On being frugal

This afternoon while getting Nate's oil changed I read an article in Readers Digest about a family that decided to have a no spending month. They had a catchy name for it that I do not remember- so not so catchy.
The decided that outside of their regular expenses for necessities (mortgage, utilities, fresh milk and produce etc.) that they would not spend any money. The limited their cash to $100 for the entire month.
Being a self proclaimed princess of Penny Pinching I was very interested in this article.
(only a princess... you see I buy a lot of un necessary items that I want if they are on sale- thus the large collection of shoes every member of my family owns. And sometimes I don't look for the best deal in emergency situations, like when I found 2 roaches in our kitchen. I was on the phone ready to pay the big bucks for a man to spray poisons all over my house. Well, I got a $10 discount for dropping my mom's name. Or like tonight when I sent my Husband to buy a replacement DVD player after ours died. When you have young kids in the home and sometimes rely on movies to get you through a long day a dead DVD player constitutes an emergency situation).
So this evening I looked at our budget of necessities and cut our gas in half (there is no way Nate can get to his job in Phoenix and school in Tempe for free). Necessities included Tithing, Utilities (including cell phones) Pre-school, insurance, Mortgage etc. I cut our food budget from $240 for the month to $100. I realized that we had $X left. Ideally I'd like to put this money into savings. Even after our normal budget that included more grocery money and date money and gas money I have money left, all of which I'd like to put right into savings. But things come up like car repairs, food storage items on sale, diapers on sale (in which i stock up) and sales at Target, Old Navy, Banana Republic, J. Crew (yes, those places have worthy sales, just ask my $2 J. Crew top). Not all of that money makes it's way straight to savings. Soon those extras will be included in my budget. But the article was not about tweaking my budget. It was about not spending money on things you don't need. Ultimately the idea of the article was to cut out the un necessaries. They came up with interesting things:
Using their neighbors Internet (unsecured line).
Reading his neighbor's paper before the guys woke up (funny).
Taking his kid to Costco to roam the store and eat samples.
Avoiding calling a plumber by searching out home fix it concoctions on the Internet.
Getting a free hair cut from a lady trying to build her clientele.
Craigslist.
Freecycle.
Interesting and fun ideas.
It got my mind turning on more ways to be frugal. Like having more free date nights. Or even making it a goal to clip more coupons for buy one get one FREE meals at restaurants.

In the end the author learned a lot and saved over $2000 that month!
Wow.
My conclusion on this wonderful and insightful article.
WHAT THE H**K were you spending an extra $2K on each month?

Maesyn. Have you ever met a man called Miro?

Maesyn loves to sit and draw and write in her many notebooks.

Today she drew this:
Maesyn, Beautiful Master (she titled it herself), 2009

And it made me think of this:
Miro, Woman, 1976
Well, not this exact painting.
But when I saw her art I did think: "Miro"