Blending Away...

I'm all for saving money.  I have to be.  With a family of eight, I admit and am no where near being ashamed to say that I will save a buck any way I can.  If there is a way...I will find it.  With that said, I follow several blogs from couponing to homemade gifts.  I also think it's funny how our society, trying to make things "easier" has almost made things more complicated.  A recent magazine I received in the mail had this thing-a-ma-bob that you could order, for only $14.99 to use to stuff the yucky food down the drain to your garbage disposal.  Nifty, ya...but really?  To me all that says is that I have one more "thing" to find a place for when it's not in use.  This brings me to what is known as The Magic Bullet.  it's a nifty contraption, but again.....really?  Sure, it would be nice to make single serve smoothies for myself (who am I kidding, the sound of it would be a call to my kids and I would instantly hear, "Can I have one?!") but there is a solution, and it was right up in my cabinet.   A common Mason jar MAGICALLY fits onto the bottom mixing part of my blender!  Now, I won't be making myself a personal smoothy....but I can customize everyone's with what ever ingredients they want (even though I may not choose bananas and lemon juice, but who's judging, right?).  Oh, ya...it's great for making baby food too, no deep blender pitcher to try to scoop stuff out from.

Wearing Thin...

During grandma's visit over the holidays, she had purchased a couple new pairs of jeans for the boys.  Last night as we were picking out what to wear to school today, I caught Sutton admiring the 'scratch' marks or 'wear' marks on some of the new pairs of jeans.  "These are kinda neat", he said.  

With four boys it has become custom that Sutton, our oldest, usually gets the newer clothes and the younger boys, of course, are blessed with his hand-me-downs.  It's been a while back that I figured out why thrift shops don't usually have many boys jeans, but we have only recently run into this little 'snag'...holes in the knees.

Girls jeans can be quite simple to patch.  You can put pretty little flowers on them and they can become "stylish" or even cuter that what they were before.  This is not necessarily the case with boys.  

As I looked last week at the pile of jeans on my dresser that were otherwise in pretty good shape, and most importantly, still fit them, the light bulb over my head slowly but surely began to flicker.  

What if I put the patches on the inside?  So, with about 10 iron-on denim patches and about eight pairs of jeans I whipped out that thing that maybe gets used once every couple of months (twice if I'm feeling ambitious)...the iron.  I cut the patches to fit the holes (making sure to cut rounded edges on the corners), turned the jeans inside-out and made sure that those obnoxious white strings that now replace where denim had once been were straightened out.  

The pairs that were so worn and no longer had the strings were put into another pile for shorts for next summer.  The great thing about patching the jeans this way is that not only are the patches "invisible" but Sutton can still wear his favorite jeans and they are now also re-enforced with the patch.  It also works great with jeans that are starting to wear thin but haven't quite ripped yet because it serves as a reinforcement for them then as well.  The patches also tend to stay on longer as well, there's not as much to catch on or rub up against.  

I guess this could be seen as a way of being thrifty and trendy at the same time.  It has long been a joke at our house how, when I was a kid, my mom once refused to pay fora pair 'ripped' jeans when there were plenty my closet.  No, it's not the same, but it works...