The best things in life are free: Dogsitting

Rio came to stay with us for 5 days while his owner was out of town. How much fun is a temporary dog?! All of the awesome pluses of having a pet - playing, walking, snuggling -  without the long-term commitment. There is something so comforting about having a dog greet you at the door when you get home. I also loved how the need to walk him twice a day got us out of the house at least twice a day - kind of a feat in this non-work time period...

We miss you Rio! Come back sometime!

DIY

I'm in a really creative, DIY-type mood of late. I think the not-working, tons-of-time-on-my-hands, trying-not-to-spend-money, bored-of-all-my-clothes factors are major contributors to this! Either way, I've been discovering a lot of fun new blogs that have been inspiring me and wanted to give them some props...

http://www.trashtocouture.com/

What this woman can't do with random items, nobody can do! I love the things she does with lace, zippers and crotchet the best, but really the whole site is amazing. Hours wasted spent here being inspired...


http://allthegoodgirlsgotoheaven.blogspot.com/

This girl just has amazing idea execution... the DIY is just one small part of her blog but everything is gorgeous and I love her aesthetic... makes me want to dress up just looking at her ideas. My favorites are these shorts and this t-shirt (I've been cutting up old t-shirts for years, but this is somehow fresh and so beautiful).


http://www.ohsoprettythediaries.com/

These ladies do a little bit of everything, but all of it is cool and fun and pretty. 


And now I just want to run off and cut up old clothes, to make them into something new... :)

The best things in life are free: Having my boyfriend back in town

... which is the main reason I've been neglecting my blog, friends, running regime and just about everything else. 

But oh wow, so amazing for us to be in the same country without a deadline! So much fun, going for long walks, watching movies, laughing hysterically, going on fun adventures, waking up next to each other every day. I am so filled with happiness at the freedom of us being together and neither of us  having to leave soon. :)

Love. The ultimate free fun <3

Quinoa Fried Rice for One

I LOVE fried rice. I love quinoa. I thought I was such a genius when it occurred to me to combine the two, but it turns out this idea has already been thought of (most notably for me here - comprehensive!). Either way, I always feel like there's a little more difficulty in making a meal for one when you're sure you won't want the leftovers. Given that my fridge was full of so many other recent cooking adventures, this was one of those times.

Delicious raw ingredients

Hence, many tiny piles of vegetables. I like my fried rice with some serious variety and was in no way planning to deprive the quinoa of this treatment. I chopped up tiny amounts of onion, cauliflower, broccoli, green onions, celery, carrots, bok chuy, garlic and ginger. I made a simple flat omelette in sesame oil (so it would taste Asian :)) and then chopped it into little strips. I stir-fried all of these veggies together in sesame oil, added a little veggie stock mixed into water, and then the quinoa, omelette and a handful of pine nuts*. Once the liquid evaporated, everything was ready and delicious, and waiting to be eaten with chopsticks and admired for it's prettiness. No tupperware for leftovers required.

Veggie fried quinoa goodness!

*yes, these things are crazy expensive and are like gold! Fortunately, Wonderful Boyfriend of Mine is a Costco impulse shopper and bought a huge bag of them a while back, so I get to feel fancy and rich sometimes...

The best things in life are free: having friends stay

I love my alone time, but there's something so wonderful about having friends come to stay. It's built-in entertainment, especially if they're good friends and you haven't seen them for a while.

Cynthia came to stay for 2 nights on her way through LA from one exciting adventure to the next. We sat up late talking about her travels, my travels, our plans for the future, our ideas about life and love and what it all means. We spent the majority of her one full day here walking for hours on end with pretty tenuous goals. We shopped for a dress for her at Crossroads and Goodwill (it's super fun and free to shop for someone else at one of these places, as you get all the fun of looking and satisfaction of finding without the regret of spending!). We went to a salon and got mani-pedis with Erin for under $20.  We took fun birthday photos for another far away friend.

It's so easy to have no-money fun with another person around!

Easiest Dinner Ever

Problem: A little bit hungry, but not enough to cook a full meal. Plus it's late. Plus I don't feel like eating just cereal.

Solution: Random combo salad. This one is avocado, pepperjack cheese, chick peas, cherry tomatoes and Tofurkey, all cut into uniform sizes, drizzled with basalmic vinegar and seasoned. Delicious, quick, using items I have, not terribly unhealthy and best of all, easy as slicing everything. Win!

Garlic Lemon Roast Vegetable Salad

I went a little crazy at the Farmer's Market this weekend. The problem is that everything tends to be cheap and beautifully displayed, and I'm just a sucker for that combo. And the variety! So many options and you just want them all. Suffice it to say that for only spending $9, I have a refrigerator full of vegetables and only me to eat them.

I've been trying to meal plan (as suggested by Annie's Eats, which I adore) and so was trying to come up with a way to eat a ton of veggies in one meal. This just occurred to me as a delicious spin on salad. It seems fancy but is as simple as chopping up the vegetables into uniform chunks, tossing them in olive oil, chopped garlic and dried rosemary, squeezing half a lemon on top and tossing the lemon wedges through with it all and throwing it in the oven. I wanted to try roasting broccoli and kale so I threw them in a little later than the potato, carrots and pearl onions, as they take less time to cook. The kale gets super crispy and chewy - delicious. To serve I just put the veggies on a bed of baby spinach and sprinkled some feta cheese and pine nuts on the top. So delicious!

Adventures in running: the thought process

So I decided to force myself to like running. 

You might read that and think it doesn't sound so crazy, but this is coming from The Girl Who Was Last Picked on Every Sports Team Ever. I wasn't even sure I knew HOW to run. The running shoes I own were bought from Amazon for $56 in 2010, and chosen mainly because I like their pretty aqua color. The only exercise clothes I own are for yoga.

Why did I decide to like running? Two reasons. The first, a minor one, being that Wonderful Boyfriend Of Mine keeps telling me that yoga alone will not make me healthy and that I need C-A-R-D-I-O. As a rule, I usually fight against every bit of advice he gives me until it becomes glaringly obvious how right he is. In this case, glaringly obvious comes in the form of my favourite pants being too tight. Sigh. Cardio, be my friend!

I think everyone can agree that the second reason is the best reason to like running: IT'S FREE. In the same way that I'm always trying to force myself to like red wine (it doesn't need a mixer! it doesn't need to be chilled! it's the lowest maintenance alcoholic beverage there is!), the need-nothing aspect of running is the biggest appeal. No gym membership/special equipment/special time of day/great skill/learning required. All you need is shoes. And you can do it without them if you just get your ass to the beach.

So Wonderful Boyfriend Of Mine is away for a month, and this seemed a fitting amount of time to try this out. 

The goal: to run, or edge towards running, every day that he is gone. 

The end date: August 14. 

The progress so far: mediocre. 

He's been gone 12 days. I have skipped 4 days (5 if you count the day that I planned to skip and magically found myself playing a game in a park involving sprinting. It made my whole body ache more than any of the "planned" running days, and so I count it as a win day). I'm hoping that putting this goal online will serve as a check and balance in making sure I do it....

Starting over

My mother is the most frugal woman on the planet. I'm not talking about coupon-clipping, order-only-water-at-restaurants frugal. I'm talking drop-her-in-the-city-of-your-choice-with-$20-and-she'll-survive-for-a-month frugal. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of her making deposits at the bank for what seemed like hours, my brothers and I begging her for 5 cents to get a cup of water from the doughnut shop opposite the bank (they charged not for the water but for the paper cup), and her refusing us and telling us to wait til we get home. Rumor has it that she went into labor with my younger brother while checking out at the grocery store and drove home before heading to the hospital so the ice cream she'd just bought wouldn't melt and be ruined.

I was brought up this way, and I used to be good at it. I remember my first year of university, living in a 2-bedroom apartment with four of us and somehow getting by on $400 for 2 months. I remember priding myself on an entire outfit costing less than $15. 

But somewhere I've lost the ability to function this way, and I've been hemorrhaging money for the last five years, spending it as soon as I earn it. Part of that must have been living life on the road, part of it must have been certain lifestyle niceties encouraged by Big American TV Show I worked on, and the cycle of deprivation-overabundance-deprivation-overabundance. But what it comes down to is this: I need to make a change here and rediscover that lost art of living cheap. It's good timing, because I've just spent a lot of money moving to a new country, and am trying to settle myself in LA. There seems no time like the present to figure out how to do this...

Enter this blog, in which I intend to document my adventures in living thrifty in LA. I plan to cook most of my meals, find ways to exercise cheaply without joining a gym (or use Groupons I guess), teach myself to fix things that break, figure out ways to make a little extra cash on the side and generally find ways to have fun for free. I want to feel better about my finances by the end of this year than I do now, Christmas and all!

So we shall see how we go...