Thrifty Thursday

We've been trying to eat a lot healthier lately.  Fewer desserts, more fruits and veggies.  For Caleb's birthday, I "entered" him in the Dessert of the Month club (provided by me), but other than his monthly dessert, I've been trying to avoid the sweets (and sometimes succeeding).  This means I don't have a lot of new dessert recipes to try with you, other than ones I tried off of Pinterest oh, maybe a year ago, and took no pictures of the results.  Maybe sometime I'll put them all in one review post.  

And as for dinners/main courses?  I like the tried-and-true, well-tested, family recipes.  My mom's lasagna. Caleb's pot roast. Or something simple and hard-to-mess-up, like quesadillas.  I guess I just feel more comfortable experimenting with chocolate and cinnamon than with basil and beef. So I don't have a lot of new dinner recipes, either.

So I thought about going way back to the beginning of this whole daily theme idea and trying my idea of a Thrifty Thursday, and who knows - maybe something better than how it sounds will come of that. 

I guess Thrifty could go many ways.  I could tell you the price per pound deal we got on chicken.  Oooh, how thrilling.  Or I could tell you a project I did - or heard about - that was done for very little money.  

Today, I'll briefly tell you about our bookcase.  I despise particle-board bookshelves.  I think particle-board in general is great.  It provides cheap shelving, and if you're putting sheets or towels on it, it will hold up just fine.  But a bookshelf?  That's ridiculous, especially with people like Caleb and me, who read hardcover theology books.  We need real wood bookshelves, which unfortunately don’t come cheap.  Not new anyway. 

Just over a year ago, when we were getting ready to get married and move me into the apartment, Caleb already had one bookshelf - a particle board one - but we needed more shelving, thanks to my obsession with book sales.

I searched the local thrift stores, but nothing super great showed up, except one that was solid, but the bottom was just beat up enough to be a bit rickety.  They wanted $20 for it, and I wasn't quite ready to snatch it up without Caleb's opinion at that price.  One of my best friends worked at that store and actually later that day she called me and told me that they had just marked it down to $6!  I didn't have Caleb's approval, but for $6, I thought it safe.  It was an ugly, dark, shiny wood finish, but I primed it with some primer my dad gave me and painted it with the same blue paint Caleb's parents bought to paint our apartment.  Once at the apartment, we drilled it into the wall to take care of the rickety part, and it fits nicely into a little corner.  It's the perfect shelf for that area, sturdy, and no longer rickety!  Plus, it matches the wall, so it looks like it's meant to be there.  

It's deep enough that the bottom shelf (okay, the floor) can hold two layers deep of books.  The shelves are tall enough to hold my concordance and some knick-knacks, too.

Not my concordance - but rather my selection of classic literature - written 

mostly by Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen.

Next to it you can see my other great shelving: milk crates. 

These are truly something they just don't make like they used to.  I came into great riches when my family let me have all the ones from our house.  In my old bedroom, I had them stacked 3 high to serve as a bookshelf.  If you mimic this, keep these cautions in mind: Use the old milk crates.  They're sturdier than the crap they make today. Stack them against a wall, and have at least one side against something sturdy (a real bookshelf or a wall or something).  If you stack them higher than I have here, or if you use really heavy things in them, you may want to secure them to each other. I used a few thin strips of duct tape, and wrapped them around a few matching weaves.

    

Love and Books,

Leah Joy