Craig's List

I successfully sold my first item on Craig's List today! The buyer was not an ax murderer, and everything went very smoothly.

Hmmm, what else can I sell??????

Homemade and Inexpensive Christmas Gifts

These are some of the things we made this year to give to our family and friends as Christmas gifts. I couldn't post about them before Christmas, for obvious reasons. :-) The children and I finished school a couple weeks before Christmas, and then spent a good bit of time making gifts and other preparations for our celebration of Christ's birth. It was so fun! I am so thankful that we could give small gifts to loved ones this year, as last year we gave only to our own children. And even though these items are not in the same league as a Wii or a flat screen tv, or even a new cell phone, they were stitched and glued and made with lots of love and gratitude.

I sewed these satchets for the adult women in our families. You can see the lavender filled pouch sticking out of the red bag. The lavender was from Colonial Williamsburg, and I have had it for two years waiting to get my sewing machine fixed so I could make satchets with it! It still smells sooooo good! When the lovely smell finally dissipates, these can be used as jewelry bags when traveling.

Cost of making these was about $20 for 8. They could have been made more cheaply, but I chose to use two fabrics for each color rather than just one. Over the green and red solid fabric there is a sheer netting with sparkles on it to make it extra pretty!



I found these mugs on sale for 4.99 at Dayspring. We added some hot chocolate instant mixes and some chocolate covered candy cane stir sticks that the children had made. Isn't this a cute gift? When I ordered from Dayspring.com I was very impressed with how well their breakable things were packed, and my order came in just 3 days!


Here is the refrigerator frame the children made for my parents. It has magnets on the back and the bottom is open to slide a picture in and out. The stacking kids photo took about 5 tries and an hour of tweaking on the computer, but didn't it turn out great? We sent these out with our Christmas letters this year.


Cost of frame: foam frame shapes were 8 for $1, so one was just .12 cents. Bucket of foam letters, $4.99 with lots leftover for other projects = approximately .50 cents each.

The children made several more drip ball ornaments to give as gifts. We realized that we could use use all the colors to make this a "wordless book" ornament that tells the whole gospel story. Here are the lyrics to the wordless book song:

My heart was black with sin
Until the Savior came in.
His precious blood I know,
Has washed me white as snow.
And in God's Word I'm told
I'll walk on streets of gold.
What a wonderful, wonderful day!
He washed my sins all away.

We added a bit of green to represent growing in faith.



Cost of each ornament: ball ornament - .48 cents; paint $2.49 per bottle but we used just a miniscule amount on each ornament with lots leftover for other projects; ribbon $1.99 per spool with lots leftover for other projects = approximately $1.25 each.

I also got one of these small plates from Dayspring to give as a hostess gift. We went to a Christmas party, and I took this plate filled with cookies and then told our hostess it was hers to keep. It's small, but I just love it! John 3:16 is also printed on the back. It was $10.99 when I bought it, but now they are on sale for halfprice!


What inexpensive things did you make or find for gifts this year?

Homemade Laundry Detergent

During my husband's unemployment I made plans to begin making my own laundry detergent in order to save money. I purchased a large container of Liquid Tide, so that I'd have a container to put my homemade detergent in when the Tide was used up. Well, I didn't realize how long it takes to use up a huge container of liquid detergent concentrate, when you only use a tiny amount in each load! My husband has now been working again for 3 months, and last week I finally used it all up. So I excitedly made my first batch of homemade detergent.

Here is what you need:

1. Borax
2. Washing Baking Soda
3. A bar of fels naptha soap (some of my friends who have allergies that can cause skin irritation use a different type of bar soap ~ not sure what it is but I'll find out)


The recipe I used calls for grating 1/3 of the fels naptha, but I didn't want to get soap in my cheese grater so I cut it into small chunks instead and it worked just as well. Pour 6 cups of hot water into a large saucepan and add the grated or chunked soap. (Yes, I made laundry detergent inches away from freshly baked bread! Busy kitchen day....)


After the soap has completely dissolved, add 1/2 cup of washing soda, and a 1/2 cup of borax. It will look something like this:


In a separate bucket, pour 4 cups of hot water and then add the soap mixture from the saucepan.


Stir thoroughly until all is dissolved and mixed well. Add 6 more cups of hot water and stir again.


Then pour in a gallon of hot water, stir it up, and let it sit overnight.


In the morning it will appear to be solid, but in fact it is gel-like for about 3 or 4 inches down with the rest of the liquid underneath. Wisk (or pay one of your children to wisk for you!) the soap and then pour into whatever container you plan to use for daily use. Nearly all of this batch fit into my empty Tide container.


I have used this detergent for several loads now, and here are my observations...

You have to be more careful to check for and pretreat stains before washing. If you are used to using a detergent with bleach already added in, as I was, stains may not come out with just a regular washing using homemade detergent. Also, it tends to separate in the container and so I get a bunch of liquid with chunks of gel floating in it. Today I started shaking the container before dispensing detergent and that seemed to help. And lastly, this detergent does not make suds, which is fine since suds is not required to get clothes clean. But it looks really different when you look inside your washing machine and see no suds.

I am using a full cup with each load so I'll go through this container much faster than when it was filled with liquid Tide concentrate. But since the ingredients were SO cheap and each batch makes so much, I still think it will be a significant savings over store bought detergent. I'm keeping track of how many loads each batch washes so I can compare later.

A Twist on Black Friday Shopping - UPDATE

It worked!!!!! I went straight up to the customer service counter, which was empty even though the store itself was filled with shoppers, asked for my price adjustment, and in less than 30 seconds it was done! Whoo-hoooo!!!!!

And even better, when I bought the item a few days ago I signed up for a Target Red Card (which I never plan to use again) which gave me a 10% discount on my purchase. This discount more than paid for the 4 GB memory card I bought to go with the item I purchased! So I got a $140 item for $86 and the memory card for "free"!

And I got to sleep in today.

I am so psyched.

I'm also really excited for this to be opened at Christmas. :-) It will essentially be our oldest son's only gift, and he has been longing for one of these for at least two years. I can't wait to see his reaction!

A Twist on Black Friday Shopping

I have never gone shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Waking up before the crack of dawn and fighting crowds of crazed shoppers is not really my idea of fun. And most of the time, the doorbuster deals are not things I want or need or was going to buy anyway. This year, however, I was tempted to give it a try because we were looking for a good deal on one of these.

I followed a link from the Happy Housewife blog to a website called A Full Cup, which is dedicated to finding deals and saving money. There was tons of information there about Black Friday deals, and I stumbled upon Target's Black Friday ad paper, which hasn't been released to the public yet (you can see it here). Lo and behold, one of their items to be deeply discounted on Friday was the exact item I was looking for!

Then I read even better news. Target has a price adjustment policy which states that if an item you purchase goes on sale within two weeks of purchase date, you can show your receipt and be refunded the difference. So I'm testing out that theory this week. Tonight I went and bought the item in question at full price, and sometime on Friday (not at 5 a.m.!) I will take my receipt to customer service and ask for a price adjustment. If it works, it will be a savings of $52. Whoo-hooo!! There were lots of women at the Full Cup forum who said they did this last year on Black Friday and it worked great. So I'm very hopeful. Another cool thing about buying early is that they haven't run out of that particular item.

On Friday I will get to sleep "in" (whatever that means), eat a leisurely breakfast in my pj's, read a good book in front of a warm fire, and still get a fantastic black friday deal! I'll let you know if it works!

Thrifty Clothes Shopping

Recently it dawned on me that I was down to my last pair of comfortable every day pants. All the others had worn out, including my absolute favorite brown pants which I wore ALL the time (probably why they wore out!). So I headed off to my local Salvation Army Thrift Store for a couple hours of shopping. The Salvation Army Thrift Store near me is very clean, extremely well organized, and has fun music to dance to in the aisles while shopping ~ a much more pleasant experience than shopping at my local Wal-Mart! And the prices are unbeatable.

I found 3 pair of pants that fit me great and are very comfortable, as well as 6 tops. Any guesses how much money I spent??? (answer at end of post)

Here is one new outfit ~ white 3/4 sleeve, v-neck top = $3. Blue pants = $4.



And here it is again with matching snap up sweater ($4).


Total for 3 piece outfit = $11
(masked superhero = priceless!)


Here is a nice green blouse I fell in love with for church on Sunday.


Another white top, this one a sweater with a white on white pattern.


Another every day top.


And one more green blouse. This one is very sheer and needs a white cami or tank top underneath, but is made of a really soft fabric and feels GREAT on!


Total price for 9 articles of clothing.......$33! All the items look store bought new, and one nice thing I love about buying used clothing is that it's already shrunk as much as it's going to shrink, so the way it fits in the dressing room is the way it's always going to fit. For $33 I maybe could have purchased 3 items at Target or Kohl's if there was a really great clearance sale going on. Maybe. But instead I got several outfits that fit me well, are comfortable for my lifestyle as a stay at home/homeschooling mom, and make me feel great!

I was literally happy dancing at the store! (remember that fun music they play?) And my husband was SO happy that I was able to buy a few new things for myself. He is so sweet.

I encourage you to check out the thrift stores in your area ~ why pay retail when you can pay so much less? Coming soon.....thrifty clothes shopping for kids.