The doll bed

Random happenings at the Davis household:

Matt builds a bed for his doll, whom he named "Jesus".

Eating Free

March 1
Cereal for breakfast. We would never buy cold cereal, it's free on WIC. So is the milk.

Oranges and grapes for snacks. Those were free.

Pasta and sauce for lunch. Both the pasta and the sauce were from Food Net.

Tomato soup for supper. Made with soup from Food Net, and milk from WIC. We ate it with crackers that weren't free.


March 2

Breakfast was spiced apple-nut bread. It wasn't free (but the apples were).

For lunch we had alphabet soup combined with tomato soup. That was entirely free too.

Supper
Unstuffed pepper skillet

3/4 lb. brown rice
1 green pepper, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp. oil (oops, that wasn't free)
1 lb. sausage (8 patties, broken up)
1 can spaghetti sauce
1 can corn

Cook brown rice in rice cooker. Fry onions and garlic in oil until soft and clear. Then add green pepper. When it's done, add in the meat and the rice. Pour spaghetti sauce over. Add corn. Warm through and season to taste.

This tastes like stuffed peppers, but is less of a pain to make. And it's our supper tonight. Very nearly completely free.

Selfish Sewing

I've become addicted lately to the Selfish Seamstress blog. For years I've wanted, even intended to sew for myself. But I was too scared to start -- knowing that what I made probably wouldn't fit me right, or wouldn't be made well, or wouldn't look good on me.....

But reading Selfish Seamstress's snarky blog has inspired me, and given me the guts to give it a go. I figure if she can tear out a seam a dozen times to redo it until it's right, why can't I?

First up was sewing knits. I love to wear knits, but they're supposed to be nigh impossible to sew. My machine, though, is an excellent old Bernina, and I was convinced that if I did it right, knits would work great in the machine.

I was right. After three attempts, I have a t-shirt that fits the way I want it to. (It's made out of an old, faded jersey-knit sheet that I love). The red ribbing is some red ribbed-knit that I have in my stash too. And it works great for ringers.


Even better, I have a t-shirt pattern that works! That way, I can modify it to make pretty much any sort of t-shirt I wish, and it'll fit, right? Tonight I tried a cowl neck, and it's okay. I'll probably wear it, in spite of the armhole-finishing being a bit off.


Sorry for the blurry pictures. I'm still fiddling with getting my timer and my camera set up in a way that works....

Roadkill Cafe

Last year, about this time, my workplace had a chili contest.

Not being one to shy away from some friendly competition, I entered. The requirement was a pot of chili and a table.

I didn't get good pictures of the final table, with the chili and all, but here's the best I got. Chester really did the decorating. We had a live-animal trap (with a stuffed kitten in it), a deer skull (with antlers intact), a couple of rust ol' bear-type traps, a rattlesnake on a stick, and all sorts of really gross stuff.







In addition to this, I had a old, dented spare tire sitting in front of the table. In the huge rusty bowl, I placed the crockpot of chili, to which I had added a few really large turkey bones so that they stuck out everywhere, and I wore greasy mechanic overalls to serve the chili.

While my chili wasn't anything special, I won for best decorated table.

Next week is the same contest for this year. I'm having troubles coming up with an idea for a cheap (i.e. free) table decor that has potential to top last year.

God's provision posts are moving

I've decided to move the "God's provision" posts to a sidebar via twitter. That way, it's not cluttered with posts that you probably don't really want to read, but I can still publicly express my appreciation to God for His providing for us.

My $40 Christmas

Christmas 2009 was an especially lean season for us, in the financial sense. And not terribly fattening in the physical sense either, since we had the stomach flu.

Because of the lean funds, though, and because I wanted to, I made most of our Christmas presents. I was really proud of how almost everything turned out. I wish I had gotten pictures of them all.

But I thought I'd share what I made:

For the grandparents, photo rubik's cubes and marble magnets made from the kids art (I just cut circles for the backs of the marbles, and then let them draw tiny pictures on them). Both turned out really cute, but didn't get photographed. I got the cubes and the marbles for the magnets at the dollar store, printed my own photos for the cubes, and ordered 100 magnets for the back of the marbles from ebay, for about $4.60. Total was $7.60, which I'll round up to $8.00

For my side of the family the adults drew names and have a suggestion that we spend $15 on each other. (Which, in my opinion, is a LOT). For one sister,

I drew and framed a picture of her dog


made her sesame street characters out of yarn pom-poms



I think Oscar is my favorite.

and gave her a cute vintage mug and a large jar of homemade instant chai mix.

For the other, I painted a stencil portrait of my brother and his wife. It was my first time painting, and I wasn't very happy with my skills, so Chester fixed it for me, and it looks much better. (I got the canvas and paints on amazing sales at Michaels, so the painting cost under $5).


She also got a jar of chai mix, and a half-dozen marble magnets, printed with star-trek icons.

Total cost for my side was about $8. I felt guilty spending so little, especially when my sister spent $30 on me. I'm not sure how to deal with that. I stopped feeling guilty when I realized that the sister who spent $30 on me makes about double what I do, and supports one, not seven, person on that wage. Still, I hope they didn't find my gifts cheap. I worked pretty hard on them. Not everyone considers time expensive.

Chester's side drew names too, and the kids were included in that gift draw -- so it was seven gifts total. On that side, it's okay (even cool) to give gifts that you got an a garage sale or thrift store, and the limit is $5. Most of what I gave were indeed garage sale finds from last summer: A cereal dispenser, filled with cereal from food net was $5, a gumball machine, filled with cereal from food net, was $2.50. A brand new swiffer mop was from food net (yeah, they give away amazing stuff that doesn't sell), a set of walkie-talkies that had been given to us a few years ago, a set of doll paraphernalia from garage sales totalling about $3, a set of exacto knives in various shapes, that we bought from a going-out-of-business sale for $3, and a home-made apron (which was a lot of work and turned out really cute, and I wish I'd gotten a picture of) that the recipient had requested. And family gifts of home-made Keva blocks (Chester cut them from some maple wood flooring pieces that were too short to be used well, and they turned out really neat), and a game of Bongo from a garage sale for $2. Total $20.50.

We gave each of the kids gifts that we'd gotten from garage sales, or that were re-gifts. Bennet got some books of paper airplanes to make (free), Matt got a set of car props (buildings and roads and such for cars to drive on, free) Josephine got a set of wooden dolls with "clothes" to dress them ($1 at a garage sale), and Lisel got a tea set in a wicker basket (free).

In the kids stockings were the "useful" gifts - tights and belts, and a pair of homemade mittens. As well as apples and oranges that had been given to us. The total there was under $2.

I used swagbucks to get Chester a book that he requested. It was $20 on Amazon, so I also ordered a book for homeschooling next year to bring the total over $25 and take advantage of the free shipping.

At church, we gave away about 40 jars of home-made jam and jellies. Those cost about $.65 each to make (most of which is the jar. Not many people return them when they're finished).

So, about $39 on gifts and $26 on jams and jellies. Chester got me a gift too (a nice vegetable peeler). I haven't looked to see what he spent. This post is about what I spent. I really was hoping to spend under $50 total, but when I consider what I spent on jelly, I'm pretty happy with under seventy.

I felt like it was a really special Christmas to give people things that I had put a lot of heart and effort into, and I was pleased to also not go broke in the process. Handmade is really great! (So are garage sales!)

God's Provision, January 6

Today was Clothing Exchange. It's a local ministry that is open once a month with free clothes and stuff for anyone who cares to come and get it. The usually have 10-15 conference tables full of stuff for the taking.

I went looking for a green shirt and some pants, since mine aren't fitting as well as I'd like these days. I came back with:
seven shirts (not the green I was hoping for, but amazingly, all fit)
two skirts
one pair of pants that's nice and warm
two pair of mittens for the kids (YES!)
a few pairs of pants for Chester
two dresses and a swimsuit for the girls
two pairs of shoes for Bennet, and one pair for Matt
a high-quality, padded laptop case
and, just for fun, a genuine vintage little pair of shorts and shirt, that date back to when I was a kid. They're so cute.

Each of the kids pick out a few things for themselves, so they got new shirts, pajamas and a couple of toys too.

Thanks Lord, for ministries such as this!

Chester and the kids also all cleaned out their closets and dressers today, so we'll have lots of stuff to donate to clothing exchange next month!