We Signed With Tenants!

I wanted to apologize for being a little absent from the blog the past few days. There was a lot going on here what with the holidays, construction, and unfortunately most of the family having a virus of some sort or another. I’m still recovering and a few of my kids still are as well… […]

How To Overcome An Unexpected Financial Crisis

Image courtesy of jesadaphorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net A reader, Heather, reached out to me, and mentioned how she had cancer and she went from being financially stable to in a big financial crisis, because of all the expenses involved in the treatments and being unable to work, and more. She asked me if I’d be able […]

Our Kids’ Free Upcycled Quadruple Bunk Bed

I had all sorts of plans for beds for my kids in our new home. We specifically designed the outlets and doors in the bedroom with the plan that we’d have a set type of beds that would be able to sleep all four of our kids. We were going to have 4 beds, in […]

Healthy Girl: 5 Small Lifestyle Changes to Lose Weight

This post is written by a blog reader. Losing at least a couple pounds is something that’s on just about everybody’s minds in some capacity. Beginning a weight-loss journey doesn’t have to begin with moving in to your local gym or eating crackers for every meal. Instead, imagine more realistic and sustainable changes that you […]

Our New Beautiful and Frugal Small Living and Dining Room

In the past few days a few different people asked me questions about living situations that brought to mind some things that were at the back of my mind for much of the duration of my marriage, and especially in the last 5 years where we lived in 484 square feet, with a family of […]

Foraging and Homemade Miso

My dad makes homemade miso. When I was a kid, I think he made miso once or twice, but since moving abroad with the family, he has made miso pretty regularly for a few years now. I have been asking and asking him to write me a post on miso making, but that hasn’t happened […]

Rental Kitchen Mostly Installed Ourselves!

So yesterday I posted that we installed our Ikea kitchen cabinets (upper) ourselves, first time doing cabinets, and it was much easier than we expected. Putting the cabinets together was a cinch, and installing them was not super simple, but easy enough. Today, my 9 year old son and I put together the rest of […]

We Finished Installing Our Ikea Kitchen

We did it! My kitchen is now complete! After 9 year old Lee and I built all of our Ikea kitchen cabinets, yesterday Mike and I installed them into our kitchen.  If I want to be honest about who did what, I went to the hardware store to get advice about what type of screws […]

Building Our Own Ikea Kitchen- Because We Can!

The kitchen, as it arrived… Yesterday in Ikea I placed an order for a complete kitchen, and as I paid for the delivery they assumed they also were charging me for assembly. When I told them that we were assembling it ourselves, they said “Oh, your builders are putting it together for you?” I told […]

Homemade DIY Pallet Nightstand or End Table

I went to Ikea today to pick up some more things for our home and to place an order for the kitchen, and when I got home, I saw that Mike had started working on another DIY project out of pallets we collected- a nightstand for me. I had mentioned that in our room I […]