Frugal Accomplishments

Spring has officially arrived!  We've had beautiful weather, mixed with showers.  It's been really nice for outside play, yard and garden work, and hanging clothes outside.  We've had cool enough evenings to enjoy the windows being open.

• Cooked all meals at home including egg and cheese sandwiches, homemade granola (added pumpkin seeds and dried coconut), lentil sloppy joes, egg salad sandwiches, homemade pizza, and crock pot lasagna soup with salad.
• Enjoyed a date night, thanks to Mom for keeping little man, with baby.  We used a gift card for a local restaurant, and then did dessert at home of brownies and ice cream.  
• Salvaged several containers of berries, pears, apples, lemons, mushrooms, several loaves of bread, bagels, yogurt, and half and half from the food pantry.
• Gleaned several snacks, milk cartons, and cheese sticks from the school cafeteria.
• Kept up with all regular cold water laundry activities and hanging clothes to dry.
• Kept up with composting activities, adding more hay to the compost.  This seems to be helping the fruit fly situation we had.
• Planted free basil plants in the garden.  The parsley we planted has been eaten by rabbits (anyone know an easy way to keep them away?).
• Spent a little time weeding the garden.  Need to split irises and hostas, so will relocate these to another garden area where they can multiply.  Might also split hellebores, as they're doing really well in the back garden.
• Purchased new sandals for 50% off.  They are really good quality, so should last several years.
• Carpooled to work two days.  Should be able to carpool most of next week, and the following weeks.
• Enjoyed some time outside with little man on walks and playing "egg hunt" in the yard/garden.  He also helped some with weeding.
• Enjoyed the cool air and having the windows open.  Will substantially save on the electric bill this month too.
• Stayed away from the local kids consignment sale this time.  The boys can make do with what we already have for summer, so we didn't need anything.  
• Met with our financial adviser to set up automatic savings for the boys, contribute more to retirement funds, and a little more to mortgage.
• Accepted a curriculum writer position with DPI for the summer.  It will be a substantial amount of work, but the stipend will be worth it.

What did you do to live and save green this week?  I'd love to hear from you!

Frugal Accomplishments

We're trying really hard to think creatively about our budget, our needs vs. wants, and how to accomplish the most with what we have.  Our big success this week was finalizing the car sale, including bartering for the exterior painting we need done, and we transferred the title of the new-to-us car from my in-laws to us.  We also are skipping the grocery store this week, primarily because my in-laws brought things for us from Costco and Mom brought us two boxes of things gleaned from the food pantry.

Here's the breakdown for this week.  I'll be back later this week with our March menu plan.

• Cooked all meals at home.  This included crock pot lasagna soup, Asian chicken (yes, this has been a new favorite), steamed lemon pepper tilapia with roasted veggies, lentil and sweet potato stew (see comments for adaptations), breakfast egg casserole, and banana chocolate chip muffins.  The in-laws did treat us to pizza out one night, and lunch one day.
• Gleaned three bunches of bananas, strawberries, two cartons of mushrooms, a bag of oranges, three loaves of bread, six small cartons of yogurt, half gallon of milk, and a pint of whipping cream.
• Enjoyed a shared meal with Mom.
• Continued with our regular composting and recycling.
• Washed all laundry in cold water except towels, sheets, and diapers.  Line dried everything except sheets and towels.
• We did go by the grocery store for a deal on diapers and I got 4 packs for $20.  This will last us several months since we only use disposables for night time.
• Carpooled to work three days, saving on gas
• My inlaws graciously brought some things from Costco, including blueberries, frozen broccoli, cheese, and rice.
• Ordered a bulk order of black beans, steel cut oats, and grits.
• Enjoyed seeing my chives and garlic coming up in the garden (though this is unseasonably early)  Plan to use them in meals this coming week.
• Benny and I decided on direct deposit amounts to contribute to his retirement, the boys' 529 accounts, and our savings.  He is going tomorrow to set these up.
• Weeded out some clothing and toys to send to Goodwill.
• Called the library to renew books, rather than stopping by.
• Planned a double date with friends.  Mom will keep little man, saving us on babysitting.  We will go to the restaurant early to miss crowds and will use a coupon we have.  Will get water to drink to save money.  Will enjoy dessert and a movie at home.
• Tried making homemade Hershey's syrup, and it worked!  We now have two bottles of it in the fridge for use in coffee drinks, desserts, etc.
• Worked out with You Tube videos at home
• Had to laugh a little when little man reminded me to turn out a light when I left a room.  Glad he's already getting it!
• Enjoyed reading books at home to the boys and watching baby boy pull up on everything in sight!

What did you do to live and save green this past week?  I'd love to hear from you!

Frugal Accomplishments

This past week we did really well, frugally speaking.  I manage to stay away from the grocery store for two weeks, except we did buy bananas.  The weather was reasonably warm, so we were able to hang clothes outside a few times, and have some outside play time and family walks.  The warm weather also meant that we were able to conserve on energy bills, with heat not running.

• All meals were cooked at home.  These included potato soup with homemade turkey stock (in the crock pot), black beans and rice, black bean hummus with carrot sticks, waffles with sausage and fruit smoothies, loaded mac and cheese with broccoli and sausage, french toast casserole with cranberries and pomegranate seeds, and banana chocolate chip pecan muffins.  
• We enjoyed a shared meal with family of baked ziti and salad.  Mom also sent an extra serving home with us, which made a nice lunch portion.
• Composted all appropriate kitchen scraps.  Enjoyed our new stainless steel compost bucket that Mom gave us for Valentine's Day.
• Really appreciated salvaged items from the food pantry, including two milk crates full of produce.  We salvaged two cups of strawberries, a few raspberries, a pear, a nectarine, two bags of snow peas, asparagus, two packages of green beans, four packages of mushrooms, jalapenos, chopped onions, two large cartons of yogurt, and a gallon of milk.  We also salvaged a whole produce box of overripe bananas, which we froze for use in smoothies and baking.  (The boys also like to eat these frozen as a snack.)
• Continued to hang all laundry up, either inside or out, saving on drying costs.  All clothes were washed in cold water.
• Used items at home for some basic science experiments with little man (baking soda and vinegar in a bottle to fill a balloon, etc.).  He really enjoyed these, so we're going to try to do a family science night at least once a week at home.
• We also used items at home to do some fun water color paintings with salt.  They turned out really neat, so we'll frame a few.  Some will hang at home, others will be gifts.
• Took the boys to the playhouse on Saturday, which was really fun.  They both had a blast and it was nice to visit with some other parents too.  The free coffee and tea was a bonus for me!
• Enjoyed a last minute invitation to a birthday party.  The friends requested no gifts, so we just made a card by re-purposing the front of a previous birthday card.
• Finalized plans for the car sale. Will hopefully get the title transferred on Friday.  Looks like we'll be able to barter for our outdoor painting needs, which means it will benefit both of us in the long run.
• Found out the in-laws are coming this weekend, so have to get things ready for them.  They will likely pick up dinner for us one night, which will be nice, and we will fix breakfast and lunch for them while they're here.  I am thinking a breakfast casserole with sausage, mushrooms, peppers and onions that I have in the freezer.  
• Since the weather is nice, we're hoping to do our next round of bug spraying outdoors for pest control.  Doing this ourselves with a concentrate we found online has saved us hundreds.
• Also want to take advantage of the nice weather to try to get some garden chores done.  I'd like to cut back the raspberries and asparagus while they're still dormant.  I might also try to rake and chip some leaves for compost.  (This might not happen with hosting in-laws this weekend, though.)  
• I might try to order some tri-color sage plants too.  I've been wanting to try them as a foundation planting along one bed of the house.  If I order, I will find a coupon code.
• Benny has picked up some more side work with technology.  We will continue to try to pick these up.  These funds should go directly toward Benny's retirement fund.
• We have a lead on the upstairs rental!  She's coming up early next month to take a look at the space, but sounds super sweet and should be a good fit for us.  If she signs, it sounds like it will be a year lease, which will be nice.
• I continue to look for professional development opportunities with a stipend, but am also exploring options for tutoring.  Hoping to be able to earn an extra $20-$40/week tutoring.  

What did you do to live and save green this past week?  I'd love to hear from you!

February Menu Plan

This month is all about using up some of what we have.  I did take advantage of Harris Teeter's Super Doubles event, but aside from that, we're really going to try to stay away from the grocery store except for absolute necessities.  I plan to use some of what we have in our freezer and pantry, including some things like powdered milk, frozen veggies from our CSA, frozen bread, and scraps that have been saved for making stock.  We're also going to continue to take advantage of gleaning from the food pantry to stretch our budget too.

We're also going to try to save some money on our electric bill with cooking too.  We'll work to use our crock pot to do the heavy lifting and use the microwave or toaster oven for reheating.  We'll only use our upper oven, which is smaller, for baking when necessary.

Here's the plan:

Breakfasts:  egg and cheese sandwiches, overnight oatmeal in the crock pot, smoothies using frozen fruit, french toast casserole with frozen blueberries, bagels and cream cheese, toast with jam, and whole wheat waffles with fruit and hard boiled eggs, winter squash muffins, strawberry cream cheese coffee cake, blueberry muffins, cappuccino chocolate chip muffins

Lunches:  leftovers filled in with fresh fruit or yogurt, egg salad sandwiches, PBJ

Dinners:  tomato basil soup (we make it without cream so it has other uses too), meatball subs with tomato basil soup as marinara, fajitas with rice, leftover turkey, and frozen peppers and onions, corn chowder with garlic toast, potato soup with homemade turkey stock and garlic toast, waffles with fruit and sausage, black beans and rice with fixin's and corn bread, black bean chili, homemade pizza (x4), french toast with smoothies and sausage, jambalya, crock pot Asian chicken over rice, veggie stir fry over rice with egg rolls

Batch cooking for freezer:  homemade turkey stock, homemade veggie stock, black beans, muffins

Special Meal:  We will celebrate Valentine's Day later in the month, so that my mom can keep little man overnight.  We'll do a dinner out and make some peppermint brownies with icecream as our dessert at home.  We'll do an early dinner and take advantage of a coupon we have, so that we can have time for an at home movie with dessert.  The cost of this meal will come out of our regular grocery budget, if possible.

Snacks:  popcorn, chocolate mint cookies (we have some cookie dough we purchased from a fundraiser that we need to use up), fresh fruit, nuts, toast and jam

Drinks:  water, hot tea, hot cocoa, maybe iced tea made with loose tea

What are you cooking up this month?  I'd love to hear from you!

Frugal Accomplishments

This past week we did pretty well with sticking to our budget.  Benny did take off work on Saturday to spend the day with little man, which was awesome and I think they both benefited from a "boys day."  Mom and I took baby boy to a baby shower for my cousin (out of town), and Mom drove, which saved us on gas and wear and tear on our car.  It was a great weekend for us all and we had some much needed family time, even though we were all in different places.

• We cooked all meals at home.  We had several shared meals, which saved time and money with meal prep.
• We composted all appropriate kitchen scraps, brown paper, and paper towels.  We're calling this week to pick up spent grains from a local brewery for more compost material.  
• Used the crock pot twice to fix black beans and black bean chili.
• Made an expired corn bread mix that was donated to us.  It didn't rise as much, but tasted great, so we'll use the rest of the mix up soon.
• Appreciated heirloom tomatoes donated to the food pantry (they came from a farm and they were the ugly ones that wouldn't sell... they donated over 150 lbs!).  They were going to be bad by Wednesday, so I took a box and made homemade pizza sauce in the crock pot.  We'll eat the rest fresh or freeze them for later use in soups.  If I weren't juggling the boys, I would have taken more to make and can salsa.
• Used our herbs and garlic from the garden to spice up meals.
• Made smoothies with food pantry fruit.
• It was super doubles at HT this week, and I managed to stock up on several necessary items and keep the food budget in tact.  The bill was $40.
• Continued to hang all clothing and diapers to dry.  The season for using the outdoor clothesline is waning, as the fall rains begin to set in, but we're making use of our drying racks and ceiling fans to dry things indoors.
• Used family cloth and cloth wipes while at home to cut down on the use of disposables.  
• Repurposed mismatched pillow cases for changing pad covers.  They work great and are easy to change.
• Gratefully accepted some hand-me-downs for little man from a coworker.  He loves the new clothes, and it's nice to have a few things he can grow into.
• Reused gift bags and greeting card fronts for gifts for a baby shower and birthday party this weekend.  Little man made a tie dye t-shirt for his friend using a kit we had, so it was a cheap gift and he had fun making it.  It's also nice that these can be made ahead and are unisex, so they work for either gender.  
• Began getting estimates for some carpentry work we need done around the house.  We had planned to do it earlier this summer, but it just didn't happen.  We're hoping that we might get a better rate on it now that its not the busy season and people are needing jobs more.
• Spent time weeding the garden some and planning for fall preparations.  Would like to find some free straw bales for the garlic beds so I don't have to purchase any.  

What did you do to live and save green last week?  I'd love to hear from you!  I'm linking up to The Prudent Homemaker today.

Frugal Accomplishments this week, and a recipe

This week, I feel like we've done really well with living frugally.  Here's how it's played out:

Grocery shopping on Sunday was only sale, coupon, and need items.  (Well, ok, I did splurge on a $1.99 box of clearance junk cereal for me.  I'd been craving some for about two months.)  We stocked up on cabbage, which is on sale around St. Paddy's Day, and keeps in the fridge for several weeks.  I also found some bell peppers on the discount produce rack at 3/$2.50, which is really good for grocery store prices around here.  It's hard to find them for less than $1.00/pepper.

We were also given some eggs and cheese by my mom, which was a nice treat.  Now I probably won't have to buy either until the end of the month.  When I got to school on Monday, I found the conference table covered with leftover concessions items, including a whole box of bananas.  The items were available to anyone for a donation of their choice, so I took a whole bag of bananas and a few other snack/breakfast items for the week for a small donation that fit our budget.  The bananas were mostly frozen for later use in bread and muffins.  Of course we used our reusable shopping bags, which we got a five cent credit for at one store.

Made a crockpot of cabbage, tomato, and ground beef soup.  I usually make this with ground sausage, but all we had was the beef.  It was a great way to stretch a half pound of meat, and we love cabbage in soup.  We supplement the protein by adding beans, this time pintos.  But usually, I prefer red kidney beans.  (I'm listing the "recipe" below.)  This lasted us for lunches all week, and dinner on Tuesday night.  By cooking it in the crockpot, it means we used a fraction of the energy of the stove top.

Made enchiladas with more pintos, turkey from the freezer, half of a sale pepper, onion, and cheese and flour tortillas.  (Most of these were bought on sale or with a coupon.)  I used store bought enchilada sauce.  This made enough for dinners and lunches to fill out the week.

Benny made a loaf of whole wheat bread in the bread machine.  This was great with soup and for toast for breakfasts.  We also made muffins early in the week using raspberries we had in the freezer from the summer, which we picked for free from a friend.

We were a one car family this week, since the Jetta was in the shop again, and found it really worked for us, especially since I carpool to work  We're slowly thinking that perhaps we could do this full time.  We'll continue to evaluate and see.

We didn't eat out, buy anything extra, or splurge (aside from my cereal) this week.  We went ahead and scheduled all our bills for the rest of the month, so they're all set to be paid.

Made a birthday card instead of buying one.  Made a loaf of banana bread as a gift for a friend.  Found a coupon code for a photo book for a birthday gift, so it's much less expensive than we originally thought, but still a very thoughtful gift.

Found the code for our tablet and realized that we still have a week before the warranty runs out.  This is great since the touch screen junked out earlier this week.  Benny's taking care of the details; we're hoping to get a replacement.

We sold about $70 worth of stuff on eBay, so we're that much closer to cleaning out and having our CSA money. Yay!

What about you?  What were your frugal accomplishments this week?  How are you living and saving green?

Cabbage, Sausage, and Tomato Soup:

1/2 head cabbage, chopped into about 1 inch pieces
1/2 lb ground sausage or beef, browned
1 small onion, chopped
1 24 oz can diced tomatoes
1 15 oz can kidney beans or 2 c homemade
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp garlic salt or minced garlic
generous tsp of ground pepper
fennel seeds if not using sausage

Combine all ingredients except beans in crockpot.  Cook on low for 8 hours.  Add beans about 4 hours into cooking time.  Serve with homemade bread or saltine crackers.

Cloth Diapering with Baby

We brought our little Raygan home from the hospital six weeks ago and my how they've flown by! The first few weeks were definitely an adjustment for everyone, but now we're in a groove as a family and loving our little monkey to pieces. So, hopefully, I can find time to get back to blogging on a regular basis during some of his nap times.

We were committed to cloth diapering and going diaper free (sometimes, when it works for us) well before we even found out we were pregnant. The cost and environmental benefits were huge to us, especially knowing that we hoped to have more than one child and that the cloth diapers could be used with the next baby. The health benefits to him are an added bonus.

Most of the cloth diapers we purchased were Charlie Banana ones, mostly because they were available at Target through our registry. We were given two that are velcro closure style, one from my friend who makes them for her (Etsy store. These are easy to leave in the diaper bag for those times when we need to leave him with someone who's not as comfortable with cloth diapering since they're styled more like the disposable kind in terms of closures. We discovered that people were hesitant to buy cloth diapers, I guess because they either weren't sure we were committed to the idea or because they wanted to buy something cute like clothes or books. So we ended up pooling our gift cards and buying them ourselves, which worked just as well. My school faculty also wanted to throw us a diaper shower, so we ended up getting about 12 cloth diapers that way also. We've found that the 30 cloth diapers we currently have is enough to get us through about two days of cloth diapering, allowing for what's in the laundry. Since Raygan is still so little, he's eating frequently, which means frequent diaper changes.

Washing is a cinch with these. We keep a diaper pail beside his changing station, so we just toss the dirty diapers, liners, and cloth wipes we use in there at each change and wash them when the pail is full and we're down to about six clean diapers. We love the design of the Charlie Banana diapers since the pocket is in the front, it means its less messy to get the liner out, and they're really adjustable with the elastic in the legs and the snaps in the front. We wash them on warm with a phosphate free detergent and either line dry them or toss them in the dryer on low heat. Stuffing them is easy; we can do it while we watch an episode of White Collar on Netflix and it takes no time; it's really easy to do with him in the Moby Wrap too.
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All told, we figure we "spent" about $300 with gift cards to get the cloth diapers for him and we had a few given to us as shower gifts. Since we're cloth diapering exclusively now (he was a little small for them at first), we're not having to buy any disposables, which is saving us probably $20 a week right now. Rough estimates from various sources figure we'll save between $1000 and $2000 on diapering costs alone with him, and that doesn't include the cloth wipes we're using instead of disposables (they're flannel ones a friend made and thin washcloths). This savings is huge, since it's helping us cut costs so that Benny can stay home with him when I go back to work in August.

And then there's the environmental benefit of not filling the landfill with all those disposable things. Of course, there are folks who would argue that it's a toss up since we're washing with warm water, which uses more energy, but hopefully our new water saving washer will help to offset that somewhat. And we wait to wash until we've got a full load of diapers, which means we're saving some energy there too. Being able to line dry them in the summer will be great, and it'll help sun bleach out the poop stains. By using cloth diapers, we're also able to cut down on our chemical consumption as a family, since there are far fewer chemicals used in these than in the disposables (all those super absorbent polymers, etc.).

Plus there are health benefits for Raygan to using cloth diapers. Since he can feel it more in cloth diapers when he's wet or dirty, we change him more frequently than we might in disposable diapers. This means there's less diaper rash and less of a risk of yeast infections for him. It also means that potty training will be far easier, because he won't have lost that feeling of what it's like when he "goes", which means hopefully we'll be out of diapers sooner than if he were in disposables. Friends who cloth diaper also report that they've seen fewer accidents with their kids who were in cloth diapers exclusively, probably because they're more aware of the signs of needing to go and so they don't wait until it's urgent. And, we're exposing him to fewer chemicals by cloth diapering, which makes us feel better, since many of these chemicals haven't been researched in terms of long term effects.

So, all in all, we're thrilled with our decision to cloth diaper. Some might say it's more work; we just see it as a different kind of work (more laundry vs. more trips to the dump). We love that it allows us to save some significant money, and it allows us to save a huge amount of landfill space. Do you cloth diaper? Thinking about it? I'd love to hear from you! Here's to living green and saving green bringing up baby.

Green Energy on a Shoestring Budget

So, snow day number seven (in a row) begins... Before getting the real post for the morning, I had to share this with you all. One of my former students produced it and it's highlighted on booneweather.com today. It absolutely fits how we're all feeling right now! If "Groundhog Day" Was Set in Boone Now, on to this morning's post...

As I said before, we have the vision of having solar panels on our roof one day, but that simply doesn't fit into our budget right now. We did try to plan the home with that end goal in mind, choosing electric kitchen appliances and electric tankless hot water heaters. Of course, the southern orientation of the house will mean that we'll get the most out of our solar panels when we finally get them.

In order to save energy now, we had higher R-value insulation put into the walls and attic space, so that the home would heat and cool more efficiently. (And also insulated the slab in the basement--see below for more details.) We chose double paned windows (which have pretty much become standard) that will help retain the internal temperature of the house. Our heating system is zoned and sized for the basement as well, so we can control each level independently. Some of the most common sense things we did were to install ceiling fans in almost every room (again, thanks to my uncle, a family friend, and Benny). When we have the windows open in the spring and summer with the fans on, we don't need AC. (In fact, I think we ran it about a week last year. Yes, we're blessed to live in the mountains with wonderful breezes most days.) And, as I mentioned in the laundry post, we don't use the dryer that much.

We did a few more things to increase the energy efficiency of the home:

1) We installed insulation behind every outlet and light switch. (These are readily available at most home improvement stores.) All you do is screw the cover off, put the foam sheet in place, and screw the cover back on. It's amazing how much cold air you can feel flowing through those spaces once you remove the cover!

2) We stuffed insulation (or spray foam insulation) into every other possible leak, especially behind the dryer and around the holes where the cable and HVAC system come into the home.

3) We installed CFLs in every possible fixture in our house. (We did leave out the chandelier because you can't dim CFLs, but we most often eat by candlelight or have an oil lamp, so we don't use that light that much.) And, of course, we only use the lights when it's dark so that we can make as much use of the natural light as possible. (This means that in the spring and summer, when it's light outside when I'm getting ready, I don't turn the light on in the bathroom until I put on makeup. We have a sheer shower curtain, so it diffuses the natural light nicely into the shower.)

4) The thermostat stays at 62 in the winter for us. I know this sounds extreme to some people, but we've really gotten used to it. With our insulation being higher than most homes, the heat stays in well and the cold stays out. I've learned in the evenings to put on a sweater or sweatshirt, and we sleep better with the cooler air. If you can't make an adjustment like this all at once, try it one degree at a time. (It's more energy efficient to run your heat that way anyway, than bumping it up and down several degrees at once.)

5) We kept all of the trees on the property that we logically could. This means that in the winter, the evergreens on the north side act as a windbreak and keep the house a little more protected. In the summer, the deciduous trees (those that lose their leaves in the fall) help to nicely shade the house. It does still get a little warm on the southern side of the house in the summer, but we installed curtains to help control that.

6) We insulated BEFORE they poured the cement slab in the basement. After we laid the vapor barrier (which is easy and will save you on labor costs if you're looking at building), we laid down blue board (the hard, Styrofoam type insulation). Although this was not the most earth friendly product, it did mean that we'd get a lifetime of savings out of the insulation factor. It also means that we have to worry less about condensation in the basement because the insulation acts as a thermal break between the interior temperature and the temperature of the ground underneath the house.

7) Our current project is to install new weather stripping around the exterior doors. Since the doors have settled a bit and shifted when they were moved with the house, the weather stripping that was originally installed now has gaps. This is an easy project, just do your research first so you know what type of weather stripping would work best for your application. I've also made a draft dodger from some dried beans, dryer lint, and scrap cotton fabric for the basement entry. Since I used these materials, it means that if (or when) the beans start to get a little funky, I can compost the entire thing.

8) We bought the most energy efficient appliances our budget could afford for the kitchen. This meant a fridge with the freezer on the bottom (warm air rises, remember, so this model makes tons of sense), a range with double ovens (the top one is smaller than the other, so it heats quickly and uses less energy... the bottom one uses convection, which runs about 25 degrees cooler and makes fantastic cookies), and the most energy efficient dishwasher we could buy (you don't have to rinse and it recirculates the water, sensing the cleanliness of the water with an electronic beam... oh, and we have a Lavender prewash cycle!). (Yes, that's a horrible run-on sentence for an English teacher.) We did take the hand-me-down washer and dryer from Benny's sister, which are not terribly energy efficient, but we know that when we have to replace them, we'll purchase the most energy efficient models our budget can afford.

9) I started landscaping last year, which included bushes as foundation plantings. Although foundation plantings provide a nice visual, their primary purpose here was to provide an additional wind block and temperature break between the yard and the house. Once the bushes grow up well, they will shelter the house from the winter winds and snow, meaning that heating the basement (one day, when we finish it) will take less energy.

10) We installed curtains in every window we could to act as another thermal break. We have a few odd shaped windows upstairs that will need something custom, so we're still working out the details there. When we do have something on those windows, it will probably be something that I make because that is generally cheaper than store bought materials.

Now, I know many of you may be thinking... with all those electric appliances, hot water heaters, two floors, tons of windows, you can't possibly have an economical electric bill! Not so fast... in the spring and fall, when we don't run the AC or fans, our bill is around $30 a month. In the winter, it might get up to $90, maybe $100 if it's really cold outside. So, when you average that out, that means we spend about $40-50 a month on electricity.

Certainly, we could make that greener by opting into the program offered through Blue Ridge Electric, where we can purchase green power from TVA for an additional cost. Right now, that's not in the budget for us, but maybe in a few years we'll have our own solar panels!

So, I hope you've found something useful here that will help you make your home a little more energy efficient. Also, if you haven't seen the documentary Kilowatt Ours, you should. It's amazing in what it reveals about the American energy industry and what individuals can do to make a difference. It's probably available at your local library, and if it's not, they usually welcome requests from patrons about new material to add to the collection.