Got No Money Guide To Good Living - 2008

* Good living does not require money to be done and it sure doesn't need to wait till you got some.

* There are all kinds of great ways to add good living to every day living. Throw a sheet on the floor and have a picnic.

* Or, if you don't mind ants and bugs - throw the sheet or blanket or old quilt on the grass in the backyard and call it a picnic. You can bring stuff out in baskets - even the pretty napkins and glass cups. Its your picnic - do it so it delights you and those you love. Its good living.

* We grew a beautiful trailing red rose bush to have rose petal baths with rose hips tea. With four blueberry bushes, we had fresh blueberries with the dew still on them warm from the sun.

* It was great fun until my husband put himself in the bath with burnt motor oil and diesel crud all over him. I will never forget that rosy smell.

* Some people just don't have prosperity thinking when they got no money. They would pay $6,000 for a rose petal bath at a spa but wouldn't buy a $5 rose bush to have that bath at home.

* A satin pillowcase isn't but a two dollar remnant or prom dress from the thrift store and a little sewing. Who needs a $50 hair stylist with a satin pillow to sleep on, a hairbrush and blowdryer.

* In fact, a blow dryer comes in handy for all sorts of useful stuff when you got no money.

* Its not real efficient for drying socks compared to the top of a good station wagon - but it is very useful for quick setting glue to fix upholstery on sofas, chairs and free-form macro furniture.

* It also sets the caulk on the bathtub when you redo it to get off the burnt motor oil from husband's baths.

* A good blow dryer will melt some good plastics for sculpting and making handles fit, too. Never melt plastics in a toaster oven - its an air quality thing.

* Every time you buy groceries - put back the cookies and go buy a hammer or a screwdriver or pliers or scissors. You can always bake cookies, but you can never find something to make do as well for the others.

* Although, a dime will make a good screwdriver and even an old phone book can hammer some stuff, its easier to have the tools for easy good living handy.

* I would definitely say "always have" to a few things like duct tape, scissors, hammers and screwdrivers, measuring cups, measuring spoons and some good glues.

* It helps to have nails, tacks, tapes - electrical and otherwise. They are all good living necessaries. When you have to glue something and there isn't any glue, then what? You're stuck with taping, stapling, nailing it or leaving it the way it is.

* Of course, I've caulked some stuff that shouldn't have been touched with caulk just to get it to stick together and there's something that's obviously been fixed poorly.

* I also used duct tape to stick a gutter back on the house and that didn't work very well either. It appears that water sources have to be handled a little differently than sticking it back on with a good long piece of duct tape.

Got No Money Guide To Good Living

* Most good living is going to happen whether or not you got any money. Trashy living will happen too whether you got any money or not. The trick is to do more of the good living than letting it slide into trashy regardless of your economic reality.

* I've got to say, though, there is some comfort in trashy living - nobody expects much and its easy enough to accomplish that.

* If you wanna do good living when you got no money - its really easy. Satin pillowcases for your head and day-old cakes, donuts and collecting stuff everybody else is done using.

* We had do it later mentality for a long time until one day I realized we were going to be poor for probably ever and ever so that day we started good living anyway.

* We bought fancy napkins that cost fifty cents each at the clearance aisle one week which isn't too bad if you don't mind that they won't match each other or anything else either.

* Those napkins were a one-time investment for years of imagining the fine dining of a fancy restaurant without leaving home.

* We were scared to get those nice napkins messy so we brought home a library book about folding them, set the table with them folded all fancy and used paper towels.

* My children loved folding those napkins from the directions in the book - this made it a multi-part family activity. I think there are still some around somewhere I'm saving.

* Appearances are an important part of good living when you got no money. Canned peaches really do taste wonderful with candy sprinkles and stars on top.

* Do not bake canned peaches expecting any improvement. *

* There are wonders you can do when you stick a pie crust under something, though, and put those little dough strips on top with some butter and sugar. Now, that's good living right there.

* I remembered that my grandmother talked about a peaches and cream complexion and yes, I did try using that for a facial mask - it is not the same with canned peaches and milk. This is not a good living experience with or without money.

* That mask would've worked maybe a hundred years ago when there was no way to compare it to anything else but now that I've thought about it - maybe the weather was just different.

* We didn't generally have air conditioning because we didn't need a $600 electric bill. Some things involved in good living need to be modified when doing it without air conditioning.

* When you got no money you might as well do with what works. Doing what doesn't work costs money that you aren't going to get to fix it. Then you're living with it that way for who knows how long.

* A chair could be a good example of things that have to be modified without air conditioning and an idea of the cost involved when stuff just doesn't work. Vinyl does stick to the skin when its hot and humid outside - and without cool air - its like that inside, too.

* Strangely enough, the cost of a leather chair at the thrift store is about the same as vinyl or naugahyde, but the difference is whether you pick the chair up on the back of your leg when you get up from it. Good living says the chair stays where you put it.

Got No Money Guide To Home Decorating 2007

* It doesn't take a genius to understand home decorating. It isn't rocket science but to do rocket science is easier when you got no money than home decorating.

* That's because there's more manure in the world for blowing things slap to the moon than there are fine and fancy things for no money to use for decorating.

* I wouldn't get too caught up in that, though. What can be done with $200 a yard fabric can always be done with other stuff given a freer sense of what's what.

* Sheets can be used as curtains, if you don't mind everywhere in your house looking like your bedroom.

* Yards and yards of fabric can be bought for $1.00 a yard or even 50 cents a yard that you wouldn't want to use to line the floor of a doghouse, but given enough of it - there's something Architectural Digest would be proud to display.

* It can always glow-in-the-dark with a little spray paint or poofs from t-shirt paint pods to make stars and planets or even fancy flow in the dark florals.

* Sparkle and spatter - these are some of the great terms of got no money decorating. If you can't sparkle it, I would be surprised.

* Do not use spray adhesive to fling glitter on curtains for sparkle. After about six months, the dust in the air collects on them which gives a whole new meaning to the term textured.

* If you want spatter effects, this is easy enough given just about anything with color including kool-aid. You won't learn this at kid's school but do not do spatter effects with children around to see it being done. Their little minds are not going to think limited use in a decorating scheme on this.

* Spatter paint and glitter on sofa pillows are nice effects and some have been done to cover an entire couch, chair or wall. This does not work well with absolutely every paint in existence. I know by experience. The nice little acrylic paints leave hard poke into you spots when dry that don't allow you to ever get comfortable on the same couch again.

* Do not assume that dust will not show up as much on dark surfaces. This is the same dust that looks darn well yucky everywhere else with its dark little greyed out lint but on dark fabrics, walls or furniture - it is bright enough to have its own zipcode.