Category Archives: frugal strategies

Are food prices rising?

frugal strategies

Have any of you checked your grocery receipts and noticed food prices seem to be going up?

I have!

For the most part, I’m not seeing major increases. Well, except for meat at the supermarket I regularly shop at, which went up about 25%, and ground beef hasn’t been available for several months now. The butcher can’t explain why it’s disappeared or why prices jumped like this. I know that’s not the case everywhere, and that increase isn’t typical. What I am consistently noticing are steady smaller increases.

I talked to a couple of people who work in wholesale food sales, who both told me that prices are “jumping” at the wholesale level. I’m always interested in the behind the scenes understanding of what’s going on, so I asked each of they could explain what is causing the prices to increase.

One didn’t know (but he told me if there was something I wanted, to buy more of it than I would usually buy to offset the ongoing price increases), but the other told me that shipping costs are dramatically rising, that costs have shipping containers have gone from less than $3000 for a load to several times that. Those shipping costs have to be passed on to the consumer, which means…higher food costs.

And that’s not affecting just food. A few weeks ago at the housewares store I spoke to the owner while I was checking out. Literally as I was at the checkout, they increased the price of my item by five shekels. When I asked why, they told me their shipping costs are rising and they are raising the prices on every item by five shekels.

Then a week later I went into one of my favorite nurseries, and noticed that plants that were 25 shekels the week before were now 37, and that every single plant had increased in cost. This time the owner was busy and I didn’t ask him why everything had gone up so much.

I found it interesting. But while the food wholesalers were very clear about their concern, increases take time to trickle down to the retail market, and maybe it’s not yet so noticeable that prices are moving up?

And this was also interesting – the US has announced that it will be increasing food stamp benefits by 25% on October 1. To me it seems that those making the decisions expect retail prices to rise and are preparing the recipients accordingly.

What does that mean practically? One super helpful strategy for keeping a food budget in check is buying the sales. If you have a freezer, you might want to buy some extra chicken or meat at today’s prices, which may be tomorrow’s sale prices. You might want to buy a bit more of the foods that you already eat, particularly those that are non-perishables. If the prices go up more, you’ll save money; if prices don’t move up any further (let’s hope!), you’ll still be eating the same groceries you would have eaten anyway!

I’m curious about if you’re seeing anything like this where you live. My impression is that prices are rising faster in other parts of the world than Israel. Have you noticed food increases, and if so, what kind of increases?

Avivah

An abundance of summer tomatoes and what to do with them?

frugal strategies

Someone who has an organic tomato patch invited us to come and pick as many tomatoes as we wanted (which became an activity for my visiting married children and grandchildren!), and the day after, I got an amazing deal on four cases of tomatoes. So the question was, what to do with all this amazing abundance before it turned to mush?

For reference, the pots are 16 quarts and 12 quarts.

My dehydrator isn’t working, and I didn’t want to dehydrate slices of tomatoes in my outdoor setup that I described to you when I recently dehydrated mushrooms. Also, my past experience with dehydrating tomatoes is that they sat for AGES in a glass jar in my pantry before I finally threw them away. If I’m not going to use it, there’s no point in dehydrating them, right?

I decided to try something new, sun-dried tomatoes (in the oven!), which was super yummy and a big hit.

I cut a bunch of tomatoes in half or quarters (depending on the size), then sprinkled them with olive oil and a mixture of herbs. (One batch was salt and zaatar, another was a mixture of salt and Italian herbs.) I slow roasted them in the oven at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit for hours, until they were mostly dried out but still had some moisture. (These wouldn’t be suitable for long term storage due to the oil and moisture.) When I took them out of the oven, these flew off of the pan!

So I made another huge batch for Shabbos, which I dried a bit less and they were even better! Very tasty on top of challah or eaten on their own.

I also cooked a huge pot of tomatoes and made matbucha, which I froze in meal size containers. We enjoy a variety of dips at our Shabbos meals, and matbucha is one of our staples.

Avivah

Creating personal space for young children – our DIY clubhouse

frugal strategies, parenting

A few months ago my next door neighbors built a clubhouse, and it was hardly completed before ds8 began regularly disappearing into their yard. Usually when he would go to their house, it would be to play with their children, but when I would search for him, each time I would find him sitting or laying inside their clubhouse, happy to be in this private space on his own or with ds4.

It was clear to me that he really wanted some space of his own. Don’t we all sometimes want that freedom of just being, without oversight or needing to be accountable for our time?

I had been thinking for a while of building a clubhouse for ds8 and ds4, but seeing this galvanized me to take action.

A business in the industrial zone of a neighboring city advertised that they were giving away large wood crates. They listed their address and asked not to be called, to just come. So one night when my husband was on his way home from Jerusalem with ds22, I asked them to stop before coming home and see if any of the crates were still left. There were three left, so they chose the one that looked best. Using the rachet straps stored in the car, together the two of them got in on top of the car and fastened down – it was an unwieldy load!

The packing crate, before – you can see the outdoor couch next to it for size reference.

Several times I had asked a couple of our teens to build some kind of clubhouse using some of the scrap wood left from their projects, but they weren’t very interested. I didn’t see any reason to insist on it, and it didn’t happen. But once I had this basic crate to work with, it was much easier to get them involved.

I asked ds13 to cut a door and window into it. The wood isn’t strong at all – it’s a basic cheap packing box that isn’t intended to hold up to long term use – so he reinforced both the door and window. After that, he put a waterproof roof on it, using material from a cage we were given but hadn’t ended up using.

Dd15 painted it blue, using leftover paint, and then ds12 painted the trim white – his idea, not mine. It made it look much nicer. Then one of the boys cut some artificial grass to fit on the floor, and voila, a clubhouse!

Ds8 and ds4 were delighted when they came outside and saw this mini house, all for them to play in. They’ve spent hours playing inside together; our granddaughters and visiting young children have also enjoyed it. And once we built this, they never went into the neighbor’s playhouse again.

(As an aside, this is not an uncommon dynamic when a child seems to be misbehaving – in this case leaving our home without permission and going into someone else’s yard without permission. If we can identify the need they are expressing and address that need, then the behavior will often fall away completely, since there’s no longer a need for the behavior.)

When I told a friend about this project, she sent me a paragraph from a Betsy-Tacy book, when the author of the fictional series writes about the young girls finding a piano box and making it into a play space. There’s something about having a space of one’s own that is significant for people of all ages. It might be going too far to call it a primal need, but it’s not too much to say that it’s deeply appreciated.

Ds12 has been asking for a space of his own for a while, and we haven’t yet figured out how to make that happen – he shares a room with ds4 and ds8. There’s a staircase on one side of our kitchen that leads to the second floor, and back in the fall when we were putting in the new kitchen, he asked me if he could put a narrow mattress in that space under the stairs and it would be his room. Yes, ala Harry Potter, but in this case he felt it would be very desirable. He wasn’t happy when I told him I planned to use that space for kitchen storage.

t’s a simple playhouse and due to the quality of the wood, I don’t know how it will hold up once the rainy season comes. But we literally spent no money and not more than a couple of hours putting this together, using recycled materials we had at home. As long as it lasts, I appreciate the enjoyment they’ve been having in this space of their own.

Avivah

Beginning kitchen renovations – yes, again!

frugal strategies, homemaking

I told a friend in the US that we’re about to start renovating our kitchen, and she said, ” You’re always redoing kitchens. Maybe next time you move, buy a place with a renovated kitchen!”

We did our first DIY kitchen renovation thirteen years ago; the last three took place in the last six years. And here I go again.

So why not buy a house with a renovated kitchen? Very simply, because I’m able to buy more home for my money by being willing to do my own upgrades.

For my past kitchens, I’ve purchased used kitchens and then customized them to my space. It requires being able to visualize and think out of the box, and I’m good at that.

This kitchen has been a lot more challenging to plan than any of the others. The way space is allotted here is unusual, and I’ve spent ages thinking and rethinking and rethinking again. Now that I’ve bought the kitchen (yep, used once again!!) and the various cabinets are sitting in front of me (the configuration is different than the detailed measurements I was given and had planned for already), I’m reworking out the details yet again!

The old kitchen was pulled out two days ago, and it was nice to to get it out. It was only seven years old but looked really dilapidated, and when we took it out, some of it was moldy and rotted.

I had originally planned to replace the kitchen before moving in, but when we suddenly moved a few months early, that plan changed. It ended up much better that I lived in this space for a while because it completely changed my idea of how to renovate.

It’s never fun taking out a kitchen because nothing is where it belongs and instead it’s piled up all over, and it makes it hard to prepare meals. But we’ve got a better workable temporary setup than ever before – we put a piece of granite from the used kitchen that I bought on top of the cabinets that will be the island, and that gives us a workspace.

The sink we’re using is in the bathroom, and here’s my workaround – I’ve placed a dish drainer set into the laundry hamper, so that I can stand at the sink and put the dishes in the drainer without having to bend down to the floor. Simple but it works and it makes me happy to find a way to make the renovation process less stressful!

Quite small but it gets the job done.

So much easier than how I washed dishes last time we did the kitchen, sitting on the edge of the bathtub/ on my knees leaning over the tub.

If you’re wondering about specifics of putting in a kitchen like this, feel free to ask! Someone on a FB group for those doing building projects/renovations in Israel asked about putting in a used kitchen a couple of years ago, and out of thousands of members, I was the only one to respond. This is my fourth kitchen here in Israel and I have a good sense of what’s involved in terms of cost and getting outside help.

My daughter, her husband and our granddaughter will be coming to visit for a week, arriving Thursday night. (And next week another of our couples, is arriving for an extended visit and the week after the third family arrives!:)) I’m very much hoping to have the countertops and sinks put in by Friday – it would be so nice to go into Shabbos with a new kitchen!

Avivah

The vitamin D hammer for the flu- boom!

frugal strategies, health

When my twenty year old son called from his dorm and said he was feeling so sick and achy that he was coming home, I knew he had the flu.

Just a few days before my son called, I happened to read a Pubmed abstract referencing the ‘vitamin D hammer’, a term and dosage that were unfamiliar to me. In it, the doctor writes, “A colleague of mine and I have introduced vitamin D at doses that have achieved greater than 100 nmol/L in most of our patients for the past number of years, and we now see very few patients in our clinics with the flu or influenzalike illness. In those patients who do have influenza, we have treated them with the vitamin D hammer, as coined by my colleague. This is a 1-time 50 000 IU dose of vitamin D3 or 10 000 IU 3 times daily for 2 to 3 days. The results are dramatic, with complete resolution of symptoms in 48 to 72 hours. One-time doses of vitamin D at this level have been used safely and have never been shown to be toxic.8 .”

(I’m including a link in case you’d like to see where this came from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/?fbclid=IwAR1-aVcZEeMysIWUgOy0v1cMzb91L0-K74K5P12rtWRmitxM9wpZ-aIK3vs )

Of course I knew about the importance of vitamin D for the flu since years ago when there was the swine flu panic I did some research on that. And I’m very, very comfortable and experienced with megadoses of vitamin C. But megadoses of vitamin D? Not something I had done.

I went straight to the pharmacy to pick up some vitamin D so I could have some ready for my son as soon as he got home. I was told the only options in Israel were for 400 iu or 1000 iu; I usually buy 5000 and 10,000 iu per capsule online. So I got more than one bottle.

Five minutes after he got home, I gave my son 25,000 iu and gave my other kids 5000 iu for prevention.Three hours later he took another 25,000 iu before going to sleep.

He was really sick and I expected he would be in for a rough night, and sure enough, he was. But by the morning, he was feeling much better; within 24 hours, the achiness and fever were completely gone (though he felt tired). Within 48 hours he was completely back to himself.

BOOM! The hammer was a winner for us!

It’s not coincidental that the flu comes around seasonally when it’s cold and dark, and most of us aren’t getting much sunlight (sunlight being the natural source of vitamin D). I read somewhere that the flu could be called a vitamin D deficiency; if you aren’t deficient in vitamin D, you aren’t going to catch the flu.

The day before this I was in the doctor’s waiting room with someone whose two children were just over the flu, and she told me how hard it had been for her to have nothing to do but let them suffer and wait for them to get better. That’s such a hard feeling for a parent. It’s so empowering when you know how to speed up a child’s recovery from an illness!

The amount I gave my son was for an adult, and I was wondering what a child’s dose would be. The formula I found to work out a weight based dosage is this: multiply a person’s weight (in kilograms) and then multiply that by 1000 to get each person’s dose. This dose would be the amount to take daily for only three days, then stop.

(Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin, unlike vitamin C, so megadoses are only for when sick. This isn’t an amount to take daily for an ongoing period!)

I love finding easy and effective ways to deal with seasonal illness! My son was certainly grateful.

Avivah

Manifesting our newest car – combination of unusual features at an amazing price!

frugal strategies, personal development

Sometimes it seems there’s no way to get what you want within the parameters you’re working with. And then something like today happens and reminds me that I don’t have to try so hard, I have to allow things to unfold. It’s quite marvelous how what seems impossible can happen with so easily with so little effort.

A few months ago I bought a new car after my previous car being totaled in an accident. So why was I once again looking for a new vehicle?

Here in Israel there’s an interesting phenomenon: families with several children will often choose to buy a smaller vehicle that doesn’t seat all their family members when traveling at one time, rather than getting a minivan. When living in the US, I never heard of anyone making a choice like this, but it’s very, very common in Israel.

The reason this is done here is because the costs of buying and fueling a larger vehicle are significantly higher. Often, families will rent a second car to travel together during vacation but keep their daily mode of transportation a smaller and more affordable car.

We made a similar decision when we bought our first car over a year and a half ago. Though we’re a large family and in the US I drove a full size 12 passenger van, I mostly needed something to get around locally for errands, and for that a small car was fine. We have great bus transportation and sending older kids on buses if we don’t have room for everyone is an option, as strange as that might sound to those who don’t live in Israel!

However, with our decision to move to northern Israel came a realization that we would need a larger vehicle. (We didn’t know we’d be moving to the north when we bought the replacement car or we would have made a different choice.) Public transportation where we’ll be living is weak and having a couple more seats will make a big difference.

I didn’t want to leave the selling and buying of a car for when we’re moving since there will be plenty of other things to do, so I decided to do this now. Almost three weeks ago, I sold our five seater.

Prior to selling and since then, I’ve spent waaaaay too long reading every bit of data I could get on various makes and models. The more I read, the fewer choices I seemed to have. I wanted a number of features and when considering my very conservative budget, even a basic functional car of that size looked completely unrealistic. It as also complicated by the fact that every time I found something suitable, my husband would raise concerns.

I would have been totally discouraged and overwhelmed if I didn’t continually remind myself that somehow we would find something that would work for us no matter how unlikely it seemed. (And I also reminded my husband he could trust me to buy the car as I’ve always done it and it’s always been fine.)

The choices that were the most affordable, spacious and gas efficient were all made by French manufacturers. None of these companies have a reputation for long lasting/hard wearing vehicles, and I was concerned that my lower acquisition costs would be more than offset by ongoing repair costs. When a mechanic for one of these companies dealerships told me to stay away from them, that finalized my decision to look at other options.

I thought and thought and thought some more about what was most important to me, and finally edited my original list to the following priorities:

  • Japanese manufactured
  • well-maintained
  • decent fuel efficiency
  • non-diesel engine (because I want to convert the engine to run on propane fuel and diesel vehicles can’t be converted)
  • price below xxx shekels (this is so low that I don’t feel comfortable writing it :))

Last night I decided to look at a car model I hadn’t previously considered due to a concern that the very back two seats wouldn’t be be comfortable for my hulking sons. 🙂 When I checked out the listings online for sale by private owner (I don’t buy from dealers), one stood out to me among a number of listings for the same model, year, mileage and price.

Sometimes I get a feeling about things; from just the wording of the ad I’d be hard pressed to explain why one listing calls to me and similar one doesn’t. I do think there’s an element of logic mixed in with it; it’s not all based on my gut feeling.

This car had slightly higher mileage than most of them, but there was nothing in my price range that wasn’t high mileage. My biggest concerns about buying vehicles that were older and high mileage was that it we might have to replace the engine or transmission in the near future, both very big expenses.

One of the things I debated with myself is if it would be more financially prudent to spend more on a newer car upfront to minimize the possible repair costs. However, we would have to dramatically jump up in price and of course there’s never any guarantee that even a newer car with lower mileage won’t need expensive repairs – in my reading in different forums I read a number of worrying stories like that. So I stayed with my original low price point.

When I called about the car I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the engine had been replaced three months ago – there was no mention of this in the ad.

Both the wife who took my initial phone call and the husband who showed me the car were very honest and forthcoming with information. Before I went to check out the car, I was pretty sure that unless something was really wrong when I saw it that I would be driving it back home with me. 🙂

(When I buy a car, I’m buying in large part based on my feeling about the seller. Buying a used car is unpredictable and I need to trust the person who is selling it and what they are telling me. Yesterday I looked at a car and within one minute of meeting the seller knew I wouldn’t buy the car. Not because of the car, but because of the seller. )

It was only because of a specific question while test driving the car today that I asked that I learned that the transmission was replaced six weeks ago! In two conversations with the sellers, neither of them thought of mentioning that to me, even though that was a very positive factor in favor of the car.

After the sale was completed, I looked at my long list of things I wanted that I had put aside so I could focus on the basics, and I got every single thing. Every single one.

Here’s the longer list:

  • Seller location – since I was traveling by bus to check out the potential options, I was hoping to find something not too far from home even though I was looking online at cars across the country. These sellers listed their location as the city where the wife works, which would have been very time consuming and difficult for me to access by public transportation. Another reason I shouldn’t have called them. They live just a a 25 minute bus ride from here and that’s where I saw the car.
  • Roof rack – knowing we’d have a small trunk, I wanted to have a space to load up for trips
  • Trailer hitch – this seemed an unlikely feature to find in the class of vehicles I was looking at but a previous owner had it installed
  • Tinted windows – this cuts down on the heat quite a bit in the summer and one of my kids requested it
  • Driver seating position – I prefer sitting higher up to have a better view, with my legs more vertical than horizontal
  • Head space – my last car didn’t have much and I missed having that
  • Feel of driving a car rather than a minivan
  • Propane system – this was complicated because I didn’t want to spend the money to put in the system on an old engine, and I didn’t want to buy a car already converted since a poorly done conversion can shorten the engine life. In any case, only a very small percentage of cars are converted to run on propane. This car had a propane system installed by a reputable installer, then it was reinstalled on the new engine.

This last point was the one that made the entire buying effort seem impossible. I wanted a newish engine already converted to run on propane by a reputable installer that I recognized (which totals three names in the entire country) at a ridiculously low price, or as a very much less appealing distant second option that I almost don’t want to mention because I really didn’t want to do this, a car so cheap I could afford to replace the engine and put in the propane system (adding lots of aggravation and at least 11,000 shekels to my purchase cost).

Was that situation with the propane alone extremely unlikely? Yes. Combined with all these other things, it was very, very, very unlikely.

And yet, that’s exactly what I got!

How could I have gotten all of this for the very low price I had budgeted?

Here’s an amazing bit of synchronicity regarding the price! (This is when in my house I burst into song, G-d Loves Me!!! Yes, I really do that.No, my children don’t always deeply appreciate my constant singing about everything but that’s the mother they have. :))

After having their vehicle on the market at fair market value for a month and not seeing movement, the sellers decided to get it sold and dramatically cut the price yesterday. It was last night when I decided to consider this model and saw the listing.

They listed it for 100 shekels less than my budgeted amount (remember, with none of the information about the very recent and expensive work they had done – they just wrote ‘excellent condition’).

I heard a statement somewhere (I wish I remember where so I could credit it): “Whatever you are looking for is looking for you.” I felt that so much with this purchase.

No, the car isn’t perfect. I didn’t have that on either of my lists! But it’s a really good fit for me and it’s been really wonderful to see this manifest in this way.

Avivah

Upcyling my unused tubes of lipstick

frugal strategies

I don’t wear much makeup on a daily basis, but I do wear lipstick. Or I used to.

At some point over a year ago, I stopped wearing lipstick. I had a couple tubes of shades that I really liked but they no longer glided on smoothly. I had another tube that was way too pale, and a fourth was too thick and uneven. I tried applying one and then the other to get a blended color but it wasn’t effective, so I just stopped wearing lipstick.

After making antibiotic salve last week, it occurred to me that it might be very simple to create new lipstick from these unusable ones. That’s what I did!

I took the four tubes of lipstick that I’m not using, and pushed the applicator to the very top. I broke off each lipstick at the base, then scraped out the remaining contents into a glass jar. I then boiled a small pot of water and put the glass jar into the pot (creating a makeshift double boiler). I added some petroleum jelly, then waited a few minutes while it all gently melted together.

The easiest thing would have been to pour the mixture into a small round glass container but I wanted to try to use the original lipstick holders. This made a little more mess and took a bit more time, but was worth it.

I adjusted each empty lipstick applicator to the lowest position, then poured the liquid mixture in until it was just about flush with the top. I let it set in an upright position until it completely cooled. I didn’t get a nice smooth pointed shape like lipsticks in the store, but with use it will smooth out.

I am so delighted with the results of this little experiment! Instead of four tubes of unusable lipstick, I now have four tubes of a color that I love. It’s the perfect shade for me, and amazingly, it not only goes on smoothly but it stays on longer than my old lipsticks used to.

Not only that, I don’t need to blot it to prevent it from getting on my teeth. I always thought it was a waste to apply lipstick, then blot it and have half of what I just applied be thrown away on a tissue! I don’t know what is different now, but practically it means my new upcycled lipsticks are easier to use and will last longer.

If this sounds time consuming and difficult, it really wasn’t. It didn’t require any special skills – just melt and pour. The entire project took somewhere between 15 – 20 minutes from start to finish.

Avivah

Is it worth your time to get bank fees refunded? I think so!

frugal strategies, parenting

It’s that time of year when there are the yearly payments to cover my website expenses, so I do a bit of online juggling to make sure money is in the right places for the various automatic withdrawals. Tonight I got a message in my email inbox, notifying me know that the transfer I had made from my bank to my Paypal account didn’t go through due to lack of funds.

I was taken aback since there was plenty of money in the transferring account so I quickly logged onto my bank account and saw that I had mistakenly done the transfer from one of my two accounts (one is savings, one is checking). Though the accounts are linked, rather than automatically transfer the necessary funds from one account to the other, the transfer was denied.

I didn’t mind that, but I did mind that I was charged a $29 non-sufficient funds fee for the transfer that didn’t go through. I didn’t think that I should be charged for a failed transfer from one of my accounts to another. I called my bank to explain what happened; the representative very courteously heard me out and said she understood. (She can also look at my 13 years of banking history at their bank and see that I don’t have a history of insufficient funds fees – if I don’t have money for something, I don’t buy it. My secret for staying debt-free. :))

Then she asked me a very interesting question: “Well, Ms. Werner, what would you like us to do about this fee?” Isn’t that a nice response?

I told her I wanted the $29 fee waived; she agreed that would be appropriate and she would take care of it while I was on the phone.

Well, that was easy!

While I waited for two minutes for her to refund the fee, I explained to my son who was impatiently waiting to know what I was talking to her about what happened. I explained that it’s our responsibility to be aware of what happens to our money. No one cares what happens to your finances like you do.

Was it worth the few minutes on the phone to get $29/110 shekels refunded? Yes, I thought so!

Similarly, I check my receipts before leaving the store when I shop – I have found so many errors and almost none of them were favorable to me. (Of course, I notified them when I was undercharged as well.)

The little things matter!

Avivah

Having fun making essential oils blends and salves and other DIY healthy kind of stuff

frugal strategies, health, home remedies, homemaking

Winter is here (well, kinda of – it’s been very warm and one son was wearing shorts and a short sleeved shirt yesterday), and we’ve been having fun with some diy health related kind of projects.

Eight years ago before moving to Israel, I traded 50 pounds of spelt berries for a few small, lightweight bottles of essential oils. I didn’t use the oils regularly because even though essential oils are great, you have to: 1) know how and when to use them, and 2) make them easy to use or you’re not going to use them regularly.

Thanks to the diffuser I was gifted by my mom last year, it’s now easy for me to regularly diffuse oils, which I love to do! With the recent free shipping option to Israel from Amazon, I was able to buy a set of roller ball applicator bottles, which I filled with essential oil blends. I made a blend for cuts and bruises (easy to slip into my purse), and one for germ fighting to apply to the younger boys before they head out in the morning to their classrooms.

In case you’re wondering about costs, I buy large 4 ounce bottles of the essential oils I consider most important (NOT from the name brand companies), then use recipes found online for the issues I want to address and make blends at a fraction of what it would cost to buy them. For example, I made an athlete’s foot blend (castor oil, tea tree, lavender) – I call it ‘Foot Freshener” for one of my sons, conveniently stored in a plastic dispenser with a roller top.

I also recently discovered the amazingness of shea butter! I know, how could I have walked through the world all these decades and been oblivious, right? I’m remedying that right now! I ordered a pound of raw shea butter to play with in making my own salves. I haven’t made salves for quite some time but still have beeswax around from the last go around, so it was pretty simple and fun to put together a few mixes.

In the past, I used olive oil infused with herbs as a base for my salves (http://avivahwerner.com/2009/09/25/making-first-aid-salve/ ). This time, I used shea butter with essential oils and made: a vapor rub (similar to Vicks or Unkers- I like to use this when the kids over age 6 are congested or have a sore throat – I used eucalyptus, lavender, frankincense, rosemary); a general antibiotic salve (tea tree, helichyrsum, lavender, frankincense) and a facial moisturizer.

———————————————-

Last night I pulled out my capsule filler, which I haven’t used for years. The boys enjoyed figuring out how to use it and filled a bunch of capsules with vitamin C. If you’re wondering how I happen to have empty vegetarian capsules, loads of powdered vitamin C and a capsule filler on hand, you haven’t read my blog long enough. 🙂 Seriously, though, these are the kind of things I keep around.

Vitamin C is a wonderful support for when your immune system is down with whatever is going around, big or small. We generally give our kids powdered vitamin c in water and some kind of sweetener, like juice or xylitol. That’s perfect for the younger kids but the older ones prefer the capsules, and so do I! (Here is my post with guidelines on how much to dose – http://avivahwerner.com/2010/01/27/vitamin-c-for-health/ .)

I’ve hardly ever needed to give any of our eleven kids antibiotics, since vitamin C has been so effective and isn’t accompanied by all the potential side effects. Why isn’t this cheap, easy and super effective remedy for literally just about everything widely known?

In any case, it’s so easy and gratifying to create something people tend to think has to come from a store, right in my own kitchen!

Avivah

Keeping bar mitzva costs down – you don’t have to do what everyone else is doing!

frugal strategies, parenting

When I have some time away from my blog and then come back, I always have a sense of “Where do I start with and what should I talk about first?” Today I’ll answer this question that’s been sitting in the queue for a while!

My son’s bar mitzva was beautiful. He had a long and difficult Torah portion to read, and he did beautifully. He also read the Haftorah. The rest of our male family members dominated the prayer service. 🙂 One son got hagba (raising the Torah scroll), another was honored with p’sicha (opening the ark), my husband and sons-in-law received aliyahs, and and my oldest son davened the musaf service. It was very special for me.

bm brothers

And all of our little granddaughters were there, even the newest one who was less than two weeks old. And of course their mothers. 🙂

Pesach 2019 sisters 1

I’m telling you, it was serious nachas. I kept thanking Hashem for the privilege of raising these children and His kindness and partnership with us throughout the years.

family pic 2019

I have a question for you, if you have time, I’d love to get your thoughts on bar mitzvahs and not spending 10k like most of my son’s friends are doing..!

Well, how much you spend depends on where you live, what the standards are and how comfortable you are establishing your own standards!

A friend recently made a bar mitzva and told me I was her inspiration for thinking outside of the box and doing what was right for her family – which included keeping costs proportionate to their income. I love hearing about people finding their own path; it’s not always easy but there’s a lot of freedom in acknowledging your personal preferences and limitations, and making choices accordingly.

I remember speaking to an Ethiopian woman in Karmiel who worked cleaning homes for a living. She told me she spent thirty thousand shekels on her son’s bar mitzva party. When I expressed surprise (shock, actually), she told me this was the norm for all of his friends. A friend here in RBS told me the same figure.

There’s no question that it’s a lot of pressure when all of your child’s have a given standard and you feel you have to live up to it. After all, you don’t want to embarrass your child. So hopefully you’ve chosen a community that has compatible values in terms of how a simcha is celebrated with your own.

When it comes to bar mitzva plans, we take into account the preferences of the bar mitzva boy. I originally had one thing in mind, and my son had a different idea.

I thought since his actual birthday was on Shabbos, we’d have a large lunch meal with all our family and his friends in attendance. When ds20 had this same scenario, we had 90 people for Shabbos lunch and it was really lovely. But when I broached the idea with my son, he told me that he has friends and teachers who don’t live locally, and it was very important to him that he have an event that all of his classmates and teachers could attend. So that was the end of my idea!

The Shabbos of the bar mitzva we had immediate family members for the entire Shabbos. On Shabbos morning we hosted a kiddush (dessert buffet) at shul following his Torah reading.

Most of his friends have their bar mitzva celebrations in a hall. I didn’t want to do that, because then we have to fill the hall and I wasn’t planning to invite my friends. The purpose of this evening was for my son to celebrate with the people he wanted to have there. He made the invitation list, he delivered them all personally to everyone on his list – I gave no suggestions or input to this. (Some of our friends did come, because he wanted them there and invited them!)

We are blessed with a large porch, and thanks to the renovations we did this summer, we have a large open plan dining room/kitchen. While certainly not comparable in size to a hall, I was sure we could fit the 60 – 70 people he wanted to invite for a sit down meal.

Our plans changed just a week before the party. Due to the unseasonable and unpredictable cold and rainy weather we were having. I wasn’t at all confident that the weather would cooperate with our plans. So at the last minute we scrambled to find a new location and had his party at a shul.

This ended up being really nice for a number of reasons and I think it was nicer than it would have been at our home.

I feel a sense of communal responsibility every time we have an event, because community expectations are based on what everyone does. I think it’s a kindness to the community to unapologetically hold the costs and standards down, which are continually ratcheting up. My goal has never been to have the cheapest possible event, but to have a celebration that honors the person being celebrated, and to do it in a tasteful and financially responsible way.

My experience is that people appreciate it, and I don’t think anyone has ever considered any of our celebrations cheap. The principal of my son’s school was there and told us how much he liked how we did it: “Hakol she’tzarich k’mo she’tzarich” – loosely translated to, “Everything that there should be, in the spirit it should have. ”

 

I saved every receipt so I could share with you exactly what I spent for everything, but if I wait until I sift through and add up every shekel, this post isn’t going to get finished for a very long time! I have all the exact figures except for the bar mitzva meal food expenses written down so I’m going to overestimate on that rather than give numbers that are too low.

Since I think the question that was asked was inquiring about the costs generally associated with the party itself, I’m not including the costs of bar mitzva lessons for nine months (about 3000 shekels), or tefillin (also 3000 – we got a very good price on them). However, I’m mentioning them since they are spiritually and financially significant. They aren’t usually talked about but these are the most important costs, the costs of preparing a young man for a life of mitzvos.

Kiddush – our shul has a very simple standard, which I appreciate, and there are two different options. The simpler kiddush is 2200 shekels and includes brownies, cookies, chocolate rugelach, cinnamon rugelach, potato kugel, pekalach and drinks. The one that is slightly nicer is 2600 shekels, and includes herring and crackers in addition to the other items.

This really isn’t a lot, considering the shul I used to go to has an average cost of 6000 shekels for the kiddush (it’s a completely different standard), and that this is for 200 people. But it was more than I wanted to spend for a simple kiddush. I asked the person who takes care of this to share a list of what items are bought and quantities of each, and told him I’d like to try doing some of my own shopping. Since this isn’t something the shul makes a profit on, he was doubtful that I could do any better price-wise but agreed.

I decided not to get the potato kugel. Yes, that’s standard for the shul but I can do what I want to do, right? (That’s what I reminded myself because I was feeling I had to get exactly what he usually got!) I didn’t feel it added value for me personally. I got about eight kinds of bakery cookies, two kinds of crackers and three kinds of rugelach (miniature rolled yeast cakes), and drinks.

Then I added on some items: herring, chumus, olives, halva, banana chips, and two kinds of gummy candies. I also got 100 bags of bisli snacks for the kids. (I was told they usually get pekalach for the kids so that they don’t grab all the more expensive things. I don’t like to skimp on quantities and I bought plenty of everything so kids could also have as much as they wanted, but I still got the bags of bisli.)  I got a ton of stuff.

The shul has  policy that everything has to be store bought, or I would have made some fruit and veggie platters and some other things. It was good that I couldn’t do that because it kept me from adding any extra activities to my list at an already very busy time.

Total for kiddush: 1004 shekels. This included everything and I had lots of leftover cookies, rugelach and drinks, that I put out at the bar mitzva the next night. I had leftovers of everything else, too, even the herring, which usually gets totally finished!

As far as the bar mitzva seuda/party, I also had some last minute changes. I planned a very casual menu that included hot dogs, roast, french fries – things I thought this group of guests would enjoy more than the standard chicken/rice/green beans. But alas! When I bought the hot dogs, it was before I knew that the widely accepted kosher certification on this product (Kehillot, for those who are wondering) wasn’t used by the school.

It was the night before the party when I realized my error. I went to a number of stores, but none of them had hot dogs with the kosher supervision I needed. That’s because it was the week before Pesach and only kosher for Passover products were being sold, and this organization that gives the kosher certification (Eida Chareidis) doesn’t authorize things like hot dogs for the holiday.

Okay, so time to change the menu! Then one of my older boys objected when he heard my menu, telling me I wasn’t making enough food. I knew he was wrong but rather than argue, I just made more food. 🙂 It really wasn’t a big deal.

The menu ended up as follows:

  • homemade rolls
  • chummus
  • olives, pickles
  • Israeli salad
  • brisket
  • sliced chicken breast
  • rice
  • french fries
  • green beans with red peppers and onions
  • ice cream
  • cupcakes, cookies
  • (additional cookies and rugelach from kiddush)

Here’s the breakdown of costs for the seuda/party:

  • Food and paper goods for the seuda: 1000 – 1200 shekels
  • Wait staff –  630 shekels – I wasn’t sure if this was a good use of money but in the end was glad I hired this out since I was able to sit and let them make sure things got served with minimal involvement on my part.
  • Music – 250 – my son had a friend he knew from when they were in high school who was very experienced but not yet officially ‘in the business’. He played the keyboard and was excellent; the music added tremendously to the atmosphere and the fun.
  • Music equipment rental – 200 – there was someone who had a gemach for this; the price included delivery, set up in the beginning and break down at the end
  • Photography – 0 – we hired someone to do a family photo right before the bar mitzva Shabbos but decided not to do photography for the party. We figured friends and family would probably take pictures and didn’t feel we needed more than that.
  • Shul rental – this is one of the shuls we pay a monthly membership to; they don’t officially have a hall and getting the space ready for the bar mitzva was a lot of work. They didn’t ask us to pay anything. 200 shekels

Total for meal for 70 people (using higher food estimate): 2480 shekels.

I once again had lots of leftovers but no one minded since it was a few days before Pesach and it’s helpful to have food to eat when you’re scurrying around cleaning and turning your kitchen over.

So there you have it, 3484 shekels for a kiddush for 200 and meal for 70. Again, my focus isn’t on cutting costs to a minimum but I do try to be a good steward of what we have. I was pleased to that our son was very, very happy with his bar mitzva weekend, and I wasn’t stressed by the costs even though it was taking place at what is easily the most expensive week of the Jewish calendar.

So my suggestions are when making a celebration: think about what it means to you, what will feel good for you, what resources do you have to work with? And then, ask yourself what kind of things match that vision? Then execute accordingly.

Avivah