Frugal Babe

Our little boy is 11 days old already.  We’ve had a couple sleepless nights so far, but mostly it’s been a wonderful week and a half.  I was noticing today that I can already tell that we’re not going to need some of the baby stuff that we have - and we don’t even have that much stuff, since we didn’t have a baby shower (the ladies I work with at the library threw a book shower for me, and everyone brought a favorite book, which I thought was a wonderful idea, but we didn’t have a typical shower with a gift registry and piles of baby stuff all around).  We did get lots of hand me downs from friends and family who have already had babies, and we bought a few things from Craigslist (a sling, a pack n play, some cloth diapers…)

So far, we’re using the sling every day - it’s been a lifesaver.  He loves to go for walks in the sling, and we can wear him around the house in it, with our hands free to do whatever else we need to do.  We both love how it lets us keep him very close by and still be able to get other stuff done.  It’s a sling that lets the baby ride sideways against the parent’s abdomen, and it’s perfect for now, although I think we’ll need to move on to an upright carrier by the end of the summer.

We’re using lots of baby blankets - we use them to swaddle him; we put them down on the floor for “tummy time” and we put them under him at night since he sleeps in our bed, they keep the occasional spit up off the sheets.

I’m loving the one piece outfits that are like a bag with arms and an opening at the bottom.  They come down over his feet to keep them warm, and they make diaper changing a breezy - just scooch them up around his waist and change the diaper.  No snaps, no threading noodly little legs into leg holes…  Even though we haven’t bought any clothes at all, we have a whole dresser full right now.  Lots of things that we got as gifts, and lots of hand me downs from friends.  I can already tell that he’s going to outgrow a lot of them before he ever wears them.  I’m tending to stick with the clothes that are simple, easy to wash, and easy to put on and take off.  And he wears the same clothes for 24 hours - although that could change if he starts spitting up (for now, he’s only spit up three times in 11 days!).

We haven’t used the stroller yet, since we’ve carried him in the sling everywhere he’s gone so far.  We used a baby swing a couple times, but he got tired of it and so did we.  It uses batteries, which is a drag, and it takes up a lot of space.  I think that will be getting donated soon.  We haven’t used the changing table at all, since we’ve been changing his diaper on our bed.  I’m glad we didn’t buy an actual changing table - we got a contoured pad that sits on top of his dresser instead.  And for now, our cat has taken up residence there.   In fact, we haven’t used his room at all so far, although I’m sure that will change over the next few months.

I knew that we didn’t need most of the baby stuff that’s out there - but now that he’s here, we’re needing even less of it than I had imagined.  All he really wants to do is nurse, get his diaper changed, snuggle with one of us, sleep, and be carried around.  We don’t really need anything other than ourselves and some diapers to get all of that done.

It seems that we can’t go a day anymore without hearing about how high gas prices have gotten. And it’s unlikely that they’ll be headed down anytime soon. Two of my friends have recently bought hybrid cars - each with nearly $20,000 financed for the car - in an effort to lower their gas bills and save the environment at the same time. Fuel economy is the buzz word for new car sales, and I read somewhere that used SUVs have decreased in value by 20% just since the beginning of the year.
My husband and I have a 1991 Honda and a 1990 Audi. Both are smallish vehicles, and get nearly 30 miles to the gallon. We have never had any trouble with them, and plan to keep them until they die. We have no car payments, pay next to nothing in registration fees, and about $600/year for car insurance. And the gas mileage - while not what we’d get in a Prius - isn’t really that bad. A friend who just traded in her Tahoe for a 2008 Accord gets just about the exact same mileage in her new car that I get in my Civic.
Getting a hybrid or a fuel cell car is not going to fit into our budget anytime soon. We’d love to have solar panels on our house too, but that would also be a huge expense.  The environmental impact we make is a big priority for us, but so is personal finance and living well within our means. So for all of us who don’t want to pay several hundred dollars a month for a new car or a complete home energy makeover, what can a person do to protect Mother Earth and be easy on the budget at the same time?

DON’T DRIVE. As much as humanly possible, leave your car in the garage. If public transport is available where you live, take it. If you can possibly walk or bike where you need to go, do it. Yes, that might mean getting up earlier, but then you don’t have to squeeze in a trip to the gym in the evening. And sometimes you can just not go anywhere at all. Staying where you are is the best gas-saver around. Yes, you have to go to work, but do you really need to drive somewhere for your Saturday entertainment? My husband and I used to drive 20 miles each way to go to our favorite mountain biking spot. Then he hurt his knee last spring, and wasn’t able to mountain bike last season. So we started biking on the trails near our house instead. It’s not as exciting as biking in the mountains, but we can just ride out of our garage and straight to the trail, and then ride for miles, without having to drive anywhere. It will be especially nice now that we have a baby, since we can easily tow a bike trailer on the local trails (it wouldn’t be possible to haul a child on the mountain bike trails we used to ride).

EAT LESS MEAT. The environmental resources used in meat production are enormous. The impact is debated depending on the viewpoints involved, but however you look at it, there’s a lot less environmental impact from growing beans as opposed to raising cattle. And from a budget standpoint, it’s a whole lot less expensive to eat a plate of organic brown rice and beans than a sirloin.

BUY IN BULK. If you have the room to store what you buy and know that it won’t go to waste, buying in bulk makes sense from an environmental and a budget standpoint. You’ll almost always pay less per unit when you buy in bulk (but double check before you buy, since a smaller size might be on sale), and there will be less packaging waste. We buy organic oats in 50 pound bags from a health food store. We pay about $40/bag, and it lasts us for about six months. Way cheaper than breakfast cereal in boxes, and the only packaging is one brown paper bag. Compared with the price we’d pay and the number of cereal boxes and liner bags we would go through if we used dry cereal (or even if we bought oats in those cylindrical cardboard containers at the supermarket) our oat consumption is far better for our budget and for the environment.

STAY HOME. It’s Saturday night, you’ve worked hard all week, and you’re looking for something to do. You could go out to dinner and a movie (which would probably involve driving and using gas) and spend $80. Or you could make dinner at home, pop some popcorn, and watch a movie in your pajamas on your couch. With the money you save by staying home, you could probably pay for your next tank of gas. I find it helpful to play mental tricks with myself when it comes to money. If there’s something we have to buy, I “save” money somewhere else to zero out the balance in my mind. Gas is one example - even though we try to drive very little, I still have to put gas in my car about once a month, and it’s been getting more and more expensive with each passing month. So if we’re talking about going out to dinner, and then decide to stay home and cook, I can tell myself that my next tank of gas is “free” since we didn’t spend money on dinner.

DON’T USE YOUR DRYER. We use our dryer about 10 minutes a week, just to fluff things that wrinkle badly. We have four clothes drying racks that we got at thrift stores (I’ve seen them in department stores too), and that’s how we dry our laundry. I also use the bathroom shower curtain rod - I put clothes on hangers when they come out of the washer, and just hang them on the rod. When they’re dry, they go straight into the closet. The racks are working great for drying diapers, so our environmental and financial impact from using cloth diapers is further reduced by not using electricity or gas to dry them. This obviously works best in a dry climate, but if you’re patient, clothes will dry just about anywhere. You could always use a combination of drying racks/clothes lines and the dryer - any reduction in the use of your dryer is beneficial for the environment and will reduce your electricity bill. We can’t have clothes lines per our HOA, but if you can put in a clothesline, stuff would dry even faster outdoors on nice days.

REDUCE YOUR USE OF PAPER. We’ve made our home office nearly paperless.  We’re using cloth diapers and washcloths instead of wipes.  We use old t-shirts as rags instead of paper towels (we do still use paper towels sometimes, but a roll lasts us quite a long time).  We use cloth napkins.  Avoiding paper products is obviously easier on the budget, since you don’t have to keep buying them.  And it’s easier on the environment - we can reuse a diaper hundreds of times instead of putting a new one into a landfill every few hours. 

LIVE IN THE SMALLEST SPACE YOU CAN.  If you’re thinking about buying a bigger house, stop and think about whether you could be creative and make the one you have now work for you.  We decided to stay in our 1300 square foot house, even though when we bought it we assumed we would upgrade a few years down the road.  By keeping our cozy little house, we’re not taking on a higher mortgage payment (easier on the budget) and we’re also not increasing our energy consumption - it takes a lot more energy to run a 2500 square foot house than it does for a 1300 square foot one.  We’d have to drive a lot of miles in a Prius instead of my Civic to make up for the extra energy we’d be consuming if we were to double the size of our house. 

GROW YOUR OWN FOOD.  Even with a very tiny yard, you can have a little garden.  You might only be able to grow a tiny portion of your food, but every bit makes a difference.  It’s less expensive to grow your own veggies (and if you compost your scraps, you can have an organic garden without spending any additional money).  And since the food you grow at your house doesn’t require any chemicals or transportation, it’s a bonus for Mother Nature as well. 

THINK ABOUT YOUR WATER USAGE.  We need water.  But do we really need all the water that we currently consume?  If you have a lawn, think about xeriscape instead.  Or even a less thirsty variety of grass.  And do you really need to flush the toilet every time you use it?  I think we all know by now that we shouldn’t let the water run when we brush our teeth, but what about all the other water that we let go down the drain?  A friend of mine keeps a bucket in her shower, and fills it up while she’s waiting for the water to get hot.  Then she uses that bucket to water her house plants.  Little things like that add up.   

By doing all of these things, my husband and I are keeping our expenses to a minimum and helping to protect the environment at the same time.  Buying a hybrid car would cut our gasoline usage, but it would also put a huge strain on our budget.  Since we already have cars that are reasonably fuel efficient, and since we drive very little, we’d rather focus on all the ways that we can help the environment without hurting our bottom line.  What about you?  What things do you do that are environmentally friendly without being a financial burden?

I’ve been catching up on my blog reading today, and found lots of good stuff to pass on to my readers:
Shanti has a great post about how a car is not an investment.  I couldn’t agree more.  Our 1991 Civic and 1990 Audi are getting along just fine.  We have no car payment, we pay about $600/year for auto insurance, and about $50/year for registration on both vehicles combined.  Each of our cars gets nearly 30 miles to the gallon on the highway.  Every year they pass the required emissions test with flying colors - they’re not smoke bombs.  We will keep them until they literally won’t go anymore.  They are a means for getting us from A to B, nothing more and nothing less.  They are not an investment, not a status symbol, not entertainment - and we’ll continue to not spend money on them.
Lynnae has an article about modern marriage and money.  I agree with her position that marriage means you’re a team - and that includes money.  I cannot imagine my husband and I having separate finances.  We combined our money before we got married (when we bought our house) and that’s the way it’s been for the last five years.  Neither of us even knows how much money we make individually.  We run our business together, so technically we split the income on our W2s and dividends, but my husband does more of the actual work.  Neither of us cares, since all the money goes to the same place, and we both have the same financial goals.  We might have different ideas about how to spend small amounts of money, but we make all of our financial decisions together.  To us, that’s just part of being married. 
Trisha has rounded up a whole list of bloggers who have paid off their debt, and she and her family are well on their way, with their debt dropping below the $9000 mark last week!
NCN has posted about the finances of having a new baby - something we can relate to right now.  Our little boy is one week old today (I can’t believe a week has gone by already.  Sometimes three hours go by while I do nothing but hold him and watch him sleep).  So far, we’ve spent almost nothing since he was born, mainly because we’ve hardly left the house.  We have wonderful neighbors, family, and friends who have stopped by with food for us, and our fridge is still full to overflowing.  Our baby and I have gotten the hang of breast feeding, which I plan to continue for at least a year (free baby food - doesn’t get more frugal than that).  I’ve been washing a load of diapers every day and a half or so.  I just use the low water setting on the washer, and wash them with vinegar, baking soda, and an all-natural chemical-free laundry soap that I get at Costco.  We dry them on a drying rack, so no electricity used for the dryer.  So far so good as far as the baby and money are concerned.  I’ll keep you updated as we go along…
Nick has a great post about how to not be evil with your money - and there’s even a nifty graph to go along with the article. 
Kyle has a post about beating gas prices.  Lots of good tips, although I’d have to say that my favorite way to get around high gas prices is by not driving.  Sometimes it takes some creativity, and pretty much always requires extra effort.  But by walking or biking to the grocery store, library, bank, post office, etc., I save gas and get a little workout at the same time. 
I’m starting to feel like myself again after a rather hazy first week of parenthood.  I should be back in the swing of things on my blog next week.  Thanks for stopping by, and for all your good wishes after the birth of our little boy!

We got our $1200 economic stimulus payment today.  We put the whole thing into our HELOC, since we have decided to make the HELOC a priority for the time being.  We’ve already maxxed out the HSA and my husband’s IRA for the year, and instead of moving straight to my IRA, we’ve been focusing on stashing some extra money in the HELOC first.  We’ll probably do that for the next few months, and then go back to our original goal list and tackle my IRA in the fall.  Paying off part of the HELOC principal was part of our goal list for the year anyway, we’ve just changed up the order of things.  We decided to work on the HELOC for now because the money is very liquid in that account.  Hopefully we won’t need it for anything, and can just pay down the principal on the loan.  But if we do need the money, the HELOC is linked to our checking account, and we have instant access to the money.  We have our ING account emergency fund, which is up to about $1600, and of course there’s the HSA in case of a medical emergency.  But with a brand new baby, it would be nice to just have some extra money in the HELOC just in case. 

I called our health insurance carrier to add our son to the policy, and it’s going to be $158/month.  Ouch.  We were expecting about $100 - $120.  But our policy has a family deductible, which we already met this year when my husband had knee surgery, so if our baby does happen to need anything medically for the rest of the year, we don’t have to pay anything for it.  So the HSA money should be safely locked up at least until next year. 

I’m going to start checking out college savings options, and I hope to have a 529 plan set up by next month.  We don’t plan to fully pay for college for our son, since we think that it’s important that the student have a part in the financial outlays of getting an education.  But we do plan to put aside $100/month from now until he graduates from high school, which should make at least a dent in whatever college costs in 2026.

So for the time being, our expenses will increase by $258/month for sure, just for insurance and college savings.  After that, we don’t anticipate a huge amount of additional expenses for now.  We have everything we need and then some as far as baby stuff goes.  Our homemade diapers are working great, we won’t have any additional medical expenses until at least 2009, and we’ll be staying far far away from Babies R Us.  If the last few days are any indication, our other expenses should go down for a while, since we’ve barely left the house since he was born.  Our already small entertainment and eating out budget will probably actually get smaller for a while, since it’s so much easier to just stay home and have family time.  And since all we want to do it sit and stare at him, that works just fine.

Thank you all so much for all the comments and congratulations on new baby - your kind words mean a lot to us.  A couple people requested the birth story, so here it is… (obviously I’m strongly in favor of home births and intervention-free births.  If that’s not your cup of tea, please don’t be offended - this is just our story, and we’re so glad that it turned out the way it did)

The whole time I was pregnant, we’ve been seeing a wonderful midwife every few weeks for prenatal checkups.  The visits were always fun - she would give me a foot massage for about 40 minutes while she talked to us about all the ins and outs of pregnancy and whatever stage we happened to be at.  She would take my blood pressure, check my pee, listen to the baby’s heart, tell us that we were doing great, and send us on our way.  She charges $3000 to deliver a baby, including all the prenatals and postnatals and the birth.  (The backup midwife’s fee is included in that amount, so we didn’t have to pay anything extra to have the second midwife at our birth).  Our health insurance doesn’t cover home birth midwives, so we paid the $3000 ourselves.  Our midwife was always commenting on how easy we were as clients, and I remember thinking that we were spending a lot of money to have someone just be able to tell us that we were doing everything right and didn’t need to change a thing.

Well, our midwives sure did earn every penny of their fee during our birth.   All of my close girlfriends have had babies in the last few years, and all but one ended up with c-sections.  Based on their stories, and how closely my labor matched some of their experiences, there is no doubt in my mind that we would very likely have been headed for some serious medical intervention if we had been having our baby in a hospital.  But because we had two highly skilled midwives here with us, our experience turned out just the way we hoped it would.  With minimal intervention, a healthy mama, and an absolutely perfect baby.  I was in labor for 45 hours, and the longest break I ever had between contractions was 18 minutes.  That doesn’t leave much room for sleeping…  We weren’t sure at first if it was real labor or false labor, because the contractions weren’t very regular.  But they did get more and more intense and lasted longer and longer as the hours went by.  We cleaned the garage to give me something else to focus on, but that only lasted a while on Sunday, because the pain was getting to be too intense to do much of anything else.  I talked to our midwife several times, and told her I’d call her in the morning and let her know how we were doing.  Neither of us slept on Sunday, because I had to get out of bed with every contraction - they were way too painful to handle if I was lying down - and they were pretty close together by then.  We called our midwife in the morning, and she got here about 10 am.  She checked me and I was at 7 cm and she could feel the baby’s head.  We were all ecstatic - especially me, as I was so glad to know that all the pain of the previous 30 some hours had been getting us somewhere. 

The backup midwife arrived a couple hours later, and we all thought that we’d have a baby by the afternoon.  Then I got stuck at 9 cm, and stayed there for seven hours.  Who knows why.  I had fierce contractions every few minutes the whole time, but they weren’t doing anything.  A friend who was in the exact same situation a couple years ago ended up with a c-section, and although I tried to push her birth story out of my mind, I couldn’t help but think how closely my labor was mirroring hers.  Luckily we had midwives with us, instead of doctors.  They hooked me to a breast pump to strengthen the contractions, and used an amniohook to break my waters.  They helped me walk around, and put me in the bathtub.  They told me how confident they were in my ability to birth my baby, and never wavered in their calm support.  They checked the baby’s heart rate numerous times during the whole thing, and it was always so reassuring to us to hear it thumping loud and strong, never wavering.  If he could do it, so could I.   And of course my husband was with me every minute - I don’t know how I would have done it without him. 

And so it was that our little boy was born in our bedroom, with just his parents and the midwives to welcome him into a wonderfully calm little world that we had made for him.  I needed a few stitches afterwards, which the midwives did with the greatest of skill.  The midwives were a perfect combination of birth knowledge and medical knowledge and knew when each was required.   I know that sometimes, on rare occasions, medical intervention is required during a birth.  But here in the US, it’s done at an alarming rate, far more often than in most of the rest of the world.  I’m grateful that hospitals and doctors are there in the event of a serious medical emergency, but I’m ever so grateful that our midwives were there for us during the birth of our baby.  Our midwife was here today to check on us, and she’ll be back five more times in the next eight weeks (it sure is nice to have your postpartum checkups without having to leave your bedroom!)  I have to say - that was the best $3000 we’ve ever spent.   

We added a new member to the Frugal Babe household last night!  Our little boy arrived yesterday, at home just like we planned.  It was quite the process (45 hours…) but our midwives were wonderful and we’re all doing great.  He’s perfect, and might distract my attention from blogging for a little bit, so forgive me if there aren’t as many posts as usual this week.  But once we start getting the parenting thing figured out, I’ll be sure to let you know any frugal tips that I come up with. 

It’s Sunday, and the first day that we haven’t had plans in months.  We’ve finished pretty much all of the home improvement projects we had set out to do.  We still have to stain, varnish, and install our new bedroom doors, but I think we’ll hold off on that and do it after the baby gets here.  Yesterday we finished shortening the new wood blinds we installed in the kitchen, and gave the whole house a thorough cleaning.  It’s so nice to have everything back to normal after having construction mess for the last few months.  We’ve made several trips to the thrift store and recycle center, getting rid of stuff.  I was inspired by this post from Being Frugal, and have just felt like clearing stuff out lately.  We gave my sister several pieces of furniture, which has made the house feel bigger.  And the built-in storage that my parents helped us make for our bedroom has helped a ton.  I’ve also been trying to adhere to the “if you haven’t used it in a year” rule, and have been getting rid of stuff that I don’t need anymore.  I’ll admit that my frugal nature tends to resist getting rid of stuff.  Not because I spent a lot of money on it (generally I didn’t, because I don’t tend to spend a lot of money on things), but because I tell myself that I might need it someday.  Yes, sometimes things do come in handy down the road, but it’s probably more likely that we’ll forget we have the stuff, or something else will work better at the time.  And since I feel happier in an uncluttered space, I’m working hard to overcome my hoarder instincts.  Adding a new family member and staying in our smallish house is a big incentive to pare down - otherwise I could see us being overrun by “stuff.”  We’ve already got more baby stuff than we need, thanks to generous friends and family members passing along their baby things.  One friend gave us a couple swings and a bouncy chair, but I’m debating whether I want to keep them, since we’re now planning to use a sling and practice “babywearing” most of the time.  Maybe we’ll keep them for a while and see if we end up wanting to use them, although they’re taking up valuable real estate in the garage right now…

At the beginning of April, I set a goal to have 350 subscribers to this blog by the end of the month.  I’m happy to report that as of today, I’m at 360!  A big thank you to all my subscribers, and congratulations to Lynnae (who inspired me to try to increase my readership) who hit the 2000 mark in April!  It’s exciting to have more and more people reading my blog, and I enjoy writing knowing that people are interested in what I’m saying. 

My latest frugal project is a home-made baby sling, and thanks to the seemingly limitless ideas on the internet, I’ve found directions for making the sling we want.  When I bought flannel sheets to make diapers, I got three, and we’ve only used one so far with the diapers we made last weekend.  We’ll use one more for diapers, but we have a really good-quality queen size flat sheet left over, and I’m going to use that to make the sling.  All we’ll have to buy are the two metal rings, which shouldn’t be more than a few dollars.  We have an infant sling that I bought on Craigslist, and that should work for the first few months.  By the time the baby outgrows that one, we’ll be able to use the one we’re going to make.  I love the look and versatility of the adjustable slings, but I balked a bit at the prices - I’ve seen them on line for $40 - $100 depending on what fabric is used.  So I was excited to find directions for making one, and to be able to use left over diaper material is an added bonus.  It might be a bit before we actually get the sling made, since we have one to get us through the early infant stage.  But when I get it done, I’ll be sure to post pictures and let you know if the directions were easy to follow. 

The Festival of Frugality is up at Sound Money Matters.  Lots of good ideas and entertaining reading.   I completely agree with Money Blue Book’s post about higher gas prices (hopefully) leading to a decrease in the number of cars on the road.   I will always walk or bike if it’s a reasonable alternative.  If I’m going to my parents’ house 75 miles away, I’ll drive.  But if I’m going to the bank 4 miles from our house, I bike.  And the majority of the errands I run are within a five mile radius.  The 75 mile trips are very infrequent.  But the one or two mile trips happen all the time.  So walking or biking really does add up in the long run.  It’s very frustrating to me to see people in my neighborhood driving their SUVs to their jobs that are less than two miles from home.  I’m very hopeful that higher gas prices will make people really think about when they need to drive and when they could use an alternate way of getting from A to B. 

I also liked Save and Conquer’s post about taking care of your own health at home.  I go to the doctor once a year for a checkup, and that’s it.  I’ve never been to the doctor for anything other than a physical (although I did go to an oral surgeon to have my wisdom teeth removed several years ago).  With our pregnancy, I’ve been seeing a midwife and we’ll be having a home birth with the midwives in attendance.  We’re lucky to both be healthy, although we go to great lengths to keep ourselves that way.  We almost never get sick, but every few years one of us will get a cold.  It would never occur to either of us to go to the doctor for a cold, but I’m always amazed by how many people schedule a doctor visit at the first sign of a sniffle.  We also have a high-deductible ($3000) health insurance policy with an HSA, so we’re motivated to spend our health care dollars wisely.  My husband had knee surgery a few months ago, which meant we had to meet our deductible.  We didn’t mind though, because there was nothing we could do on our own to fix his knee.  But for minor ailments, a little time, patience, good food, exercise, and rest will usually do wonders. 

Funny About Money has a great post about cost-efficient home improvements.  Hard flooring throughout the house and xeriscaping are two projects that we’ve done in the last year, and I couldn’t agree more about all the benefits.  All of our floors are now either wood, laminate, vinyl, or tile.  Everything can be swept and mopped in a flash.  Dog and cat hair (and the occasional cat puke) are no problem now.  And our yard looks great with very little fuss and almost no watering.  Both projects were definitely worth the effort.

We spent the day at my parents’ house today, and my mother and I got a great start on the diapers we’re making for the baby.  We had a blast - lots of chit chatting while we worked.  We finished five diapers completely, and I got all the fabric cut for 14 more that my mother is going to sew over the next couple weeks.  We used this website for how-to:

http://www.geocities.com/mytafadhali/DiaperSewingTutorials.htm

We used the fitted diaper directions, and they worked great.  I did the cutting and pinning, and my mother did the sewing.  For each diaper, I cut three diaper-shaped pieces (an inside, an outside, and a liner) and then about five layers of additional liner material cut in a rectangle to fit in the middle of the diaper.  This gives it lots of absorbency where you need it most without making the whole thing too bulky.  We used all sorts of fabric… We had the flannel sheets that I got in a thrift store a while ago, and a bunch of thrift store and hand-me-down flannel baby blankets.  We also had several thrift store tee shirts that my mother had bought to use as liner material (she goes to a store that sells a bag of 25 tee shirts for $3).  Most of the shirts were pretty generic and I just cut them up into little rectangles to go in the middle of the diapers.  But one was from a microbrewery, and my husband suggested that we use the back of it as the outside of the diaper, with the Fat Tire logo right on the baby’s behind.  I couldn’t resist - so now our baby will have a novelty beer diaper mixed in with all the baby blanket-fabric ones. 

We spent several hours working on the diapers today, but we got much faster as the day went on.  The first one took us a while but once we got the hang of it, it was taking about 45 minutes per diaper.  And we were having fun the whole time, so it didn’t seem like a chore at all.  We estimate that the total cost of materials for all 19 diapers is less than $30, including Velcro and elastic.  And the end result is absolutely adorable.  Can’t wait to use them!  I’m hugely grateful to my mother for all of her sewing help, and for finishing the sewing on the rest of the diapers I cut out today.  Between the diapers I already had and the ones we made today, we should be set for the first six months or so, as long as we wash a load of diapers every other day.  And by the time the baby outgrows the diapers we have now, we’ll have had time to make a bigger size. 

Here are the pictures of our handiwork (of course I had to show the Fat Tire diaper from the back):

We’re thrilled with the results, and I would highly recommend the tutorial website we used to anyone looking to make their own diapers - the directions were easy to follow and the diapers turned out great.