We bought five yards of burlap in three pieces, multiple colors of spray paint, and three cheap wooden frames used to stretch fabric.

We went outside, scrunched up the burlap, and spray painted like crazy with one color. Then we unscrunched, rescrunched, and sprayed like crazy with a different color. We did that for about 45 minutes until we were really happy with the colors.

After the three pieces dried, we stapled them onto their frames.

Even though we have spent a couple of thousand of dollars on 8 other prints and paintings in the last 4 years, those colored burlap pieces have always been our favorite.

P.S. Remind Paul to change first, lol!

My frugal confession this week is that 2 weeks ago I asked my son where he wanted to go to dinner for his 16th birthday. Knowing that it would cost over $100 for dinner for 6-8 people, I headed over to http://www.plasticjungle.com to buy a discounted gift card to pay for the evening out. Outback Steakhouse gift cards were 13% off!
It felt good to save a little…especially since the next morning we woke up and found that someone had stolen out credit card number last week and spent over $800 on our card! ARG!

Have a great week!
Momma J

Although your changes have been drastic, you are taking your finances into your hands, so good for you! Keep wrapped up in blankets, and I look forward to hearing more of your frugal confessions.

1) Thermostat is set at 53 degrees but the house hardly gets that cool. Yes, I’m dressed in layers.

2) Water heater is set to “Vacation mode” for most of the day. The water can keep hot for at least 2 days — I discovered this when I forgot to return it to normal mode before taking a shower. Water was still hot enough to finish.

3) Opened doors and windows today, it reached 60 degrees.

Result: So far this winter, gas bill is roughly 1/3 of last year’s. The gas company sent somebody over to check the gas meter for tampering.

And that’s just the gas bill. Stay tuned, more confessions next Friday…

Anyway, my frugal confession this week: free tv online! Its amazing how many shows are available for free on hulu in addition to networks putting their shows online like NBC, PBS, etc. All we paid for was a $2 cable that hooks from our laptop to our TV so we can watch the shows on our television. This month we also have a 30-day Netflix trial and many of the movies and tv shows you can watch instantly online! If eventually we find we run out of free material on other websites, I may consider a Netflix subscription so we can have the on-demand access for much less than a cable subscription. But the way its looking right now, there’s tons of stuff out there! Last week we were watching a few different home renovation shows on hulu, it was great!