La Dolce Vita

Now that I got my raise (a modest one, but every little bit helps), despite the global recession, I'm still looking to fail... but that's another post...

Anyways, money is tight everywhere, for practically everyone... and it's likely that we're all gonna feel the squeeze even more in these coming months.

Growing up with a mother who had endured a childhood living in poverty has taught me that being short on cash doesn't mean that life can't be rich.

My mom grew up in a home complete with plywood walls. It made for extremely cold winters considering that she lived much of her childhood years in the interior of B.C. She told us about how she used to wake up on those winter mornings with frost down the walls. She and her siblings slept under those grey scratchy wool blankets. They didn't have a bathroom, but instead had to make treks out to the out house, and bathe in a big tin wash bucket.

She had a doll (emphasis on the lack of plural), and she loved it. While she loved sports, she never got to be part of a team because her family couldn't afford the gas to pick her up after practice.

I have had the privilege of learning from the best on how to pinch pennies, and growing up hearing about her childhood, I have an entirely different view on what it means to be poor, and conversely, what it means to be blessed.

Being thrifty is bred into me, but there's always room to grow. I actually wear my ability to be thrifty as a badge of honour and I am always looking for inspiration and ideas.

One of my favourite blogs is Pink Of Perfection: A Thrifty Girl's Guide to La Dolce Vita.




Just looking at her blog makes me want to cook and craft and enjoy what I have at the tips of my fingers. Like the practice of building muscle, the thrifty/crafty "muscle" must be flexed and worked in order to be built up. My experience over the past year (just over three weeks shy of my buy nothing new), despite my slip in buying shoes the other week, has really taught me that there is potential in a lot of stuff that I would've normally passed by. I was telling my mom the other day that I was talking through the dollar store and I came upon a pair of men's XXL red and black checked boxers and right away my mind's eye flashed an extremely cute capelet.

I joked with my friend Liz that it is an illness. Rarely can I ever let anything be the way it is. I'm constantly looking at ugly, goofy things wondering how they could be altered into something great.

While this past year has greatly improved my "thrift/creative muscle"- I am well aware there are people out there who could put me and my men's dollar store boxer capelet to shame, and I find heaps of inspiration in their ability to squeeze every last drop from a thrifty life so that instead of living life looking at all the things they cannot afford, they see a challenge to use what's available to build la dolce vita