Okay, check it out.

My new computer desk…

Gorgeous, right?!

Guess how much I paid for it.

You’ll never guess.

Okay, I’ll tell you. Twenty-five smackaroos.

That’s right, $25!! I couldn’t believe my luck!

It was a Friday afternoon, and the family and I just happened to pass a yard sale while we were out. We stopped, curious about some barrels we spotted, not even noticing this gem. But just as I was heading back to the car I happened to spot the desk strapped onto the back of a trailer.

“How much are you asking for the desk?” I said to the man there, purely out of curiosity. No way was I gonna be able to afford it.

But the man shocked me when he answered, “Ya know, it’s getting late in the day, and I really don’t wanna take this thing back home. So I’ll tell you what… how’s twenty-five dollars sound to you?”

Twenty-five bucks? Are you serious!?

“Um. Okay, let me go see what my husband thinks.” I casually replied.

Of course I was trying not to jump up and down as I jogged back to the van to tell Jerry about the deal. He was just as excited as I was, and we made plans to come back with our own trailer to pick it up.

And I didn’t even haggle with him. (Very uncharacteristic of me. Just sayin’.)

What a deal! As soon as we got home I began taking everything out of our office to make room for the new addition while Jerry went back to get it.

What fun!! I love redecorating.

It was a struggle, but I was able to help him carry it (in one piece) up our front steps and into the office. And then I gleefully went about the house gathering things from here and there to decorate it with.

But the very best part of this deal…

This is the desk we replaced with the new one. Jerry had rescued it from the dumpster at work.

I sold it two days later for $25.

So, we broke even. Ha!!

I just love little blessings. Every now and then I feel like the Lord rewards our penny pinching ways.

Have you had a frugal find lately? What is your favorite freebie or super cheap score you’ve ever happened upon?

Photo Credit: Lifehacker.com

I visited a good friend of mine today, and she showed me one of her latest projects: sun jars.

Basically, they’re solar lanterns made from mason jars.

Her children have had fun using these sun jars to go to bed with instead of turning the lights on in the house at night. What a great idea!! She said they last about 8 hours before needing to be recharged, and are a great alternative to a night light.

There are several how-to tutorials online, like this one at Life Hacker, but some of them get quite technical and complicated. All my friend did was spray the inside of regular mason jars with frosting spray, disassembled solar garden lights (she used this set of 4 for $12 at Harbor Freight), and inserted the bulb and solar cap into the jar, gluing it to the rim. I wish I’d taken a picture of them so you could see what I mean. It looked very simple.

*UPDATE: She emailed me a picture to share with you. Yay! Here’s what hers looks like.

I just loved them!!

They’re cheap to make, and are completely sustainable, running on nothing but sun power. Plus, I’ve seen some cool colored ones that would look really neat on a patio at night.

I’m definitely gonna have to make some of these for us to use around the house at night. They’d be great for camping, or just hanging around the house, too!

Have you seen these before? Do you think it’s something you’d be interested in making yourself?

Can I just say how much I love feeding our babies homemade baby food? Especially when it’s something organic that I picked locally, or grew myself!

It’s incredibly satisfying.

And it’s wonderfully convenient to use stuff that’s already canned. Applesauce from the apples I picked off a friend’s tree. Pearsauce from my mother-in-law’s pear tree. Peaches we bought from a neighbor. Greenbeans, carrots and squash from last year’s garden.

Yes, it’s much more nutritious to make baby food from fresh ingredients, but I figure my home canned goods are at least a notch up from the store bought stuff. Not to mention MUCH cheaper.

The only downside is that when I canned these things, I didn’t have baby food in mind. In hind sight, there are a few changes I’d make next time I am canning something and will have a little one to share it with.

Next time, I’ll try making the fruit without added sugar, and the veggies with very little salt. Not that baby seems to mind, but it would be even better for him without these added ingredients.

Turning canned goods into baby food is practically effortless. Just spoon out what you want into a baby food processor, a couple of whizzes around, and there ya go! Perfectly pureed.

Of course, I don’t always use canned food for his meals. Often I use fresh or frozen as well. Some of his favorite dishes right now are:

• greenbeans
• squash
• sweet potatoes
• mashed potatoes (made with water, not milk)
• mixed veggies
• broccoli and carrots
• carrots
• peaches
• bananas
• bananas and oatmeal w/ cinnamon (not the baby cereal kind)
• bananas and blueberries (sometimes add cinnamon)
• applesauce
• applesauce and blueberries
• pearsauce
• pears

Does your little one have a favorite baby food combination? I’d love some new ideas!

Now, I realize that not everybody gets money back after filing taxes. And I do understand that getting money back is often a sign that you paid too much in, and that it would have been wiser to adjust your withholdings so that you kept that money instead of loaning it to the government to earn interest off of. I get that. However, if you are like us, you just might qualify for tax credits that carry with them a nice bonus refund. That’s always cool.

But, what to do with that extra money?

Well, obviously, if you’re in debt you NEED to pay that off, asap. Please do not blow you tax refund buying more junk. PAY OFF YOUR LOANS! Breaking the shackles of debt bondage must become the top priority in your financial life.

If your mortgage is your only debt, then paying it off should be at the top of your to-do. And putting a good chunk of your tax refund toward paying down your mortgage is actually, in my humble opinion, a very wise financial investment to make.

By paying extra on your loan, not only are you reducing the amount of years it will take to pay it off, you’re also saving that much more in interest. You can type your loan info into an ammortization schedule calculator, and find out how much interest you will be saving by making an extra payment. Of course, your loan amount, the amount you want to put down, and the interest rate of the loan are all variables here.

In our situation, if we put an extra $2000 down on our mortgage (tax refund money), it will actually save us about $4000 in the long run. That’s like double our money back! If you ask me, that’s a pretty good investment, with low risk (no risk if you stay in the home) and great return!!

At a time when the market is unstable, it’s hard to know how to invest wisely. But for us… this is the answer. Pay off the mortgage!!

If you’re expecting (or already have) a nice little check from Uncle Sam, and are wondering what to do with it, please consider how much money you could save over the long run by putting some of that money toward your home loan. A few years down the road, you’ll be so glad you were looking ahead!!

 Of course, there are SO many good ways to spend your tax refund. How do you plan on using your money to benefit your financial future?

For those who don’t follow me on facebook… here’s the updated picture of our new greenhouse! It’s come a long way since the last picture I posted!

As you can see, we’ve added siding to it. Which I totally love.

But not just any ol’ siding. (You know how we do things around here!)

This, my friends, is made from salvaged corrugated plastic sign material.

When Jerry worked at a print shop, he saved some really long scraps of this material that they were going to throw away. They sat in our shed for about nine months before we knew what their purpose was going to be. But seriously, we keep everything. And I’m so glad we do, ’cause when Jerry got the bright idea to cut that plastic into strips and staple them to the frame of this bad boy, I was couldn’t have been more thrilled.

Didn’t he do a fantastic job?! I mean, for working with what we had, I think it looks pretty darn good.

So far we have $5 in this entire project. We had to buy some caulking for the windows on the roof because it was leaking big time. But even after that it still leaked. Fortunately, we happened to have a roll of clear plastic which we stretched out over the roof and stapled to the frame, which has worked very nicely.

It’s a good sized space: 12′ x 16′, with 6′ walls and an 8′ peak in the center. We’re in the process of installing some gutters (which we salvaged for free as well), and running them into rain barrels inside the greenhouse. I am dying to get in there and make it all pretty and functional.

It has been interesting learning how to use this space. It’s really more like a giant cold frame right now than a greenhouse, since it isn’t heated. I have to be sure to open the windows in the morning, and close them in the evenings, otherwise my poor seedlings will be absolutely fried in the heat. Even though it’s still wintertime, the temps have reached well over 120* in there so far!

There are still a few things to do, but I’m excited with how it has all been coming together so far. I’ve decided I’d like to put cold frames along the front of the greenhouse, to block the underneath part off. We have some extra windows leftover that we can use for that. I figure, it’s a free and functional way to finish off the base of the greenhouse, instead of having to buy lattice like I’d originally planned.

Anyways… that’s where we’re at with that! I’ll keep you updated as we make more progress.

But then the night before last, I came across this article on The Survival Mom on making a candle from Meatloaf grease, and since I’d just happened to have made meatloaf that night (which was literally sloshing in grease) I knew it must have been meant for me to try!

I’m calling it a Homemade Tallow Candle, ’cause somehow that sounds so much more pleasant… and homesteader-ish.

Here’s what I did:

This is the fat drippings from two pounds of ground beef, including what I poured off of my meatloaf. You can see the sauce and bits of meat from the meatloaf settled at the bottom of the jar. I should have just scooped the fat off the top for this project, but instead I just dumped it all into an empty tin can.

I found a spare oil lamp wick in our emergency supplies, and sunk it into the middle of the grease, using a wooden skewer to hold it centered while the fat solidified overnight.

(The grease didn’t really get hard though. And I had a hard time keeping the wick in the middle of the “candle” as it burned.)

I was afraid the can might get really hot, so I put it on a wooden hot pad thingy to protect my countertop. I was curious to see how long it would burn, so at 10 am I started the clock, and lit her up! The wick was a couple inches tall, so the flame burned big and bright. I was pleased as I watched it continue to burn once it got down to the grease.

Several hours later, the flame was still going strong. But as the fat turned back into a liquid, the wick fell to the side of the can.

I stripped a twisty-tie and used the metal wire to prop the wick back in the center of the candle. It worked for a while.

It burned for 11 hours straight before the wick fell over into the grease and put itself out.

Overall, I was really impressed with how long it burned, how little smell it put off, and how little smoke it made. Surprisingly, it didn’t smell at all like burgers until I got down to the meatloaf remains at the bottom of the can. It would have burned longer, I’m sure, if I’d re-lit it.

Next time, I will definitely try to separate the fat from any sauce which might have mixed in before creating a candle. You might be able to can the grease, or freeze it to preserve it, otherwise it will start to get nasty.

If you needed to make one of these, and didn’t have any candle wicks, you could create your own by cutting a 100% cotton t-shirt into strips, and anchoring them with a metal nut tied to the bottom.

I think this would work particularly well in an old fashioned oil lamp. Then you wouldn’t have trouble with the wick falling over, and you could avoid the fumes and expense of lamp oil.

Yes, I will be making more of these for as long as I have fat to use!

I thought I’d make an impromptu video of the candle, just so you can get a better idea of how it burned…