What's scarier?

I wrote this like 3 weeks ago, and forgot to Publish it. Sorry, I am still alive ;-)


The fact that I'm making bread from scratch today, or the fact it appears to have turned out?

I've come to the conclusion that yep, I've really gone off the deep end. I mean I don't think I have, but after being told that quite a few times, and making my own bread, I guess it must be true. Oh well. I truly started down this road of trying to go more natural, and back to basics as a two part effort. One was to clear #1's diet of most red dyes and excess sugar, and the other was I found it is cheaper and moving every 2 years takes it's toll on a budget. Since I have been asked how I manage to keep our food budget down the easiest answer is that I buy very little convince/snack foods, lots of generics, and do things like have Monday be Soup Night (hence the homemade bread to go with the black bean soup I'm planning for dinner). I found out soup is actually easy and cheap to make as long as you go with in season veggies or things like beans and lentils.

What is surprising is that on the way down this road I remembered I use to be an environmentalist, the reason why I was and how I planed to save the world. Even stranger is the fact that I've noticed that this is the cumulation of the two parts of my personality I've always struggled to combine.

Resolutions and Challenges

First I don't do New Year's resolutions. I know I won't stick with them. In fact I'm kind of a New Years scrooge when it comes to them. Now occasionally I will take the new year to overlook all my goals in life to see where I'm at with them, but usually only because someone asks in the form of a resolution post on a board. This takes it's form in other areas as well. Like I'm not resolving to start exersizing, but for a while I've been trying to figure out how to quit work and to start something as a family. Because of everyone else making their resolutions the Y is now offering no joiner's fee so we may join, not because it's a resolution, but because it's cheaper now then in 3 months. Although this is still undecided, I'll be crunching more numbers later and deciding how frugally I want to live in exchange for good health ;-)

Now on the Challenges front. I read this artical today. If your like me and never actually read the artical linked, it's about how a group of friends took the year of 2006 to not buy anything new with a few exceptions. I've actually been hearing about this movement for a while now both on frugal blogs and enviromental boards/blogs I read. Really I've challenged myself to reduce what I buy new a long time ago. I know not as dramatic, or newsworthy, but hey I'm not a cold turkey type of person. I will say I think we have also gotten some of the "rewards" the people in the artical do. I've also seen the Compact - Karma in action.

When I think back I honestly think I've probably bought less new each month then I could count on one hand. Now the last week I went a little nuts. I bought a shirt for DS that was on clearence cheaper then Goodwill, A box of 10 candles on clearence for $3.74, and some nice shelves to organize our basement, and today some makeup on sale for 50% off (I wonder if makeup and hair dye are part of their exceptions....yes growing out the gray thing fell apart). Still. I think I might just start keeping track of what I buy new (non food/toiletry items) and see how I stack up to those buying nothing. I guess I really had better quit my job!

So anyone else up to this challenge? If so I'll track my new from retail purchases online. Otherwise I can take a hint of lack of interest, and will do it in a notebook.