I've Been Busy but I have a Give-Away

Hello there,

I've been absent for way too long. I've had lots to talk about but too over exhausted due to working on a different project at work and extra busy with my moon lighting job. But things should quieten down now.

This weekend I have booked a stand at a new market venue. It's a market selling only locally crafted items or second hand goods. I can't wait! It's the very 1st market and I hope to get a bit of $$$ for our Borneo trip and meet other like minded people.

I spent $20 at one op shop where I purchased 10 cute dresses to resell. And tomorrow another op-shop is having a 1 dollar day which I hope to spend another $20 of cute items to resell or repurpose. The only problem is that I'm taking Dolly to a Halloween Story Time at 9:30am. This means by the time we get to the op shop all the good stuff might be gone :-(

Due to my absence I want to do a give-away of one of my favourite books off my own bookshelf. It's The Richest Man In Babylon. It's a simply written paperback book on the value of being thrifty, planing your finances and slowly growing your wealth. This book furthered my financial education and motivation to be thrifty and wise with my hard earned dollars. I'm sure all you eco-frugalista's would enjoy it too.

To win this giveaway from my bookshelf to yours; All you need to do is write a frugal tip in the comments. I will then number all the comments with frugal tips and place them in a bowl for Dolly to pick out. Please make sure your comment has a email address if you are not a Registered blogger.com blogger. This way if you are the Winner - I can notify you! Yeah!

I will be pulling out the winning number on Tuesday Night in Australia. So come on - write a tip in the comments!!!

Going Bananas for Bananas.

We have great tropical weather and a nice little garden area in the backyard. I could be more eco and frugal by growing a lot of eatables.

I did try last year. I grew a little bit of rocket (enough for 1 salad) and 2 small cos lettuce were eaten too. Our basil went well but has since died and our beautiful tomatoes all died before producing fruit. Dolly harvested 3 mini carrots from a full packet she planted.

Our passion fruit has grown profusely but not fruited and the paw paw trees have all been non fruit bearing. Either they need some pollenation help from us or they are just the wrong sex to fruit.

However... the garden has lots of banana trees that belong to everyone and mainly cared by Handy D. He obviously has a greener thumb then I. Three bunches were chopped down this week and shared amongst the flats. I love frozen bananas on our hot hot days.

Chopped Down Banana Bunch 

My mum also purchased a food dehydrator this week. She's not particularly pleased with it, but I'm itching to borrow it and give it a go with the mangos and bananas. I'll let you know how I go.

Mary Mary.. How does your garden grow?

What has been growing in your garden?

Spoilt Again

My gorgeous neighbour Lady Thai gave us a beautiful dish again.

Fried Rice and Spicy Beef and Pumpkin

It was so good. The Rambling Expat and I ate this slowly savouring each delicious morsel. It was too spicy for our Dolly.

And tonight Lady Thai gave me a Thai massage that went for over an hour in her peaceful home massage room. She wanted to practice some techniques so asked if she could practice on me. How could I say no? Someone in need and I was there to help...

Sorry no pics here, my Rubenesque body is for galleries only. lol. 

Click Here - Pregnant cranky me in 2007

I'm very lucky indeed and appreciate all the lovely gifts that have come my way.

Did any gifts come your way this week? I'd love to know what you received.

Baby Gift For 1 Year Old Beauty.

I had a very busy marathon of a weekend yet again. Dance class for Dolly, grocery shopping done, laundry nearly up to date, moonlighting job attended to, playgrounds played in and a crafting project finished.

The birthday party is over, the gift is given - so I can at last... show you what I made for Ms Elegant K's, 1 year old. 

Cushion & Cover

I made a cushion and cushion cover! Yeah.. all by my little self... well kind of... Dolly helped too :-) She sat between my legs and pushed her little foot down hard on that pedal, nearly stitching up my fingers.

I am tired of trying to purchase birthday gifts that have very little sentiment and even less eco kudos. So I decided to take action instead of whinging on and on. 

This gift was eco-frugalistic in the materials used but due to lack of know how... this project took me over 5 hours to complete.

I used:

• 1$ Women's shirt from the op-shop.
• Piece of fabric from early 1980's trousers (sat at my mums all these years in my fabric stash!!!)
• .50 Cent vintage doily from op-shop.
• 6 buttons from $1 Op-shop mixed button jar given as gift by a Helpx.
• 1/4 of good quality cotton cot sheet purchased at op-shop for $2, Dolly has out grown it... (she's never slept in a cot!).
• Pillow stuffing from a good quality pillow we no longer needed. 
• Threads of various colours.

Total monetary cost roughly = $2.50

Luckily I don't charge myself for my time because $20 x 5 hours would make an very expensive cushion indeed. LOL.  

Everything was washed carefully and dried in sunshine. Dolly and I measured and cut fabric for the cushion cover. The Rambling Expat got busy with his iron and gave it all a good going over. Dolly and I then sewed the panels together. By now she was ready for an outing. So off we went to the playground, she played for ages and I hand sewed on the buttons and doily with different coloured threads whilst siting on the bench.

Home again, I made a simple white cushion. It was the wrong size :-(

Everything came out again and I made another! This time it was perfect :-)

Finished Front!

Finished back!
I removed a button and replaced with a different one for a bit of interest.

Dolly was very proud to give a gift that she helped make. The Rambling Expat gave a CD of Photo's he took at the Baby's baptism 2 weeks earlier (he's very skilled in this area). It's a really nice feeling to give from our hearts and hands instead of something from the shopping centre. It's eco and frugal too! Happy Days.

Have you made anything eco-frugal lately? Comment and let me know.

Neighbourly Help at Hand for Leaking Taps

Hello Those With and Without DIY Talent,

We've never had to change a washer on a tap before EVER as we have never owned our own home or lived anywhere long enough to have to. But this has changed. We purchased our home in 2007 and smaller things here and there are starting to need repairs.

Last weekend out of the blue our shower was trickling. Not just dripping but actually running a trickle that was filling a bucket within 5 minutes and our kitchen sink was dripping too. It was Sunday. We didn't have the knowledge, tools and confidence to fix it ourselves. Plumbers are expensive just for the call out in our city due to the lack of tradies and on a Sunday - doubly more...  So after having a major stress about it, we decided to ask our neighbour Handy D if he knew how to fix leaking taps. It was our lucky day!!! He was home, knew how to fix the problem and had the tools for the job.

Handy D fixing our shower taps.

So over he came, turned off the water to all the flats, fixed our problems while we watched and learnt. It took him 30 minutes all up. We were thrilled and are now armed with the know how for next time. We gifted him $50 for using up his precious time. He was happy, we were happy... Win-Win all round as we now have the know how too.

Do your neighbours have skills they can share and teach you?

Happy DIYing,

Stephanie @ Frugal Down Under.

Bartering Domestic Help.

Hello Hard Workers,

Every once in a while we take in Helpx travellers to give us a hand in exchange for a place to sleep and a evening meal. We don't do it all the time only when we are in the mood or someone is in desperate need as our flat is cramped.

We live in a small touristy city. The gateway to Asia, so there is a lot of coming and going. A dorm bed in a noisy backpackers is $26.50 a night which is very pricey for people trying to travel on a super tight budget. Knowing this we joined Helpx and have travellers of all ages stay with us for 3 to 7 days. They don't have to fork out $$$ for their accommodation and we don't have to fork out $$$ for domestic help - plus we get to meet some extremely interesting people!

However we are also careful; we check references, we never leave anyone in our home when we go out, we don't give out keys, we don't have valuables and our daughter always sleeps in our room (her bed is next to ours), so she is NEVER EVER alone with strangers. Our profile also states clearly what we want and don't want.

In the past 2 years we have had about 100 Helpx and Couchsurfers stay with us. We have barely had problems. A few broken dishes and a couple of sponging slackers but they are in the 3% minority. We have the luxury to pick and choose our guest/helper carefully as we receive numerous requests each week.

We try to never exploit people,we ask for a maximum of 3 hours help in the late afternoon and they have the day free to visit our city. We try to make their stay as comfortable as possible. We see it as an exchange and aim the exchange to be equal benefit to both us and the guest.

Earlier this week we had lovely young man from Hong Kong. A uni graduate who has spent 6 months in Melbourne working and is now ready to do some tourism before heading home again to his family, girlfriend and his chosen career path.

Our "guest" on the fold out couch/bed.

We loved having this particular Helpx. He was calm, respectful and a great helper! He watered the garden, helped with dinner preparation and played with Dolly. And while I went to bed unusually super early with Dolly, he washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen floor and hang out the laundry without being asked. In the morning I woke up to everything looking sparkly clean and it was a great start to another crazy hectic day.

The Rambling Expat and I both work full time and Dolly is super energetic, so this gives us time to give our daughter quality attention after busy work days.

Would you take in a travelling helper too?

Stephanie @ Frugal Down Under.

Mango's, Eggs and Curry

Hello Dear Readers,

Wow!! We've had a very lucky week of lots of local food goodies given to us!

My mum went visited a friend in a rural area called Humpty Doo. A larger mango tree on his property had fallen, so there were plenty of mangoes to be picked before all the native animals and fruit flies got to them. My mum picked a large amount and gave us 3 times the amount you see in the photograph. I LOVE Mangos so this was a great gift.

She was also given eggs by another rural living friend, which she shared with us too.

Then to top it all off our neighbour gave us local curry leaves which have since dried and been used in various dishes.

I love gifts of foods from people's gardens. It's local, it's eco and it allows me to use my grocery budget on other extras.

Gifts: Mangoes, Eggs and Curry.

We have been very lucky indeed. We have eaten mangoes everyday and I will cut and freeze some before they go bad for future days. Yum! Yum!

Have you been given food lately or shared extra food that you have?

Cheers to good food,

Stephanie @ Frugal Down Under.

Saturday Op Shopping Finds

Hello Lovers of Thrift,

I went to my local Op shop with my 3 year old daughter and found some great goodies to feed my consumer wants and needs.

My Total Spend = $8.50.

I bought a Pumpkin Patch tracksuit for Dolly for $8.00, it's super soft and warm. This is a purchase for our trip to France. It will be so cold and winter! Due to us living in the tropics we don't own much warm clothing. I need to build up 3 sets of clothing for her. I am relying heavily on family in France to lend us other winter clothes when we arrive.

I also purchased a novel in Spanish to gift a Columbian friend for 50 cents. Bargain and unusual find.

Warm Tracksuit and Spanish Read.

My daughter Dolly also made a purchase with her own money: Total Spend $6.00

Dolly purchased a beautiful rocking unicorn for the inexpensive sum of $6.00. She should be able to flip this and get her money back once she had outgrown it.

Rock My Unicorn

I also picked up a couple books (Perfume), tops and vintage Dollies to flip on Ebay. I'll see if I have any luck.

Did you go op shopping (thrifting) recently? Any fun finds? Were they needs or wants?

In thrifty solidarity,

Stephanie @ Frugal Down Under.