Instead of posting links to Making Do Ideas on this blog now (I'll just post my own projects here though they are few and far between now), I'm now posting them on my Pinterest Board named Making Do Stuff.
You do not have to have a Pinterest account to see it.
Showing posts with label Entertainment Projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Entertainment Projects. Show all posts
Friday, July 23, 2010
Swapping Books
If you are interested in swapping books over the internet or finding cheap books, check out this link.
Labels:
Entertainment Projects
Friday, September 18, 2009
Convert your Cassettes to CDs or onto your Computer for Cheap
Ok, anybody else out there like me who has boxes of cassettes (or records for that matter) who haven't listened to them in forever because they are so less convenient or maybe you no longer even have a tape deck? And you've gotten used to the convenience of skipping tracks etc.?
But you can't get rid of your good music from your childhood!
Have no fear, for about $8 and the cost of blank CDs, you can convert them.
1) You need a cassette player that has red and white audio out jacks. I looked at the few left in my house and none had them. So, I went to my thrift store, in the jumble of out of date electronic junk, I found a Sony stereo cassette deck, fancy stuff for back then, hi-speed dubbing, etc. But most importantly, red and white audio jacks. I got it for $5.
2) You need a "Y" Connector from Radio Shack. On one end is red and white audio jacks, at the other end is a 1/8" stereo plug (the kind that fits into your microphone jack). I got it for $7.49+tax
3)Dowload free software - Audacity
Now it's time to collect up all those cassettes and get all excited.
Here is someone's directions that proved useful for using the audacity software because after you open it, your eyes might glaze over like mine did. "How am I supposed to use this mumbo jumbo?"
1) Plug in your y connector from the player's audio out jacks into your line-in or microphone port.
2)Open Audacity and click Edit>Preferences> and then turn Device to Line-in or Microphone depending where you put the jack and change Mono to Stereo below that button if necessary. If you want to listen to the music as it goes through click the Playthrough button at the bottom of that same window.
3) Push the red dot record button on Audacity and push play on your cassette player and tada! It starts recording.
4)When the cassette clicks off, push stop on Audacity. Then you can export the entire side of the cassette to a file or if you want to separate songs, drag your mouse cursor over the part that constitutes a song to highlight it and then go to File>Export Selection as WAV and now you have a .wav file of your song which you can listen to on the computer or burn to a CD. Or if you are listening to it you could stop it each time.
Caution: These will not play in a regular CD player, but will play in the computer CD player. I read that it's possible to get them to play if you burn them on a CDR but since I only had CDRW I can't tell you if that's true.
5)If you want to convert them to an mp3 for your mp3 player (I don't have one, so can't vouch for this) then you could convert the wav to mp3. I use the free Switch to convert files.
A bit time consuming, yes, but you get to listen to your songs all over again and you don't have to pay for the album a second time. Now technically to be legal, you shouldn't sell your cassette in a garage sale or anything, only one person should own what was paid for once, so either store the cassettes as your back up copy or throw them away.
I got decent quality sound.
But you can't get rid of your good music from your childhood!
Have no fear, for about $8 and the cost of blank CDs, you can convert them.
1) You need a cassette player that has red and white audio out jacks. I looked at the few left in my house and none had them. So, I went to my thrift store, in the jumble of out of date electronic junk, I found a Sony stereo cassette deck, fancy stuff for back then, hi-speed dubbing, etc. But most importantly, red and white audio jacks. I got it for $5.
2) You need a "Y" Connector from Radio Shack. On one end is red and white audio jacks, at the other end is a 1/8" stereo plug (the kind that fits into your microphone jack). I got it for $7.49+tax
3)Dowload free software - Audacity
Now it's time to collect up all those cassettes and get all excited.
Here is someone's directions that proved useful for using the audacity software because after you open it, your eyes might glaze over like mine did. "How am I supposed to use this mumbo jumbo?"
1) Plug in your y connector from the player's audio out jacks into your line-in or microphone port.
2)Open Audacity and click Edit>Preferences> and then turn Device to Line-in or Microphone depending where you put the jack and change Mono to Stereo below that button if necessary. If you want to listen to the music as it goes through click the Playthrough button at the bottom of that same window.
3) Push the red dot record button on Audacity and push play on your cassette player and tada! It starts recording.
4)When the cassette clicks off, push stop on Audacity. Then you can export the entire side of the cassette to a file or if you want to separate songs, drag your mouse cursor over the part that constitutes a song to highlight it and then go to File>Export Selection as WAV and now you have a .wav file of your song which you can listen to on the computer or burn to a CD. Or if you are listening to it you could stop it each time.
Caution: These will not play in a regular CD player, but will play in the computer CD player. I read that it's possible to get them to play if you burn them on a CDR but since I only had CDRW I can't tell you if that's true.
5)If you want to convert them to an mp3 for your mp3 player (I don't have one, so can't vouch for this) then you could convert the wav to mp3. I use the free Switch to convert files.
A bit time consuming, yes, but you get to listen to your songs all over again and you don't have to pay for the album a second time. Now technically to be legal, you shouldn't sell your cassette in a garage sale or anything, only one person should own what was paid for once, so either store the cassettes as your back up copy or throw them away.
I got decent quality sound.
Labels:
Entertainment Projects,
Manly Projects
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Free Personalized Pandora Radio
I love Symphonies in Minor keys. So I am searching around on the internet for a CD that is just filled with minor key symphonies. (Like Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave which was what I was looking for). Didn't find anything in a quick search, but I stumbled across something better!
Pandora Radio
This is a free personalized radio station based on what you want to hear.
I signed up for their free radio player (you can have up to 100 personalized "stations") and put in Bach Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor for my first station. (Everone has heard this piece, if you don't recall this piece have a listen here).
I love this piece, so I thought a radio station that plays pieces like this would be neat, so after I put it in, the radio player says,
"We will play works that are musically similar to "Tocatta in D Minor" Featuring Tonal Harmony, minor key tonality, and a fast and bright tempo, a well known composer and a baroque style."
I love 80s music. So I decided to see what a station centered around one of the songs that no matter how many times I hear it, it makes me feel nostalgic and I never get tired of it: "Total Eclipse of the Heart" to see if the rest of the songs the player pulls up are ones I like.
The first 10 were these:
"Every Breath You Take" by The Police
"I love Rock n Roll" by Joan Jett
"It Must Have Been Love" by Roxette
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Jessica Sierra (American Idol Season 4)
"True Colors" Cyndi Lauper (not fond of this one)
"Holiday" Madonna
"Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" The Police
"Eternal Flame" The Bangles
"Time after Time" Cyndi Lauper
"Any Way You Want It" by Journey
Besides being a bit disappointed that it wasn't Bonnie Tyler singing Total Eclipse and not liking one of the Cyndi Lauper songs, I have to say the choices were all ones I could sing all the way through because they are some of my favorite 80s song choices.
If you don't like a song it pulls up, you can tell it to never play it again and it will supposedly adjust to fit your tastes.
You only get 40 hours of free listening a month and if you want more it's 99 cents. You can only skip 6 songs an hour (If you thumb down a song after it plays it doesn't count as a skip)
Every now and then there is a 10 secondish ad you do have to listen to, but I'm still impressed!
Woohoo, just made a Bing Crosby Station, I'm in heaven.
Pandora Radio
This is a free personalized radio station based on what you want to hear.
I signed up for their free radio player (you can have up to 100 personalized "stations") and put in Bach Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor for my first station. (Everone has heard this piece, if you don't recall this piece have a listen here).
I love this piece, so I thought a radio station that plays pieces like this would be neat, so after I put it in, the radio player says,
"We will play works that are musically similar to "Tocatta in D Minor" Featuring Tonal Harmony, minor key tonality, and a fast and bright tempo, a well known composer and a baroque style."
I love 80s music. So I decided to see what a station centered around one of the songs that no matter how many times I hear it, it makes me feel nostalgic and I never get tired of it: "Total Eclipse of the Heart" to see if the rest of the songs the player pulls up are ones I like.
The first 10 were these:
"Every Breath You Take" by The Police
"I love Rock n Roll" by Joan Jett
"It Must Have Been Love" by Roxette
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Jessica Sierra (American Idol Season 4)
"True Colors" Cyndi Lauper (not fond of this one)
"Holiday" Madonna
"Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" The Police
"Eternal Flame" The Bangles
"Time after Time" Cyndi Lauper
"Any Way You Want It" by Journey
Besides being a bit disappointed that it wasn't Bonnie Tyler singing Total Eclipse and not liking one of the Cyndi Lauper songs, I have to say the choices were all ones I could sing all the way through because they are some of my favorite 80s song choices.
If you don't like a song it pulls up, you can tell it to never play it again and it will supposedly adjust to fit your tastes.
You only get 40 hours of free listening a month and if you want more it's 99 cents. You can only skip 6 songs an hour (If you thumb down a song after it plays it doesn't count as a skip)
Every now and then there is a 10 secondish ad you do have to listen to, but I'm still impressed!
Woohoo, just made a Bing Crosby Station, I'm in heaven.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Frugal Master Quiz
Hope you enjoy this silly quiz I wrote. Have a good weekend, my fellow wannabe frugal masters!
Are You a Frugal Master Quiz – Take this unscientific questionnaire to discover where you are in the journey to becoming a Frugal Master. Choose the answer that best describes you.
1. Take a look at the coats in the closet, what do you see?
A) Several stylish coats to go with different outfits.
B) A warm one from the thrift store and a really warm one you got on discount 10 years ago.
C) Why would you look in the closet? You wear your coat 24/7 in your 60 degree house.
2. Why would you buy a rabbit?
A)As a coat
B)As an Easter present for a kid's pet that you will end up wishing you had never bought because the kid won't go out in the cold to take care of it.
C)You'd get two -- An endless food supply.
3. What's for dinner at your house?
A)Chinese Takeout
B)Meatloaf, Instant Mashed Potatoes and Rice Pilaf from a prepackaged bag
C)Soup, of which the ingredients have come from varied paths: stale bread, leftover veggies from yesterday's stir fry, the meat juices from the day before's pot roast and the leftover hamburger patty the 2 year old refused to eat.
4. What do you do with junk mail?
A)Throw it away.
B)Collect it for recycling and you have gotten on the no junk mail list
C)The envelopes are used for shopping lists and notes, the newspapers for mulch in the garden, the magazines for children activities and the rest in a pile to burn, recycle or for whatever else you can come up with before it goes either place.
5. What does the UPS man have to walk around to get to your door?
A) An ornate ironwork gate and a jacuzzi tub
B) The kids second hand bicycles and a potted plant
C) A raised garden of tomatoes growing in a tire, a windchime made of old silverware you couldn't bear to throw away and the goat who got loose from his pen.
6. How do your family members spend their time when visiting your house?
A) Relaxing with a glass of wine, watching pay per view movies and playing the latest video games
B) Barbecuing on the grill, chatting around the fire place and playing with the children
C) Helping you finish your house remodel, moving drying racks of clothes around to get to the couch and insisting on buying you the things that you don't have but obviously need like Windex and paper towels.
7. What do your co-workers think of you?
A)All of them wish they were your friend to get invited to the summer bash you throw every year around the pool with a live band and pig on a spit.
B)They think you are pretty average and like/do not like you based on your personality
C)They think that you are pretty strange and keep their distance, but once they fall on hard times, they run to you for suggestions.
8. How much money do you have horded away?
A) None really when you take into account the outstanding balance on your loans and credit card balances.
B) A bit, and you contribute to your 401k.
C) Everyone thinks you are dirt poor, but you know that you are debt free and have more socked away in high yielding interest accounts than 80% of those around you who make more money than you do, and you have hobbies that make a little money on the side.
9. If some major catastrophe like the Great Depression happened again, how do you think you would fair?
A)You've never thought of it, you suppose you would lose most of your possessions and move in with your parents.
B) You worry a little about it and think you would have to start spending less and maybe bring in a boarder to share the house payment.
C)You think of that all the time. You keep adding to your knowledge base of things to do to become self-sufficient, like gardening and butchering your own animals, and sewing and mending of clothing. You have already cut spending to a minimum before hardships even loom on the horizon, and you love to pick old folks brains for how they lived on the farm.
10. What is your gross out factor?
A)Anything mildly gross that has to be cleaned up you try to pawn off on someone else or do it with your eyes closed holding your breath.
B)Toilet backups, baby diaper explosions, and body fluids
C) You rarely get grossed out anymore, you are perfectly ok with using cloth diapers and reusable feminine hygiene products, snaking your own toilet backups, shoveling animal manure to use in your garden, butchering chickens, and turning your own compost.
11. You have a rare weekend without the children, what do you do?
A) Hop on a plane and go sightseeing or on a cruise
B) You eat out and go to a concert and maybe go shopping at a store complex you have had your eye on.
C) You use it to get finished those projects at home little hands have interfered with, buy some fancy piece of meat at the supermarket to grill that you never would have paid for on a normal grocery trip and watch a few movies you got second hand or from the library.
12. What is your idea of a garden?
A) The Olive Garden or the Botanical Gardens
B)A nice relaxing hobby where you can grow some pretty flowers and have some fresh great tasting cheap produce for the summer months
C)Your main attack against grocery bills, you know how much you need to can in order to get through the winter and the excess crops you plan to sell at the farmer's market
13. What is your opinion of thrift stores?
A) You donate to them clothes that you have tired of to help clothe the homeless
B) You stop there occasionally to supplement your fast growing child's wardrobe and sometimes find a neat trinket
C)You do all your major clothes shopping there, and not only that, but you buy clothing there for their fabric to refashion into quilts, diapers and shopping bags.
14. A guest enters your bathroom, what do they find?
A)A tropical theme: the curtains match the rug, shower curtain, towels and soap dispenser. A timer on the wall spritzes the air with perfumed freshener periodically
B)Clean, but bare bones bathroom with a bulk amount of 1 ply toilet paper stored under the sink and recycled magazines for reading
C)An instruction sheet on when or when not to flush and how to use the cloth toilet paper, two wastebaskets for burnables and non-burnables and homemade soaps and shampoos and a space heater to only be turned on when they are in the bathroom.
15. Where is your clean laundry?
A) At the cleaners
B) In the dryer
C) Hanging on a line in a snow storm
16. What is in your freezer?
A)Fancy Sorbet from the health food store, Diet Popsicles, and tubular ice cubes to put in your bottled water
B)Packages of frozen veggies, a bucket of ice cream and juices from concentrate
C)It has many dinners frozen in serving portions for future use, half a cow and wherever there are spaces, milk jugs full of water to keep the efficiency of the freezer top notch.
17. What does your pantry look like?
A)Pretty Threadbare
B)Has a lot of the things you eat, some items have been sitting there for 6 months+ which will be donated to the next food drive
C)Packed with homemade canning items, large amounts of canned goods found on sale so you bought 10+ cans and those things that were bought by mistake, given to you or you found out you didn't particularly like -- you are bound and determined to figure out someway to use them before they go bad
18. What pets do you have?
A)You have a $1000+ pure bred dog who lives inside or in an air conditioned dog house.
B)You have a few family pets for the kids.
C)You only have animals that contribute to the family. Chickens for eggs, cats in the barn for mice control, goldfish in your rain barrels to eat mosquitoes
19. How do you view utility companies?
A) You most often pay the bill on time and want the best service they can give you.
B) A necessary evil, but you are determined that they will not get all your hard earned money, so you try to remember to turn off the lights, turn down the temp at night, go with the low end internet speed and take a shower instead of a bath.
C) Outrageous thievery! You take in your own trash, burn wood or make solar panels out of aluminum cans to reduce heat bills, use daylight or CFL bulbs or candles for lighting, collect water in rain barrels and are seriously thinking of building or are in the process of building a windmill to start making enough energy that the company is paying you for electricity.
20. How do you get recipe ideas?
A)You watch cooking shows that have great recipes such as Mahi Mahi, Sushi and Scallops, but you rarely touch the stove.
B)You peruse cookbooks and you pick up ones at the grocery store checkout line, but you generally stay with the tried and true or the ones off the back of the box of food you are using.
C)You surf the internet for recipes according to what food you have about to go bad or leftover and you really get a kick out of cookbooks written prior to the 1900s or ones with titles like The Weed Cookbook.
Frugal Master Quiz Results
All A's – Not going to elaborate, since you aren't reading this quiz.
Some A's and Some B's – You most likely have realized you have to start cutting back on your costs and want to become more frugal, but reading the C answers on this quiz have made you a little leery of becoming that frugal.
All B's - You have been happy thinking that you are quite good at this frugal thing, but then you will stumble upon a crazy frugal blog, or meet a cloth diapering, chicken butchering, bread making, do-it-yourself house remodeler and realize there is another level. You go your own way for awhile, but one day, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, you will be staring at your check register and think back to those crazy frugal things you heard about and try to come up with one or two that you think you could pull off without the spouse and friends thinking you have gone crazy.
Some B's and Some C's – You know that you have room to improve on your frugality and are actively seeking out better ways to scrimp. You've been inspired by the some of the C answers and are planning right now how to implement some of them.
All C's – Congratulations, you are a frugal master. You are searching for the email address of this author to give her some tips since some of the C answers weren't frugal enough.
Do not reprint without permission of the author. © 2009 Melissa Jagears
Are You a Frugal Master Quiz – Take this unscientific questionnaire to discover where you are in the journey to becoming a Frugal Master. Choose the answer that best describes you.
1. Take a look at the coats in the closet, what do you see?
A) Several stylish coats to go with different outfits.
B) A warm one from the thrift store and a really warm one you got on discount 10 years ago.
C) Why would you look in the closet? You wear your coat 24/7 in your 60 degree house.
2. Why would you buy a rabbit?
A)As a coat
B)As an Easter present for a kid's pet that you will end up wishing you had never bought because the kid won't go out in the cold to take care of it.
C)You'd get two -- An endless food supply.
3. What's for dinner at your house?
A)Chinese Takeout
B)Meatloaf, Instant Mashed Potatoes and Rice Pilaf from a prepackaged bag
C)Soup, of which the ingredients have come from varied paths: stale bread, leftover veggies from yesterday's stir fry, the meat juices from the day before's pot roast and the leftover hamburger patty the 2 year old refused to eat.
4. What do you do with junk mail?
A)Throw it away.
B)Collect it for recycling and you have gotten on the no junk mail list
C)The envelopes are used for shopping lists and notes, the newspapers for mulch in the garden, the magazines for children activities and the rest in a pile to burn, recycle or for whatever else you can come up with before it goes either place.
5. What does the UPS man have to walk around to get to your door?
A) An ornate ironwork gate and a jacuzzi tub
B) The kids second hand bicycles and a potted plant
C) A raised garden of tomatoes growing in a tire, a windchime made of old silverware you couldn't bear to throw away and the goat who got loose from his pen.
6. How do your family members spend their time when visiting your house?
A) Relaxing with a glass of wine, watching pay per view movies and playing the latest video games
B) Barbecuing on the grill, chatting around the fire place and playing with the children
C) Helping you finish your house remodel, moving drying racks of clothes around to get to the couch and insisting on buying you the things that you don't have but obviously need like Windex and paper towels.
7. What do your co-workers think of you?
A)All of them wish they were your friend to get invited to the summer bash you throw every year around the pool with a live band and pig on a spit.
B)They think you are pretty average and like/do not like you based on your personality
C)They think that you are pretty strange and keep their distance, but once they fall on hard times, they run to you for suggestions.
8. How much money do you have horded away?
A) None really when you take into account the outstanding balance on your loans and credit card balances.
B) A bit, and you contribute to your 401k.
C) Everyone thinks you are dirt poor, but you know that you are debt free and have more socked away in high yielding interest accounts than 80% of those around you who make more money than you do, and you have hobbies that make a little money on the side.
9. If some major catastrophe like the Great Depression happened again, how do you think you would fair?
A)You've never thought of it, you suppose you would lose most of your possessions and move in with your parents.
B) You worry a little about it and think you would have to start spending less and maybe bring in a boarder to share the house payment.
C)You think of that all the time. You keep adding to your knowledge base of things to do to become self-sufficient, like gardening and butchering your own animals, and sewing and mending of clothing. You have already cut spending to a minimum before hardships even loom on the horizon, and you love to pick old folks brains for how they lived on the farm.
10. What is your gross out factor?
A)Anything mildly gross that has to be cleaned up you try to pawn off on someone else or do it with your eyes closed holding your breath.
B)Toilet backups, baby diaper explosions, and body fluids
C) You rarely get grossed out anymore, you are perfectly ok with using cloth diapers and reusable feminine hygiene products, snaking your own toilet backups, shoveling animal manure to use in your garden, butchering chickens, and turning your own compost.
11. You have a rare weekend without the children, what do you do?
A) Hop on a plane and go sightseeing or on a cruise
B) You eat out and go to a concert and maybe go shopping at a store complex you have had your eye on.
C) You use it to get finished those projects at home little hands have interfered with, buy some fancy piece of meat at the supermarket to grill that you never would have paid for on a normal grocery trip and watch a few movies you got second hand or from the library.
12. What is your idea of a garden?
A) The Olive Garden or the Botanical Gardens
B)A nice relaxing hobby where you can grow some pretty flowers and have some fresh great tasting cheap produce for the summer months
C)Your main attack against grocery bills, you know how much you need to can in order to get through the winter and the excess crops you plan to sell at the farmer's market
13. What is your opinion of thrift stores?
A) You donate to them clothes that you have tired of to help clothe the homeless
B) You stop there occasionally to supplement your fast growing child's wardrobe and sometimes find a neat trinket
C)You do all your major clothes shopping there, and not only that, but you buy clothing there for their fabric to refashion into quilts, diapers and shopping bags.
14. A guest enters your bathroom, what do they find?
A)A tropical theme: the curtains match the rug, shower curtain, towels and soap dispenser. A timer on the wall spritzes the air with perfumed freshener periodically
B)Clean, but bare bones bathroom with a bulk amount of 1 ply toilet paper stored under the sink and recycled magazines for reading
C)An instruction sheet on when or when not to flush and how to use the cloth toilet paper, two wastebaskets for burnables and non-burnables and homemade soaps and shampoos and a space heater to only be turned on when they are in the bathroom.
15. Where is your clean laundry?
A) At the cleaners
B) In the dryer
C) Hanging on a line in a snow storm
16. What is in your freezer?
A)Fancy Sorbet from the health food store, Diet Popsicles, and tubular ice cubes to put in your bottled water
B)Packages of frozen veggies, a bucket of ice cream and juices from concentrate
C)It has many dinners frozen in serving portions for future use, half a cow and wherever there are spaces, milk jugs full of water to keep the efficiency of the freezer top notch.
17. What does your pantry look like?
A)Pretty Threadbare
B)Has a lot of the things you eat, some items have been sitting there for 6 months+ which will be donated to the next food drive
C)Packed with homemade canning items, large amounts of canned goods found on sale so you bought 10+ cans and those things that were bought by mistake, given to you or you found out you didn't particularly like -- you are bound and determined to figure out someway to use them before they go bad
18. What pets do you have?
A)You have a $1000+ pure bred dog who lives inside or in an air conditioned dog house.
B)You have a few family pets for the kids.
C)You only have animals that contribute to the family. Chickens for eggs, cats in the barn for mice control, goldfish in your rain barrels to eat mosquitoes
19. How do you view utility companies?
A) You most often pay the bill on time and want the best service they can give you.
B) A necessary evil, but you are determined that they will not get all your hard earned money, so you try to remember to turn off the lights, turn down the temp at night, go with the low end internet speed and take a shower instead of a bath.
C) Outrageous thievery! You take in your own trash, burn wood or make solar panels out of aluminum cans to reduce heat bills, use daylight or CFL bulbs or candles for lighting, collect water in rain barrels and are seriously thinking of building or are in the process of building a windmill to start making enough energy that the company is paying you for electricity.
20. How do you get recipe ideas?
A)You watch cooking shows that have great recipes such as Mahi Mahi, Sushi and Scallops, but you rarely touch the stove.
B)You peruse cookbooks and you pick up ones at the grocery store checkout line, but you generally stay with the tried and true or the ones off the back of the box of food you are using.
C)You surf the internet for recipes according to what food you have about to go bad or leftover and you really get a kick out of cookbooks written prior to the 1900s or ones with titles like The Weed Cookbook.
Frugal Master Quiz Results
All A's – Not going to elaborate, since you aren't reading this quiz.
Some A's and Some B's – You most likely have realized you have to start cutting back on your costs and want to become more frugal, but reading the C answers on this quiz have made you a little leery of becoming that frugal.
All B's - You have been happy thinking that you are quite good at this frugal thing, but then you will stumble upon a crazy frugal blog, or meet a cloth diapering, chicken butchering, bread making, do-it-yourself house remodeler and realize there is another level. You go your own way for awhile, but one day, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, you will be staring at your check register and think back to those crazy frugal things you heard about and try to come up with one or two that you think you could pull off without the spouse and friends thinking you have gone crazy.
Some B's and Some C's – You know that you have room to improve on your frugality and are actively seeking out better ways to scrimp. You've been inspired by the some of the C answers and are planning right now how to implement some of them.
All C's – Congratulations, you are a frugal master. You are searching for the email address of this author to give her some tips since some of the C answers weren't frugal enough.
Do not reprint without permission of the author. © 2009 Melissa Jagears
Labels:
Entertainment Projects
Monday, October 27, 2008
Playing Card Bookmarks
Not very inspired, but if you have a deck of cards that are missing a few cards, reserve them for bookmarks. If you read as many books at once and have a toddler that likes to take out bookmarks and eat them like I do, having several hundred bookmarks is a must!
Labels:
Entertainment Projects
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Cheap Visual Entertainment
I have never had cable and am not tempted to ever pay for television. Well, I live out in the middle of nowhere and the pair of broken rabbit ears that I have had for years no longer picks up anything. Coupled with the fact of the digital changeover that would require me to buy a digital box and still a new pair of rabbit ears has kept us TV free for one year now and frankly, I don't miss it. I have plenty of other time suckers that have replaced that one!
(For those of you that would want to go that route, get a government coupon before the end of the year for a digital converter.)
For times when we do want to watch something on the dusty tube, we either watch movies bought at less than rental prices, borrowed or rented. We never rent new releases, we just wait until they hop off of that rack. Also anymore, libraries carry more than just educational videos. Check out your library's DVD section and you can probably find some of those on your list of want to sees and rent it for free. Also, church libraries usually stock lots of kid videos.
Or we use the internet.
The big channels, NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, CNN all have their currently running TV shows for streaming along with older series sometimes. You do have to have a fast internet connection.
I have been using Youtube a lot with the toddler. You can find all kinds of good short things. (I like short because I am uncomfortable with a toddler sitting watching TV for hours on end.) I have been able to introduce her to all kinds of different music styles for Music Videos abound on Youtube. She has watched many little Sesame Street snippets. And has seen all different types of dancing styles - she can imitate tapping, ballet, swing and others! And she can identify musical instruments from some of the videos I download for her.
Because my kiddo does ask to watch them many times, I download them to my real player on my desktop.
Here is a sampling of the varied youtube videos that my toddler watches over and over and has learned from:
Singing in Rain - Moses Supposes
West Coast Swing Champions
Hayley Westerna Pie Jesu
Corrs - Toss the Feathers
Sign Language Phonics Song
Jazz Ballet Scene
Where the Hell is Matt
Always Fair Weather - Tap Dancing Roller Skates
Paula Abdul Dancing with a Cartoon Opposites Attract
IMusici Vivaldi Summer Movement
Sign Language Song
Sesame Street Baker's Numbers
Robin Williams and Elmo
Cupcake Waltz
(For those of you that would want to go that route, get a government coupon before the end of the year for a digital converter.)
For times when we do want to watch something on the dusty tube, we either watch movies bought at less than rental prices, borrowed or rented. We never rent new releases, we just wait until they hop off of that rack. Also anymore, libraries carry more than just educational videos. Check out your library's DVD section and you can probably find some of those on your list of want to sees and rent it for free. Also, church libraries usually stock lots of kid videos.
Or we use the internet.
The big channels, NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, CNN all have their currently running TV shows for streaming along with older series sometimes. You do have to have a fast internet connection.
I have been using Youtube a lot with the toddler. You can find all kinds of good short things. (I like short because I am uncomfortable with a toddler sitting watching TV for hours on end.) I have been able to introduce her to all kinds of different music styles for Music Videos abound on Youtube. She has watched many little Sesame Street snippets. And has seen all different types of dancing styles - she can imitate tapping, ballet, swing and others! And she can identify musical instruments from some of the videos I download for her.
Because my kiddo does ask to watch them many times, I download them to my real player on my desktop.
Here is a sampling of the varied youtube videos that my toddler watches over and over and has learned from:
Singing in Rain - Moses Supposes
West Coast Swing Champions
Hayley Westerna Pie Jesu
Corrs - Toss the Feathers
Sign Language Phonics Song
Jazz Ballet Scene
Where the Hell is Matt
Always Fair Weather - Tap Dancing Roller Skates
Paula Abdul Dancing with a Cartoon Opposites Attract
IMusici Vivaldi Summer Movement
Sign Language Song
Sesame Street Baker's Numbers
Robin Williams and Elmo
Cupcake Waltz
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