Making Do

We haven't had family pictures taken since...2007??? SERIOUSLY has it been that long?? You know I'm frugal, but I truly wasn't trying to save a few bucks. Honest! ;) So anyway, I was trying to figure out what we could wear for the pictures that would match or at least would go together and figured that we probably all have a white shirt of some sort. Jeans and white shirts in an outdoor setting would be cute, right? Well, we did end up buying Cody a white polo at Costco but that is something that he can certainly get a lot of use out of. Wesley didn't have a white top either but we were easily able to borrow one but if we hadn't been able to borrow one I would have gotten something at a thrift store and turned it into his Sunday shirt for the next year.

We had our pictures taken at the same time as my sister-in-law's family and she took our idea and did white tops as well. She commented that if she hadn't used that idea, she would have spent a lot of time coming up with something and then shopping all over town for the right pieces. That just reminded me of how my trying to live frugally has paid off in so many ways. In the past few years my frugality has taught me resourcefulness and brought simplicity to my life. I have learned to make do with what I have. If I'm in the middle of making a cake and realize I only have 1 egg, I make do with 1 egg and no one notices the difference. If I'm out of bathroom cleaner I make do with dishsoap and everything still gets cleaned up nicely. If I wear out my sandals, I make do without them until next summer. And just today, I noticed we were out of handsoap. I only buy handsoap for pennies on the dollar when I can pair a sale with coupons and they haven't been on sale recently so we were totally out. We have lots of barsoaps but I prefer not to use those for handwashing. Then I remembered we have half a bottle of bodywash (free with coupons of course) sitting in the cupboard because it just wasn't my favorite. So that got poured into the empty dispenser and voila! I was able to make do and now we have liquid handsoap without having to run to the store.