We had another great weekend day, no spending, lots of productivity. We finished painting the last little bit of our house. Whew! It was a small part of trim at the top of a second story gable, but it’s over a trellis and vine porch roof, so it’s pretty hard to get to. We finished the rest of the painting about a month ago, but we had been procrastinating on this part. Today we finally got it done. It involved a sheet of plywood on top of the trellis/vine structure, lifting the ladder onto that, and then my husband perching himself on the ladder and painting the trim while trying not to wiggle (so as to avoid having the ladder slide off the piece of plywood and fall through onto the porch). So anyway, we’re stoked to finally have a completely painted house, and no injuries from the process.
Our baby had his first outing in the jogging stroller today. The stroller was a hand me down from friends who had outgrown it. They gave it to us before we were even pregnant – they knew I love to run, and they knew that we eventually wanted a child; they were going to donate the stroller and offered it to us first. We’ve been storing it in our crawl space for a couple years. Today we pulled it out, aired up the tires, wiped it down, and it was as good as new. So now the dog and I have a new running companion, and he has a sweet recycled stroller to ride in. Life is good.
Lots of good stuff in the Frugal Blog Network this week. At Tight Fisted Miser, Andy has his take on the financial bailout. He says “My life was good at the beginning of the year and it is still good now. Until that changes for the worse or looks like it is going to I’m not going to worry.” I like this sentiment, and I feel the same way. Not having consumer debt, and having a small mortgage relative to our income, means that financial downturns don’t hurt as much as they could otherwise. This current financial mess is just giving me more motivation to pay off our mortgage as quickly as possible, and spend as little as possible.
The Frugal Zeitgeist has also written about the economic mess, and what it means for the average person – everything from our jobs to how we spend our money and give to charity. And I agree completely that working towards getting out or staying out of debt is a good goal for just about everybody.
The Frugal Duchess has an article about what happens to your money when your bank goes under. Helpful reading for anyone who used to bank at WaMu.
Not Made Of Money has a post about fall garage sales – it’s not too late to cash in on bargains that abound at garage sales, or on getting rid of the clutter that is taking over your basement.
Almost Frugal has written about how to put together your own travel emergency kit. Small enough to go in a purse or a diaper bag (which we moms tend to use as a purse for several years… I’ve forgotten what my purse even looks like), economical, and simple. I love it. I think I’m going to have to find a little box and get busy making an emergency kit to stash in the diaper bag. On another diaper bag note, I stashed an old sheet in ours a few weeks ago. It’s perfect for an impromptu seat on the grass wherever we happen to be (and keeps the baby from eating pesticide-laced grass), and it’s easy to toss in the washer and line dry when we get home.
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