Budget Weddings: Marshmallow chandelier

Hi All,

This pic has been around forever....well, since at least November 2011.  It comes from a stylized shoot of a breakfast wedding by wedding photographer Ely Fair, in collaboration with an Oklahoma-based event design company. Since I saw it a few years back it has been banging around in my brain. I'm long married and do not anticipate getting hitched again by this idea is just too good to leave behind (btw - breakfast parties....amazing. Mid-morning weddings? Why are there so few of those? Who doesn't love breakfast?)

So here I present to you this oft linked to pic of a marshmallow chandelier.

The feel of the shoot is pretty fantastic - crisp morning light, great flower and color combinations and some very tasty looking pancakes. I know the DIY small, laid back wedding thing has peaked as a trend, but the shoot is timelessly gorgeous. Honestly, the earnest, small, and fun wedding will always trump all other trends for me.

 So back to the chandelier - I must bring this into my life somehow. It might be a good second birthday decoration for the little one. It occurs to me, also, that we will be having a Fall house warming in the coming year....so maybe that's the time.

I tried to count the marshmallows here, I put this chandelier at 6-7 bags of the big marshmallows, plus about $5 for the line....which makes it a $20-30 range as a project. The fishing line is wrapped around the marshmallows, which keeps them from slipping or melting around a string that might have been punched through them with a needle. You couldn't do this project days in advance because the marshmallows will melt and deform as they take on moisture - basically you will be up 2 nights or the night before tying these things together, and up the morning of the event tying them to some sort of grid on the ceiling...or a light fixture. This is most definitely a dry air project - late Fall and Winter for most folks. Still...cool. I'd do it.

One consideration for this project. Some transparent rope/fishing lines that you find in the average hardware store next to spools of fine gauge wire contain lead. Be sure to check the labels on the line. California state law requires that lead content be disclosed on such products, so most spools that you find should say something if lead is in there.  Why handle lead if you don't have too?

So it has done the internet rounds, but I really like this shoot - so here it is again for your viewing pleasure. 

Most useful baby items during the first 6 months: Ergo carrier

and the list continues. I had intended to post more than one recommendation here today, but I have such unabashed love for the Ergobaby original carrier that I'm dedicating an entire post to it.

5) Baby carrier -  Ergobaby

Carriers are great, when you have a baby who HATES her stroller

Truth be told, our little one was pretty cranky for the first four months of her life. She had reflux and was extremely colicky as a result. When I say "extremely" I am not kidding around. She would cry for 13 or more hours a day - uninterrupted - during most of her second month.

The word on the street is infant carrying eases colic. The idea is that much of the crying stems from indiscernible reasons and that being close to Mom or Dad is comforting despite whatever discomfort or oversensitivity the child is expressing. That might be true for some kids. It is very hard for me to judge, because our daughter was so uncomfortable with reflux and cried so much it was nearly impossible to leave the house. We, literally, could not put her in a carrier or car seat or stroller for the first 2 months. She would scream hysterically and unrelentingly. This meant that all tasks outside of the house had to be completed by one parent, while the other one sat at home holding the baby with both hands. However, once the reflux and colic started to ease up, the very first tool that let both H and I out of the door at the same time was the infant carrier. For that reason alone, I will always be indebted to Baby Bjorn and Ergo.

Around month three, we managed to get our little girl into a baby bjorn classic carrier. Once ensconced, she would travel with us to the grocery store and even sleep on my chest while we ate at a restaurant. We even used it to get her down for a nap, on occasion. I really liked this carrier because it had several easy to snap into place locks on the shoulder and waist that made it easy to slip and secure the baby into place - and, importantly, lay a sleeping baby onto a bed and release the carrier without waking her.

The baby bjorn classic carriers are a two piece structure of straps for parents and a separate pocket structure that attaches to those straps and carries the baby. The pocket attaches, with a number of locking mechanisms, chief amongst them a large plastic lock that forms part of the carrier seat. Around month 5 this large plastic lock became very uncomfortable for our little one. All of her weight sat on it and she would cry every time we put her in the carrier. At this time we moved onto the Ergo, a one piece cloth carrier, the seat of which is formed by a large cotton pocket that tightens against the parent's stomach via a large and well padded waist strap. While the baby bjorn places the baby's weight on the parent's shoulders and between their shoulder blades, the Ergo places most of the weight on a parent's hips. As a baby grows, this carrier becomes infinitely more useful, as the child's weight is carried by the primary weight bearing parts of a human's body. Weight placements and the over structure of an Ergo means that a child can be carried until a child reaches 45 pounds in this carrier - outstripping most other carriers by at 15 pounds.

We were introduced to the Ergo coincident with our discovery that our little girl hated being in a forward facing stroller (the only way our current stroller faces). Turns out, many children are not magically induced to want to face away from their parents the second they turn 6 months and can no longer be left in a bassinet stroller or a car seat stroller without danger of injury. Our little girl wanted to see us at all times. With the bjorn carrier too small, and the stroller too forward facing, we were a miserable bunch. All of our outings were marked with the anxious screams of a poor little girl who didn't want to face the world alone. The Ergo was such a life saver - again allowing us to leave the house without hysterical screams.

I would say, between the two, the Ergo is a the better deal. It retails for a little over $100 and can be used (with an insert) from infancy to 45 pounds. They are continually posted on craigslist for less than $100 and are easily washed.  It can be adjusted to hang off a parent's side (presumably accommodating twins if you have two carriers) and, when the child is older, it can be positioned on a parent's back.  If I could go back I would have used an Ergo with an infant insert from the very beginning. 

Most useful baby items during the first 6 months: Part 1

Okay, clothes are useful too...

It has almost been a year since our little one was born. I've been thinking about this one way ride, and how our baby changed so much so fast. When we found out I was pregnant, two big, panicky thoughts reverberated  1) does anyone here know what to do with a baby? and 2) how the hell are we going to afford this?

An industrialized mommy complex has been unleashed in the last 10 years that is almost on par with the wedding industry. While throwing a large party that is supposed to embody a relationship and make absolutely everyone with an opinion happy can be stressful, at the end of the day a wedding is an event at which a couple signs a contract agreeing to be, ideally, legally joined to each other.  Caring for a child so that said child, say, stays healthy, meets milestones, defecates in a diaper that has been put on properly requires a great deal more preparation, money and time. The objects and experiences available to "help" new parents keep a baby alive and help it thrive are not only infinite, but amount to a lot of cash. Unlike with a wedding, raising a child comes with almost immediately recognizable and barely surmountable responsibilities, along with a healthy dose of persistent guilt that you haven't done it correctly.

When you are just starting out, as H and I are, the perceived expense of a baby and the things you are "supposed" to buy or do are really overwhelming. When I think back to those first few months of our little one's life, there are only a few things that we really needed, and fewer still that helpful but optional. Here are the top five items that helped us slug through the first 6 months.

 1) Bouncer chair

Handy for a little one that needs to be "held" to nap.

When our little one came home she needed to be held constantly. She had difficulty settling into the crib and would cry for hours and hours. We eventually discovered that she would sleep if we placed her in the bouncer chair. I guess it closed in around her a little bit. In those very early days, one of us would stay awake with her in this chair, while the other guy slept. As she grew, the chair became a place where she could sit and watch us while we did little tasks in the same room. We used it right up until the day she could sit up on her own. A friend of ours very generously gave us the Fisher Price My Little Lamb Deluxe Infant Seat, which vibrates and plays music. Honestly, we never used those features. They kept the baby awake. There is very likely a cheaper version of this seat that would have served the same purpose.

2) Muslin wraps

Muslin wraps are handy for the swaddling challenged.

Best.swaddling.blanket.ever. Hands down champion. These wraps are long and stretchy, making swaddling a breeze. Our little baby was very uncomfortable with reflux during her early months, and swaddling made her feel marginally better. We now use these blankets to cover the ground when we sit in the park, or to cover her legs in the stroller/car seat on a mild day. They are also useful as make-shift sun shields. We got by with two by Aden and Anais, which I snagged on sale for $10 a piece.

3) Microwaveable bottle sterilizer

You name it, we sterilized it in here.

Once the bottles are boiled that first time, they still need to be sterilized before every use during the first 4 months of a child's life. With this sterilizer and 200 ml of water, 6 bottles can be sterilized in the microwave while a busy parent accomplishes other things. Four minutes on high, followed by four minutes of rest and the bottles are ready to go.

A friend of ours gave us her old Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature bottles and sterilizer. The bottle folks would have you believe that their microwaveable sterilizers only fit their bottles. Anyone with depth perception can see that isn't true. It is particularly untrue of the the Tommee Tippee sterilizer, as it is designed to fit Tommee Tippee bottles, which are extra wide and sometime very tall. We were able to stick pacifiers, Avent bottles as well as Ameda and Medela breast pump bottles in here no problem. In fact, this sterilizer was most helpful during the period that I pumped milk at work. Breast pump bottles absolutely have to be sterile. Every morning, I would pop the bottles into this sterilizer, get ready for work, and pack them into my purse on the way out the door. Indispensable.

4) Breast pump - Ameda, Purely Yours

Breastfeeding: great for baby health, and
budget friendly too

I almost recommended my bottle brush over this pump. I didn't have much success pumping at work, as there was no space to do so. That said, this pump worked well at home. Since it is closed system, the pump cannot be contaminated by cytomegalovirus and other such nasties, so the device is easy to resell or donate when a mother is done with it (sans the tubing, filters and cups, of course). In this respect, The Ameda Purely Yours double breast pump is very similar to the hospital pumps.

I was the happy recipient of this pump, which had been used by two other women. When I first returned to work, my supply dipped so I rented a hospital pump for a month in the hopes of boosting my supply. I found no discernible difference between the two pumps. In the end, though, this little guy gave out about 4 months before I stopped breastfeeding our little one. I guess four years of virtually constant use was too much. If you consider that a week's supply of formula for a 6 month old is roughly $30, investing $200 in a new pump to use for a year is kind of a budget and health no brainer.

5) Sherpa - as diaper wipes, face wipes, miracle clean up fabric

Best baby purchase ever, hands down.
Photo credit: Wazoodle

So this was a bit of a surprise. Babies seem to require an insane amount of fabric be invested in mopping up messes everyday. Between pee spray, milk drool, bum wiping, wetting themselves mid-diaper change and the unidentifiable muck collecting around hands and face, babies need to be wiped down constantly. An easy cleaning fix is to buy cartons of diaper wipes and keep them handy during all baby interfacing. Diaper wipes, however, are usually made of some kind of polyester mix. This means they do not break down in land fill. While cheap on a per pack basis (around $4 for a small pack), the ludicrous amount of wiping up required to keep a baby alive and healthy means that in the very short term diaper wipe buying becomes expensive.

While looking into how to make our own cloth diapers (more on that later), I found a very absorbent and inexpensive knit fabric called "sherpa" referenced frequently as a good absorbent layer fabric. A quick google search led me to a New Jersey company named Wazoodle, which sells organic cotton sherpa for around $13 a yard. I bought a yard and a half, cut it up into roughly diaper wipe size (no sewing required, since the fabric is knit) and haven't bought a wipe since. Not only does the fabric absorb over 3 cups of liquid per square yard/square meter, it is softer than most terry clothes and its nap is the best dirty bum cleaner we have every used. We keep a little homemade diaper wipe solution beside the changing area and dip these bad boys into it at change time. We have another set that we keep just for wiping food covered faces. At the end of the week, we wash the sherpa with either the cloth diapers or regular clothes (depending on how it was used). The purchase of this fabric, no lie, was the most budget friendly and clean-baby making decision we ever made.

What items have you found most useful? Any DIY baby supply suggestions?

Etsy engagement rings part 2

Squeeeeee!!!! SO PRETTY!
Photo credit: Marajoyce

The Christmas season is fast coming upon us. With trees and mistletoe comes, inevitably, a slew of Christmas time proposals. A Christmas time proposal might mean snowy romance and glowing lights to some. Eternally budget-minded, for me Christmas engagements mean an important expense at a expensive time of year. 

Couples have varying views on what an engagement ring should be. I knew at the time that H proposed to me that I wanted a pretty, reclaimed ring for under  $300. 

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I'm a huge proponent of hand-crafted engagement rings that use reclaimed materials and semi-precious stones (I ended up finding a beautiful piece featuring a semi-precious stone on eBay for $102). I love the aesthetic of such pieces. Buying such rings has the added benefit of supporting a small business, having greater control over design and, in the case of rings made from reclaimed materials, the benefit of  being environmental friendly and avoiding the ethical muck of blood jewels.

Here is a selection of handcrafted rings for under $200 a piece currently available on Etsy*. 

Moonstone &14k Solid Gold Ring by Ringsland - $149

Photo credit: Ringsland

I LOVE the bezel set and the misty quality of the stone. So pretty!! Ringsland makes some rings to order, so there might be wiggle room on stone size and color. 

2.5ct Cushion Cut Ring , Green Amethyst 
                                                 or Citrine Ring by Baragent- $125.94

Photo credit: Barargent

I could not choose between these two very chic rings featuring cushion cut stones available at Baragent. The company's designs tend towards art deco style and statement pieces, with multi-faceted stones. Almost all designs in the shop fall under the $150 mark, with a few pieces coming in at just over $20.

 Aquamarine Twig Gemstone Ring, Silver by Marajoyce - $153.32 

Photo credit: Marajoyce

I am a fan of the bezel set ring, in large part because it reminds me of ancient Mediterranean jewelry. Most of the designs by Marajoyce have a distinct Roman feel to them, with some pieces featuring real Roman era coins.  This particular ring, in my view, is a bit of a departure from the other designs in the shop, both in its stone color and band width. Many of the pieces are larger statement pieces, multi-colored and many featured. Beautiful, but for my taste, this ring really hits it out of the ball park - just a lovely and peaceful mix of aqua/azure tones paired with a silver, tactile band. 

* I have not purchased any items from these vendors. I just dig the rings.  

Making a blanket out of pashmina scarves

$25 and some street haggling later,
 I have a throw blanket

Our current apartment is very small. It is approximately 450 square feet. As we were packing to move I realized that for the space to feel orderly and clean, it would have to be well organized and coordinated in terms of both shape of items and their color.

We decided to buy some new furniture to fit the space. I went on the hunt for the perfect throw blanket for the living room couch. I knew that I wanted the blanket to be predominately white and turquoise, without a lot of intricate patterning. This turned out to be a fruitless search, as the gods of West elm, CB2, Target etc. all seemed to conspire to be really into gray and yellow at the time I started the hunt. This is when I decided to make my own blanket.


As our move coincided with the last three months of my pregnancy, grant season and a major publication project, I knew I didn't have a lot of time to quilt or knit a blanket. Moreover, I had just seen the perfect turquoise color on the streets of NYC - a "pashmina" scarf being sold by a table vendor. Fake pashminas  pepper Manhattan. They are sold by every street vendor in the city, for about $5 a piece. That's when I decided to make a throw blanket out of pashmina scarves.

My street shopping bounty 

I picked up two turquoise scarves with white scarf for contrast,  and then more or less followed the blanket-making instructions I found at Centsational Girl. I made a few adjustments, mentioned below. The blanket is basically a striped duvet cover that sewn directly over a piece of quilt batting. The total cost of this project is $25-$35 - $15 for the scarves, and $10 or $20 depending on whether you want polyester or cotton batting.

Cut the scarf into strips and pin the first
 two strips together

Three scarves will make a blanket about the size of a twin coverlet. The first step to make a striped blanket is to cut the scarves in half, lengthwise. The scarf strips will, eventually, be assembled and sewn in two groups of three. The two sewn groups are then sewn together. To start, pin two of the lengths together, right side in, and sew them with a straight stitch. Since the scarves fray, I found it helpful to give myself a little bit more than the standard 1/4 seam allowance. I left about 1/2 inch of allowance.

It is helpful to leave a 1/2 inch seam allowance

To this pair of sewn strips, add and pin the third strip and sew. Repeat this entire process a second time to make a second sewn panel of three strips. Then assemble the two panels, right side in, pin and sew along the two long sides and one short side. Leave one short side open. Turn the newly assembled blanket cover right side out and carefully line up with the quilt batting and temporarily pin it in place. Us as few pins as possible, as these scarves sort of lack a self-healing ability. The holes left by the pins might be apparent.

 It's possible, due to differences in scarf, seam allowances and batting widths that the cover will be slightly smaller than the batting. At this point, the batting can be trimmed if needed. I found that the batting needed to be trimmed, though Centsational Girl seemed to get her batting to slip in effortlessly - no lining up, no trimming.

No pic of the lining up process, sorry. 

After trimming the batting,  it's a simple matter of guiding the batting into the gigantic duvet cover just sewn and straightening it so that the batting corners fit into the cover corners. Once the batting is in place at the corners, I stitched the batting to the cover in a few places, along the fringe of the scarves. I don't have pictures of this process because in the tiny apartment in which I assembled this blanket, I had to slip the batting and then hang the blanket across a door and a few other structures to complete this task. Presumably, you have a more spacious apartment and won't have to spread you blanket across two separate rooms to get the batting into place.

hand stitch the open side of the cover
and you are done!

Once the batting is in place, be sure to lay the blanket flat, smooth the cover and batting and pin the open end to the batting in a handful of places. Hand stitch the open end of the blanket closed using a slip stitch, or whatever stitch rocks your world. Centsational Girl likes colorful and apparent stitches so she used very colorful thread. I prefer less apparent stitching, so I used a more subtle color.

The finished product in its usual place. 

Three final thoughts on this project. 1) I love the blanket (it is super warm), but would have liked it to be a bit more square. If I were to redo this project I would resize the batting 2) the blanket actually holds up really well. It has collected a few snags from heavy use, but that's hardly a problem. 3) I really like this project because when the cover eventually gives out or I grow tired of the colours, the batting can be used again and again.

Moment of Happy in home decor

My dissertation killed the happy in my apartment

In the wake of my PhD I published papers- or at least I tried to publish papers. While I did this and waited for my postdoc to start, I dwelled in burnout. The author of my favourite blog in the whole wide world would call this "dwelling in possibility". That chick, however, gets stuff done. She is setting up a school, building and organizing a house, raising a two kids etc.. I, by contrast, sat on my couch, working up the energy to get to the gym at 2 pm. It occurs to me that had I taken a trip after my dissertation was deposited - if I had even chilled in a organized way that week, I would have been more productive in the weeks that followed. I might even be more productive now. 

I did however, reclaim certain aspects of my life and household. This included 1) destuffing/decluttering 2) reorganizing and repairing and 3) completing some decor projects.

My PhD years were fun, but the last 3 years were stressful. I worked veeeery long hours, in a very aggressive and unsupportive environment. For 3 years, I just came home and collapsed into bed. As a result, we never really settled into our apartment. It was filled with half done projects. It was messy. It wasn't a refuge. It was just something else I have to do.

So in the weeks after my dissertation, I decided to re-introduce the happy. H and I are worked a special project to pull the living room together. Before I put that up here, I'm posting my easiest solution to bringing in the happy - pretty drawer pulls. All found on Etsy - all pretty and delightful and welcome to replace the sad Ace hardware burnished brass pulls that dragged down our home.

VintageSkyes is a delightful Etsy shop that produces handstamped "vintage inspired" drawer pulls. The shop contains dozens of designs, most in black and white. While some stamped designs have 19th century science plate illustration feeling to them, others are dead ringers for late 19th century advertising typographic symbols, or actual government stamps (i.e. U.S. Post Office). I'm in love with all of them. At the cost of $7 a knob, I could happily see these ushering in the pretty in my kitchen.

 I am particularly fond of this Matryoshka doll pull. I've never seen anything like it before.  

Photo credit: VintageSkye

Veritas Inspired  sells recovered drawer pulls, amongst other metal objects. The feel of the shop is very shabby chic, but the owner does find some interesting pulls and will paint and shab them up anyway you might like. 

Photo credit: VeritasInspired

I'm not sure how this happened, but I have a serious case of the cutes that my grad school self would have found very amusing. I suspect it took hold after the birth of our little one (oh yes, a lot has happened since I last posted). The upshot is, I like cartoon drawings of fuzzy animals. I really dig the drawer pulls at Ebonypaws . They are adorable without being cutesie, simple but not dull, sweet but not saccharin. I have a particular soft spot for this sleeping fox pull below

Photo credit: EbonyPaws

Happy deskware: Scout Creative's free pop up calendars

Scout Creative makes my desk a happier place to work

I have completely fallen in love with these papercraft monthly desktop calendars designed by Scout Creative. They are super fun, very cute and, best of all, utterly free :) You can collect your free calendar on their site on the first of every month, or you can subscribe to their email service and they will deliver it right to your inbox. Either way, you are supporting a nifty company and making your desk a more liveable place to work :) This month's calendar is a chicken coop :)

Scout Creative is a content marketing firm that specifically designs papercraft promotional items. They make all sorts of cut out and papercraft toy designs that are designed to promote, say, movies, printers, company entities..etc. They have even made little stand alone paper toy patterns for Disney. Very, very cool.

For the last year-ish, the company has designed a free paper craft monthly desktop calendar. My favorite in their archives is the July campfire scene, but the April record collection is pretty cool too. Browse their archive. The designs are clever, little color bursts that are a little tongue and cheek. They've already made my month...and I finished a PhD in the last 30 days.

Silly thing - it never occurred to me before finding these calendars that there are companies out there that produce papercraft promotional items. When I was a kid I loved, loved, loved cutting these sorts of patterns out of cereal boxes, folding and pasting. When I was doing my Masters, I even went so far as to buy a really complicated cuckoo clock pattern from a store, and assemble it. It took months, but it supposedly worked when assembled. I wouldn't know. I got the whole thing assembled, but couldn't afford the $20 of pennies that I would have had to put into the weights to get the clock started. The paper clock hung on the wall, and the weights sort of hung around my apartment. Still, that experience did not take away from my love of these little patterns. Can you imagine how much fun designing these crafts? If this science thing does not work out, maybe I'll do this for living :)

Valentine's Day: gifts for your sweetie when you are completely broke

PC hearts H

Photo credit: hard to tell. Found on http://www.laughingriveryoga.com

Did I mention that H and I are on a $10 a day food budget right now? Just the luck of the draw, really. While I'm in forced unemployment, the running of the household is highly dependent on H's ability to snag overtime hours at the office. Due to how his office bills clients, he has to work additional hours to be eligible for overtime pay if he takes a paid vacation day. The the poor guy has to work like a demon all the time while my income has been reduced to very little.

We are very broke. While I'm not one for Valentine's day romance (blech...I really dislike canned romance of heart shaped boxes, red roses and prix fixe), we do like to spend a little extra time with one another the day before (NYC is a hot mess on Feb 14th) and we did get married this year. I'm still filled with fond, goofy, post-wedding feelings for H and I would like to give him a little gift, despite our very limited means.

So, I've decided to take a note from Jenny Steffens Hobick's Everyday Occasions and make him a little bag of sugar cookies, with royal icing designs. I'm going to print her adorable and happily free "Be Mine" tags, and affix them to a little bag of personalized cookies. I think I will make my cookies a little bit more psychedelic and little less rosebud-oriented. Her site has lots of other really cute V-day ideas worth checking out, if you want to do something a little extra special for your sweetie.

PC hearts H and H hearts cookies

Photo credit: Jenny Steffens Hobick's Everyday Occasions

Just in case you are interested in doing the same, here is the recipe I use for iced sugar cookies below.

Sugar cookies (for shaped cookies)

2 cups sifted flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup of butter (1 stick), room temperature

1 cup of granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

Sift together flour, salt, baking powder. In a separate bowl cream sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add the the flour mixture to the creamed mixture. Stir until combined (do not over stir). Chill the dough until firm (about an hour). Roll, cut out shapes and rechill. Bake cold cookies at 325, for about 10 minutes or until the edges start to brown.

When the cookies have cooled completely, you can then ice them with royal icing. Royal icing will start to harden quickly, and should be completely hard in 20 to 30 minutes.

Royal icing

2 large egg whites (or 4 Tbsp of meringue powder and 3 Tbsp of water)

1 pound icing/confectioner's sugar

juice of 1/2 a lemon

food coloring.

Pretty straightforward - combine until smooth. I usually split it into a few batches to add coloring.

If you want the effect of a full, smooth coat of icing, like in the pictures above, outline the cookie in a slightly thicker icing using an icing bag or a little plastic bag with the tip cut off. Then take the same icing and thin it slightly with water - so that it is just a little, tiny bit runnier than the outline icing and gently pipe it into the space left by the outline. It should smooth itself out, and harden in 20 minutes. Before then, though, you can throw in thinned icing in other colours and make little designs.

Super cheap post-Christmas vacation - finding a room

AirBnB - if I want to spend Christmas in Amsterdam, I could stay here for $89/night

Due to a number of reasons, I can't leave NYC over Christmas. H and I are spending Christmas entirely alone, and it's too bad. This is a big Christmas for my family as my brother and my sister-in-law have had the first grandchild. Money is insanely tight in every quarter of the fam as I am unemployed and living in the most expensive city in the Western world, my parents are building a house and my brother just gutted his home. Still, I imagined to convince my brother that we should celebrate Christmas well after Christmas this year. While his family will meet up with my parents in December, we will all meet up in some central location and exchange presents etc. in February.

Now, we have to decide where to meet. We are limited to the continental U.S. and my budget. One thing I have worked out is where to stay. A few of my friends have used Air BnB in the past and have really enjoyed it.

Air BnB is an online service where people post cottages, rooms, apartments they have available to let. The company lists housing all over the world, and manages the exchange of payment. My perusal of the site this week has revealed some amazing housing in some pretty cool places, at low prices.

When I say low, I mean low. Most of the listings I found asked for a flat fee for rental, with little or no price increase to include additional people. I found a beautiful house in a historic Southern city for $167 a night for eight people. That's not $167 per person. That's $167 for all eight. I wish I had known about this service when I was planning my wedding, as it would have been a nice recommendation for guests.

It would seem that with Air BnB I can tie up my housing situation fairly quickly. Now I just have to choose a city that is easily accessible and hospitable in February.

Kitchen Reorg: Cooking in a New York City Apartment #3

Dude - we are being plucked off one by one!

Making the best of an NYC kitchen without spending much money takes a bit of practice. I don't think I really hit my stride until 2007, when H and I moved in together and we suddenly had to combine a lot property.

I am of the mind that a body should purge as many of their belongings as possible before they move. I say this after moving 11 apartments in a 4 year period between 2003 and 2007. H having moved 3 times in that same period, did not feel the same way. Our apartment was doomed to be pretty crowded, at least initially - so I was particularly determined to get this last kitchen reorganization right.

In my previous kitchen reorg posts, I was really trying to point out really simple solutions to some pretty big structural problems. The 2007 kitchen had a small oven with four gas elements, a slimline fridge and walking room, but not a whole lot in the way of storage for cookware. Here I present my last kitchen reorg - which I consider my best reorg.

We needed three things 1) the pots to be accessible - no digging around 2) expanded dry food storage 3) more food prep space


Our pot accessibility solution? I stole an idea from my grandmother and Julia Child and painted a piece of pegboard a pretty blue, and hug some of the pots and utensils on it. I even cut a little door for the fuse box. Pegboard, wall kit, pegs and paper towel dispenser = $20.

$20 and now I can reach everything

I hung that same Ikea pot strip I used in 2004 near the 2007 stove. Ikea carries several variations on this set under the name of Fintorp and a super cute one under the name of Asker. Purchased new, this set costs about $20.

Pot accessibility, resolved

It seemed to me that we could resolve our food storage and chopping space problems at the same time by buying a kitchen rack. I actually really dislike kitchen racks. Most of the time, they are a repository for people's dusty pots and pans, and bunch of dustier kitchen towels. I was determined that our kitchen rack would serve two purposes 1) hold dried goods 2) provide counter space.

The kitchen rack: food prep space and storage

I store all of my food in glass. NYC is filled with mice, roaches and other food munching critters. It is really easy to bring these guests home from the grocery store. When we get home with groceries, I immediately transfer all dried goods to glass jars.

For the rack, we picked up Ikea Burken glass jars ($4) for items that we needed access quickly, 32 oz mason jars ($1 each) for items that needed to be sealed airtight and glass penny candy jars ($9 a piece) goods that we needed to scoop out with a measuring cup. I actually prefer the mason jars to the Ikea jars, so we will be gradually shifting the Ikea jars out.

All kitchen racks look more or less the same, so I very quickly settled on this one for $102. I favoured this one for its low cost and the inclusion of hooks for the bar below the highest shelf.

In NYC, glass food storage = critters walk past my apartments

Dry erase marker tells me what is inside the jar (though oatmeal is pretty easy to identify)

The hooks hold my mixer attachments, a thai vegetable grater and french press

That was that. Everything is neat and tidy and easy to find.

I am now developing a little gadget to allow me to store and pour drinks from this rack when we hold parties....but that is a matter for another post.

Cost of Kitchen reorg

Pegboard rack = $20

Pot strip + accesories = free (but originally $20)

Kitchen rack and jars = $102 + 36 + 13 + 25 = $176

Kitchen Reorg: Cooking in a New York City Apartment #2

I emerged from a small, dark kitchen triumphant!

In my continuing series of how to make the best of inhumanely sized kitchens, I'm posting the fix for incredibly terrible kitchen number #2.

When the year was up, I decided to leave my pretty little studio with the oven-challenged kitchen and look for something larger. This search actually led to a shift in career focus. I ended up in another city doing an entirely different job for 4 months. You would think that would mean my search for a reasonably sized kitchen would end....alas, I faced a new challenge.

My next apartment was in a national historic building, was 900 square feet, another faux fireplace with the most adorable-ly tacky brass treasure chest filled with "burning" glass "embers" that actually threw heat, a claw foot bath tub and tudor style windows with leaded glass......and a kitchen that had clearly been fit into a closet.

I'm really not lying about that last point. There were hinges on the door and everything. You couldn't open a cupboard door and the fridge or oven at the same time. I've never seen an oven like this - it had two elements, and was about 18 inches deep by 2 1/2 feet wide. It could actually fit a commercial pan, but this was at the expense of the sink..which was only about 6 inches in width and depth and length. I couldn't fit a dish into it.

This is a shot from down the hall. If you look to the right you can see the oven. The kitchen in this apartment was literally 3x4 feet before the appliances were installed.

So what to do, what to do....

I had to buy a portable dishwasher. I found one in the pennysaver for about $300. I bought a floating shelf from Ikea to hold my bowls and used an old card table the dishwasher to set up a kitchen set up area around the corner in the more than spacious living/dining area.

Unfortunately, I only took photos when I was packing to move..so these aren't the most amazing pics (particularly because I had just finished dinner).

That floating shelf actually made my kitchen items pretty (please excuse the packed and donated items against the wall)

Not the best pic, but it bought me an extra 15 sq ft of kitchen prep space.

But that...that was totally worth this and 900 sq feet of cheap space (again...not the best photos)




Cost of reorg

lightly used Kenmore portable washing machine - $300
Ikea shelf - $30
Card table - free

Total cost of reorg: $330

Kitchen Reorg: Cooking in a New York City Apartment #1

I was made in a tiny kitchen

I love to cook. I love being involved in every detail of this one activity that will produce something that I can share with H. When I am chopping and searing and whipping and baking, I don't think about my bosses. I don't worry about my financial future. I don't stress that my research will be scooped. I think about cooking and baking. All of life's stresses become a question of whether I overbeat flour, or if the crumbs of butter are big enough to make air pockets in the biscuits. If I could go back and rewrite the last 20 years, I probably would have ditched science and become a chef.

....so when I moved to New York 8 years ago, I figured this part of me would have to die. My first roommate forbade me from using the stove or oven. I spent 5 months eating spinach salad, bananas and cheez its. My second apartment was in the pre-cool Long Island City. I lived across from a methadone clinic and adjacent to warehouses which, as it turned out, were being used for crack processing. Groceries had to be brought from Manhattan to Queens.....so I ate a lot of rice and beans, bananas and cheez its.

I landed my first studio apartment in Manhattan a year after I moved here. It was the most amazing 250 sq feet I've ever been in because it was all mine. It had an unfinished green marble fireplace, bright white brick walls, 14 foot ceilings, a dishwasher, tonnes of light....and no drawers, no oven...just two gas elements on the counter. It had been a year since I have cooked anything and I had had enough cheez its. The rent was cheap as hell and the apartment was pretty and in a good neighbourhood in Manhattan. A minor problem like "no oven" was not about to keep me out of this apartment. I bring you kitchen reorg #1 - hang pots and cutlery on the wall, buy a convection oven (Hamilton Beach).

Tiny kitchens are an NYC reality. Here is the first of my kitchen rehabs ca. 2004.

That oven cooked and baked everything I wanted to cook or bake - just in small portions. I lived alone and had a very busy schedule, so most times I was baking just for me anyway. My kitchen-aid mixer (not shown) fit in this kitchen, but was a little over the top given I could only bake six cookies at a time (granted, in 5 minutes). Total cost of reorg:

Hardware for pots: $20, Ikea

Wine Rack: $2, Ikea

Convection Oven: $100, Target

Total cost: $122

Budget friendly dinner: Cucumber, Apple and Dill salad

Graduate students can eat healthily without racking up credit card debt on groceries. Every now again I throw up a recipe on this site that demonstrates my point. This is a quick and dirty meal for hot Summer days and tight wallets. It is budget friendly for two reasons a) I didn't have to heat up the house to make it (and therefore didn't have to turn on the air conditioner to cool it down and b) the total cost of the ingredients came to a little over $5.





I ate this on Sunday night with a microwave-poached egg.


Cucumber, Apple Dill Salad (serves 2-4)


2 cucumbers, deseeded and chopped into 1 inch by 1/2 inch pieces

1 green apple , chopped into similarly sized pieces

3 gloves of garlic, chopped

3 scallions, chopped

3-4 tablespoons of fresh dill, chopped

1 cup of 0% fat greek yogurt

salt and pepper to taste




As you can see, the recipe involves a lot of chopping :)


Mix the yogurt, scallions, garlic, dill and salt and pepper together. The longer you let this mixture sit, the more garlic-y it will become. I let it sit for about 5 minutes. Toss the cucumber and apple together in a separate bowl. Combine the two mixtures.

Warning: the salt will draw water out of the cucumbers, so serve right after you combine the two mixtures.

Damn tasty and it cooled me off to boot!

Under $10 indulgence #1 - Mighty Leaf Tea

Little gifts to me are a big part of how I brought my spending under control. When I first moved to New York, I was dropping plastic cards down on high end designer shoes and purses. I ate out every night and drank expensive drinks..and cheap drinks...well...I mean, I drank like a graduate student. I drank a lot. Every little bit of it went on a credit card.

My income, however, had dropped to lower than a 1/3 of what it had been the year before when I was viably employed. When you earn less than $15K a year, Chanel shoes and regular drinks and dinner at Pravda should be well out of your reach. They, of course, were well out of my reach. I spend this way because I felt inadequate. Around then of my second year in New York I realized what a mess I had had made and decided to get myself out of it.

I had about $20K in credit card debt, a failing marriage and a bit of no-starter degree. The very first thing I did was set about earning some extra cash. I took a term off of my degree to earn some extra cash and managed to clear 1/2 the debt. I divorced my husband - a man who made me unhappy and who had very, very unhealthy spending habits. When I returned to school 5 months later, I started a savings account and developed a plan to clear the rest of the debt on my lower graduate income. I took up extra teaching positions, a college assistant position and I worked out a debt repayment record and plan for myself. The divorce, the debt repayment all made me feel better about myself. So as to not feel deprived, I changed the meanings of the words "splurge" and "deserve". A "splurge" became an item I could afford within my actually income, but the cost of which would not help me noticeably reduce my debt. "Deserve" came to mean items that would not interfere with my debt reduction or savings.

I worked out that I could afford a $10 item every month or so that would be just for me and would make me feel special. At times this item has been an extra $10 so I could get a fancy shampoo. Other times, it has been a movie I really wanted to see. Most of the time I bank it to buy higher priced items like clothing. This month, it is Mighty Leaf Tea.

I love tea. My firm belief that a warm drink = warm thoughts has recently be substantiated by a study published in Science . Mighty Leaf Tea Company is a Californian company that produces whole leaf teas wrapped in silken tea bags. Now, I'm not sure if "silken" means "silk", but the company assures the buyer that the pouches are biodegradable. Sadly, the cellophane packges that the bags are placed in do not degrade. A supercool feature of the company's site is character, origin and health benefit information for each tea as well as customer ratings and comments. Honestly, I find the customer ratings more helpful than the company's own description of the tea flavour.

My personal fave Mighty Leaf tea is Orange Dulce, which sells in NYC for about $7.50 for 15 bags (currently $6.96 online). It is a blend of black and green tea leaves with jasmine flowers, vanilla and orange flavours. It is smooth tasting - like chamomile, with hints of wood and citrus. The company claims it tastes a bit like port. I drink port on an almost weekly basis and I don't taste port-like flavours in this tea at all. Still, it is an amazing cuppa.

I'm pi$$ poor. Let's crock pot

It has been a really long time since I've updated this blog. As my repertoire of graduate jobs has started to dwindle and I enter the cold and money-poor month of January, I have been forced to squish my New York City life into a shrinking budget.

Luckily for me, Christmas brought the gift of slow cooker. NYC kitchens are tiny. As a result, I'm a bit of a fascist when it comes to determining what appliances will and will not be in my kitchen. For years I lived with a kitchen-aid mixer and an electric nettle. I lived that way very happily. Since moving in with my bf, my kitchen has been hammered with appliance gifts. Everything from food processors to toasters. Someone has even given me a knife sharpener...presumably for my one and only knife.

This Christmas my grandmother gave me a crock pot. At first, I was horrified - where-the-hell-am-I-going-to -put-this horrified. I quickly warmed up to the gift as it would give me two greater presents a) cheap tasty food and b) boyfriend cooking time.

Despite having owned an antique Westinghouse meter tall slow cooker for years, I've never actually cooked anything in a slow cooker. I used the Westinghouse machine for storage until I had to store it in my grandmother's garage pre-NYC move. Turns out, it's like an idiot's kitchen. I can throw anything in there and it, more or less, comes out ok.

Tonight I decided to work the crock pot to save cash on something on which I typically spend lots of cash - eating in Indian restuarants. NYC has a slew of great Indian restaurants. It is really easy to blow my weekly budget on one night of chicken makhani and a couple of Taj mahals......so I busted out the crock pot and it was cheap and amazing. Here is how I did it.

Most of these ingredients I had at home already - starting from scratch would be a bit of an investment.

Chicken Makhani a la Crock Pot

1/4 Ghee or oil (I'm really lazy about this. I usually throw in 2 Tbs of butter and 3 Tbs of olive oil)
2 lbs of chicken thighs, bones in, skin on (skin and rinse the thighs before cooking)
1/2 cup of onion minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp of ground cayenne
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 inch of fresh ginger, minced
2 tsp of curry powder (You can also buy this - old stuff will taste bad. I make my own by roasting until fragrant but not burnt 1/4 cup of coriander seeds, 2 Tbs of cumin seeds, 1 Tbs of black peppercorns, 2 tsp fenugreek, 2 cinnamon sticks, 1 Tbs of ground tumeric, 2 tsp of ground green cardamon or crushed pods, 1 tsp of whole cloves, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 dried red chili pepper with stem or a 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper. Fenugreek is really important to this recipe as it gives most Indian food found in U.S. Indian restuarants its characteristic flavour. Check your health food store or an indian food store for it. It is pretty cheap. Grind witha mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder).
2 Tbs Greek yogurt
1 cup of canned tomatos (diced. I used cherry tomatoes, but plum or beef are fine)
2 Tbs of butter (I almost always use salted, but you can sub unsalted)
1/4 cup of water
1 tsp garam masala (you can buy this but I have the stuff to make my own - toast until fragrant 3 Tbs of cumin seeds, 1 Tbs coriander seeds, 1 stick of cinnamon, 1 tsp of green cardamon powder - or 5 crushed cardamon pods, 5 cloves, 1 tsp of ground nutmeg, 1/4 tsp of allspice, 1 tsp of black peppercorns, half a star anise, 2 bay leaves. Grind with a mortar and pestle or with a coffee grinder.)
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp hot paprika
1 cup heavy whipping cream

Heat oil in a large frying pan. Skin and rinse chicken thighs before placing in pan. Fry the chicken on both sides until cooked and light brown on outside (about 15 minutes). Remove the thighs and place them in the bottom of the crock pot, leaving the oil in the frying pan. Add minced onions, salt and cayenne pepper to the pan and saute until onions brown slightly. Add garlic and ginger and saute until fragant, or about 2 minutes. Add curry powder and saute for 30 seconds. Add greek yogurt and saute until it is well asborbed into mixture (there should not be excess liquid). Add tomatoes and butter and saute until bubbling. Remove from heat. Add garam masala, paprika, and bay leave. Pour onto chicken in crock pot. Pour water into the frying pan to rinse the remaining mixture off of the pan and then pour into crock pot. Add 1 cup of heavy cream to crock pot and mix gently. Cook at high heat (setting 2) for 4 hours.
Serves 6 people.

I served this on whole grain basmati rice and it was soooooo good. We have tonnes for lunch tomorrow.

I had the spices before I made the dish so the total cost was a little lower than it might be for someone else.

2 lbs of chicken thighs - $5.50
1 cup of heavy cream - $1.50
2 Tbs of yogurt - $0.50 (2 cup tub of greek yogurt was $2.49)
ginger - $0.50
1/2 cup of onion - $0.40 (whole onion $0.80)
Butter - $1.00 -(two sticks $3.00)
Diced tomatoes - $1.00 (2 cup can ~$3.00)
2 cup of dry Basmati rice - $2.00 (2 lb bag $5.00)

Total cost - $12.40 for 6 people...not bad. Salt, bay leaves and premixed spices would cost another $10 in total. The amount used in this recipe is about $1's worth.

Most importantly, a Taj Mahal will run about $4. A double Taj Mahal beer will cost about $7 in a grocery store.