I have a lot I want to do with this website: a resources page as I’ve mentioned before, an eBook or two, some videos and more in-depth, useful and (I hope) interesting articles and newsletters, but I’m struggling with time to get everything done and to stay sane at the same time. Also, next month I’m going to start teaching again, an evening or two a week, so until I get a bit more organised and on top of everything, I’ll be posting a little bit less often. I hope you understand.

Don’t forget, there’s a link at the top of the page to subscribe via email or RSS to make reading easier. If there is anything in particular that you would like me to write about, leave a comment or drop me a line.

Have you read these articles?:

1. Introducing The Frugal And Thriving Free Monthly Newsletter
2. Changes
3. our first blogiversary

It’s a slow day in a little Lancashire town. The sun is beating down, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich tourist from down south is driving through town. He stops at the motel and lays a £100 in cash on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the £100 and runs down the street to repay his debt to the sheep farmer.

The sheep farmer takes the £100 and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the £100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.
The hotel proprietor then places the £100 back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the £100, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything.. No one earned anything.

However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.

A few issues are raised in this story, but I think the most pressing one is: what was the traveller doing upstairs for all that time? What do you think?

Have you read these articles?:

1. Has The Christmas Grinch Come Early? My Take On Rates, RBA And Basic Economics.
2. 7 Things You Never Knew You Didn’t Know About Me
3. Weekly Link Review – The Debt Collector Edition

I’m pretty excited by what I have so far, I’ve developed a few resources like excel spreadsheets, as part of the eBook and there is lots and lots of information. And therein lies my problem. I have way too much to write about.

So I’m hoping that you will help me tailor the eBook so that it is a really helpful resource for you. I have made up a really quick survey over at Survey monkey and I would love it if you could take a minute or two to fill it out. I know you’re time is valuable, so there are only 10 questions and the survey is anonymous.

To take the survey, please click here.

Thanks in advance for your time and responses.

Have you read these articles?:

1. Garden Update – Eating The Harvest
2. Seasonal Eating
3. Budgeting basics. Creating a simple budget

I found the pattern for this bag when writing the bag roundup and you can find the pattern here. I used an old sheet that was already in the rag bag, I just cut around the pilling and the tear in the centre. So the cost to make this was only a few cents for the thread. The sheet was poly-cotton and it seemed a bit thin a flimsy, but because the bag is lined, it ends up being quite sturdy. The pocket on the front is so that it can fold down and be carried easily in a handbag.

The pattern basically follows a regular plastic shopping bag, but I did make a few adjustments. Firstly, I made the handles a little longer, next time I’ll make them longer again, so I can carry it on my shoulder. Secondly I added the little tabs on the top to make it easier for the checkout operator. (It slips into their frame like a regular bag – DH suggested putting button holes in the handles to make it even more like a shopping bag, but that was a little too much effort). My string bags, as much as I love them, tend to annoy the checkout operators.

Speaking of shopping, today is DH’s birthday (Happy Birthday)! I got him the last couple of seasons of West Wing, which we both enjoy watching.

We’ve found TV series can be a lot better value for money than a DVD movie. As a comparison, DH’s parents bought Avatar on sale for $18: 2 1/2 hours of entertainment (if you’re into that sort of thing). On the other hand, West Wing was on sale with 50% off the second purchase so at $30 each and with the 50% off, it averaged at $22 per series and we get around 16 – 22 hours of entertainment each instead.

On to nappies and a little bit of link love. I’ve been meaning to make mention of the My Green Nappy website. Charndra has created a resource for sourcing and buying cloth and eco-friendly nappies in Australia and New Zealand. The philosophy of this website is to encourage people using disposables to start with just one cloth nappy and go from there. If enough people start with just one, then this small change will add up. A lot of work has gone into this website, there are a ton of resources (as part of the Green Nappy Guide there is a link to Frugal and Thriving and the guide to making your own nappies ) and there are links to Charndra’s other websites: Part-time Nappy Free and Elimination Communication websites.

Finally, I’ll be adding a resources page (something I’ve been meaning to do for a while). One of the most popular resources that I advertise on Frugal and Thriving is The Green Clean Book. I have purchased my own copy of this downloadable PDF and have found it to be a useful book of tips and tricks to cleaning different things around the home naturally. To mention just a few things, it includes a list of ingredients (with a few surprising ones), cleaner recipes, tips on how to clean different parts of the home from the toilet to the oven, natural pet care, garden furniture care, indoor plants to grow as air filters, make your own cellulite cream… this little book covers a lot of ground.

Resources and advertising fund the cost of maintaining a website, but I try to ensure that they are relevant to Frugal and Thriving and not too intrusive.

Have you read these articles?:

1. Showcasing: Nurture Nappies
2. using cloth nappies
3. The Ultimate Guide To Making Your Own Diapers/Nappies

I’ll be taking the next few days off to celebrate Easter as a new family! We all have our own family holiday traditions, and I’ll be looking forward to creating our family Easter traditions.

I’m looking forward (in a few years) to Easter egg hunts. As a kid, I grew up in central NSW during the mice plagues, so rather than the ubiquitous egg hunt, our Easter eggs came firmly sealed in recycled ice cream containers in order to keep the scavengers out.

However you celebrate Easter, if you’re travelling to visit family, have a safe journey and a relaxing holiday. 

Have you read these articles?:

1. Easter Egg box
2. Happy Australia Day!
3. easter basket inspiration

1. If you’re looking for inspiration for reinventing old things and creating beautiful new ones, The How-To Gal is a good place to start. One of my favourites is this art from toilet rolls.
2. I have a bias for homemaker and women’s blogs and recently I came across Mommy’s Blessing. As she recently had a newborn also, it’s nice to read how others are coping – a lot better than I am at the moment!
3. Simple Green Frugal Co-op has been a favourite for quite some time now. It is a blog written by several people so there is a variety of points of view and experience.
4. Another food blog that I’ve recently come across is Fig and Cherry, a Sydney based blog with gorgeous photography (which is important for a food blog)!
5. And for more craft Obsessively Stitching is a new sewing site that I’ve subscribed to.

My feed reader just keeps growing, however, there are so many unread posts at the moment it keeps asking me to ‘hit the panic button’. If only there was one of those for life!

Have you read these articles?:

1. Love and Money
2. Weekly Link Review – The Debt Collector Edition
3. Site News – A Few Design Changes

Some general statistics that I found regarding blogging:

• Around 175,000 blogs are started each day
• 60% of blogs are abandoned within a month
• The average lifespan of a blog is four months

I thought that I would share some statistics of Frugal and Thriving over the last year:

• As of last night there have been 59,946 visits to the blog
• Visitors have come from 139 countries
• 242 articles have been published
• The most frequently Googled search term that has delivered visitors to Frugal and Thriving is ‘savoury pumpkin pie’.

The top five most popular articles are:

• 45 Awesome Free Bag Making Tutorials
• 48 Free Skirt Tutorials
• Homemade Laundry Detergent
• 35 of the Best Craft Websites across the Net
• Free Printable Household Expense Sheets to Download

Beyond the blogging world, we’ve had a few more dramas in our life. My father passed away last week, which obviously I’m quite upset about. He had just visited a couple of days beforehand and met his grandson, and I’m thankful for that. We had to drive down to central NSW for the funeral and the car broke down at the end of day one, before we even got to the QLD border, so we got towed back home and started again. It is when things like this happen that I’m glad I had saved up an emergency fund. The two day trip took four very long days. Bub had pretty bad nappy rash and thrush, so we had to have a quick stop off at the doctor, and my milk dried up completely with everything that was going on, so we are totally formula feeding. I realise that there was nothing else we could have done, but I’m really shattered about how things turned out with his feeding. I hope that now things will settle down and we can get into some kind of ‘routine’.

I want to thank all the readers of Frugal and Thriving for dropping by and visiting and to thank those that leave a comment. With everything going on, I haven’t had a chance to reply but I love reading all the comments. I hope that you enjoy the website in the year to come.

Have you read these articles?:

1. Introducing The Frugal And Thriving Free Monthly Newsletter
2. Interview with a blog writer
3. site news

Well after 42 weeks and 27 hours of labour, our son Hugh was born on the 4th of March at 3.92kg / 8.6 pounds and 55cm long. Bub came out facing the wrong way up (head first though) so he was vacuum assisted out, but was a little trooper throughout the long labour. The senior ob said he really thought we’d end up having an emergency c-section, (we had every other intervention they could throw at us – despite me being generally quite anti-intervention, I’m very thankful for it!), but because Hugh was such a strong little fella, we made it through without one.

We’ve had a little drama since: two days after leaving hospital, we were back in. My milk hasn’t come in so Hugh had lost a fair bit of weight (but it’s all back on again now). At the moment I’m taking all sorts of milk producing medications, expressing what little I can and hoping each morning I wake up looking like Dolly Parton. I never thought I would have to worry about formula and sterilising and bottles and breast pumps and routines and all that paraphernalia, but that’s exactly what we’re doing…every three hours. It’s such a hassle, so I’m hoping that breastfeeding will still be an option eventually (sooner rather than later).

Intellectually I knew beforehand that I wasn’t going to get much sleep or have much time to myself, but you don’t really know until afterwards. Also, I thought I was pretty prepared beforehand…we’ll be more prepared if there is a next time round.

I’ve still got plenty of posts scheduled for the next couple of weeks, but I will be taking a bit of time off during that time to catch up on some sleep! Thanks for dropping by to read and leaving comments, I haven’t replied to any yet, but I’ve read all of them. Will catch up soon.

And if you’re interested, this proud mama will be putting up some baby snap shots (I won’t be able to help myself!)

However, I’ve been working hard over the last month or so writing articles so there will still be plenty of new content each day to read on the Frugal and Thriving website while I’m having a little internet hiatus.

Speaking of content, I get a few emails every now and then about guest posts. I’m always happy to accept guest post submissions. If you’re interested in submitting a guest post, please check out the guidelines here.

I have lots of plans for developing and improving the website this year, but I’m not sure just how realistic it will be getting them all done, so I won’t make any promises .

Thanks to all the readers of Frugal and Thriving. You make this all worth while.

Have you read these articles?:

1. Site News – A Few Design Changes
2. Introducing The Frugal And Thriving Free Monthly Newsletter
3. our first blogiversary

It’s our national public holiday, so I’m having the day off today. If you’re an Aussie, I hope you’re having a great Australia Day. You can find out what’s on in your area here or check out your local council.

For the non-Aussies, today is the day we celebrate the planting of the English flag…

um…

Today is the day we celebrate all things Australian: BBQ’s, beer, cricket, sun sand and surf, fireworks and wearing the Aussie flag in one form or another. Today is the day to become a citizen and the day we celebrate achievement by naming the Australians of the Year.

Photo by Gary Hayes.

My Australia day typically resembles the photo above. Food and entertainment.

Photo by Golden Ratio

Hope you have a great day.

Have you read these articles?:

1. happy Easter
2. Happy New Year
3. Shopping Online for Bargains in Australia