Frugal Goals for 2009

Every week Lynnae over at BeingFrugal.net posts a Tightwad Tuesday piece.  Today and going forward she has decided to expand that to include other bloggers by adding Mister Linky to the bottom of her Tuesday posts.   This week she’s asking everyone to share their frugal goals for 2009.

Frugal has become the new buzzword of the current economic cycle.  During the first years of our marriage, we made frugal choices out of financial necessity.  Dave and I  wanted me to stay home with our children so we had to find a way to make living on one income work for us.   Now we’ve been living this frugal lifestyle for so long it’s almost become second nature.

But the thing is, we no longer need to live quite so frugally.  We are at a place in our lives financially where we have much more freedom to spend where we want to spend, when we want to spend it.

Our frugal choices of the past have allowed us to become and then continue to live debt free, to have a fully funded emergency fund and to contribute to retirement savings plans.  They’ve also allowed us to put our two daughters through their bachelor degrees (again debt free) and to know that when our son is ready to go, the money will be there for him too.

I wasn’t sure I’d have any real goals to share other than to say we’d continue to live pretty much as we’ve always lived.   But then I realized that those goals are worthy of sharing too.

So here are our goals for 2009:

1.  Continue to live well below our means.

2.  Continue to save and  invest for the future.

3.  Continue to share here on this blog the things I’ve learned over the years that helped us to get to this point in our lives, in order to help others on their journey.

May everyone have a wonderful New Year’s celebration tomorrow evening and let’s all look forward to making 2009 a Joyous and Prosperous year.

Merry Christmas

From Our House to Yours

Wishing You and Yours a Very Merry Christmas

And a Joyous and Prosperous New Year

Puppets Are Great Imaginative Play Toys

When our youngest was little he loved to put on puppet shows.   The couch was his puppet theatre of choice.  He’d hide behind it and then up, over the back would pop his two bear puppets and the show would begin.

This year, my husband’s grandson is about the age our youngest was when he started putting on puppet shows.  Since we’re having a mostly homemade Christmas this year, I decided to make simple puppets and a doorway puppet theatre for him.

The puppets cost next to nothing to make.  Each one used two felt squares (32 cents each at WalMart) plus some felt scraps and bit of black embroidery floss to make the faces.   The inspiration for them came from this site.  

But the patterns printed out way too small for hand puppets so I started from scratch and created a basic outline and then adjusted it for each individual puppet.   I also made changes to the cat’s face and slight changes to the bear and frog.  They turned out cuter than I dared to hope.

For the doorway theatre, I repurposed one panel from a set of curtains I had stored away from when our son’s room had a space theme.  The dark blue fabric dotted with gold stars worked perfectly.   ¾ of a yard of gold fabric (on sale 40% off) for the stage curtains, three dowels to give the theatre it’s support and a set of 3M Command wall hooks to hang it from were the only out of pocket costs. 

A few dollars, a bit of time and my husband’s grandson will open a gift on Christmas morning that will provide him and his little sister with hours of fun, imaginative play for years to come.