In recent days I’ve been reading an abundance of energy saving tips, testing them out each day to find areas where we can make the biggest changes and greatly decrease our energy usage. Why have I suddenly become aware of our electricity consumption? It was thanks to a very recent $366 electric bill that we expected to be around $200 (YIKES!). I’m blogging about what I’m learning here, and how we’ve been able to implement changes to drastically reduce our kilowatt hour usage to help us soon achieve our goal of regular monthly electric bills under $100 for our family of 10. If you’re interested in our challenge and you’ve missed the beginning of the “About That Electric Bill” series, view my first installments here:

Part 1: My Biggest Money Saving Challenge Yet

Part 2: The Water Heater

Part 3: The Air Conditioner

Part 4: The Breaker Box

We’ve been quite successful the last week and a half in keeping our KWH’s under 30 a day, which was the initial goal.  However, the last week has found us going one better, easily keeping them under 25. 

So yay for that!

In this process I’ve learned quite a few things.  There are numerous little changes you can make each day to help reduce your electricity usage, and your bill.  We’ve been turning off our house at the breaker everyday for about 6 hours, so many of these tips aren’t things that apply to us.  But I thought that, for those of you who aren’t interested in going all pioneer woman (as my friend and bread baking teacher, Donna put it)  these tips might be perfect for you.

1. Unplug chargers when you’re not using them.  Chargers continue to draw power even when they aren’t charging anything.
2. Turn off your plasma or LCD TV when you’re not using it.  Plasma’s are the worst, but LCDs aren’t far behind. 
3. In fact, you should unplug your plasma or LCD TV.  These things stay on standby even when they’re off, constantly drawing power.  I read about one lady who said her electric bill went up $60 the first month she had her new plasma TV.  YIKES!
4. Use your crock pot more than your range.  Not only does your range use more energy, but it can heat up your house very quickly.  This isn’t a big deal in the winter, but in the warmer months you’ll want to watch your heat output.  Using your crock and putting it in the garage to cook can help keep the house from heating up.  Stephanie has an amazing website with a year full of crock pot recipes.  They’re not just for soup!
5. Unplug your microwave and range when you’re not using them.  Or turn them off at the breaker box.  They both draw power when not in use.
6. Change your digital clocks to analog clocks.  Analog clocks take a single battery that will generally last a long time.  Plus, they’re way prettier.
7. Line dry your clothes. 
8. Shut down your computer when you’re not using it.  Computers produce a lot of heat and leaving it on is going to heat up your house.  Plus, leaving your computer on means it’s constantly drawing power, whether you’re using it or not.
9. If you have a full chest freezer, experiment with turning it off for a day.  My research has shown me that a full chest freezer can stay off for up to 3 days and still stay frozen.  Don’t take my word for it though.  We aren’t even using our chest freezer right now so I haven’t had a chance to test this out. 
10. Get a Kill-A-Watt meter.  Because we’re just turning everything off everyday we haven’t had a need to buy one.  However, if you want to know how much electricity each item in your house is using a Kill-A-Watt meter is the way to go. 
11. Do frequent house walk-throughs to make sure all the lights are off.
12. Stay aware of your KWH usage.  Take daily meter readings, preferable at the same time each day, and pay attention if the numbers suddenly shoot up. 

This may seem like a lot of work, and at first it might be.  Make a list so you can just go down it each day, or do what we did and learn your breaker box - this is much easier than scouting your home for unexpected energy users.

I’m sure there is more to write on this, and I will as new energy saving ideas come to me.  But for now, we’re already saving a ton.  I’m pleased, pleased, pleased. 

I’ll update as soon as our next electric bill arrives in a couple of weeks.  We only went a few days in this cycle before we started our energy saving experiment.  If we don’t hit our goal this month I’m hoping we’ll at least be close!

When I wanted to learn how to cook bread, I didn’t ask the lady whose bread never turned out quite right.  I didn’t ask the lady whose bread was turning out just as horrible as mine.  I went to the lady who had experience in bread making.  She taught me how to grind my wheat, mix my dough, and cook it to perfection.  As a result I am now able to cook a mean loaf of bread, start to finish, in under 2 hours. 

Sometimes I don’t answer people when they ask me questions.  Sometimes, when somebody asks me a question like, “How’d you get your bread to slice like that?”, I can tell they’re just complimenting me, they aren’t really wanting me to spill all the details of how I cook my bread. 

But sometimes when people ask me that question I know they really want to know the answer.  They are asking for advice from somebody who is having or has had success.  They want to know how I make my bread because they want to be better bread makers themselves.   

So I tell them.  But often they realize that it’s not so easy as they want it to be.

I grind my own wheat. 
Oh, I could never do that. They say, somewhat shocked.

I take the time to mix the ingredients in the right order, the proper proportions, for the correct amount of time.
Oh, that sounds tedious. They say, becoming uninterested.

I’m patient to let the dough rise so that my bread turns out perfect. 
Oh, I don’t have the patience for that. They say, almost laughing.

If I make a mistake and my bread doesn’t turn out, I try again.
Oh, I don’t have time for that. They say, turning to walk away.

So they don’t do it.

Now, I’m writing about bread as an example because it’s not threatening.  You can ask me how I make my bread and then find it’s not for you without any negative recourse, without offense, without feeling like a failure.  Not every wife needs to know how to make bread. 

My point is, however, that when you go to the person who is having the best results, be prepared to hear the answer.  Really hear the answer.  And don’t expect that the easy road is always going to get you where you want to go.

Also, remember, not everything is so unimportant as baking good bread.   Excuses for why you aren’t going to do the work to bake good bread is one thing. 

Excuses for why you aren’t going to do the work to be a better spouse or better parent is another.

Had some good, relaxing fun visiting our friends this weekend. Lotsa kids, lotsa good food, and amazing God edifying conversation.

Oh how I’ve missed my church family since we’ve moved.

Marty, the mom of the family we visited, has some real talent with the camera and took pictures of my giant burrito concoction. I’ve tried to get good pictures of it before but never had anything turn out good enough to post.

But now, thanks to Marty, I can show you what it looks like.

Marty posted my original giant burrito recipe on her blog.  Though I can’t claim the original idea as my own, I have to say that the one I’ve created is definitely unlike the one another friend made a few years ago.  Her burrito was about 1/4 the size and had completely different ingredients.  It was so very good and creative that I couldn’t help trying to replicate it.  However, due to the growing size of our family, and the growing number of large families we are friends with, I had to come up with something that would make more food, be extremely inexpensive, and have little kid friendly ingredients.

If you want to know how this is made and what we put in it go on over and read Marty’s post.  For the one we made at Marty’s we used canned refried beans, but I usually use dry, mixed beans.  I soak them overnight, then crock pot them all day long before the meal.  Didn’t really have time for that so she picked up two big cans of refried beans instead.  It produced the same taste and effect, but was a quicker method.

This 9 foot long burrito can easily feed 20+ people, and I’ve made it for only $10 before cause I stocked up when the ingredients were cheap.  I think it would normally cost about $15 or $20 though.  Still not bad for entertaining a large crowd.

Plus, it’s easy and fun to make!

My BFTKC, Mama Squirrel, and her family of 8 live in a travel trailer.

Don’t feel sorry for them. Their family is living this way by choice.

I think their goal in the beginning was to simplify and practice better finances. But, as she wrote recently on her blog, what she has learned most has been about contentment.

If you’re curious at all about their 1 year plus trailer living experiment you should really go read her blog.

You’ll be inspired.

Hurricane Lamps – $80 at William Sonoma.  Or, $3 right here in my living room.
Let me ‘splain it to ya.

These hurricane lamps are so pretty – the pictures simply do not do them justice!  And, even better, they’re seriously cheap to create. I made two of these for just $6 total and it took me about 15 minutes!

No Kidding! 

I took a little trip to the Dollar Tree (if you don’t have one you can get the supplies at their website but you’ll have to buy 12 of each thing).  I heart the Dollar Tree, by the way.  I picked up two candle sticks, two vases, and two worship candles for $6. 
I already had the mini glue gun, but if you need to buy one you can get them at just about any craft store for around $2.50.  They usually come with enough glue sticks to do this job. I didn’t even use one whole stick.

I think Gorilla Glue might be good for this project too, if you have it.  The drying time will up considerably, however.
And the blade you see isn’t really necessary.  I just used it to scrape the ornery stickers off the bottom of the vases.

Enough of all that!  Lets get started!

First, put a bead of glue around the top of one of your candlesticks.  You’ll see that my glue gun had the remnants of a red-glitter glue stick.  I haven’t used it in a long time. 
Anyway, after you get that bead of glue on, quickly stick your vase on top, peering down into it to make sure it’s centered.  It should look like this:

It’ll dry within 30 seconds.  Then, you simply set your worship candles inside to create the lamps. 

You can put a bead of glue on the bottoms of them to get them to stay, but I didn’t.  I plan to use my lamps seasonally and want the option of sand and seashells at some point, maybe, with a loose candle stuck in the sand or something, or dried wild flowers in the spring.  There are so many ideas I have swimming around in my mind with this.

I’m sidetracking – back to this project…

Then I sent the boys out for maple leaves and gently stuck the foliage around the candles.  They’re supposed to be gold, red, and brown – you know, for fall, but we live in Florida.  I’m going to have to wait a bit longer for that, I suppose.  I like the green leaves for now, however, but will definitely replace them with colorful leaves once the weather starts to turn.
I also tried adding water and food coloring.  That turned out very fun!  Christmas colors would be really cool and they look really pretty lit up in the dark with the colored water around them.

There are a ton of ideas here; Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years…  I think some kind of red berry would look so cool for the holidays.  I had planned to replace the leaves with peppermint candies and see how that looked but didn’t get around to it.

These would make great gifts for a Thanksgiving or Christmas party host.

Or a gift exchange.

Or just for your own mantle.  Like I said, I’m going to use mine for seasonal use.

And just to let you know, the totally awesome gal I swiped this idea from (it was a project from last year) said she found these for $80 from William Sonoma!

Okay, so it’s a little prettier than my $3 version. 

But, $80!?!

Yikes!!!

I think I’ll stick with my homemade lamps.

Stay tuned for another cheap product next Saturday!

I have one of those cool smartphone gadget things (But it’s not an iPhone.  I’m against anything popular. I know, I have issues.)  Anyway, I really don’t need it, but Ryan gave me one as a for-no-reason present so I get to have it anyway. 

I like it.

And right now I’m on my laptop, in the car, on a road trip, and I’m online. 

I’m blogging on the road.

In case you don’t know about PDAnet let me tell you about it.  You can plug your smartphone (Android, iPhone, Blackberry, and others) into your computer with this free app and it acts as a wireless modem so you can be on your computer without paying for costly online-anytime service. 

I found out about it when we moved a couple months ago, then when we were in the Verizon store a few days ago an employee was telling another customer about it.   

It’s pretty cool and we’re pretty sure it can replace our costly cable modem service.  We’re going to spend a little time playing with PDAnet’s service, making sure it doesn’t have any serious kinks, then if everything works well we’re going to cancel the cable modem. 

That’ll save us quite a bit of money and pay for these fancy phones.  Our smartphone costs are less than our cable modem.

You can read about PDAnet here.  There is a free version, the one we use now, and there is a paid version, which is still really inexpensive and we’ll probably upgrade to it eventually.

Just thought maybe you’d like to know, if you didn’t already.

We stopped at McDonald’s this evening.  We only eat out as a family once every few months so the kids think it’s absolutely fabulous.  Ryan ordered the food, sorted it all out to the kids, and we happily munched away on fries and yummy, greasy cheeseburgers that I’ll probably regret eating in about an hour.

Near the end of our meal an older lady came up and complimented us on our children, saying it was not everyday she saw such well behaved kids.  She said, “thank you”

After complimenting them, she asked if she could give a small gift to each of my children for their good behavior.  Ryan and I weren’t sure what we should do but I saw what looked like $1 bills in her hand and thought that a small gift of a few bucks wouldn’t hurt.  Plus, it looked very obvious that she really wanted to give the gift.

So we told her that would be very sweet and thanked her for her thoughtfulness.

But it wasn’t $1 bills in her hand.  It was a stack of 7 $5 bills.  She proceeded to give each of my children a $5 bill, including the baby.  Yes, I still call him ‘the baby’.

That’s $35 for you guys who don’t do math.

Some random grandma gave my children $35 at McDonald’s to thank them for good behavior. 

And I almost cried.
I know the almost crying part is weird.  But I’m pregnant and I can cry at just about any old sweet thing right about now.

This is weird.

[edit: Actually, this is not so weird.  I can't say why, it would ruin the trick.]

I can’t for the life of me figure out how they did that…

Yesterday we turned the house off at 11am.  It was an hour late, but part of the boys schooling on Thursdays requires them to play certain math games online and more time was needed.  Thursday’s will probably be 11am days on a regular basis.

At 11 I had one of my delightful boys go shut the house down at the breaker.  Kait took the meter reading and wrote it down.  Normally our KWHs will go up about 1 every 3 hours when we have the house off, so imagine my surprise when I went and checked it an hour later and it had gone up 3 KWHs in just 1 hour!

Kait and I both said at the same time, “Something is running that shouldn’t be.”

My sweet son, the one who flipped the breakers off for me, accidentally turned on the water heater in the process.

So, now we know that it costs us about 30 cents to heat up our water tank from cold.  And I also experienced the loveliness of a hot shower. 
Hey, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. 

Okay, so 30 cents isn’t lemons, and a hot shower is way better than lemonade, I know.  Just sayin’ that I took advantage of the mistake.

There is something pretty awesome about this whole experiment.  In just the last week I’ve come to look forward to some little things I used to take for granted.  I appreciate a warm shower way more than I did last week. 
I’ve always understood that my way of life, my ease and comfort in daily tasks, are blessings from God, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt it like this before.

Now, something as simple as a warm shower reminds me of His constant presence in my life.  

Why is it that I’m more thankful for something I’m receiving less often.  You’d think that the more I received, the more thankful I would be.  But that has certainly not turned out to be the case in this situation.

Marty,
Do you have hot water?

See you tonight!