuesday

Egg Foo Yung with brown sauce
Brown rice
Oven-roasted carrots
Homemade English toffee

Wednesday

Garbanzo bean and vegetable soup, pureed
Dinner rolls (from last of refrigerator roll dough)
Fresh strawberries
English toffee

Thursday

Tomato-Florentine soup
Deviled eggs
Homemade bread
Fresh strawberries
Scratch cornstarch pudding (chocolate)


It's strawberry season in our garden. It looks like I have enough strawberries to pick, daily, for about 10 days, then the harvest will slow down. We're spoiled, I know. Our guests were delighted to have garden-fresh strawberries, last Sunday. I'm also using a lot of spinach this week, in salads, in the egg Foo Yung, and again last night in the tomato-Florentine soup. I have enough spinach in the garden for one more large picking, then we'll move onto something else.

I made a large batch of scratch cornstarch pudding yesterday afternoon -- 8 1/2-cup portions. We managed to fall behind in milk consumption. And with one freezer unplugged, we're low on freezer space for freezing surplus milk. Pudding it is! Two of my kids were home when I made it, and 2 servings were gobbled up before it even cooled. If you use a box for pudding, you really should give scratch pudding a try. The ingredients list is simply sugar, salt, cornstarch, flavoring (cocoa powder or vanilla extract) and milk. And for me, yesterday, I was able to make a quart of pudding for about 75 cents, including the milk.

Eggs are even lower priced this week, $6.98 for 15 dozen, at Cash & Carry. That's 47 cents per dozen.  I am tempted! I have about 9 dozen in the fridge right now. We're using eggs in place of meat or cheese many nights per week. At 47 cents per dozen, egg salad sandwiches for lunches is a bargain. Hmmmm. (Can you see the wheels turning in my head?)

So tell me, what was on your menu this past week?

What does a couple of years of my frugality look like?

In addition to saving for repairs and replacements of appliances, vehicles, emergencies, etc, we also have a savings kitty for upgrades to the house. We have money transferred every month, out of our bank account into an investment, for the non-necessary, but lovely-to-have improvements to our home and vacations. This account could be tapped for an emergency, or it can add to our retirement funds, down the road. But every so often, we use this money for something nice to use or have, like capital improvements, which could add to the salability of our home, if need be.

We don't do a lot of DIY with these improvements, instead only doing, ourselves, those things we are most familiar and comfortable with. We have a contractor friend from church, who has done a good deal of our installation. So, we save in the extreme sense, for a couple of years, to afford a project like what we had done this spring.

In the last two years, what I DIDN'T spend money on, so we could save to cover this:

• mani-pedis
• professional hair cuts and color
• new shoes, new handbags
• lunches in restaurants with friends
• fast food meals 
• dinners in local restaurants (except one birthday dinner, last November)
• new car
• extravagant travel
• convenience/packaged foods
• air conditioning for the house in summer
• winter heat enough to wear a t-shirt, indoors, in December, January, February
• knick-knacks, chotchkes, trinkets, novelties or thingamajigs
• department store cosmetics
• new books, new cds
• expensive hobbies and collections
• theater movies
• dvd rentals
• bouquets of flowers
• expensive birthday gifts or Christmas gifts for myself & husband
• new linens, just because I wanted a new color (I did replace the torn sheets for my bed)
• expensive new clothing
• brand-loyalty for products like laundry detergent, bathroom tissue, foods, toothpaste, soap, coffee, OTC meds
• coffeehouse coffee AKA Starbuck's (except with gift cards) 
• pets
• candy bars or other treats at the check-out of most stores (even Ace Hardware has candy bars at the check-out!)
• smartphone
• car wash places (I wash the car, myself with the hose)
• gardening services
• newspaper delivery
• new toys, gadgets, gizmos
• temporary indulgences, to be enjoyed only fleetingly

So, that about sums up where our money didn't go. Here's where all that I could have spent, but didn't, went instead. Our living room makeover. (I didn't take any before pictures. I rarely do. If it's bad enough for me to want to redo it, the last thing I want to do is take pictures of that ugly.)

the living room as you enter from the entry hall

the fireplace surround was dark brick,
the contractor over-layed Home Depot marble tile
the mirror over the fp is from Kohl's, on sale 50% off,
then $10 off coupon, I paid $39 (orig. $99)
the electric fireplace is new, puts out heat, too.
stuff on mantel gathered from other parts of the house

built-in bookcases, contractor built with paint-grade plywood,
for less $$$ than Home Depot cabinetry/bookcases
the small writing desk is a family piece, repurposed from another room,
it folds up and stands against the wall in the background, when not in use

a spot for my great grandmother's tea set,
on top of a garage sale cabinet (paid $40) that once housed
a Victrola phonograph (1920s) -- needs refinishing/painting

this chair is a new purchase

that's a fitted slipcover, so I can change it out/launder it

the paisley "throw" is a pashmina from my closet,
the needlepoint cushion is from another room

this table is a new purchase, it fits the space better than the hand-me-down,
1970's-era, over-sized Parson's table from my parents' home.
used some of the "stuff" I had in cupboards, some family pieces of silver-plate
 that I love, and candle sticks that never seemed to get used

the view of the room from the French doors, to the entry hall

We rarely ever used this room before. It had some lay-out problems. The seal on the old double-paned windows had broken, and so were permanently fogged on the inside. The wood-burning fireplace meant that we were dragging dirty logs into the house, across white carpeting, and making a mess, if ever it were used. (Plus most of the heat just went up the chimney, when we burned wood.) This room is far from the furnace, and would feel the chill more than the family room, kitchen or dining room.

It's now bright, warm and serves multiple purposes. There's a conversation area with seating for 6, plus 2 additional chairs in the room, to seat up to 8 comfortably. The loveseat with the blue cushions is about 30 years old, and will "go" with the first kid to move out. I'd like to replace it with a single chair (similar to the one we just bought). It's really too big for the space. I reupholstered it 20 years ago, and the upholstery is still in decent shape. The larger sofa is from my parents' home, and is about 35 years old (also reupholstered once).


So, when I'm making all kinds of sacrifices in the grocery department and not buying convenience foods, or, you read that we don't eat in restaurants, not even fast food, or, that we eat beans for dinner 3 to 4 nights per week, or, we don't go to the movies, or, that I cut my own hair, etc -- this is where the money that is saved, goes. It took us a couple of years of extreme saving for this. We have no debts, no mortgage, no car loans, no credit card debt. And our retirement is still being funded, monthly. We save, in advance, for home improvements and repairs, so there will be no future debts. This is what my "extreme" frugality gives to us.

Paint colors for the interior of our house

YHF asked about the name of the color of the walls in our living room. I thought I'd do one better, and show you the walls throughout most of the downstairs of our house.

living room walls -- Oyster White  trim/doors -- Swiss Coffee (Behr)

When we began the downstairs repainting, 7 years ago, I did what we all do, and went to Home Depot and thumbed through all of the paint chip cards. I was initially looking for colors for the family room and dining room. I found a paint card, which had several shades of browns and tans, that had a wall colors that I liked.

This is the wall color of the family room. It's called Cookie Crumb. Maybe I was hungry that morning that I was looking at colors. It really is the color of the cookie part of homemade Tollhouse cookies. I wanted a warm, cozy, enveloping color for these walls, a place to go and feel hugged by warmth. (Glidden)

Here is the color of the dining room walls. It's called First Anniversary. It's a rich, caramel-y shade of tan. I wanted a deep and dramatic color in the dining room. Our dining room is just opposite the hallway from the family room, so I knew I wanted the colors to blend. (Glidden)

And here's the color of the living room walls, the entry hall walls, the small hallway between the family room and dining room, and the upstairs hallway walls. It's called Oyster White. It's really not white at all, but light tan, with yellow undertones. Although it's tan, it gives the room a light and bright feeling, despite the gloomy, overcast days that we frequently have, here. (Glidden)

I also tried the darkest shade on this color card, American Bronze. It was far too greenish of a brown, once on the area above the family room fireplace. I wound up going with a completely different color (not on this card, it's a Ralph Lauren color, something like Saddle Brown, but I'm not positive). I had set my purse down, up against one of the painted walls in that room, and noticed that the leather on the purse was exactly the shade that would look good as a complementary brown to the cookie crumb (for above the fireplace). So, purse in hand, I went back to Home Depot to find a matching brown for that small spot.

The white trim in all of these rooms is a creamy white, called Swiss Coffee. There are a couple of Swiss Coffee colors, under different paint brands. This is the Behr brand of Swiss Coffee. If you google "Behr Swiss Coffee" and look at the images, there are a couple of interior photos where this shade of white has been used. When you compare "whites" it's amazing how much variance there really is.

What I discovered with multi-tonal paint cards is that the paint colors aren't always harmonious when on your walls. Lighting, both interior and natural, affects how we see light, as well as how much greenery there happens to be planted right outside your windows.

For reference, the colors on the paint card, up top, by Glidden, are from left to right: American Bronze, New Suede, First Anniversary, Cookie Crumb, Ivory Sampler and Oyster White.

We've had several compliments on the Cookie Crumb. It seems to be an appealing shade of tan to many people.

The good, the bad and the hard to cut *plus* a sneak peek at our redo

So, our menu on Sunday wound up as this:

Appetizers, snack-y stuff

• dry-roasted peanuts, bought at WinCo in the bulk bins, just enough to fill a small candy dish @ $1.55/lb -- cheaper to buy just exactly what we need, than to buy a large can
• crackers that I got for free as a Friday Freebie at Fred Meyer last week -- I definitely like that price, and the crackers were pretty good, a nice rice cracker that we enjoyed
• a cream cheese, cheddar cheese, chopped fresh thyme, chopped black olive and green onion (actually shallot tops from the garden) spread, using just what I had at home. It's my mom's recipe, and normally calls fro bleu cheese. But as I was doing this with what I had, I subbed cheddar.

The dinner

• roasted pork loin, herb crusted overnight, in a mixture of chopped thyme, chopped rosemary, kosher salt, garlic powder and black pepper -- the flavor was very good, it was just dry inside, and hard to cut with just a fork, slightly easier with a table knife, but really, we could have used steak knives with this roast.
• dinner rolls using my mom's recipe for refrigerator roll dough. It's a good one and the dough keeps for several days in the fridge. I always make them into crescents as that's what my mom did, and it's easy to shape, but looks grand.
• potato salad. I mentioned in the comments that potato salad was one of 2 food items specifically mentioned when I asked our guests what they think of when they think of potato salad. And it was pretty good. Our guests had seconds, always a good sign
• tossed salad of garden greens (lettuce and spinach), green onions (actually shallot tops/greens), sliced celery, lots of fresh strawberries, some toasted almond slices and a sweet vinaigrette. This salad was a big hit with Angie's dad. He asked for this salad bowl, specifically, to be passed back to him. And they were very delighted to have the strawberries from our garden. Plus it was pretty to look at.
• Mushrooms sauteed in butter, with fresh thyme. I was cleaning out the fridge on Saturday, making room for all of the food I was preparing, and I came across these two boxes of fresh baby portabello mushrooms I'd bought on markdown earlier in the week. They needed cooking up. And I just thought they'd be delicious with the dinner. 
• oven-roasted zucchini, green pepper, onion, tomato, garlic medley. I went to the produce stand near WinCo on Friday and got the zucchini for 79 cents per pound, the Roma tomato for 99 cents per pound, a yellow onion for 50 cents per pound, and a green pepper for 69 cents. It was delicious, colorful and a nice contrast in flavor from everything else. And as we only ate half of the veggies I prepared, we had the rest for last night's dinner.
• watermelon pickles. Of everything we ate, the watermelon pickles seemed to garner the most attention. It was the last of my last jar, too. So, I'll be needing to make more watermelon pickles this year.
• blackberry-rhubarb pie. It was good, but just "normal" tasting to me. We were all full at that point, so I don't know how much it was enjoyed. But it looked pretty. I didn't feel like making a lattice crust (too much work, weaving it all, in and out), so I just used a small, heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut vents into the crust before laying it onto the fruit -- larger and prettier than slits.

• lots of Jasmine tea. This was the one thing I made sure would be something they might like and be very familiar with. I made several pots of Jasmine tea over the course of the dinner.
• water goblets with filtered, chilled water and a lime slice in each glass.

I began preparing, by setting the table, cleaning up the main floor, thoroughly cleaning the powder room (and then closing the door to keep family out until Sunday) last week. Then on Saturday, I had a marathon cooking day. I was able to prepare about half of everything on Saturday. Sundays' cooking was more manageable that way. And by about an hour before our guests arrived, I was able to make myself a cup of coffee and sit down for a bit. That worked well for me to recoup my energy for the evening.

So, some thoughts should we have the opportunity to have them as our guests again. The meat was tough, and I think I should stick with meats that I'm more comfortable cooking, or in ways that I'm more comfortable, or use an electric knife to cut the slices even thinner. In other words, the meat needed some improvement.

The pie -- our wild blackberries are seedy, but we don't notice them any more, we've eaten them for so long. However, I think the seeds took our guests by surprise. I wish I'd thought of that beforehand. In the future, if I make a pie, I would steer clear of anything seedy. What might have also been good is a pumpkin pie, as that's a pretty standard American pie.

On the positive side, I think I guessed right, that our guests would want something typically American. When we talked about some of their plans before they go back to Shanghai later this week, they said they wanted to go to an American shopping mall, and have the American shopping experience. And if I went to another country, I think that's what I'd like most, too, to experience their cuisine and culture. 

As they had been so kind and generous when my son visited Shanghai this spring, I did want to give them a small gift of thanks. I found a coffee-table type book about Seattle. There's very little text, just lots of photos. The book itself was an ice breaker, of sorts, when they first arrived, as they opened it right away and we could all look at the photos of various landmarks in their daughter's area.

I think our guests enjoyed themselves. I know that we all enjoyed the opportunity to get to know them a bit. And Chris and Angie were both happy all evening long. Successful evening. 

Before dinner, we sat in the living room, where we had the new doors installed. I'll give you a full tour later this week, but thought you might like a sneak peek today. I hope we make many happy family memories, in our rehabbed living room. And now we can actually see out the windows! (Old windows were double-paned, but the seal was broken and the windows were permanently fogged.)

Thanks so much to all of you, as you helped me with my planning of a VIM (very important meeting). Very much obliged!

Have a great day!

Our dinner with our son's girlfriend's parents went great!

We enjoyed meeting her parents, and even with a communication barrier, conversation flowed rather smoothly. They're lovely people, just like their daughter. :-)

I'll relay more details later. Right now, I'm bushed!

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers with simplicity in mind

Friday

Black olive and cheese pizza, homemade
Green salad with rhubarb dressing

Saturday

Black bean tacos
Kale sauteed in chicken fat, seasoned with garlic and onion powder, and soy sauce
Blackberry-rhubarb crisp

Sunday

Spinach frittata topped with quick marinara sauce, over
Spaghetti noodles
Tossed green salad
Fresh strawberries

Monday

Soybean and sesame seed patty
Marinated black beans and celery over mixed garden greens
French bread and butter
Leftover brown rice
Fresh strawberries and banana slices

Tuesday

Cheese strata
Mixed green salad
Fresh strawberries

Wednesday

Baked beans
Cornbread
Frozen spinach
Dried cranberries

Thursday

Meatloaf
Mushrooms and pasta, with meatloaf gravy
Canned green beans

We only had meat one night in this past week. I've substituted eggs, for meat, twice. We had a bean dish on 3 nights. I've been very busy, with cleaning and preparing for my son's girlfriend's graduation dinner and driving my daughters here and there for end of quarter stuff. So, dinners have needed to be as simple as possible for me to prepare. Yesterday was the last day of finals. Today is the last day to turn in rented books. And Monday begins one daughter's summer job. The other daughter has a week-long break until her job begins.

Preparing breakfasts and lunches during summer is a little less complicated, by being predictable. The change of seasons also brings change of menu offerings. I think we'll be back to yogurt and muffins for breakfasts, most days. And salads, breads and fruit, for lunches. Changing things up makes my job more interesting.

How about you -- any changes in your menus, as summer is beginning?