Green Options » thrifty

Craft Room Makeover: Cut and Glue a T-Shirt Corkboard

Julie Finn — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:25:53 +0000

I’ve mentioned before that one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to have an organized and awesome craft room. An ability to walk through it without slipping on colored pencils and felted wool and the odd button would be nice, but I also want quirky decorations and cheerful accessories and inspiring color schemes–have you seen Yummygoods’ craft room? Basically, I want Yummygoods’ craft room, only I want it to belong to me, not her.

In our last makeover, we talked about how nice it is to store your craft supplies in vintage containers instead of mass-market plastic bins–this was basically an excuse for me to show off my thrifted Pyrex, the Fiestaware coffee mug that the handle broke off of, and the other mug that PROVES that I did, indeed, go to Space Camp.

Today, however, we’re getting our inspiration board on. We are going to cover a ratty corkboard with a rockin’ T-shirt (Funny story: I never lost the baby weight after my second baby, and now my entire pre-baby rockin’ T-shirt collection basically gets to be turned into other stuff. Sigh). With a rockin’ T-shirt corkboard, you get to remember your rockin’ days, and not have to see how teeny-tiny slim your T-shirts used to be.

Thrifty Thursdays: How to Feed Your Cookbook Addiction without Breaking the Bank

Robin Shreeves — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:00:08 +0000

The irony of this post being put up on the same day as Stuart Stein’s Do Publishers Think We’re Stupid is not lost on me. But there are some of us who use our cookbooks regularly and do enjoy getting new ones. Or at least getting new-to-you ones.

I just got back from my county library used book sale, and there were two whole tables of used cookbooks with more boxes full of cookbooks under them. I promised to limit myself to only five cookbooks, and I anguished over my choices when there were so many to choose from. At $2 per hardback and $1 per softback, it would have been easy to buy every cookbook that caught my eye. But I restrained myself (plus I wasn’t buying just cookbooks).

If you’ve got a cookbook habit, or if you’re just tired of the same recipes you’ve been using for years and want to pick one or two new ones up, hitting a local library used book sale is a great idea for several reasons.

Thrifty Thursdays: Save Bucks on a Bird

Kelli Best-Oliver — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:48:35 +0000

Sorry, vegetarian and vegan Eat Drink Better readers. This tip is for the omnis! We recently made the move from a vegetarian kitchen to a sometimes-omnivorous kitchen. Without getting into the nuances of both my husband and my’s food preferences, we’re more likely to eat at home if I cook meat sometimes, and I’d rather save the money and eat at home where I can control ingredients. One thing I recently tried as part of this new arrangement was cooking a whole chicken. Why deal with a whole chicken when you can buy the convenient prepackaged boneless skinless breasts? Because you can save a ton of money by buying a whole bird. Find out how, after the jump…