Saturday snail mail...

Not all from THIS Saturday mind you.  This is all the ones that have been on my camera for a few months.  Just want to get them on the blog; there won't be much description.

This is a fun fold card...see below for how it opens.

Also a fun fold, but this opens differently.  No interior photo.

Another fun fold; see below for open view.

And my oven timer is going off.  Gotta go get my pie out of the oven!

 

The Frugal Friday File 2022, week 8...

 

1.  Finally reached the end of a shower gel as well as a shampoo bottle.  Got the use of every last drop of both.

2.  Still coming up with rather interesting recipes on the fly as I continue to strive to cook from the pantry and freezer.  The dessert I took to last week's Sunday family supper was an adaptation of Strawberry Fluff...I called it Lemon Stuff...no strawberries, so I used a jar of lemon curd instead mixed into a box of instant vanilla pudding.

3.  Made a big batch of tuna salad to have for lunches this week.  

4.  Paid bills on time avoiding any late fees.

5.  Gave the dog a much-needed pedicure at home.

The Frugal Friday File 2022, week 7...

1.  I was looking on Amazon for puzzle glue.  I knew I had an almost-full bottle of regular Mod Podge in my craft room, so I was looking to see if there is a difference between it and the Mod Podge Puzzle Saver.  I read through a lot of customer questions till I found one answered by the manufacturer (Plaid Enterprises) that said regular Mod Podge could be used as puzzle glue.  That little bit of research saved me $8.99, since I now know I can use what I already own.

2.  Though I didn't feel very frugal this week, I was happy to be able to move some money into savings.

3.  This week we got three bids for putting a new roof on the house.  Yikes!  Not something I look forward to shelling out for, but it is beyond the point of being put off any longer.  Things like this are why I put money into savings every chance I get.   We checked with our insurance agent, and reroofing will lower the premium of our home-owner's policy significantly.

4.  Cheap date planned for Saturday.  Drop off some donations at Goodwill, and visit the used book store.  

5.  A three-day weekend stretches before me!  Oh glorious, glorious extra (paid) day off!

What I'm reading Wednesday...

 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Fixer...

When I was a kid, and anything needed untangling, my mother always recruited me.  She had poor eyesight, and she and my dad were both over forty when I was born, so my young eyes were a distinct advantage. Necklace chains.  Knitting yarn.  Fishing line.  Once we were visiting a cousin of hers when I was a young teen.  My mother noticed a puka shell plant hanger lying on a side table and asked about it.  Her cousin, embarrassed, admitted it was completely tangled, and should have been thrown away long before.  My mother told her I would untangle it.  The pressure was on.  It was quite the chore, but before we left a couple of hours later it was a usable plant hanger once again.  Ugly, but usable.  :)

There were other things I fixed (repaired) as well.  Broken ceramics. Picture frames.  My parents lived through the Great Depression, so everything was repaired if at all possible.  It was a challenge to figure out the best way to do things, and I enjoyed it.

So here's my latest fix.  Remember this?

 I was so disappointed that there were three missing pieces.  So ever since the last piece went in, I've been contemplating how I could camouflage the empty spots.  Today I decided to tackle it and make our dining room table usable once again.

I gathered some supplies.  

• Top left:  Some tagboard, scissors, exacto knife, and glue.  
• Bottom left: I took a sheet of paper and slid it under the puzzle and traced the empty spots.  
• Top right: I carefully removed a 6- to 8-piece section near each of the empty spot that seemed to have similar colors/patterns.  (I used Post-It tape on the back of these sections to hold them together during the process.  It was safely and easily removed when I was ready to reinsert them into the puzzle.)
• Bottom right: I made color copies of the puzzle sections.

I cut the missing pieces out of tagboard (twice each as it took two layers of tagboard to equal the thickness of the puzzle pieces).  I fitted these new pieces into the empty spaces by shaving off edges where needed.  I traced these onto the color copies, cut out, and glued together to complete the new pieces.

Et voila!

My plan is to apply Mod-Podge to the front and back of the puzzle, and frame it to bring out anually with the autumn decorations.  The tagboard is not acid free, so those pieces may discolor over time, but I don't foresee it being considered an heirloom, so I can live with the risk.  :)

The Frugal Friday File 2022, week 6...

1.  Still trying to shop the pantry and freezer.  This week I made a thrown-together soup that used up leftover chicken fajita meat, a block of cream cheese with a rapidly approaching use-by date, a partial bag of frozen corn, a package of corn tortillas that have been in the fridge for...awhile, and some cream of chicken soup along with some spices and chicken broth.  I really wanted to add a can of green chiles, but didn't have any on hand, and Carey doesn't like them anyway.  He liked the soup.  I liked it okay, but I liked preventing food waste more.

2.  I've kept a close eye on my credit card, and when the fraudulent charges made last week went out of 'pending' and actually posted to my account, I phoned the credit card company to begin the dispute process.

3.  I emailed a vendor to report a damaged product that was delivered and very promptly received a refund.

4.  I mended a pair of jeans for my granddaughter.  

This was a kind of tricky job, as part of the rip extended into the pocket.  I succeeded in securely repairing the hole while not obstructing access to the pocket.  

Oddly, I love mending jeans.  When my kids were little, they came to me daily with requests for help, or to have me fix, so many things.  These days mending and hemming are thankfully still in the rapidly shrinking, "Mom, can you..." category.  While my hands are working the fabric, my mind is on the innumerable times I patched the knees of Jared's little jeans back when he was forever wearing them out playing with hot wheels and dinosaurs...on all of the dresses and costumes I've stiched together over the decades...and on all the happy times spent with my sewing and quilting mentor who taught me how to mend things so that the patch lasts.

5.  I made and mailed four cards this week, and I tried to include selections from my scrap pile of paper on each one.

  

What I'm reading Wednesday...

The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

 

The Frugal Friday file 2022, week 5...

 

I'll start off with the definitely UNfrugal:  My credit card got hacked.  I guess I feel lucky that 'only' eleven hundred plus dollars was charged during the day before I figured it out.  I had gotten a couple of strange texts on my phone while I was at work, but I thought they were phishing, so I didn't answer them.  I did call the bank, but they couldn't see anything unusual with bank acccounts.  When I got home from work, I immediately checked my bank accounts, and then my credit cards.  Only one credit card seems to be compromised, and I have had it cancelled.  Now I just have to make sure all the fraudulent charges are reversed and wait for the replacement card.

1.  We received our order of 4 free rapid antigen Covid-19 tests from the government.  One order (of 4 tests) per household is available at https://special.usps.com/testkits .

2.  Our son-in-law was in a barbecue cook-off recently, and he won several ribbons too.  Lucky for us, there were leftovers!  We enjoyed some for Sunday family supper, and got to bring some home too.  So, so good.  The man is a grill master!

3.  And while we are talking about good food, I made a pot of Pasta e Fagiole this week.  I love soup weather!  Soups are usually easy, frugal, and great left over.  The Pasta Fagiole recipe and some of my favorite soup recipes are at What's Cookin' 4 Miles North of Nowhere.

4.  Between the winter travel warnings this week keeping us home, and being temporarily without a credit card keeping me from online shopping, this is turning into a low-spend week.  Which is probably a good thing, as I am not anxious to see this month's heating bill.

5.  Our home's exterior door we use most often had a keyless entry lock when we moved in.  At the time, I was unsure how I felt about it, but very quickly became spoiled to the ease.  It recently had to be replaced, and it was quickly and frugally changed out by Carey.  I continue to be amazed, not just by his  DIY know how, but by the good sense my 18-year-old self had in choosing a life partner that was so handy.  Probably because he changed a tire for me the very first week we dated, followed shortly by him replacing my car's timing chain saving me a mechanic's repair fee that I definitely hadn't budgeted for.  Yet another instance of my early uncertainty in a situation quickly giving way to being spoiled.  :)

What I'm reading Wednesday 2/2/22...

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

I have never read any of Le Guin's work before.   The Lathe of Heaven was originally published in 1971.  This was a hard-to-put-down piece of science fiction about a dreamer whose dreams come true.

Sweet girl by Travis Mulhauser

This one has been on my Kindle for awhile now, since I bought it as a deal of the day.  I am starting it today...purely because of the cover art.  We are supposed to be very cold in the next couple of days with chance of snow and ice.  Hoping our power grid doesn't go down...again.