Gone, One Car

At last it's gone...

Our car was sitting in the driveway gathering dust and taking our valuable shady car spot for a year and a half. Each time I arrived home it was the 1st thing I saw and it dragged me down increasing my feeling blue. The motor was fine. The only damage was the smashed back. A great project for a mechanic student, teen or even mechanic wanting to tinker on the weekend.

1. I tried advertising it at an inexpensive price on 2 popular sites in my city (no interest).
2. I tried calling the car part yards (only after specific models).
3. I tried to offer it to mechanic classes in a high school and uni (liability issues).
4. A friend offered it to the Fire Dept for practice - (I would have to get it to them costing me $$$).
5. I tried to give it away on Freecycle, 2 people were interested (but no takers).

Last week I saw a small notice in a FREE newspaper - someone looking for cars of certain models and makes. So I called with car paperwork in hand rattling off brand, make, year and qualities. Two days latter our car was picked up. No drama, no hassle and gone in 10 minutes. Just like that. And.. the man was thrilled with our car which makes me very happy indeed.

We didn't make extra cash but we didn't have to hand any of our money to have it removed by a towing company which was to be my next move.

As I arrive home from work each afternoon - I smile because I see a shady empty space for the car we use each day. So my advice to you is wait it out if you can. Try your different avenues and take a few minutes to look at those wanted ads in you free newspapers. Someone may just be after the very something you have been trying to get rid of.

I see a week of success coming up. I am positive and making changes in my life :-)  I have been busy and taking a little time away from here to recharge and prioritise. But I'm back from my little Blog Holiday and hope to catch up with all of you this week on your blogs and through comments.

Have a Happy Day :-)

Stephanie at Frugal Down Under

Dont Buy Cards! Make Them!

I used to buy cards. Never the $5.95 cards, but pretty cards in boxes or from $1 racks. However you can make cards for a fraction of this. I started my adventures in card making last year with a few collaged images from vintage books. My confidence has grown to be a bit more creative as I arm myself with inspiring library books.

Dolly had a friend turning 5 in her class. So she made a pretty cupcake card to wish him a Happy Birthday over the weekend.

As for myself, one of my friends had a birthday too... a few weeks ago... and now I wanted to wish her a belated birthday with a gift voucher of my services for 2 nights of babysitting. Recognise the gold fabric? It's from this... There is so much of it!

Our cards only cost about 30 cents each to make. It doesn't take much time. You can use scraps, it's personal and it's fun. I also think it's great for Dolly's self esteem to give beautiful objects she has created.

How do you source your cards?

Pizza and Taxis

The Rambling Expat is on holidays for 4 weeks. We celebrated with bought Pizza (I was too tired to do any kitchen work in this heat). The cheapest pizzas were $10.95 each and we wanted 2. I found this was much too expensive so I searched online and found a voucher for $6.95. Then I decided to look another 3 minutes to see if I could find a better deal to really squeeze my dollar. And yep, another voucher code was found within a few seconds at $5.95 each.

If you have internet access I encourage you to look at getting better deals. It's just there at your finger tips and doesn't take much effort. Instead of paying $21.90 we paid $11.90. Thats a $10 savings! Now lots of people can't be bothered but $10 in my pocket is gold!

We took our pizzas and bottle of cold tap water from home and watched the sunset over the sea next to a playground. Something for all of us and a very nice way to end the day...

...except The Rambling Expat had to be at the airport at 11:00pm for his 1:00am flight to Sydney. We were booking a taxi as waking our 4 year old seemed too mean. However after spending $$ on pizza I really didn't want us forking out another $20 in taxi to the airport and another $20 on the return. Mentally torn I chose to get Dolly up. I lifted Dolly out of bed, popped her into her car seat, drove the 20 minute round trip and popped her back into bed. She slept through the whole process! It only took 20 minutes and we saved ourselves $20. I asked Dolly about the airport trip, she doesn't remember a thing. Tonight I think we will be picking him up to save ourselves another $20.

Had this been 2 years ago.. Pizza at full price and taxis wouldn't have been a problem in our eyes as we had the cash. But we now prefer to save that hard earned cash and put it towards the future. That $50 we didn't spend will be able to work harder for us in online saving accounts and extra payments into mortgage.

I'm aiming for those good things in life! What about you?

Long Lost Finds.

Once Dolly is in bed and asleep The Rambling Expat and I have been cleaning and sorting every night for 40 minutes. It's making a huge difference in my life. I feel much happier and motivated as the messy clutter slowly finds a place and the dust is swept away. I am also finding long lost documents and feeling much more in control. I also feel that the housework is now becoming more evenly distributed between our gendered divide.

We started this when our Parisian visitors were going to have a sleep over at our place. Once they left for France we pushed ourselves to continue with the nightly routine and it's paying off and saves some more of our hard earned cash. For example I found a pair of sneakers I had forgotten I own. So I don't have to do the big sell on Ebay to pay for them.

Long Lost Sneakers.

Six years ago I had a pair of sneakers for a job serving ice-creams at a market. I wore them only 8 hours a week for roughly 5 months while serving customers. As I didn't wear them much, there was barely any wear or tear. They got caught up in some muddy water when our home was flooded 2 years ago and placed in a  box with other grubby shoes to be forgotten about. With this cleaning and sorting action I stumbled upon them and washed them in the washing machine to see how they would turn out. They look fabulous and now I no longer have to fork out money for new sneakers to go on walks with my neighbour Mr T.

Have you ever found any long lost treasures?

Did you click on the Book link above and read the blurb on Found? - It looks really interesting, unfortunately it's not in my public library so I will hold off buying it until it comes my way in an op shop.

Perks of Volunteering

Hi Everyone hope you are well and enjoying life. My grouch has gotten off my back and I'm happy go lucky again :-)

I have done a great deal of volunteer work in the past 15 years before Dolly came into my world. Here are some of the things I have done:

• London for 8 weeks, to help build a community house with hammer and nails. 
• 4 weeks (against my families wishes) in a refugee camp for traumatised children in ex-Yugoslavia towards the end of the war.
• In Melbourne with Asylum Seekers and Refugees for a couple of years in a food bank and legal team assistant and researcher.
• In Australia for an AIDS council, early nineties handing out condoms at concerts/nightclubs and counselling on the phones.
• Sorting clothes for the Red Cross during flooding.
• Helping with activities during a Mental Health Week Event.
• Working in a needle exchange for roughly a year every second Saturday handing out syringes to substance users and condoms to sex workers.
• A few months filling in for a volunteer at a Red Cross book trolley in a hospital handing out books and magazines for people to read and lending an ear.
• "Friend" to a young woman with various disabilities who no one wanted to work with due to a past extremely violent act and constant stream of "offensive" swear words.
• Various sausage sizzles for different fundraising events.
• Helped the UN feed refugees fleeing East Timor in Darwin's Tent City (I was able to also track down a friends missing family by showing everyone 2 photos I had of her family. Found out they were taking refuge on another Indonesian island and got a phone number for her! Great personal moment making the call to her with the news!)
• Helped a toy library stock-take all their toys for a couple of days. Mind numbing.

As you can see from the sample of jobs I'm a Jack of All Trades but mainly with a human rights theme, left leaning and pretty open to peoples choice of lifestyle.

With my hectic eco-frugal family life I feel I don't have time to regularly volunteer anymore. And if I do volunteer it must not put me out of pocket or drain me emotionally, as I need all I have for my family, which has definitely not been the case in the past.

Last week I did a 3 hour volunteer stint at the Darwin Show for the department I work for. No heartbreaks there. In exchange I received a Polo Shirt ($40) which I can wear as a uniform to work and get a tax break of .50 cents every time I wash it. I also received a ticket to the show which saved my family one $17 entry fee.
Total yearly value: $40 shirt + $17 ticket + $69 washing = $126, not too shabby :-)

Tonight my partner The Rambling Expat is volunteering. He is sleeping in a hammock on the Endeavour Replica from the Australian National Maritime Museum, which is visiting Darwin for 10 days. In his 12.5 hours on board he also has to complete a 2 hour stint of guarding the ships decks during the night. In exchange he gets an amazing experience that others pay $250 to $500 a night to have AND he receives a free family pass for 2 adults and 4 children $38! Now that is cool... And it was so easy. All he had to do was apply, be enthusiastic, have a clear police check and attend a 3 hour training with free lunch.
Total value: $125 twelve hours experience on the ship + $38 family pass + $15 lunch = $178, very nice deal indeed.

Arrived in Port a few hours earlier, Sails Down.

The Rambling Expat Off to Experience Boat Living 200 yrs ago.

So our volunteer work may be more "selfish" now. But we are still helping out in some way and enjoying the perks in exchange. Once Dolly is older, I will go back to doing volunteer work on social issues that are important to me. At the moment I will do mostly one off volunteer jobs that give me a perk as a dollar saved has more value then a dollar earned.

Here's another Blogger who volunteers for enjoyment and perks.

Do you do any volunteer work for the good of humanity/community or for any perks to keep you life financially balanced? Love to hear what you have to say.

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.