In the theme of our (newly adopted) organic living, we would like to share with you the making of real vanilla extract. Real vanilla extract is expensive, so we have been known to purchase to the cheaper version which is imitation vanilla extract, still $4 a bottle. However, the first ingredient is water, and the second is propylene glycol – what the hell is that? The eighteenth ingredient on the list, finally (after alcohol, which was the only ingredient we recognized) was ethyl vanillin.

So we decided to make our own vanilla. If Ethyl can make vanillin, so can we! And we’ll save tons of money!!

#1 – Buy vodka. As it turns out, newly-voted-member of the mission committee at church Queen B. hunkers down next to the floorboards of the truck, while Honey purchases two fifths of their best vodka. Current savings: -$34

#2 – Buy vanilla beans. Go to Good Food Store and purchase $28 of organic vanilla beans from Madagascar, along with various all-natural supplements to assist with weight-loss, and glass bottles (no doubt organic, because they’re in the Good Food Store) to put the vanilla in. Followed by lunch special of tofu egg salad made with vegan-aise, organic hokey-pokey, dried apricots from the bulk section, and a bag of raw milk cheese curds that were eaten while shopping. Current savings: -$136

#3 – drive to Queen B’s house because she has the tools – funnels, kitchen shears, and homemade brownies – in Honey’s 13 miles-to-the-gallon truck. Stop for gas on the way. Current savings: -$170

#4 – Sample the vodka for freshness. This involves closing all the blinds so that any other members of the church mission committee don’t witness it.

The church mission committee

#5 – Bottle the vodka with 4 vanilla beans in each jar until we run out of beans. What do we do with the extra vodka?

#6 – Sample a little more vodka, to celebrate our frugality and good sense to make our own vanilla. Toast the impending ruin of the propylene glycol farmers. We could probably sell our vanilla on Etsy. Toast our future success as entrepreneurs.

#7 – After some toasts, Queen B. admits that she was known for her vodka fruit shooters in college, and would like to pass down the traditional recipe for future generations.

#8 – Out comes the blender, and the perfecting of the recipe ensues. Oh Honey we really shouldn’t let this vodka go to waste, besides, we need to drink all the evidence before your father comes home. 

#9 – First try at fruit shooters. This is good stuff, but we need more pineapple juice.

#10 – Second try at fruit shooters. This is seriously yum, next batch needs more orange juice

#11 – Third try at fruit shooters. OMG this stuff is frickin’ amazing, add more vodka!

#12 – After six tries, we have the recipe just the way Queen B. thinks she remembers it.

#13 – Dad (Left Brain) calls on his way home from work, Queen B. gets the giggles and hands the phone to Honey who tells him to pick up Chinese because we’re too drunk to get anywhere near the stove to cook. Current savings: -$212

Bonus Feature: Queen B’s Perfected Fruit Shooter beverage, circa 1977.
Quantities are a little fuzzy, but we’re sure this is very close:

• Half a can of frozen orange juice consentrate (although orange-mango or Orange-pineapple can be substituted)
• 1 fifth of vodka
• Coconut extract
• 1 can of pineapple chunks in juice
• Ice cubes
• Lots of little plastic swords
• Maraschino cherries (optional)

Pour your preferred quantities of OJ, vodka, and pineapple chunks in juice into the blender. Add a couple drops of coconut extract and ice, and blend until frothy. Stab pineapple chunks and cherries with plastic swords and add to the drink – if they land on the floor just throw them in anyway, the vodka will kill all the germs. Drink with a straw for additional effect (sucking all the vodka off the bottom).

Note – Change of business plan from Queen B. and Honey’s Etsy store – scratch selling vanilla extract, we’re going to sell frozen fruit shooter kits. This stuff is awesome!

PS – We were going to take a picture of what we did, Pinterest-style, but Queen B. wouldn’t get off the floor – she had her face plastered to the sliding glass door that had snow on the other side, trying to get rid of the gin blossoms before we took a picture, where she fell asleep.

So, we have two giant Labradors- they’re adorable, but they are 200lbs of dog who eat 30lbs of dog food a week, and put out quite a bit of dog doo in our yard. We tried composting it traditionally (above ground in a mesh-type composter) but we needed it to decompose faster. You can buy commercial kits, but we were unable to find anything as big as we were hoping for (we made a 30-gallon bin) and the 10-gallon systems are easily $50-60+ online. Onto the interwebs for inspiration, and a Saturday project later, we have a working doggy doo waste bin for about $41.

To do this project we used a large heavy-duty plastic garbage bin with lid, some rocks (we bought a bag of river rock), and some septic tank bacteria solution.

1) First, we cleared an area where we wanted the doggy doo bin, at least ten feet away from the vegetable garden. We chose an area under some bushes where it wasn’t easily visible, but still right near the yard for easy waste disposal.

2) Marmot dug a hole, deep and wide enough that the garbage bin can sit in it, but not so deep that we can’t still get the lid on.

2) We  cut the bottom out of the garbage bin, although you can always drill holes in the bottom too.

3) We put the bin in the hole, and packed the dirt around it, building up towards the top.

4) Poured the rock into the bottom.

5) And then added doggy doo! I’ll spare you a picture of that, and highlight one of our adorable doggy doo suppliers instead.

6) Last step was adding some septic tank bacteria solution, which we’ll do about once a month. The bottle we bought is enough for a 500-gallon septic tank, so with a 30-gallon bin we’re thinking the bottle should last over a year.

And ta-da, we have a great doggy doo composter that will allow the doggy doo to degrade and be absorbed back into the soil!

With the heavy-duty garbage bin ($31.99), river rock ($2.59), and septic treatment solution ($6.99), our total was $41.57.

From: Mom, queenb@thehoneyb.com
To: Honey, honey@thehoneyb.com
Date: Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 10:22 PM
Subject: Estate Sale Recap

Yes Honey B – that has to be your life long Mantra “Say No to Stuff”. Or you will end up like your Great Aunt Marie. The oldest of twelve children, she lived her whole (single) life hauling and hoarding stuff into the large family home. In the end she died from it. The house caught fire and she could not see her way through the piles of newspapers to get to the little trail that led out. She died of smoke inhalation I think. Personal Note: Your fathers side of the family has some weird ones. 

On that note I thought that I would give you my “5 Rules for Thrift Shop/Rummage Sale/Estate Sale Shopping”. You have to really work at keeping these in mind when you thrift and rummage and estate sale shop… it is just so easy to say “Oh its so cheap, I will just get it.”

Rule #1 – If you don’t say “That is just what I have been looking for…” keep walking. It may be cute, fun, cheap or just plain flashy – but if you haven’t been thinking that you needed one before you walked in, you don’t need one now!

Rule #2 – If you don’t LOVVVVVEEEEEE IT or IT’S PEERRRRFFEECCTTT- don’t take it. Whereas you can return things for a refund from a retail store if you decide that it really is not perfect when you get it on in front of the mirror at home – once you buy it at a sale and it is in your car, it is yours forever. Forever is a VERY long time, but lets leave marriage out of this…

Rule #3 – Something in – Something out! If you come home with a car load of new “stuff” you have to come up with a car load of stuff to take to the Salvation Army within the week. Or you can plan ahead – I like to do it this way: if I can come up with 3 bags of giveaway I can go and shop this weekend at that sale. Your house has only so much room in it and it is probably full already. Anything that requires you to buy more storage totes is not saving you any money and is moving you closer to being your generation’s version of Aunt Marie!

Rule #4 – Have a budget for the day, and don’t go over it! You can overspend easier when it is cheaper for some reason. I think it is the feeling that you are getting so much for your dollar that makes you feel so free to throw those dollars around. Like Gramma Inez use to say “If you watch the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves.”

Rule #5 – Remember … More is not always better. Just because it is cheap does not mean that you can justify taking home more of it. Just because you can fill a whole bag for $5 does not mean you should. I have spent $10 on a large bag of sale stuff and had nothing that was really worth much …. I could have gotten one good thing of the sale rack at the local department store. Buy one get one free ?? It’s only good if you are standing in Walmart looking at Jockey shorts or running socks, something that you want multiples of anyway. When they say …”here we will throw this in” You should think ….”or you could just throw it away” …. because that is what you will be doing when you get home with your free load of “stuff”!

Well Honey B. that is all the wisdom I can squeeze out of my little head tonight. By the way that Frosted Pumpkin candle was mine …. how did it end up on your list????

Love from your mother,
Queen B.

From: Mom, queenb@thehoneyb.com
To: Honey, honey@thehoneyb.com
Date: Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 1:40 PM
Subject: The Honey B.

Honey B. — This is your Mother speaking — does that make me the “Queen B”????

A few comments on your “Shift to Thrift” as I will call it …. First of all I called your grandmother and read your post to her. We would like you to know that nobody ever died from having their Orange Juice diluted! You are exhibit A. If you can go 7 weeks instead of 6 for a haircut you can certainly stand another 8 oz. of water in your 32 oz. carton of orange juice. I will however admit that when I was filling up the carton with water at the halfway point and putting in a little food coloring that may have been going to far.

Now, what is this about transferring money from one account to another – sounds like a slight of hand game to me. Just because it is in one account or another does not make it saved! That would be like me putting the carton of eggnog in the skim milk container and calling it diet!

Lastly, cut the satellite. Call it going green – or going frugal – or going nuts. You can live with the eight basic channels that come in free – a you will love that little extra time you will have to spend with Marmot!

“Queen B” (aka Mom)

I’ll be honest….I’m high maintenance. Since Marmot left his job, I’ve given up acrylic nails, high-end makeup (*sniff* I love you Sephora!) and those $100+ haircuts/colors. I’d love to say it hasn’t been that bad, but its sucked.

There have been a few things that have helped me on my journey to frugality, and none of them involve diluting the morning OJ.

-Man Vs. Debt’s article, 42 Ways to Radically Simplify Your Financial Life It goes beyond the run of the mill and includes some things that I found incredibly useful such as #29, Create a List of Everything You Own (which I’m still trying to do, which suggests I may have a slight problem) and #16, Insure Adequately in case you ever considered cutting insurance as a way to cut costs. We’ve all done that, right? No? Well, uh, me either. Ahem.

-Simplify Your Life {affiliated link} I read this book when I was probably 11, it was sitting on my Mom’s bookshelf and I read the entire thing in a day. I vowed that I would use all the suggestions when I grew up and while I have to some extent (the majority of my wardrobe is black and grey- I don’t own a single item in navy blue!) its a book I like to re-read. Oftentimes it helps just to have the concept of simplicity in the back of my mind as I make decisions that would contribute to (or detract from) overall simplicity in life.

-Salvation Army, Goodwill, and the like- my Mom was the Queen of the Thrift Store, and I think its genetic. I’ve found more awesome name-brand stuff, some still with tags, for a fraction of the retail price. Yesterday I wore an amazing long dress coat to work and got so many compliments on it….and no one was the wiser that it was $8 at the Salvation Army- with tags. For a half hour of searching the racks, Marmot walked away with three Brooks Brothers non-iron dress shirts for $3 each, they’re normally $80 new. Never ever again will I mock my Mom’s thrift store habits!

-Keeping track of the savings! Everytime I do something that saves money, I transfer that money to our savings account (or as of right now, our closing costs account!) and watch it grow. We changed to a cheaper satellite TV package, so every month I transfer the difference to the account. As much as we think we don’t have room in the budget, its amazing how the little deposits add up.

-And any number of other painless little things that really add up….the thermostat down a few degrees, going an extra weeks between hair cuts (does six weeks really matter compared to seven?), using sites like PaperbackSwap instead of buying books, and going with store-brand groceries.

What are your favorite painless frugal tips….?