merry christmas from frugal and thriving 2011
The last few days I’ve been silent on the blog but busy at home preparing for Christmas and taking lots of daytime naps. I can’t give too much away, but energetic moments have included sewing and baking and swapping truffle recipes over the fence with a neighbour whose Christmas gift list also includes lots of home-baked goodies.
I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and an enjoyable festive season. I hope that your Christmas celebrations are full of joy for you and your family. If you’re travelling, stay safe on the roads.
I’ve ummed and ahhhed and decided despite having so much time off blogging recently, to take next week off to spend some quality time with the family and to plan and prepare for 2012, which is set to be a busy year for me.
I hope to see you in the new year.
Best Wishes
it’s a wrap–christmas gift wrap on a budget
I’m in two minds about gift wrap. On one hand, the anticipation that builds as you unwrap a gift is an important part of gift giving. It’s the surprise when you tear away the paper that’s part of the fun.
On the other hand, Christmas wrap can put an unnecessary strain on the budget and is certainly a strain on the environment. It’s hard to find stats, but the UK alone uses around 8,000 tonnes of the stuff each year – that’s around 50,000 trees. Even if we recycle the paper (which is a good thing) that doesn’t bring back those trees. And it takes a long time to grow replacement trees just for five seconds paper-tearing delight.
This isn’t a new concern of mine. One year, when I was about fifteen, I gave my family gifts wrapped in recycled newspaper. It didn’t go down well. It was a little bit messy too. So I admit, I have a few rolls of Christmas gift wrap in the cupboard. To peer pressure (or in this case, family pressure), I succumbed.
Below are a few ideas on how to save on Christmas gift wrapping, including how to save on the traditional wrap, if that’s your thing.
christmas food traditions
When I was growing up, much of our Christmas traditions involved food. In fact, Christmas day was a big gastronomic event the likes of which we never saw for the rest of the year.
When it comes to the pleasures of the table, the day stands out in our family calendar.
It started early in the morning with ham, poached eggs and a smear of Australian mustard on toast for breakfast. At least one year, dad had a butcher friend brine a ham and then dad baked it in a scone dough case. It was the most succulent and tasty ham ever. There is no comparing real ham on the bone to the watery stuff you buy at the deli. The ham lived in a pillow case in the fridge and when it was all gone, mum would freeze the bone until winter and make pea and ham soup. Nothing wasted. The eggs we ate were fresh from a friend’s yard and the bread was (in later years) handmade.
5 frugal tips on saving money abroad
This is a guest post by Karen Elseworth, a writer for Oz Forex.
Travelling abroad can be an exciting and enriching experience, but it can also be rather expensive. If you don’t plan ahead, you could find yourself spending more than you intended to. The following five tips will help you enjoy your upcoming trip without breaking the bank.
1. Save on currency conversion
Using your debit card at local ATMs may be a good way to save money when travelling abroad, but make sure to check your bank’s rates before you do this, as you may be charged per withdrawal. Whatever you do, don’t exchange your money at airports as they are known for their outrageous exchange rates. If you want to bring cash, either exchange it at home, or find a local currency exchange office in the city you are visiting.
2. Do your shopping abroad
Before going abroad, many people stock up on things like sunscreen, toiletries, flip-flops and new outfits, without stopping to think that these things are readily available at their destination as well. Aside from the fact that you are unnecessarily overloading your baggage, these things are often cheaper abroad, and you will probably end up buying new clothes and shoes while abroad anyway. This could cause your bags to be overweight on your trip home, and we all know how much airports love to overcharge for excess baggage.
3. Choose your hotels wisely
While travelling abroad, staying at hostels that offer dorm rooms can save you more than half of what you would normally spend on hotels. If you prefer a bit more privacy, many hotels abroad have the option of private rooms with shared bathrooms. If you think about it, it’s not really worth paying twice the price just to avoid walking across the hall to use the shower or toilet.
4. Save on transport
Do a bit of research on your destination before you arrive in order to find out what the cheapest mode of transport is. Taxis are generally the most expensive mode of transport in any country, and you could easily spend half your budget on taxis if you aren’t careful. In most countries, public transport is fairly affordable and also allows you to explore more of the city you are visiting. In some places like Amsterdam and Paris, you can even rent a bicycle and cycle through the city, which will cost you next to nothing and give you a chance to experience the city first hand.
5. Stay off the beaten path
It goes without saying that every destination and city has its tourist traps. Unless you really want to see a particular historical site or building, steer clear of popular tourist sites and ask locals for advice on what you should see and do. Most places designed for tourists do not portray an accurate picture of the place you are visiting, and you will end up spending far more than is reasonable on meals, guides and transport.
When travelling outside of Australia, it is important to keep in mind that even though you are trying to save money, you should never be frugal with your travel insurance. No one plans for accidents to happen, but unfortunately they do. It is simply not worth taking a risk just to save a few hundred dollars. The common advice given is that if you can’t afford travel insurance, you can’t afford to travel at all.
A guest post by Karen Elseworth, a writer for Oz Forex – find out how much your Australian dollars are worth elsewhere in the world with our free currency converter calculator.
planning a christmas budget
This is a guest post by Justin Toladro from Life Insurance Finder.
Political satirist Stephen Colbert recently said on his show in regards to the holiday season:
We are once again spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need to give to people we don’t like.
While there was undoubtedly a level of sarcasm in his rhetoric, in some ways, Mr. Colbert is right: as a consumerist society, we are so overwhelmed with the mad dash to buy as many things for as many people as we possibly can this season. The shopping fervour only increases with each passing Christmas season, and with Australia’s consumer debt crisis at record highs, perhaps spending more money isn’t what we need right now.
annual gutter maintenance
This is a guest post by Stan Horst of the Kingsley Bate furniture company.
My home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia sits on five acres of fairly wooded land. Come autumn, the colour display of all these trees is absolutely spectacular. The price I pay for this beauty, though, is several weeks of raking leaves and a weekend spent cleaning out gutters.
We don’t spend much time thinking about gutters. They’re a bit like the plumbing, electrical system and furnace in our home – inconspicuous, easily forgotten components that are ignored until something goes wrong.
christmas baking
We got in some Christmas baking last week. Just before the tummy bug hit. While the weekend was not much fun, last week we had lots of fun making mess and eating biscuits.
I wanted to share this cheap and easy recipe from the Down to Earth website, which is what we used to bake the bikkies. The biscuit dough is just butter, flour, sugar, sweetened condensed milk. You can find the recipe here.
I actually halved the dough recipe because the original makes a huge batch. I froze the left over condensed milk; I’m not sure how it will go out of the freezer, but it will be used in baking also, so it probably doesn’t matter if it goes a bit grainy. 
We rolled the dough and cut Christmas shapes from it. Just like playing with play dough but better tasting. They would be great to decorate, but they didn’t last that long in our house 
.
handmade Christmas decoration roundup
Making Christmas decorations as a family lends a special touch to the occasion – decorations have sentimental value rather than just being something plastic and purchased. Crafting your own decorations is also a way to extend the Christmas joy beyond a single day, especially if your children are old enough to be involved in the crafting.
While it’s tempting to create ‘the perfect Christmas’ with all the bells and whistles, I’ve decided that we can start small with sparse decorations and craft more each year.
When it comes to finding inspiration, websites like Pinterest and Craftgawker are definitely great places to waste a few hours find inspiration. Below are just some of the wonderful things I found on these sites as wells as around the internet.
While looking for decorations, I came across the ancient Japanese tradition of Temari: making balls out of thread in gorgeous patterns (pictured above). This is not a casual craft but involves a lot of skill and dedication. The results though, are absolutely stunning! For information about this craft you can find some interesting Youtube videos here and here as well as tips, directions and patterns here, here, here and here.
our square-foot (or so) no-dig garden
In contrast to the many other frugal and simple living blogs in the blogosphere, I want to focus here on small space gardening because we live in a townhouse with a small yard and because urban living without a large backyard is the reality of many of us (actually, almost a majority!). It can be a little disheartening reading about others eating and preserving their abundant harvest from their large veggie gardens when that is not attainable in a courtyard or on a balcony, however, it is quite possible to supplement the produce you purchase even when you only have a small space and less than favourable growing conditions that further complicate matters.
As far as our yard goes, we dug out the five tree stumps and huge root system and levelled our yard, which has given us a lot more space in which to ‘do stuff’. (The cost of excavation, by the way, was $300 plus tip fees, not too bad I thought). That, coupled with the fact that the removal of some cocas palms next door (these are noxious weeds in Australia) has given our yard a lot more sunlight, particularly at this time of the year, resulted in us building a new vegetable garden.
tip tuesday–what have you been reading lately?
This isn’t so much a tip as a sharing of some of the really good books I’ve come across lately.
I’ve been making the most of being recumbent (and therefore being less sick) all day long to catch up on some reading. I’ve caught up on quite a bit of fiction reading, getting through some of the books on my shelf that I’ve bought in the past and haven’t yet read, as well as revisiting some old favourites: I read my way through the Harry Potter series again; enjoyed Margaret Gaskell’s North and South for the fourth time; finally got round to reading Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, which has been sitting on my shelf for almost six years and which has to be one of the best books I’ve read in very a long time; revisited Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda and read Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders. It has been such a luxury to be able to read with leisure, despite the uncomfortable circumstances, and the little fella has been quite patient with me, enjoying his playdough and matchbox cars while I’ve had some serious couch time. We have also read The Three Little Pigs about 400 times, I’m sure he will be able to recite it back to me off-by-heart pretty soon.
As for non-fiction, I want to share some excellent books that I’ve read lately. A reader emailed and recommended Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’ve read several of Mr Pollan’s other books, but not this one and I have to say it was a fascinating examination of modern food production as well as more ‘alternative’ agricultural practices. I highly recommend this book (you will probably find it in the library, as I did). My only reservation is that I would like to read a book written by an Australian about Australian food production, because I think our ways aren’t quite as extreme as they are in America.
If you’re looking for some young kid’s gift ideas, I came across this wonderful book from the library (just released) called Hop Skip Jump by Fiona Dalton. This book contains the patterns and instructions for a whole heap of gorgeous stuffed animals all made from recycled or ‘eco’ fabrics. Apart from the super-cute toys, the thing I love about the book is that it explains where to find the different fabric suggestions. For instance, where the book recommends woven wool for toy making, it suggests sourcing it from second hand suits, skirts and trousers. This is great for novices like me, who are unsure about fabric terminology. The other great thing about the book? The author is Australian and has a blog, Hop Skip Jump, where you can find a couple of free patterns and get an idea of how cute these creations are.
Finally, I came across a cookbook (also from the library) called The Improvisational Cook by Sally Schneider. This cookbook gives an overview of how to improvise in the kitchen, some ideas on good flavour combos, and then includes a variety of recipes “deconstructed”, with ideas on how to improvise, change or adjust them or use them as a springboard for creating your own recipes. It’s not often I come across a cookbook that has recipe after recipe that I want to try (and then improvise with). Recipes like flavoured salt and homemade infused oils and vinegars, which it has never occurred to me to make, or semi-dried tomatoes and roast capsicum (to be used as a base for many dished). One idea I love is using a very thick vegetable soup like cauliflower soup or potato soup as a binding agent in chicken pie instead of the usual white sauce. This means a sauce binding without the flour and dairy – great if you’re allergic to both and you’re getting extra ‘hidden’ veg in your meal. I also love that Sally gives a ‘formula’ for making jelly with any kind of liquid like juice or milk, from which you can make an infinite variety of jelly type dishes.
So, while I’ve been inactive in many aspects of day to day life, I’ve been making it up by getting some reading done. What books have you been reading lately?
