Frugal Fridays: Inexpensive Cards

Recently, I started making my birthday cards in advance. Like months in advance, because birthdays have a tendency to creep up on me.

So, I purchased a pack of cards & envelopes $2.49 and a packet of birthday stickers for about $5. For a total of $7.49 for 25 birthday (or other occasion) cards. I just dip into my scrapbooking scraps and decorate away!

Frugal Friday: Scrapbook Embellishments

Since one of my goals for this year (hopefully, the next 2 to 3 months) is to start a scrapbooking blog/Etsy store, I'm working to shift my focus on Frugal Fridays toward that purpose. And since scrapbooking is such a pricey industry this is one way I hope to inspire people to scrapbook and keep scrapbooking that benefits them financially as well as aesthetically (<-- Can I just say this was one of my favorite words to use in college papers. It's beautiful.).

Frugal Scrapbooking Tip of the Week

Make your own chipboard embellishments. When I first thought about doing this I thought it was too hard. Guess what? It's not. It's actually pretty simple. The hardest part comes with cutting the chipboard. (Not quite sure what chipboard is? Find out here.)


How to Make Chipboard Embellishments:

Supplies You'll Need:

• chipboard
• paper
  
• pencil
• scissors
• a distressing tool (sandpaper or an emery board)
• stencil or shape (to trace)
  
• adhesive

Step-by-Step

1. Trace your shape onto your chipboard. You can also do this freehand.
2. Once you've traced your shapes cut it out.
   
3. Using your adhesive, adhere your chipboard to your paper and then cut it again.
4. If you prefer to keep the edges crisp looking skip the distressing step. (I do it because it makes the little mistakes in cutting go away.) Take your distressing tool and gently sand the edges. This is where making sure your object is soundly adhered is important, otherwise your paper may move during the distressing.

Voila! You're done!

The best thing about this method is that even if you aren't a big scrapbooker with lots of supplies on hand you can still make these. One thing I want to try: homemade chipboard alphabets. Now that will take some time and patience!

Have fun scrapping!

Frugal Fridays

I love cooking, but I usually avoid using spices that aren't already in my pantry. Curry, dry mustard, and, you know, other stuff like that I don't have. When spices range from $3.99 to $5.99 (and higher) it's just too expensive, especially when a recipe will only call for a teaspoon.

But at Henry's on Wednesday, I decided to go ahead and get a few spices that I usually avoid. To my surprise they had the normal shelves of spices, but also a few shelves of spices in large containers. I had never seen this before! There was a scale and little spoons in each jar and little bags. It was so much fun!

Excuse my excitement, but instead of buying a whole bottle of a spice I can measure out the amount I need and go. So instead of $4-something for the curry I bought it only cost me $ . 12. So, that's my Frugal Friday tip for the week. See if your grocery store (or a whole foods type store) does a similar thing and save!

Frugal Fridays

Five Painless Ways We Saved $100 Last Year:

1. Doing laundry at my father-in-law's house, instead of paying $16 a month to do it at our apartment complex.

2. Buying produce from a local farmer's market chain rather than paying an overpriced amount of the major grocery store.

3. Looking for deals on big ticket items on slickdeals.net before making a big purchase.

4. We also found a good way to have cheap date nights. Check out Happy Hour at local restaurant chains. A lot of places have their appetizer menu for half-price and the portions are definitely enough for a full meal. The best part is that is cuts our bill in half.

5. We saved a bunch of money on car insurance by switching to Geico. Just kidding. We don't even have Geico. But we do save money on insurance by not having brand spanking-new cars which equals higher insurance and just put them in the shop when they need to be fixed. Like now. It's less expensive than throwing down $25,000+ for a new car and being debt for new wheels.

Frugal Fridays

So...I thought about this recently and I figure it follows the "frugal rules."

I shop for my clothes mostly at thrift stores, clearance racks, and discount stores like TJ Maxx or Ross. I've grown up shopping this way--enjoy it and couldn't think of paying full price (most of the time)!

But another thing I do to save money is to separate my fall/winter clothes from my spring/summer clothes by boxing up the out of season clothes and storing them for the next few months. When the weather begins to get warm I put away my heavier skirts, sweaters (except for a few light cardigans I wear throughout the year), work blouses, and even shoes. Then, when the weather turns cooler I switch to my fall/winter clothes. Of course, there are certain clothing items that remain in my closet throughout the year like plain t-shirts, jeans, denim skirts, the staple black skirt, denim jacket, and etc.

I do this for three reasons:

1) It helps me to preserve my clothes so that they stay in good condition and last longer.
2) It makes me evaluate the clothes that I have and what I wear most often when it's time for to put the box back on the shelf.
3) When I pull that old Ikea box off the top shelf when the seasons change it makes me feel like I have new clothes...which means less shopping!

So...check out your closet and have fun!

Frugal Fridays: Scrapbooking!

I've been scrapbooking since I was about 12 or 13 (I'm going on 11 years of scrapbooking--aren't I getting old?). I really enjoy it, but sometimes it just gets so expensive! Especially with all the cute paper and embellishments! And I have a wedding album to do (and a courtship album to finish...among others)!

But one thing I did from my bridal showers was save the gift bags, cards, and some tissue paper. Some will be reused for other gifts, but you know how there's always certain gift bags you get and the paper is just so cute and you don't want to give it away just yet, but when are you really ever going to use it? Scrapbooking!

I'm finding this very useful for my wedding album, especially with some many cards having embellishments these days. And the gift bags I love (I'm drawn to those with vintage designs) will become scrapbook paper for other albums. It's useful and it's fun! So what do you think?

Frugal Fridays: Free Movie Rentals

This one's pretty simple, but easy, free, and convenient. We "rent" movies from our library. It definitely helps our entertainment budget. And the library is such a great place to find stuff--new or old movies, kids movies, documentaries, and some of my favorites A&E and PBS miniseries! Usually, at most libraries the movies are free. If there is a fee it's usually small (like $3). You just have to watch out for the late fee, usually $2 a movie!

Frugal Fridays: Effective Drying

We live in an apartment, so we share four washers and dryers with about 30 other apartments. They're Maytag brand, so they work well...but sometimes the dryers aren't so great. (Either that or my loads are too big--probably both!)

But my mom gave us the suggestion to take out the vent that catches the lint (What is that thing called?) and wash it with soap and warm water every so often. She said it helps to improve the efficiency of the dryer and helps the filter to last longer. Which means less quarters I need to use for drying a load again and for all those of you with your own dryer it'll help prolong your investment!

Frugal Fridays: For the Ladies Only

My tip for this week is kind of personal and definitely applicable for only the ladies. So, if there are any guys out there reading just skip on over to the next blog (or post). I'm one of those women who never really got into the habit of tracking my monthly cycle when I first got my period. I just knew it came around the same time each month, and as I grew up I tracked it pretty sporadically. So, when I find this website www.mymonthlycycles.com I found it very useful. It's a website where you can track your menustral cycle and fertility. It also has a period calender, menustral, ovulation, and pregnancy calculators, history reports, and can even send you different reminders. It's free, but you do have to sign-up...and remember to use it. I'm getting better. ;)

Frugal Fridays: Do-It-Yourself Car Repairs

This week for Frugal Friday (even though it's actually Saturday!) our frugal item of the week is car repairs. The brakes on my old 1989 Volvo wagon were well overdue on being fixed, but having gotten married in the last month or so put that on the back burner somewhat. However, last weekend that changed.

Joe happened to mention to a man in our church (who happened to give us tools for a wedding present) that we needed to fix the brakes on our car. The man offered to help Joe fixed the brakes, since he was well experienced in the area. So, Joe took him up on the offer and last weekend Joe spent four hours fixing our own brakes. We ended up saving about $400 dollars doing it ourselves and only spent $120 on new brake "stuff" and one tool. It's something worth considering if you have the time, tools, and know-how. Think about it!

Frugal Fridays: Cheap Meat!

Alrighty, this week for Frugal Fridays this is what I've got: cheap meat.

I use to never buy meat before I was married, except on occasion when I had a coupon for the Tyson family chicken pack (the frozen chicken breasts that are oh-so-itty-bitty). However, one Sunday Joe and I were at Vons picking up something and were browsing by the meat section hoping to see some spicy Italian sausages (a favorite of Joe's that is usually onsale for about $3 for 2lbs.) That's when we saw the clearance section for meat!

It's the stuff that either needs to be used in the next day or so or freezed. And all the meat is marked between 30 to 50% off and occasionally there are things like stuffed mushrooms or chicken marsala. It's a good buy. I only buy meat from the clearance section now and freeze it.

Here's what I've gotten on my last few trips:

Organics Chicken Thighs - .68lb/Reg. $3.39 Clearance $1.69

Porkchops - 1.44lb/Reg. $6.47 w/ club card $5.03 Clearance $2.51

Ground Turkey Breast - 1.25lb. (x2)/Reg. $5.99 Clearance $2.99

Sirloin Steak - .77lb./Reg. $5.38 Clearance $2.69

Breast Fillets - 1.65lb./Reg. $9.88 Clearance $4.94

Drumsticks - 1.52lb./Reg. $3.02 Clearance $1.51

Lean Ground Beef - 3lb./Reg. $10.96 Clearance $5.48

It's always fun to find good deals, especially now that my husband gets meat with his meals!

That's it for me....I'm off to make Sloppy Joes and homemade french fries. I've been keeping the menu easy this week, since it's the first week back from Spring Break at work. ;)

Frugal Fridays: Free Cooking Magazines

As I was going through my magazines yesterday and tearing out recipes and helpful articles I had a few Kraft Food & Family magazines that I got one year. They're free and you can sign-up to receive them at www.kraftfoods.com/free. They have a ton of different recipes, of course using quite a bit o Kraft brand foods (but those can always be substituted). If I remember correctly they are quarterly, one for each season. Enjoy!