Debt Reduction 101

I had to share this cheap, reusable idea for wrapping gifts. One of my coworkers recently broke her leg, so a bunch of us pitched in some funds to buy her a couple of gift certificates and some wine for her recovery (because when you have a broken leg, there’s nothing like a little merlot.). [...]

Sorry that it took me a bit to post these photos, but I finally made my own Topsy Turvys using recycled milk jugs and an orange juice carton. The inspiration for this came from here. In addition to liberating my recycling, the supports are constructed out of bamboo skewers and I used regular kitchen string [...]

I grew up on a farm that wasn’t quite in the middle of nowhere but was 10 miles from the closest town. So while many of my peers spent the summers at our city’s park or in the municipal swimming pool, I spent a lot of summers in the treehouse that my father built for [...]

I’m usually at a loss for words when it comes to my dad, which is odd considering that my one of my greatest talents – the ability to talk to anyone, trees even – comes from him. But when it comes to my dad, one of the strongest memories comes from when I was a [...]

The early bird gets the worm – or in my case a couple weekends ago – the early bird was the fourth person in line at my county’s annual rain barrel and composting bin sale. Every year, the county teams up with a vendor that will sell their compost bins and rain barrels at cost [...]

I’ll be honest – I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. But when it comes to technology, I have been blessed by free or cheap computers and a brilliant husband who doesn’t believe in buying – but building – his own computers. So last Sunday, when my $60 computer gave up the ghost, [...]

The Class of 2010 is hitting me hard this year – no less than five loved ones are graduating from high school and making their way into the Great Beyond. Luckily for me, three of those graduates are triplets and they are having a combined party, so my road trips aren’t as numerous as they [...]

I haven’t had as much luck with my tomatoes as my cohort Beks has had over at Blogging Away Debt. I had a bunch of beautiful tomato seedlings that I thought were ready to “harden” outdoors and instead of growing bigger and ready themselves for planting, they decided to wilt and die on me. I [...]

Something happened to my husband and I a couple of months ago that has haunted our dreams. … We watched the “Dirty Jobs” episode where host Mike Rowe took a dirty job collecting used mattresses. What always amuses me about this particular episode is that Mike Rowe barely flinches in the face of animal poo, [...]

Now that I’m done working at the cab company, my husband and I have been fulfilling familial obligations and taking a fair share of road trips. And although we love to see our family members at the end of these journeys, one of the best parts about spending three hours in a car is that [...]