Sew, Stitch and Simmer

My dogs are having some kind of world class wrestling match in the living room. They are so goofy. My brother calls it "zoomies" when his dog does her version of this game which basically involves lapping the living room at top speed while periodically and randomly jumping on the furniture without changing speed. Its hysterical to watch although you don't want to get banged into by a dog performing "zoomies". It hurts!

Last night I just about finished another hat (two rows to go.) I found some really cute ornament kits at the thrift store yesterday for only $.50 to do with the boys. How can you go wrong with dinosaurs wearing Christmas hats? The boys wanted to know if they really had to give them away?

In other frugal news, I'm replacing my first zipper in a winter jacket. Its tedious but rewarding. I feel like I'd be able to go much more quickly if I ever had to do it again. Jim got a really heavy winter jacket for work this past summer at a yard sale. The second time he wore it the zipper pull completely broke off. I harvested the zipper from his worn out winter jacket to replace the broken one. Just to make sure I was on the right track, before I started I read the section on replacing a zipper in the Complete Tightwad Gazette.

I still need to pin the second side and do my basting before I can machine sew the jacket back together. Fingers crossed and positive thoughts in my head, I should be able to finish it tonight or tomorrow at the latest. The thing that gave me the courage to try replacing the zipper was, even if I failed miserably nothing had been wasted. I wasn't taking a functional jacket and ruining it. I was taking two non-functional jackets and making one (hopefully) functional one out of them. The only expense was matching thread for the finishing work, under $2.00.

In frugal food news, I made cream of celery soup last night. I still had a lot of celeriac and some celery in the fridge so it seemed like a good idea. I used the recipe in a regular cookbook as a guide. I sauteed the celeriac, celery and a potato. Then I added dill, onion powder, nutritional yeast and a little seasoned salt. I covered this with water and cooked until the veggies were soft. I cheated and used the pressure cooker to do this quickly. Then I pureed the veggies and pureed silken tofu into the broth. It came out pretty well, although I should have pureed it a bit more since some of the celery strings were still evident. Overall it seemed like a great use of celeriac.