Skip to main content

Back on track?

Whew...it has been a pretty crazy 2 weeks of the new year.  I hope that is the extent of excitement like that we have for the rest of the year.

I don't feel like i have been very frugal this last week with all the trips to the hospital and the added cost of medication for momma.  Anyway, we have been doing well at keeping up with where we spend our money and using what we have in the freezer instead of running to the store everyday for something for dinner. 
Another thing we tried and it really seemed to work (don't laugh) I made home made fire starting logs. Yep I know it sounds silly but really, with the cooler weather (and snow last night) we use lots of the store bought ones. they are not cheap either.
 
I bet you have this around the house

 So here is what I did.  I took empty toilet paper rolls (house full of girls we have tons of these) smeared the inside with petroleum jelly (less than $2) and stuffed them with dryer lint.  
the jelly soaks into the tube & lint
 The petroleum jelly soaks into the tube and into the lint which makes for wonderful burning power :)
 

I store them here

I store them in an empty plastic tub that my favorite candy comes in.  that way the jelly doesn't soak into anything except for what it should and for next to nothing we have fire starting logs for the wood burning stove. 
A box of the logs(from walmart) run around $10 and up & they don't seem to last us very long at all.  So I think I will continue to make the homemade ones because it goes along with my desire to be more aware of what we use and becoming more frugal.
Every little bit helps.  I have only made a few so far and It doesn't even look like I have used the petroleum at all, so with this being so cheap to make I can't give you a price per log or anything like that, I just know we are going to use up some stuff otherwise bound for the trash can and save some $$ that I can put away to eventually pay for a vacation or another cow or 2    :)
  
Reduce, reuse, recycle, re purpose.  I am loving this way of thinking.  If you have great ideas to share please do. I would love to try them in our family.
Also, I am still thinking of ways to introduce a give-a-way for my blog-a-versary, so keep checking back.

Have a great day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Throwback Thursday

    Let me just start by saying straight out of the gate that I absolutely hate to be on the front side of any camera much less my own.  Now it isn't that I don't enjoy being in the moment, I do.  I just enjoy taking the pictures instead of being in them if that makes any sense at all.   With that said I'm glad I was on the front side of this camera this day.  I suppose all little girls dream of growing up, getting married and having babies.  I know when I was a little girl my friends and i would play house, we would more less mark of sections of the room as mine and theirs these sections would be my house or her house.  we'd have baby dolls name them fun names.  We had fun.  I don't know that I ever really thought about actually having children when I grew up.  And as I got older I remember that I didn't even want to get married when I grew up much less have any kids.  But we all grow up. And that guy comes along t...
2 comments
Read more

Super sweet scrub

So the picture isn't the best, you're not looking at a wonderful back drop or perfectly packaged product for this jar of sugar scrub.  But what you are looking at is a simply wonderful homemade sugar body scrub.  I am guilty of spending more than my share of time on the ever growing in popularity website craze "Pinterest" just looking and pinning, pinning, pinning.  I asked myself some time last week "what is the point in this if I don't try some of the things I am pinning."  So yesterday I found this recipe for a sugar body scrub, it helps take off  dry dead skin and it hydrates as well. Now I know we haven't been hit with a bad winter (yet) but the air has been terribly dry and my skin is really suffering all dry and itchy.  My hands have gotten so bad that they were starting to crack and bleed around my cuticles.  So I made this scrub last night before taking my shower.  Here is what I did: Mix 1/3 cup of each in a bowl Brown sugar Regular...
1 comment
Read more

A new year

Ugh!  I have started and deleted this blog entry more times than I care to admit. :)  I have so many things floating around in my mind that I want to write about that I keep jumbling them all up on the page and they are not making sense to me so I am sure you will not have a clue what I am saying...babble, babble, babble... Anyway maybe this one will work for us all. The new year.  2012  Wow.  I am getting so old, I don't ever recall thinking this far in to the future when I was a kid except maybe when I watched movies with flying cars and hoovering skate boards and such thinking it would be neat to have a flying car.  but here we are still living a pretty normal life without all that stuff. I chuckle a little when I think of all the things I enjoy, these things certainly don't "fit" the year 2012 as the movie writers would write it. Because I don't want a flying car, I think it would be fun to ride a horse everywhere or have a covered w...
1 comment
Read more