A Cheap…ahem–what I meant to say is: A Frugal Fix

Spin Cycle over at Sprite’s Keeper this week is all about Arts and Crafts…and I have done neither in the past few years that don’t involved washable paints or crayons. Oh, and there was the ribbon project I completed a couple of weeks ago….

This project all started when Lily asked her daddy why there were loops on the ends of her handlebars. Her bike is a hand-me-down from a neighbor, and the tassels that used to hang there no longer exist. So after Ed explained that there used to be ribbons hanging from the handlebars, we all piled into the car, and drove to Walmart to find new ribbons.

The only bike tassels at Walmart came in a package along with a Barbie basket and bike bell. It cost around $8.00. Ed said he was thinking bike tassels would be more along the lines of two dollars, especially since if we bought Lily the Barbie basket package, we’d need to buy Emmy one too and would end up spending $16.00.

If I had been by myself (what was I thinking when I typed that? By myself…hmm, interesting concept…) Anyway, if I had been with just Lily and Emmy, I probably would have bought the baskets. I’m a sucker for my little girls. Ed is too, but he’s a little more, well, economical than I am.

So we traipsed on over the the gift wrap section, and bought a three pack of wrapping ribbon–pink, purple, and silver– for about two-fifty. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” says Ed.

When we got home, I had to figure out how to attach the ribbons to the bikes. I looked in my craft box left over from my crafty days, and found some pink pipe cleaners. Perfect!

I don’t know how long these will hold up, but the girls like the sparkle they add to their bikes.

Emmy posing on her tricycle. She hasn’t figured out how to pedal yet, but she still loves her bike.

Emmy’s trike–It’s been rainy and cold, so these haven’t had a chance to fall off yet!

Lily is showing me how sparkly her ribbons are.

Lily on her bike–with ribbons!

*Normally I am entirely against wearing flip-flops while riding a bicycle due to damage inflicted on my own toes when I rode my bike without shoes as a little kid, BUT we just came outside for a couple of minutes on a rainy afternoon, so Lily decided to wear shoes that COULD get wet, which just so happened to be her flip-flops, which she wore to the pool this summer. I just wanted to clear that up.

**Oh, and Lily refused to wear her jacket since we were only going out to get the mail, originally, until I saw the bikes, and then saw the RIBBONS, and thought of SPIN CYCLE, so I ran to get my camera and we were outside longer than I thought we’d be!

Have You Seen This Car?

Lately, I’ve been spending my mornings with my cup of coffee reading the newspaper instead of perusing the blogosphere. This car, the Cozy Coupe, made the paper this week. The Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland inducted this car into it’s collection last weekend. How about that? At least three of my neighbors have this car in their backyards as well! Ed and I always think this toy is kind of useless, since the girls have trouble pushing it with their feet and then we end up pushing it for them, but they don’t move their feet with the car and then one little foot gets stuck under the car. The article says that Little Tikes has sold more than 10 million of these cars, and “that doesn’t take into account its reputation for surviving multiple owners.” We got this car free from a friend whose grandchildren had outgrown it, so who knows how many owners it had?

(article written by Heidi Stevens in the Chicago Tribune)