Well, it’s been a while and I’ve been busy with Uni and other stuff but I thought I’d mention a new home based business enterprise I’m embarking on.

It’s a self development course that comes with 56 day 100% money back guarantee that is entirely unique in this industry.

I see it as a kind of spiritual evolution project pack (my description) as it contains a home study course from 14 of the worlds luminaries in this field. It takes up where The Secret left off and includes a film, the self development pack and journal but most interestingly it gives you access to a website in which you can track your progress which lasts for 56 days.

Consequently the 56 day money back guarantee ~ once you’ve done the course and kept track of your progress online the first time and if you then don’t feel it was transforming you can be refunded. Sounds fair? Not only this but should you to decide it has great value (which it does!) you can reset the 56 day website and do it again as many times as you wish.

When you buy this product you are also immediately able to earn a very good income of $1000 USD per sale. When you decide to become a business partner you are given access to a fantastic team environment with people world wide and comprehensive online training.

But let me address the frugal aspect. I think frugality is a life style and it’s very possible to have a good income and still be frugal and care for your resources.

You could still use freecycle and other recycling websites. You can still shop and cook etc in the same frugal manner but the money saved from those normal frugal activities can be offset from your income to give you time and finances to take up hobbies or explore things you’ve wanted to explore for a long time and to have a holiday/vacation occasionally.

It also puts you in a position where you can give back and support your favorite charities and community organisations.

It’s not inherently ‘wrong’ to have a very good income and be frugal. You can be both!

My marketing approach is that organic listing in the search engines, specifically Google can have excellent results. I’m working on a blog that will list all the other non-paid options and experimental results. Hopefully this will give people the opportunity to see that you don’t need to pay Google for PPC (pay per click) advertising and that Google organic results are as effective as PPC.

I will also be covering other internet marketing methods, adbrite etc.

You can give it a chance, click on the link to the left: Frugal Free Enterprise and may we all help our general financial situation in the these difficult times.

I put an advert on freecycle for a sewing machine and lo and behold I was offered this one, it’s two years old and has been under the ladies pool table for a year. I am very grateful to Jenny for this great machine.

I am also hand sewing English patchwork which can be a frugal hobby if you have already got material and old clothes you can use for the projects. You could make a memory quilt with material from your childhood clothes and pieces of linen etc that you are fond of.

I’ve decided to make a full length English patchwork coat, it may be a huge project but I’m very excited about it so far.

Here’s what you do:

Feel free to download the hexagon template I made from here:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3085/2901183584_75240e94ee_o.jpg

and print out on A4 cardboard or photo paper. I used an old batch of HP Everyday semi matt photo paper. It is perfect for the templates!

It took me two hours to make this perfectly in my graphic program! I scoured the web for resources but could find none that would print out as I wanted so decided to make my own.

This is what it looks like pre cutting:

and here’s the squares of material before basting them on to the cardboard templates:

Now very carefully cut the hexagon templates out, preferably with a craft knife and a ruler.

It’s essential that these are accurate or your quilt won’t be of a high standard.

Before you do anything else go and view these great video tutorials HERE. (I will make my own tutorial when I next have access to a camcorder.)

Now to the fun stuff.

Here’s some work I started a few days ago.

Here’s an example of some of the templates before they are sewn together:

Here’s the material that I used:

The light green and pink was $3 a meter and the printed material was in the sale at $5 a meter. All of the other material you can see here I already had in my stash or was less than $8 a meter and I brought half a meter. So you see it can be a frugal craft.

There’s still plenty of material left for my coat. I’ll post a photo once I’ve finished

Thanks for reading!

I am back at Uni next Monday so I’ve been in preparation mode and haven’t posted to the blog. I’m going to attempt at least one or two posts a week, I should be able to take care of that.

I wanted to let any passing readers know, there will be updates, just not so frequent as they have been since I started this blog.

Thanks for coming by!

This is a delightful accompaniment to the Balti Beef I cooked last evening.

Ingredients

1 onion
1.25g/ 1/4 tsp coriander seeds
1.25g/ 1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1.25g/ 1/4 tsp chilli flakes
50g/ 2oz chick pea flour
1/2 cup fresh coriander
vegetable oil, for frying

1. Chop the onion and add all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
2. Squeeze the onion to produce a juice that will bind the ingredients together.
3. Add 1 tbsp water and mix well
4. Put aside in fridge for 15 mins
5. Separate into four bhaji and shallow fry, turning when necessary, until bhaji are golden brown.

This is a wonderfully fragrant curry made with the curry paste from a previous recipe.

Ingredients

30ml/ 2 tbsp oil
5ml / 1 tsp cumin seeds
2.5 ml/ 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 onion sliced
1 crushed garlic clove
1 in piece of fresh ginger, chopped
15ml/ 1 tbsp curry paste
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 lb rump or fillet steak cut into chunks

1. Heat the oil and fry the cumin and fennel seeds for a few minutes until the seeds begin to splutter
2. Add the garlic, onion, ginger and chilli – fry for a further five mins
3. Add the curry paste and fry for a further few minutes
4. Add the beef and stir fry for 10 – 12 mins

Serve with onion bhaji and rice

Voila, an authentic Indian meal!

It’s been a long time since I made my own authentic curry paste so I thought I’d give it a go again and a trip to the wonderfully fragrant Indian specialty food shop worked out very well. I purchased my spices for NZD $6.36 and considering this recipe makes about 1 pint/ 2 1/2 cups of curry paste and I have three quarters of the spices left it worked out very inexpensively, what a pleasant surprise!

Ingredients

1/2 cup coriander seeds
l/4 tbsp cumin seeds
1/2 tbsp fennel seeds
1/2 tbsp fenugreek seeds
4 dried red chillis
5 curry leaves
1 tbsp chilli powder
1 tbsp turmeric
2/3 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup oil

• Grind all the whole spices to a fine powder.
• Spoon into a bowl and add the remaining ground spices

• Mix to a thin paste with vinegar and add 75ml/5tbsp water
• Stir fry the paste in the oil for 10 minutes or until the water has been absorbed. When the oil rises to the surface, the paste is cooked.
• Cool slightly before spooning into sterilized jars.

This is the end result.

Spices have never seemed particularly frugal to me but yesterday I brought some fresh spices from the local Indian specialty shop and was pleasantly surprised at the cost.

Considering that I would have had to pay approx $3 per spice in the supermarket these spices compared very well. In total it calculated at $6.36 for a reasonable quantity of:

Cumin
Fennel
Black Mustard Seeds
Coriander
Turmeric
Cinnamon Sticks
Fenugreek
Chili Powder
Dried Chili
Cardomon

Unfortunately I can’t provide exact costs as they are all listed as misc on the receipt.

Check back shortly for three recipes using these spices, I had a yummy meal last night, and it was all cooked from scratch.

I started container gardening a month ago and it’s time for an update and some new photographs. It’s been an important first month! During this time I’ve made some interesting errors of judgment and all in all it’s a positive move forward. I’m not a gardener and know very little about growing vegetables (or growing anything for that matter) but I’m determined to learn and to make a success of this.

I discovered a problem after a short period of time, pests! Something was eating holes in my brand new plants – how dare it! It must go!

So, after much searching on the internet I found information on an organic pest product called Neem. I felt like a detective, I found something that is organic and is supposed to work well. With a degree of excitement I hunted some down and went and purchased the product.

Initially I found it for just under $10 at the local Mitre 10 but it wasn’t until I was reading the label properly, after paying for the item, that I realised it was not for use on food bearing plants.

Feeling somewhat confused after all the positive reviews I had read about it I took it back to the helpful store guy who went through other products I could use. He mentioned my predicament to a colleague and reported back that the Neem product is highly toxic. Huh? That’s not what I had read on the net this very day.

In the end I brought some Derris dust as it appeared it was the only organic pest product available. However I didn’t get to use the Derris.

After leaving the store I went to the nearest garden center and lo and behold they had Neem for food bearing plants at $20 a bottle. (It’s concentrated so it should last a long time). I don’t usually purchase from this garden center as they are on average 25% more expensive than the Mitre 10 and other stores that sell veggies and gardening products. However, I’m glad that I did as it appears it’s the only place in the area that sells this product for veggies.

On reading the label it mentioned that there is no withholding period on it at all, which for those that aren’t aware (I wasn’t) means you can eat it the same day you spray it. So, figuring it was safe I thought I’d better get a handle on the annoying bugs in my container garden. Primarily Passion Vine Hoppers and an unidentified creature laying it’s eggs on the underside of some of the silver beet, capsicum and broccoli leaves.

I made it up to the correct proportions but evidently used too much as within a day or two the leaves of my treasured plants were dying and looking blight stricken on the edges!. Oh no! So, after another couple of days I pinched off the leaves in question which left me with a pretty pathetic looking container garden, where once fine leaves had been.

Wellll, I’ve learned from that lesson that’s for sure! I’m going to spray some on tomorrow (it stops the life cycle of the bugs in question) but I’m going to use it in much smaller quantities and keep a wary eye on the results. Interestingly enough the overdose of Neem that I gave my plants affected some but not others. The Capsicum is still very healthy, as is the Tamarillo and the herbs! There appears to be no rhyme or reason for this!

Here are some photos of the current state of my container gardening plot. I realised that I probably should have separated the perpetual spinach plants as they didn’t seem to be doing much bunched together in one pot. So, after dividing and repotting I have some rather sorry looking spinach plants, however I’m hopeful that they will pick up over the next couple of days.

I’ve also planted some new tomato plants as the Neem had obviously damaged the original ones I planted beyond repair, one died and two didn’t grow at all for three weeks. I am going to need to support the new ones with a stake as soon as they grow larger. I’ve been collecting sticks and branches from dead trees for this, after purchasing a few bamboo stakes and realising that was probably a waste of money. One has to be frugal of course!

This is my herb garden – it’s coming along beautifully, the herbs are growing more each day, although the Oregano is a little stunted in it’s growth, maybe it just grows slower? That’s something I’ll have to check out.

These are my dwarf beans and snap peas. The peas were probably not a good idea as according to the packet they require support. But, as the packet was from my last failed attempt at planting some veggies (at an old residence which I moved from quite suddenly) I felt compelled to try them so they don’t go to waste.

That rather large plant you can see just in the right area is my Tamarillo – it’s grown so much! It really seems to like my garden. If it continues at this rate it will be massive before I know it!

This is my potting area. I decided to make use of the old barbecue area as I probably would never use it and the barbecue itself was rusted out. The area to the left is ideal for potting and to the right for my herbs. They appear to be doing well there too!

There are lettuce plants on the wooden chair and capsicum below the herbs. They are doing well too, the capsicum fruit grows quickly I’ve noticed. There’s a lemon tree (that’s ideal for containers apparently) to the right of the chair.

I’m looking forward to tasting the first fruits of my garden, that’s for sure!

To end on a frugal note I’ve managed to get all these pots (apart from four very large ones that are obviously brand new) through freecycle. I have 70 pots now with veggies in them and a few more ready to go when the seeds I’ve planted today are ready. What a substantial saving this has been! I’m making plant identifiers from cut up opaque plastic milk bottles too, and using a permanent marker which does so far seem to be permanent.

Although initially this project has cost me about $140 the next growing season will necessitate buying only seeds. The compost has been expensive, I’ve brought 7-8 bags of it so far but as I don’t have a compost heap I can’t do much about that.

I am however going to look for one of those cement mixer type compost bins as they are compact and they don’t smell. I’ll post about it here in due time. Thanks for reading and if you have any information to share please do, the more the merrier!

Here’s a great way to recycle old vinyl records and it’s a fun project to do with the kids.

1. Heat oven to 120 deg C
2. Put the record centered on an upside down oven safe bowl
3. Put in the oven and leave for up to 5 minutes
4. The record will become flexible and you can then mold it to your requirements by bending the record with oven gloves on

Ta da! A new bowl for your house. These can be used as houseplant holders because they have the drainage hole at the bottom.

Here’s some images of two bowls my 9 year old made yesterday.

Have fun!

Wisebread forums are offering another competition! This time for TurboTax Premiere, and TurboTax Deluxe. Unfortunately I can’t enter as I don’t live in the States, but for those that can, I say go for it!

This is information from this thread

From 1/28 to 3/1 we’ll be giving away two free copies of TurboTax per week. To enter the contest simply follow these two steps:

* Step 1: Post in this thread and say “I want to win a copy of TurboTax,” and

* Step 2: Make at least one more post elsewhere on this forum. Each post you make between 1/28 to 3/1 will be counted as one “raffle ticket” for this contest. Any good faith comment over 3 sentences will be counted, so the more you post the better your chances of winning!

Due to shipping restrictions, this contest is only open to people who live in the continental United States. We will post the names of the winners here every Sunday night.

For the first week we’ll be giving away two copies TurboTax Premiere, and the next four weeks we’ll be giving away copies of TurboTax Deluxe.