Wrapping Up 2012: The Year's Most Popular Parsimonious Posts

Crazy how fast time goes by, isn't it?

Like all years, it's been a pretty eventful one for our family. The kids are growing like crazy; Max started kindergarten and my baby is nearly two years old. I feel so ambivalent about growing kids -- I love them at the age they are and want them to be little forever, but it's so much fun to see them grow, too. Thank goodness they both get even better with age. My super-talented husband has been really busy with his full-time job at Disney Interactive, as well as with his freelance work. It's been stressful at times but also a blessing -- this year we saved up enough money to buy a second car (a very basic but nice little commuter car for my hubs), to do some home renovations (we redid all the floors on the main level of our home and painted our cabinets), and we're almost debt-free (just a couple thousand left on our car -- yay!). I also turned the big 3-0 this year (which wasn't so bad, especially since we softened the blow with a trip to Disneyland).

The year was also full of frugal and homestead-y firsts:  I finally got the backyard chickens I'd been wanting for years, Kevin and I (and my parents) started our beekeeping endeavor (no honey for us this year, thanks to super-dry conditions, but we're optimistic about 2013 honey harvest), and we had our first yard sale. I also grew zucchini for the first time in my garden, started my own tomatoes from seed for the first time, and I even bought my first can of beer this year (to kill snails in my garden, of course). I wonder what we'll try next year...

Anyway, I thought I'd do what I did on here a year ago and look back to see which posts were the most popular (according to page-views) and compile a list of the top ten. I find it odd/interesting/amusing that a third of the posts in my top-ten list deal with poo. Go figure.

So, without further ado, here are the top 10 posts from 2012 on The Parsimonious Princess...

10.  Adventures in Cloth Diapering: The Post about Stripping

Like I wrote in the post, the title isn't even close to as scandalous as it may sound. After a while, some types of cloth diapers get minerals, oil, and detergent built up on them making them really stinky (we battled serious ammonia odors before I stripped our diapers) and less absorbent. This year, I stripped our cloth diapers for the first time. This post covers what worked and what didn't, plus some other info about build-up and how you can avoid having to strip cloth diapers as often.

9.  Abbey's Award-Winning Zucchini Cake

Make this cake. Hopefully you have some shredded zucchini in the freezer because this cake is awesome (just like my friend, Abbey).

8.  How I Reuse Dryer Lint for Camping, Emergency Preparedness, and Beekeeping

Yes, I found a reuse for dryer lint. Lint is notoriously flammable, so why not use that flammability to your advantage and make fire-starters? An update since I wrote the post: after my first season of beekeeping, I highly recommend using these fire-starters in your smoker. The fire-starters burn for a while and produce a nice, cool white smoke.  There have been a couple times when I didn't have a lint fire-starter and it was much harder to keep the smoker lit (and even when it was lit, it didn't last nearly as long as it did with the fire-starter in it). So, yeah, yay for dryer lint!

7.  Recipe for Relief: Homemade Teething Biscuits

So easy to make. Your little one will love gnawing on them.

6.  In the Backyard: My Milk Jug Mini-Greenhouses and How Empty Milk Jugs Changed My Garden

I put both of these posts in the #6 slot because they were in the top ten but basically about the same thing -- why have them take up two slots? That said, this is one my favorite things I tried in 2012. I'm still amazed that it worked and I actually started my own tomatoes from seed this year -- it was so easy! I'm going to start saving my empty milk jugs again pretty soon!

5.  Adventures in Cloth Diapering: The Post about Poop

Yep, I wrote a whole post about babies and poopy diapers. Apparently people wanted to know about it. It makes sense -- whenever people find out that I cloth diaper my baby, I can tell they want to ask about how I deal with the stinkier side of it all. This post has just about everything you need to know on the subject.

4.  How We Made Our Chickens' Water Poop-Free

It's been so much fun having chickens and collecting their eggs (I still get a little excited when I see eggs in the nesting box). What was not so fun about keeping chickens? Constantly changing disgusting, poopy water. Enter the 'chipple' (as the husband and I call it).  Problem solved.

3.  Ants Hate Cinnamon

They do. They really do.

2. Clothesline 101: How to Get Softer Line-Dried Clothes

Who would have thought that a tip my lovely grandmother gave my mom back in the 1980s would become one of my popular posts on the blog?

1.  Sudsy Savings: Two Homemade Hand Soaps

This post and the one in the #2 slot are so close -- it's almost a tie -- but the homemade hand soap eked out a win. I love that it's popular because homemade hand soap is so easy to make and so, so cheap.  We've been using homemade hand soap all year and will continue to in the next. If you're not already making your own hand soap, give it a try for 2013!

{Although it's not a post from 2012, I have to mention the little post that could: the post about making an emergency heater  from rubbing alcohol, toilet paper, and new paint can. Babble first featured it on a post about DIYs for the zombie apocalypse and then it went a little nuts on Pinterest. It's gotten tens of thousands page-views in just a couple months. I'm still amazed.}

Thank you so much for reading my blog. I hope it has helped your life in some way. I have fun writing it. I enjoy taking tons pictures of kids, animals, and inanimate objects for it. It keeps me focused on my money-saving goals because I feel a sort of accountability to you all. Plus, trying all the new things I do (partly doing them with the intent to share the results with you) keeps all this homemaking and child-raising fresh and fun for me. I'm not perfect at it -- not even close -- but at least it's interesting.

Best wishes for you and your family in 2013!

{This post is linked up to Your Green Resource, Simple Lives Thursday, and Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways.}

My Favorite Cookbooks of 2012

First, let me state for the record that I realize I've been a slacker on this blog this month. I apologize, faithful readers. It's for a bunch of reasons -- lack of time, spending any free-time knitting gifts (or a hat for my son's Who costume for the kindergarten Grinch play), and simply enjoying the Christmas season with my family (we're making gingerbread cookies today). Honestly, it's been nice to take a break. Plus, taking a break has gotten me even more excited about this blog and its possibilities.

Okay. Excuses made. On to the post!

Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows of my love for cookbooks. I read them like novels. I love the pretty pictures. I love the possibilities. Lucky for me, 2012 has been a great year for cookbooks. I know I'm missing a few from my list (hopefully, I've either got this one or this one wrapped and under our Christmas tree right now) and I'm sure there are some out there I haven't even heard of (clue me in, please!), but I feel pretty good about this list.

That said, I meant to write this about my favorite cookbooks post sooner in case you wanted gift ideas, but...well...the excuses were made in the first paragraph. I guess you could still order one of these cookbooks (today is the last day for two-day shipping on Amazon for before-Christmas delivery) or you could hop over to a local bookstore (if you feel brave enough -- having worked retail for a few Christmas seasons, I know full well what shoppers face this close to Christmas).  Or, maybe you'll get a gift card for Christmas and you can pick one of these up after the holiday.

In no particular order (except for the last one which will be my #1 favorite of the year), here are my five favorite cookbooks of 2012.

5.  An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler
I'm cheating a little on this one because only the paperback version of this book came out this year (it was initially released in  hardcover last year), but I had to include it. I loved this book. It's not a traditional sort of cookbook --  no pictures, mostly prose with recipes thrown in here and there. But let me tell you, this book made the way I regard eating and cooking food so much more mindful. There's a thoughtfulness, a grace to the way she writes about the simplest things. At one point, she had me excited to boil a pot of water. Awesome. (For more on the book, you can read a full review I wrote a few months back here.)



4. The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from my Frontier by Ree Drummond

I love PW.  I love her blog. I feel like I know her. I think if I saw her at the grocery store, I'd forget that she has no idea who I am, and start chatting with her about her family and the ranch like I'm a close friend. I absolutely loved her first cookbook - I've used it so often that the spine is broken, the pages are wavy and splattered, and some pages are starting to fall out. Everything I've made from that book has rocked (well, except the prune cake. Not my cup of tea, but I did try it). I say all that because I was chomping at the bit to get her newest cookbook this year. When I got it, I was so thrilled that it was thicker and had more recipes. So many options -- it even had a canning section (albeit, a really small canning section, but still!).  I have to come clean and say that I don't love it as much the first, but it is a great cookbook. Nothing complicated.  Lots of variety, something to please everyone.

3. Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round by Marisa McClellan

I love canning and I really like this book. No matter if you're a novice canner or if you've been canning for thirty years, this book has something to offer any canning enthusiast. I wrote all about it in full detail here.









2.  Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosentrach

We've heard over and over and over about the importance of family dinner. I completely agree that it's important on so many levels, that this simple act could help change the trajectory of society and our nation's families. In our busy world, it's a bit of a struggle for people (my family included) to sit at the table and have family dinner every night. So when I saw this book's title, I was immediately drawn to it. I mean isn't Dinner: A Love Story such a fantastic title?

This book is really cool in that it's a cookbook meets family memoir. I had fun reading through it, even though at times I felt like I couldn't relate very well to her experience. I felt like the author's complete opposite: she's a working mother (writing and editing magazines -- one of my dream jobs), Jewish, from the cool and busy New York City area, who unwinds with a martini in the evenings; me, a stay-at-home mom and Mormon girl, born, raised, and living in nice-but-sometimes-boring Utah, who's never so much as tasted a drop of an alcoholic beverage. In the end, though, our differences didn't really matter -- I still enjoyed reading her experiences, I appreciated and admired her goals, and I looked for ways to implement her ideas. Her and her husband's blog -- of the same title as the book -- has since become one of my favorites to read.

As you can see in the photo of my copy, I've got quite a few bookmarks -- and that's only in the first section of the book. So far, we've liked what we've made out of it. One recipe that stands out -- the chili recipe is amazing (hint: it has cinnamon in it. Whodathunk?). It's my new go-to chili recipe. It was the first thing I made from the book and I was converted.


And now, for my favorite cookbook of 2012.  I'd go as far to call it one of my favorite cookbooks I own.

Drum roll, please...


1. The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making by Alana Chernila 

I don't remember how I learned about or where I saw this cookbook, but the minute I did, I ordered it. I knew it would be right up my alley.

As I've written many times on this blog, I always prefer to make things from scratch, for the money-saving benefits as well as the health benefits. This book has recipes for everything I felt I had to buy processed. Take graham crackers, for instance. I had no clue how to make them, so I always bought them at the store (well, until we stopped eating hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup and then it was no graham crackers at all). This book has a recipe for them -- they're easy and delicious. With this book, I've also made Oreo-style cookies, marshmallows (this past summer, we made s'mores with homemade graham crackers and marshmallows - wow), hamburger buns (so easy!), granola, brown sugar, salad dressing, and yellow cake, to name a few.   And there are so many others things I need to try making: homemade Fig Newtons, mayonnaise, cheeses, Pop-Tarts, veggie burgers. There's even a recipe for a homemade Twinkie (with only ten or so ingredients instead of the 39 in the {now-defunct} store-bought variety).

There's something empowering about this book. I like not having to rely on certain processed foods. I like having control over what my family eats -- especially when it comes to my kids. I know what is (and what is not) going into their foods. It's just cool.  The book is laid-out very nicely. I love the photography. Each recipe has a short essay/blurb before it, which I always enjoy in a cookbook.  Get it. I can't recommend it enough.

2012 was definitely a good year in my kitchen and for my recipe repertoire.

Note: Some of the links in the post above are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. 

{Have you read/cooked from/bought any of these? Any cookbooks I overlooked? Suggestions are always welcome.}

(This post is linked up to Your Green Resource, Simple Lives Thursday and Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways.)

Still Here. Christmas in Full Swing. Sorry for the Silence.

I know it's been quiet here for a while. We've been all wrapped up in the Christmas season -- baking, decorating, shopping, wrapping, upcoming parties, all the knitting (I procrastinated the gifts and stockings that have to be done in time). I seriously love this time of year!

I'll be posting again soon, I promise.

See you then.

- Heather