Do you know why cutting flowers from my own garden is a frugal thing for me?

these daffodils, lilacs and Solomon's seal
are the current bouquet on the kitchen table

The answer is not the obvious. It's not simply so that I don't go out and buy bouquets of flowers.

Our house will likely be our largest purchase, for my husband and myself. A house is meant to be lived in. It wouldn't make much sense to spend our hard-earned and saved money on a purchase that we didn't fully use.

By keeping our home as lovely as we can, we reap the benefits of homeownership, by actually spending more time in our home.

And when I bring cut flowers into the house from our garden, the beauty of those arrangements inspires me to keep the rest of our home as lovely as a garden bouquet. As a result, we find our home to be a very inviting place. We're taking full advantage of this major purchase of our home.

Have a girls' dress, but wanting a new apron

My daughter grew out of this dress years ago. The fabric was too cute to give away. Sometimes you just can't part with something. And, the dress itself was free from the annual clothing swap that our church used to host.

Anyway, I'd actually been out shopping for apron fabric earlier in the week. I wear aprons when I work at the charity teas, at our church every month. This past Saturday was April's tea, and I wanted a new apron for that event. My other aprons are just not terribly pretty or flattering, ones given to me as promotional items. So, a new and pretty apron was on my list.

At the fabric store, I just didn't find any fabric that I really liked. And then I remembered this dress, sitting in the stash of sewing fabrics. I talked with my daughter about the dress, and she said I could use it. This was after class on Friday afternoon. While she made the biscuits for dinner, I made the apron.

Here's the dress, a sleeveless, gathered skirt attached to bodice. When you look at the dress, you can see it has the possibility to become a half-apron, pretty easily, using part of the bodice for the waistband, leaving it attached to the gathered skirt.

I turned the dress over and cut up the back seam.

On both sides of the cut seam, I cut off 4.5 inch strips, to use to make ties.

Then I cut the bodice off, about 4 inches above the gathered skirt, leaving some of the bodice attached, to serve as the waistband.

After, pressing under the edges of the long slit up the back, I machine topstitched it down, creating a finished edge to the sides of the apron.

Here's the 4-inch portion of the bodice, still attached to the gathered skirt.

I turned the portion of the bodice under, and topstitched it into place, for a waistband.

These are the strips I removed from the back of the dress. I turned these into ties, by folding each in half lengthwise, right sides together, stitching, and turning right side out, leaving one of the short edges unstitched.

After turning the ties right side out, I tucked the unfinished end into the edge of the waistband on the apron, then topstitched into place.

And here's the finished apron. It's on the long side, so I may take up the hem. Bt I wore it as is on Saturday, and received many, many compliments. All in all, it took me about 1  1/2 hours, start to finish.

This is the sort of project that I find very satisfying. It was totally free to make. It was something I had wanted. It was quick and easy, under 2 hours, from start to finish. And I could use it right away.