Gift Wrapping, Quick and Easy!

Long ago I had to face the fact that I'm a terrible gift wrapper.  I don't know why, I just have no skill for it. The ubiquitous gift bag is a godsend for me at the holidays.  Most of us have a supply that we've received gifts in and we just keep recycling them, occasion after occasion.  Perfect!  Now that I'm a gypsy I no longer have that backlog of gift bags and when I went to the store to buy some for this year's gifts I was shocked by the prices.  I'm trying to have a very frugal Christmas this year and didn't want to add the cost of a bunch of gift bags to my bottom line.

While wandering around Michael's I came up with this idea, which I think is cute, and I wanted to share it with you.  I used plain brown paper lunch bags, a hole punch, some scrap yarn and a marker.  If you're artsy you could go a lot farther than I did with the bag decorating!

The first step is to stick your gift into the bag so you can determine the proper fold-over.  Take the gift back out, true up the fold and then punch the holes in the top.

Bag with holes punched in the top and my tassel jig

The next step is to make your tassel.  I used these directions to create my template.  I used the cardboard from the divider in a case of wine.  It took about 30 seconds to cut out the template freehand.  Disregard the notch on the lower left, that was a mistake!  Lay a long piece of yarn (long enough to thread through the holes in your bag and tie a nice bow) horizontally across the top of the template.  It helps if you cut a little slit in each side of the cardboard and slip the long yarn into it.  That helps hold the long yarn in place.  Then you simply wrap your yarn around and around the template, crossing the notched part, until it's as thick as you want your tassel to be.  Tie it at the top and through the notch and then cut the yarns at the bottom.  Go to the link to see Nezumi's pictures, she does an excellent job of illustrating the process, which makes it a lot easier to understand.

Put your gift in your bag, fold over the top, lining up the holes and then thread the long yarn though the holes in the bag, tie a bow and viola!  Decorate as you choose or simply add the recipient's name.  In my case, all my gifts are knitted and I used the same yarn to make the tassels as I did to make the gifts.  If you have no scrap yarn you can buy a skein very cheaply at Michael's, Hobby Lobby, Walmart or any place where they sell craft supplies.  You don't need fabulous, expensive yarns for this project.  Just get the cheapest yarn you can find in a color you like.

I think they're cute!  It probably took less than 30 minutes for me to make all five of these.

I used the same process with the boxed gift, just slid it into the bag.

What do you think?  Gift worthy?  I'll be finishing my last gift at the eleventh hour in my hotel room tomorrow night, en route to Florida but I'll get it done!

Poaching: The December Cooks' Challenge

This month's Daring Cooks' Challenge is about poaching.

Jenn and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose an Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie.

I love poached eggs so this month's challenge was nothing new to me.  Since I'm in the middle of getting ready to leave on a two-week driving trip to the east coast, I was glad that I could make it without much time or trouble.

I used the last two eggs I had in the fridge, some toasted English muffins, some basil pesto and a tomato that all needed to be eaten before I left and whipped up a tasty lunch.

There are a lot of tips out there about poaching eggs.  Adding a little white vinegar to your water will help set the egg whites but it's not necessary.  Making a little vortex in your water can help keep the egg whites together but it's not really necessary either and I've never been able to figure out how you would poach more than one egg at a time with that method.  I have no idea what adding a pinch of salt is supposed to accomplish.  There are lots of gadgets you can buy to help you with your egg poaching.  Some of them work pretty well but then you have a bunch of gadgets that need cleaning.

Poaching eggs is easy and quick and with just a little practice and the correct technique, you can poach perfect eggs every time.  The biggest mistake I see people make is using rapidly boiling water to poach their eggs.  If your water is furiously boiling away all you'll get is a mess.  You want your water to be fairly still with small bubbles rising from the bottom.  Crack your eggs, one at a time, in a small bowl and slip them into the water.  Use your slotted spoon to coax the whites around the yolks.  They'll set pretty quickly so you'll just need to gather the whites around the yolks once or twice and then you can slip the next egg into the water.  

If I'm only poaching two eggs I use a sauce pan, if I'm poaching a bunch I use a saute pan.  Medium poached eggs have completely set whites and slightly runny yolks.  Soft poached eggs, which I prefer, have very runny yolks and the whites may not be completely set.  The timing takes practice but generally speaking, two minutes for soft, three for medium.  Remove the eggs from the water with a slotted spoon and allow them to drain for a minute before placing on your dish.

This summer I experimented with olive oil poaching.  The results were delicious!  Once you perfect egg poaching, experiment with different poaching liquids like wines and stocks and various firm-fleshed fish.

How to Entertain on a Budget

This is a guest post by Alban who is a personal finance writer at Home Loan Finder, a home loan comparison website. 


If you would like to submit a guest post to SimplyForties, please review the guidelines here.

A budget of $100 for Christmas day at your place may not sound like a lot, but when you plan your menu, your groceries, your decorations and your drinks you can take out much of the stress of the season, which is rooted in the cost of the day. While everyone will be able to set aside a different amount for Christmas dinner it is still important to plan and budget for the day to avoid a financial hangover in the New Year. Plus, while it would be a lot easier to stretch a $100 budget to feed a Christmas dinner party with six guests than it would be to feed 20, everyone can apply these few tips to their festive season celebrations.

Create an Affordable Menu

If you have to limit the number of guests for affordability’s sake then explain the situation to extended family and plan another time to get together for Christmas which could be a picnic, a day at the movies or a camping trip. Christmas is not the time to overextend yourself on your budget because it is easy to think you have the funds available, until you remember all of your everyday bills and expenses, plus the fact that with the Christmas break, your next pay check may not be arriving for several weeks.

With your budget and guest list confirmed consider what you want to serve. Remember that turkey is more affordable than other birds such as duck or goose and you’ll also get more meat. Also plan for any children who will be there as you may not have to cater a normal adult meal for them.

To make your Christmas menu special even though you’re on a budget, choose one part of the meal you want to focus on. You can do this by electing to cook just the main dishes yourself and have each of your guests bring a side dish, or a salad or a dessert. Alternatively, you can spend more on a fancy dish for the entree and plan cheaper and simpler side dishes and dessert. With simple ingredients, easy methods and a few carefully selected seasonings you can create a traditional home cooked meal which doesn’t have to cost the same as a restaurant menu per plate.

When planning your menu it is also important to know your cooking skills and make sure you don’t plan a menu you can’t execute. A difficult menu results in more stress for you and can also mean more wasted food when dishes don’t turn out the way they should and can’t be served.

Save on Shopping

With your menu planned you can now start making your shopping list, remembering these few key tips:

·       Bulk can be cheaper. Buying a full turkey can often be cheaper by the kilo when compared to a smaller duck for example. Plus, you can cater to Christmas day and almost all of the holidays as you make the rest of the meal into kebabs, sandwiches and even use the carcass to make soup or stock. Also, as you’re making your list, identify common ingredients which are used in several of your recipes so you can buy these in bulk too.

·       Plan and shop early. Not only does this help you beat the inevitable price rise around Christmas time but also means you don’t have to buy everything at once. Not to mention you’ll also be saving yourself time and stress in beating the last minute crowds.

·       Reduce the frills. When catering to the masses you can get away with not including all of the add-ons and garnishes the dish usually needs. A simple meal which is made well will be well received by your guests and once it is on individual plates, it won’t matter how it looks.

Decorate the Dinner Table on a Budget

When you’re catering to your whole family in your home at once you’ll quickly find you are short on things like plates, glasses, serving platters and more. Therefore, borrow what you can from friends and family to save you buying items you’ll only use when everyone is together once or twice a year. You will be surprised at what your family and friends will be able to lend you once you ask.  Not only is Christmas the time for giving and sharing, it is also the time for excess so you can probably source extra tinsel, baubles, lights and tablecloths to create the perfect festive atmosphere.

If you’re worried about there being enough room in your oven, or the expense of having enough baking trays to cook everything at once, why not use your barbeque, where you can use cheap disposable aluminium foil trays? Another big expense when catering to your whole family can be the actual dinner table, but once you start getting creative with your decorations you will find ways to borrow tables and chairs from neighbours, or even disguise your outdoor setting with festive tablecloths.

If you don’t want to borrow everything, give what you need for Christmas dinner as a gift. Give your partner a dinner set or special decorations as their Christmas gift, as you are still giving and receiving presents, which can then be used and displayed right away.

Also consider making your own Christmas crackers which can be as simple as collecting some toilet rolls or paper towel rolls, some candy for inside, some tissue paper for hats and wrapping paper left over from last Christmas. You can then buy the cracker noise maker from craft stores and you have a thoughtful and affordable table setting.

At the same time you can also make table centrepieces with berries, nuts or leaves from the garden, arranged around a simple white candle. Printing place cards on your home computer and decorating them can also make a pretty keepsake for your guests.

Drink and be Merry

Another big expense on Christmas day is the alcohol so ask each guest to bring a bottle of wine, spirits, a mixer or a soft drink to ease your bill at the bottle shop. Plan your alcohol buys carefully too as you can often get a discount when you buy six bottles of wine for example.

Also make sure to buy large bottles of soft drink as this will be cheaper than cans and you can then switch all of your guests to soft drinks after dinner since many of them will need to drive home, and they’ll thank you the next day when they aren’t hung over.

I've never had a $100 dinner party.  What about you?  What are your best cost-cutting tips for entertaining?

Book Club at the Museum

Purple Robe and Anemones by Henri Matisse

I took part in an interesting tie-in at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston this weekend. Every organization is looking for ways to draw people in and this was an excellent one.  The museum publishes their booklist on their website and the books in this series have a storyline that features artwork or artists.  The Museum invites existent bookclubs to participate and also encourages individuals to join in.

This week we read "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Sara Houghteling, which was excellent.  The novel deals with the looting of French artwork during the German occupation of France in World War II.  The main character and narrator of the story is the son of an art dealer whose entire gallery and personal collection disappeared when the family fled the Nazis.  According to the author 100,000 works of art disappeared from France during the occupation and 40,000 or so remain unaccounted for today.  It's a fascinating story.

Edouard Manet "The Workers of the Sea"

We met at the museum, books in hand, were given camp chairs and proceeded to the MFA's impressionist gallery with our group leader who had chosen several works of art to highlight.  We stopped at each painting, set up our camp chairs and discussed different portions of the book that the various paintings brought to mind.  The bookclub lasted about an hour and a half and was very enjoyable.

The event worked on several levels.  It got people into the museum, it gave individuals who perhaps don't belong to a bookclub a chance to participate in one and it gave the participants a better understanding of both the theme of the book and the paintings and artists that were discussed.  It also represented a way to meet some like-minded people in the community.  While the participants did have to pay the regular museum entry fee, there were no extra costs.  I believe the MFA is doing two or three of these a season.

I'm sharing the idea here because I'm hoping you might want to share it with your local institutions, all of which are probably struggling to find new ways to draw people in.  If you already have a bookclub, consider reading "Pictures at an Exhibition" or "The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver or any other book with an artist or period theme and then approaching an art museum or art gallery about holding your meeting there.  See if they'll provide a docent to lead the group.  If not, have one of your members become the art expert!

Susan G. Komen Takes Over the World

Susan G. Komen died from breast cancer in 1980 at age 36.  Her sister Nancy Brinker, a breast cancer survivor herself, formed the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization in 1982 in response to a promise she made to her sister to do everything she could to end breast cancer.  Her organization is now the largest breast cancer charity in the world.

There's no escaping Susan G. Komen; her name, her pink ribbons, her events are everywhere.  The other day I saw the movie Love & Other Drugs, which centers around a young woman who has Parkinson's disease.  The father of a good friend of mine has Parkinson's as does the uncle of another friend.  Shortly after that I saw yet another commercial for yet another Susan G. Komen tie-in and it annoyed me a little bit.  I thought, "come on already, give someone else a chance".

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has raised something like 1.5 billion dollars since its inception 28 years ago and yet Elizabeth Edwards died from breast cancer on Tuesday.   Another very special person and friend died from the same disease on Wednesday morning.   She was the best friend of one of my closest friends and this was her third go-round with breast cancer.  She'd beaten it so many times that we were all sure she'd beat it again.  In her friend's words, "She fought a long and dignified battle and we'll miss her".  Yes we will.

Paint the whole world pink, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, if it helps.  When a cure is found for breast cancer, perhaps you can turn your massive charity engine towards another disease, and then another and another...

Please consider joining me in donating to Susan G. Komen for the Cure this holiday season or whenever you can.

Imagine life without breast cancer—where your mother, daughter, sister or friend doesn’t have to worry if she will be the one-in-eight women diagnosed with the disease.

Art: What is it?

Here's one answer to the age old question of what constitutes art -

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Steve Martin Pt. 2
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> March to Keep Fear Alive

It's pretty funny too!

Link Love 12.9.10

My niece is a wonderful person and a constant inspiration to me.  Last month she started a new practice, which I love.  She's setting herself small goals each month.  Not lofty aspirations, just little things she wants to accomplish.  Things like finish her Christmas cards and bake a loaf of bread from scratch.  She's publishing four goals each month on her blog and then holding herself accountable the following month.  I'm going to follow her footsteps and try this method of being more productive!

My friend over at Funny About Money is sharing a tiny house video.  You know how I love tiny houses!  This one is a gem from Tiny Tumbleweed houses.  She has some valid considerations about the practicality and safety of the setup.  Take a look!

Jeff at My Super Charged Life has a lovely article about being happy.  If you're worried about your daily happiness quotient you should give it a read.  There may be more ways to mine for happiness than you think!

Are you in support of the payroll tax holiday?  See why As Time Goes By thinks it's no holiday at all.

Following up on his list of more expensive gift, Michael Ruhlman has this list of cheaper kitchen gifts.  I have almost all of these and I love them too!  I may have to buy those circle cutters for myself.

Oh my gosh - jar pies?!  Souffle Bombay has the cutest idea.  I love these!

If you made Sunday's recipe and ended up with too much roasted vegetable soup, use some of it in this delicious cake from Stop Eating Out.

From Eating Our Words, a Houston blog I've recently started following, Oreo Fudge. I have no words.  If you make this, let me know!

and finally

A Baby Named Jesus from Fifty is the New.  It's a story that needs telling but it's not what you think.

4 Essential Benefits of Effective Budget Making

This is a guest post by Sylvia, who writes on the subject of debt consolidation.  If you would like to submit a guest post to SimplyForties, please review the guidelines here.

A budget is a plan that includes everything that you spend your money on. For you to budget effectively, you should include all items that you spend on, irrespective of how small they are. You must remember that all your debt problems arise from what you spend and not what you earn. A budget helps you control where your income is being spent. Usually you may not be able to figure out where your money went. This may lead to debt and you may have to consider debt solutions such as debt consolidation, debt settlement, etc.

1. Take charge of your finances: Effective budgeting helps you take control of your finances. You get to know all the unnecessary expenditures that you make and can now get rid of them. It is one of the best ways of getting out of debt as you are more in control of where you will spend and where you won’t. It helps you adjust your expenses as and when required. You can decide how to spend your money. As you plan ahead you will not need to worry about your income lasting till the next pay check. It will also help you learn how to cut down unnecessary expenses.

2. Helps you become aware of your finances: You will be better informed about where your money is coming from and where it is going, which will help you curtail your expenses. This also helps you check yourself when you are going towards debt. Thus it helps you from staying away from debt and hence you can stay far away from debt solutions like debt consolidation, settlement, etc.

3. Lets you take advantage of opportunities: When you budget effectively your financial position is completely known to you. Thus you can easily take advantage of a financial offer that comes your way. You will not have to wonder if you can afford to take a risk or not or afford to invest or not. You can grab the opportunity which may prove very beneficial for you. Such an opportunity you may have missed if you were not budgeting.

4. Helps you earn more: Budgeting will most certainly leave you with more money. You can eliminate hidden fees and interest that you pay to outsiders. Once you identify your unnecessary expenditures you will strive towards eliminating them. This will again leave you with more money. Saving is an important part of budgeting. Even a small amount of saving can accumulate and help you greatly.

You should make budgeting a part of your life. This will not only help you manage your finances better but also keep debt at a distance. You will be able a save a lot which will help you progress financially as you will have more money at your disposal and less to worry about. If you are looking for more information then watch the debt consolidation video on YouTube.

Spontaneous Fun

While catching up on my blog reading recently I came across two posts about fun and happiness.  One of the people I follow was concerned about her inability to answer the question, "What do you do for fun?".  I think she was talking to a prospective date.  She's an extremely busy single mom and when she couldn't think of an answer to what she did for fun it led her to worry that she might not be having any.

Her concern got me thinking.  Certain fun activities fit as answers to the question but a lot don't.  Regular practices like going to the movies, clubbing or trying new restaurants fit.  Volunteering fits and gives you bonus points for being a caring person.  Hiking, biking, sailing and fishing all fit and make you seem sporty, which may be a good thing depending upon the questioner.  But what if your life doesn't have a space for regularly scheduled fun?  Does that mean you're not having any?

What about spontaneous fun?  Life can be full of moments of small and big spontaneous fun.  Are fun and happiness synonymous?  On many levels I think they are.  Having fun certainly makes one happy.  Meeting and having a spontaneous conversation with an interesting person makes me happy and could be classified as small spontaneous fun.  So would walking my little dog and having a young kid run up and gush over him.

Saturday night I had some big spontaneous fun.  My Houston cousin is the art director at a local television station.  Saturday he emailed and asked if I'd like to ride on the station's float in the south Houston Christmas Parade.  They participate in a lot of these parades and it seems this was a last minute addition to their calendar and they hadn't time to gather up station people to participate.  It was a crazy, goofy, hysterical way to spend a Saturday night and a lot of fun.

So, if someone asked me what I do for fun, would I answer that I ride on parade floats, talk to strangers and let kids pet my dog?  Probably not but that doesn't mean I'm not having any fun.  If you're struggling with your happiness or the fun in your life, don't overlook the spontaneous kind, big and small.   Sometimes fun just happens!

What about you?  Has fun caught you unawares lately?

Roasted Vegetables Do Double Duty

If you and your people aren't big fans of leftovers it's a good idea to figure out how to completely repurpose them before you even begin cooking.  Here's a good example of a first dish and a way to use its leftovers so completely differently that they won't be perceived of as leftovers.

Meal one - Perfectly Roasted Vegetables -

This is the perfect time of year for roasted vegetables.  Root vegetables and winter squashes, which roast beautifully, are in the store in force and are extremely affordable.  I chose turnips, rutabaga, parsnips, onion, garlic, Brussels sprouts and a butternut squash.  Make a lot so you have enough for meal two!  Wash, peel and chop all the vegetables.  Try for uniformly sized pieces so they will cook at the same rate.  The smaller the chop, the quicker they'll cook.  I cut mine in bite-sized pieces, except for the garlic, which I finely diced.

Put all your vegetables into a big bowl.  Add fresh herbs, I used rosemary, thyme and marjoram.  Amounts depend on the amount of vegetables you have.  I used about 1/4 cup total herbs, finely chopped.  Add about 1/4 cup of olive oil (again the amount depends on the amount of vegetables you have).  Salt and pepper appropriately.  Mix (I use my hands for quicker and easier mixing) until the herbs, oil and salt and pepper are even throughout.

Spread your diced and seasoned vegetables out on foil-lined baking sheets and put them in a 400 degree oven.  Stir your vegetables around every 15 minutes.  They're ready when they're just tender.  Serve hot over a grain as a main dish or on their own as a side.  Delicious and nutritious!

(I took all the pictures with my iPhone, which is why they are so bad!)

Meal two - Roasted Vegetable Soup

If you made enough roasted vegetables you now have a lot left over.  Turn them into a beautiful pureed soup and no one will recognize them as the delicious roasted vegetables of their last appearance.  You're going to need some stock, either homemade or store bought.  If you buy stock, choose the unsalted variety.  Your vegetables are already perfectly seasoned!  Any stock; beef, chicken or vegetable, will do.  I went through two cartons of vegetable stock.  The amount you need will depend on the amount of vegetables you are pureeing.  You can use a food processor for this step but a blender will give you a smoother, silkier soup.

Simply put your vegetables, a bit at a time, in the blender with enough stock to make them puree smoothly and evenly.  If you like, add an apple and some finely diced ginger, along with your vegetables for a lighter, brighter flavor.  Transfer the completed batches to a large stockpot.  When all your vegetables are pureed, add more stock if you need to thin down your soup and then heat through for immediate consumption or freeze in containers or ziplock bags.  I use quart-sized ziplocks.  The two pans of vegetables I roasted resulted in 3 meals of roasted vegetables and nearly 3 quarts of roasted vegetable soup!

(I had no blender so this soup was pureed with a food processor, not very smooth but quite tasty!)

I enjoy my soup top-dressed with a little high quality olive oil (Sicilian Frantoia Barbera is an excellent mid-priced choice) and some matchstick apples.  Yogurt or sour cream would also work and look nice, or enjoy it as is!

Too completely different economical dishes, equally delicious, for very little additional work.  That's a perfect plan!

Cheap gas at Kroger!

Kroger grocery stores are offering a $.40 per gallon discount at their accompanying gas stations if you buy $100 worth of gift cards at one of their stores by December 11th.  At the Kroger near me gas is currently $2.69 a gallon, making it $2.29 a gallon with the discount.  That's a pretty good deal for all of us planning to do some holiday driving!

I checked out the gift card selection at Kroger and it is impressive.  Restaurants, stores (both actual and online), service companies and credit card gift cards were all represented.  You can't buy Kroger gift cards for this deal but I would estimate there were at least 100 other choices.  I'm not planning on giving gift cards for Christmas this year so bought two for myself!

I download music from iTunes and Kindle books from Amazon quite frequently so I bought a $50 gift card for each.  I'll load up my respective accounts and, with the gas discount, my money will work a little harder this month.  The only trick will be not to buy more than I normally would from  Amazon and iTunes because I'm carrying a balance.

You have to purchase your gift cards by December 11th but you have until the end of January to buy the gas.  I'm hitting the holiday road on the 19th and plan to fill my tank with discounted gas!

Already know where your holiday gift dollars are going?  Are you buying electronics at Best Buy or power tools at Home Depot?  Why not go by Kroger and get a gift card for those stores first and then go shopping with the cards?  Not only will you be making your dollars stretch a little further, shopping with gift cards is an excellent way to keep you on your gift buying budget.  Better hurry though, you only have one more week to get your gift cards!

Sushi Class

(Cucumber, sprouts, avocado, goat cheese & pomegranate seeds.  I call this one a Christmas roll!)

One of the ways that I involve myself with whatever new town I'm living in is to take classes.  They're fun and informative and a good way to meet people.  This past week I took a sushi class at a local upscale grocery store.  The class was taught by Zushi executive chef Christopher Nemoto.  It was a lot of fun!

Chef Nemoto is an excellent teacher and seemed to enjoy sharing his knowledge (not always the case with these classes).  He had prepared an in-depth booklet for us with all the information he was sharing plus a great deal more.

We started with a shrimp hand roll.  Hand rolls are those cones of nori (seaweed sheets) filled with various ingredients.  I've made a hand roll once before and am as uncoordinated as ever with this one.  I don't really care for hand rolls anyway so, although I plan to practice, I accepted my failure and moved on!

Next we made salmon sashimi (sashimi is raw fish served without rice) served over a salad of daikon, cucumber and enoki mushrooms.  The Scottish salmon Central Market provided was excellent.  Two women at my table refused to eat the raw fish but I found it delicious!

We finished up with two different rolls containing two different types of tuna.  Again, delicious!  Chef Chris gave us a lot of tips on how to buy the best fish for sushi and what sort of ingredients make better fillings.  One important tip he shared was to choose ingredients that don't add liquid to the roll.  After the class I went down into the store and bought sushi rice, rice vinegar, nori and a sushi rolling mat so I could practice at home.  My total investment was probably less than $15.

I decided I'd better try right away before I forgot what I'd learned so the very next day I gave it a whirl.  I do not have a rice maker but I've been successfully making a lot of rice for years so I figured I would give the sushi rice a try in a pot.  It wasn't perfect but it was pretty good and I was happy to save the money on the rice maker.  I also decided to use what I had on hand for fillings instead of buying a bunch of expensive ingredients.

I was pretty happy with my results.  I need some practice but I found sushi making to be one of those "hard and easy" operations.  The sushi chefs in good sushi places are real artists and it's taken them years to get where they are.  To be like them and do what they do is hard.  Making sushi at home for yourself and your friends is fairly easy.  There is lots of room for creativity in the fillings and I'm looking forward to having fun trying out a few things.

I plan to keep practicing and if you're visiting me or I'm visiting you in the next few weeks, expect sushi rolls to be on the menu!

Link Love 12.2.2010

Just a couple this week.  I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!


Fabulously Broke in the City has another blog called The Everyday Minimalist.  My adventure has made a minimalist out of me and I stop over there frequently.  She wrote an article the other day that I found funny and disturbing at the same time.  Read Why People Who Love to Dance Are More Likely to Buy a Mac and see what you think.

Flexo is doing a wonderful thing over at Consumerism Commentary.  He's matching charitable donations.  Make a donation to the charity of your choice anytime between now and December 11, email him the receipt and after December 11 he'll add them all up and make a matching donation to Doctors Without Borders.  He's willing to donate up to $5,000 total.  He did this last year but only got $3584 to match.  This year let's make sure he donates the entire $5,000 to an excellent charity.  Check out the details and then make your donations!

My sister-in-law recently shared this flash mob video with me and I love it.  It will not fail to make you smile.  It will definitely get you in the holiday spirit!

6 Baby Steps on the Journey to Simple Living

This guest post is contributed by Olivia Coleman, who writes on the topics of online colleges and universities.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: olivia.coleman33 @gmail.com.  If you would like to submit a guest post to SimplyForties, please review the guidelines here.

Ironically, many of us make simple living too hard on ourselves. I don't know if this is because we're constantly comparing ourselves to those who get it right, or if we just set pie-in-the-sky Martha Stewart standards for ourselves.  We berate ourselves when we fall off the wagon, so to speak, and realize we have just stacked up 12 pairs of flats in various fall colors or purchased another tech toy we didn't really need. Truth is, it's not always easy to get a handle on a habit of needless accumulation, particularly when you have reached a place in your professional life when you technically have "money to burn." The journey to simple living is just that; a journey. And every journey begins with small steps forward. Here are a few baby steps I've taken on my journey to living simply.

1.) For every new thing you buy, get rid of something older and equivalent. I've gotten in the habit of doing this with my clothing. I'm still working on the habit of not indulging in retail therapy when I've had a bad day at work or I'm not getting enough attention from my husband. So when I do make clothing purchases, I make sure to get rid of something older and equivalent as soon as I get home. This keeps clothing from accumulating. I use the word equivalent because people often like to accumulate particular types of items, and through this you begin setting boundaries to how much you will allow yourself to have of an item. I keep a give-away bag next to my dresser that I routinely take to donation bins when full.

2.) Pass books along. I am an avid reader and I once found it very difficult to part with books I enjoyed. However, not only does passing the book along spread the enjoyment to someone else, it clears your shelf space. I've limited myself to about seven of my favorite books (I used to have 50+ lying around in various places or taking up shelf space) You may find that after parting with your books you can part with a shelf entirely and have more open space in your home. The only purpose of a shelf, I've discovered, is to display and organize something you've accumulated. Nine times out of 10, you don't truly need anything on your shelves.

3.) Eliminate external storage. We used to have a storage building that we faithfully paid for each month. One day we woke up and realized that we hadn't been to the storage building in years and that we couldn't even quite remember what was in there. We got rid of most of the things inside that we never used and saved ourselves an annoying monthly bill.

4.) Bi-annual garage sales. Getting rid of things is a process that comes in waves. That's why I suggest having at least two garage sales a year. In your first garage sale, get rid of the things that are easy to part with. In your second, choose at least a few things that are harder to part with. If you don't have a yard or garage, collaborate with a friend who does.

5.) Curb spending with serious giving. You'll remember in my intro that it's tough curtailing needless accumulation because many of us have money to burn. I chose charities that meant a great deal to me (World Vision, Blood: Water Mission). By upping your donations significantly, not only will you help out hard-working nonprofits that need the support, but you will allow yourself less money each month to burn.

6.) Downsize. This is the biggest of my "small steps." My husband and I went from living in homes with square footage galore and lots of extra bedrooms to a small one-bedroom apartment. By doing this, we have reduced our expenses significantly and have finally come darn near close to paying off our debt. Many middle aged couples live in large homes with extra bedrooms that used to belong to our children, but what's the point? No one's living in the rooms. You don't have to take it to the extreme like we did (a guest bedroom or two is useful when the kids come to visit), but ask yourself if you really need as much house as you have.