Category: Featured

Entertainment / Epic Treks / Featured / Kids

8 Mar, 2021

We’re Spending 1,000 Hours Outside in 2021 (maybe, we’ll see how it goes)

I don’t think I’ve ever kept a New Year’s resolution. Ever. In my frittered youth, I made impossible, vague and numerous resolutions. I’d resolve to “lose weight, achieve inner peace and volunteer more,” all in the same year, with no specifics, no action plan and no accountability. I think we can all see why this approach failed. And it didn’t fail just once. It failed every single one of my resolution-making years, which was probably...

Featured / This Month On The Homestead

23 Feb, 2021

This Month On The Homestead: Bonfires In The Snow and Leisure Cilantro

January 2021 We are in the season of snow every day. Maybe a lot, maybe a trace. There’s no forecast to tell us what’ll happen: we look outside, we bring in more fire wood. It dips into single digits every night and still, we go outside every day. We hike, we sled, we cry (mostly the kids; sometimes me), and we love the cascade of monochrome. There is no beauty more distilled than fresh glitter...

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Featured / Reader Case Studies

18 Feb, 2021

Reader Case Study: Looking to Leave LA?

Kate is 30 and lives in LA with her kitten Cashew. She works in payroll at a university, which is a stable job with great benefits and low stress. As she approaches the five-year mark in her current position, she’d like to examine her options for moving to a lower cost of living area and a smaller town. Kate also hopes to have children one day and she’d like our help with determining a financial...

Featured / Monthly Expense Reports

5 Feb, 2021

Fruit Trees And Other January 2021 Expenses

We’re planting a pear, peach, apple and elderberry orchard this spring! Because why not. In a year (two years?) of unrest and insanity, why not plant an entire fruit orchard. We have a long-standing goal of expanding the perennial foods we grow and this’ll be our latest and largest undertaking. In years past, we planted perennial blueberries, strawberries, currants, cherries and did major remediation work on our existing apple and plum trees. This’ll be our...

Featured / This Month On The Homestead

26 Jan, 2021

This Month On The Homestead: Pancakes, Snow and Tractor Stuff

December 2020 Christmas at home and online, daily hikes, snowshoeing, baking cookies, fires burning in the wood stove and wrestling children into snowsuits. These are a few of our December things. And Bernie’s visit to the Glamour Shed. Pandemic “Homeschool” Continues My ‘give them real jobs’ approach to “homeschooling” continues with countertop wiping, laundry folding, egg scrambling, dishwasher loading, vacuuming, sweeping and… scribbling on any important paperwork they happen to find. All day long Littlewoods...

Featured / Holidays and Special Occasions / Reader Suggestions

22 Dec, 2020

Merry Pandemic Holidays! How We’re Celebrating, How Readers are Celebrating

Merry Pandemic Holidays!!!! We’re ready to celebrate how much we love our families by…. not seeing them!!! This holiday season will be different, but no less merry and jolly. Primarily I will achieve this by making as many desserts as I’d make if we were hosting 15 people. Since there are four of us x 1 pandemic x no childcare for 9 months, I feel the math is going to work out well. Also, going to...

Featured / Uber Frugal Month

17 Dec, 2020

The Uber Frugal Month is BACK!

You might’ve thought I forgot about the Uber Frugal Month and that would be totally justified because I DID forget about it in July. But NEVER AGAIN. You frugal mavens aren’t going to ring in 2021 alone–you’re going to do it WITH MEEEEEEE and thousands of other Uberly Frugal folks. The Uber Frugal Month is a thing I made up back in 2016 that has since become world-famous. Ok, slow down there, Mrs. Frugalwoods, let’s...

Featured / Monthly Expense Reports

9 Dec, 2020

Christmas Lights, Lightbulbs, a Headlamp and other November 2020 Expenses

Let there be LIGHT!!!! I’ve surrendered all restraint and decorum with regard to Christmas decorations. This year, we are lit. It’s dark, it’s cold, there’s nowhere to go and so I transformed the interior of our house into a beacon of light/some might call it tacky. Up to this point, we’ve used hand-me-down and garage-sale-purchased strands of Christmas lights which, while cheap at the outset, were not cheap from an energy use perspective. This year,...

Featured / This Month On The Homestead

4 Dec, 2020

These Two Months On The Homestead: Halloween, Thanksgiving and of course, Wood Stacking

October AND November 2020 Oh yes, you get a double dose of homesteading because I neglected/forgot to write this up last month. But who even noticed?! It’s a pandemic! We had an election! This Month On The Homestead‘s timeliness does not rate. Fall in Vermont blows in with intention. No balmy leaf-crunchers here, fall is a rapid descent to winter. In a year that’s felt like a decade, November alone spanned several years. Wood Stacking:...

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Featured / Frugal Homestead Series

6 Jul, 2020

Want To Move To The Country? 15 Things To Consider

Moving to the sticks is all the rage right now. At least, that’s what I gather from the number of questions I’m getting about septic systems. Or, you all are just really interested in becoming rural waste management engineers. Assuming it’s the former, let’s talk about what it’s really like to live rurally. I’m no expert, I’ve only been here for four years, and I’ve only lived in Vermont, but I’ve devoted a lot of...

Category: Featured

We’re Spending 1,000 Hours Outside in 2021 (maybe, we’ll see how it goes)

This Month On The Homestead: Bonfires In The Snow and Leisure Cilantro

Reader Case Study: Looking to Leave LA?

Fruit Trees And Other January 2021 Expenses

This Month On The Homestead: Pancakes, Snow and Tractor Stuff

Merry Pandemic Holidays! How We’re Celebrating, How Readers are Celebrating

The Uber Frugal Month is BACK!

Christmas Lights, Lightbulbs, a Headlamp and other November 2020 Expenses

These Two Months On The Homestead: Halloween, Thanksgiving and of course, Wood Stacking

Want To Move To The Country? 15 Things To Consider

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