These are so pretty I don’t think I’ll take them down after Christmas:

The Ikea bowl, with matching colours:

We even got some Christmas mugs! We’ve been paining over having just 3 mugs in the house, and these were so sweet… and 1€ each!

Well, this is our first real post and we’re late writing it! We meant to have it ready days ago, but nothing is getting done around here on time lately. This is our post for “Friday is for food” over at Almost Frugal Food.

Since winter is officially here (well, not officially, but you get the idea) we want to share this amazingly frugal, easy and hearty recipe.

For 2 people (sorry, I cook for two!) you need:

- 2 garlic cloves

- 2 tsp oil

- 1 tsp paprika

- 4 bread slices (yes, that days old bread that is so hard you could use it as a weapon)

- 2 eggs

- 3 cups chicken broth or water + stock cube (which is my choice because in this recipe it doesn’t make much of a difference and I rather save my good broth for other soups)

- some cured/smoked/whatever bacon, chopped (about 1 and 1/2 tbsp)

And then you…

Fry the garlic cloves. Add the bacon. When cooked, add the bread. When golden, add the paprika. After a few seconds, add the broth (or the water with the stock cube dissolved). Let it cook for a while. Before serving, add the eggs, and as soon as the white is cooked, serve. Enjoy!

We’re back strong, we’ve rested, and we have a milion ideas to write about, so be ready to read! Now, in 11 hours I have a German exam, so I better go and study a bit, because after the exam it’s all post writting!

I’ll be away a few days.

I got a call last week from an NGO I’ve collaborated with before offering my interpreting services for free and later finding out that that congress had a high budget that was spent in fancy catering and paying expensive acomodation to the speakers. That, I didn’t like. But I decided to give them another shot. And when they called and asked me to participate in a campaign in local schools talking about children’s rights, I thought it could be nice. So, we had to meet at 7.30AM at the NGO headquarters. I get up early enough, I leave the house with plenty of time and I’m at the door at 7.26. I wait. And I wait. They didn’t give me a phone number to call in case something happened,but they did have mine! So I wait. And keep waiting. And at 8.05, 35 minutes past the meeting time and 40 after I arrived, I see a bus approaching and going my way home. I get on it, my hands frozen because I was so worried about not being late that I forgot my gloves. I go home and send them an email which reads:

Good morning, XXXXXX. As we agreed, I was at 7.30 at your headquarters. I’ve been there for 35 minutes and nobody showed up. I was willing to help, but not to waste my time. I have a job and I put it on hold so I could participate in this project, but what I can’t do is wake up earlier than usual, go somewhere and stand in the cold for over half an hour for nothing, I’m sorry.

Maybe I could have been softer, but the cold weather makes me grumpy. I didn’t want to leave to get a coffee across the street in case they came, so they wouldn’t have to wait for me!

And trust me, when I need a coffee, I need one. Like now. Off I go.

I always thought I had good posture when sitting, I never had to be told to sit straight, but recently I’ve found myself sitting in the most awful ways. You may not believe it, but I was working on my computer like this: 

See the bottom right? No, that wasn’t me. I was sitting like that but my neck was so thrown back that the back of my head actually touched my back! I can’t believe I’m sharing this Quasimodo info, but admitting it is the first step to recovery, right? Ha! well, I’ve taken the first AND the second one, since I signed up for the classes!

I miss the days when I was doing pilates 4x/week. I felt so great and never ever had back pains!

Now, this afternoon is the first one. We’ll see (and I’ll tell you) how it goes.

1. Wall stickers. More specifically, these:

We are thinking about the green ones, since the silver wouldn’t give a nice contrast to our vanilla walls. But we are very scared of not liking the effect. I’ve never seen a place with wall stickers. They sound cool and a nice and original alternative to good old frames, but I’m afraid they will look cheap and will start to peel off two days later. Or the opposite, that we won’t like them and when we try to remove them they’ll peel off half the wall paint. That would be scary, specially since we’re renting.

2. A long frame, placed horizontally, 

with some b/w pictures. 

This would be quite difficult for us, notorious for our empty frames, since we’d actually have to choose five photos to go in there and then go and have them printed and it’s just too much. This option would probably call for cards or cut-outs from a magazine or whatever. But not photos. And this reminds me that I should be choosing the photos that will eventually go in the living room frames and going to the store and having them done. I’m always just too lazy! Because, also, the ones in our bedroom have to be square. And guess what. They don’t have square paper. So I asked if they could print it square leaving two blank stripes on the sides and I would cut them. No, they can’t. They can only stretch it to match the rectangle of the paper. I hate incompetent people who make me use photoshop!

3. Art. Unchosen for now. And because of our tight budget, quite hard to find, both the print/painting/whatever and the frame. And it meant that we actually had to go and find something, which could take us another 4 months (we’ve been living here for 4 months and 2 days?!?!?!?!?!?!?!)

So, obviously we are going with number one. For starters, it’s the cheapest option (14€ against 18+printing of the photos fr option 2 and who knows how much for option 3) . Also, my cousin needs some sticker, so we would share the price with her and she would get to keep some of them, so the coust will go down to 10€. Anyway, in the package come twice as many as we need, so it’s a win-win. Another advantage is that is somehow less intrusive than frames, since it is more “integrated” with the wall, it’s way more original (if we manage to make it work, look nice and not peel off) and supposedly it’s easier to take off without leaving any trace than, say, drill holes.

We’re thinking of making a big branch going from the top of the door on the left (kitchen) to the middle of the door on the right (living room). What do you think?

This one was a present from my aunt Tere, as it was this cactus that apparently has beautiful flowers come spring:

They both live in the kitchen, together with our ever growing aloe vera:

Our basil plant (which we were told would die in September, and look at it!

And our “money plant”. People say here that the nicer your money plant looks, the wealthier you are. Apparently, our No-Spend End of the Year is proving successful!

Right in the entrance is our ficus benjamina, looking strong!

In the office is a cactus that Eric bought me because it was very cute with its pink flower. There were many more  pink flowers after that one, but right now I think it’s waiting for spring to bloom again.

In our bedroom, right by the wondow so it gets enough light, is the orchid. I can’t think of the time when it won’t have flowers!

Now, in the living room lives this beauty that we got from Ikea:

And Eric’s bonsais:

We’re shocked as to how many plants we have, we never thought of us as the plant type of people, and even less in an apartment without a balcony! But they look so nice and help bringing a happy natural touch to every room. I whish we had windows in our bathrooms so we could have some plants there too!

We want to share a few things we’ve learnt this first month and hope they’ll help you if you decide to give this a try:

DO:

- Plan your meals. No more buying everything you normally eat. Just buy what you’re going to need to cook the recipes you’ve decided to cook this week.

- Check the unit price. So often we’ve found out that a certain product wasn’t as cheap as we thought. Check the price per item, per weight, or however you divide the item you’re purchasing and see what’s cheaper.

- Cut in half the detergent and softener you use. We haven’t taken the plunge -yet- to make our own detergent or to skip softener altogether. But during this month we’ve discovered that using half the recommended amount in each load was giving us the exact same results for half the price! Some more tips about greening your laundry, here.

- Cook in batches. Right now there’s a huge pot of broth on the stove. A couple potatoes, some celery, two tomatoes, two carrots, a handful of chickpeas, some chicken bones we saved ages ago and half a pork rib. It’ll give us at least 10 servings of soup with noodles and all the veggies will be blended into a nice vegetable soup, all for less than 5€. Yesterday we froze 10 servings of pasta sauce (with meat and everything) that costed us 4€ total.

- Make the most of your resources. A distant relative of mine has hundreds of navel orange trees. Yesterday we offered to pick some of them in exchange for some oranges. We gave an hour of work and got the equivalent of 15€ in oranges. 

- Stop using paper towels. There’s something decadently nice about fabric napkins, and cloth rags clean just as well as disposable. AND since you just toss them in the washing machine, they are replaced for free. Oh, and don’t tell me you’re losing money because you’ll have to run more washing loads. A napkin or a rag fits in with any load, no matter how full the machine is (and since this is about frugality, I hope it is full before you run it!). Some more tips about greening your laundry, here.

DON’T:

- Buy the cheapest option no matter what. I know that a certain brand of spaghetti sauce may look cheaper, and maybe it’s still cheaper than another one even after you compare weights, but if you need to use twice as much in order to taste it, it’s not worth it. And, of course, always check nutritional values. The point of this experiment is to cut back as much as you can regarding money, not health.

- Go more than once a week to the supermarket. Make it a rule and live by it. This will force you to plan your meals AND you’ll only have one chance a week of buying useless things. It has made a dramatic difference for us. Also, trust me, you spend the exact amount of time in there if you’re buying for a week than if you’re buying for a day, so this way you’re also saving lots of time!

- Think it’s all over when you go over your plans. Always remember the difference between a budget and a No-Spend experiment. Life happens. In a budget, you can’t go over because you don’t have more money than this. Here, the point is to stay withing the limits you’ve stablished, but the point here is to see how low can you go, and maybe your limits were too ambitious. While I was sick and Eric working extra hours I bought some “comfort food” (fancy soup, cookies). This put us in a difficult situation regarding our goals, but with all we had learnt up until then, we were back on track the next week, and when I bought that I saw it as a luxury and was very careful as what to choose. Before, I would have tossed anything that looked good in the cart and go out without thinking it twice.

- Go crazy once your stablished timeframe is over. The point of doing this is to learn. To learn to see what’s necessary and what isn’t. To learn about ourselves and our limits, what we’re ready to give up and what we aren’t. If the day after your month/year/week is over you go shopping, order food and whatever, you’ll just have spend some very hard time, and that’s all. If you think about the experience, what you’ve learnt and what you’re ready to keep up with, you’ll end up saving lots of money, enjoying other aspects of your life other than material purchases and loving, savouring and enjoying much more than before any treat you give to yourself.