The Green Frugal

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Keeping chickens is fast becoming one of the best ways to ensure organic, fresh food “delivered” daily to your home. The cost of keeping chickens is relatively low compared to other pets that don’t give back in the form of food and they provide hilarious entertainment for you, your family and your neighbors! My family decided chickens were a must-have to start our small urban farm so we decided to build our own coop. Little did I know how easy it would be…

happy chickens in a safe enclosure

1. When you embark on a journey like this, its important to make sure you can keep chickens in your area. This is going to depend on state, county and city laws as well as, if you rent, landlord permission. Most counties will not let you own roosters, so make sure to check the specifics. There are also usually laws regarding where you place your coop on your property.  Double and triple check!

2. You should draw up some plans. Do you want a mobile chicken coop – called a tractor – or one that is a permanent home? How many chickens do you plan on keeping and how big do you want the coop to be? What do you want to use for building materials? There are a lot of websites that have free plans for you to browse. One of the best is Backyard Chickens. They have a plethora of information about coops and chickens. For our own coop, we found a truck canopy at Goodwill for $30 that we used as the “base” (the roof) and built onto that. You could even search for “unique chicken coop images” and see all the different things others have made coops out of.

3. Next, build! Easy, right? We found some 2 X 4s and plywood and then screwed a wooden frame into the truck canopy so it was over six feet off the ground. Then, using the plywood, we built the actual henhouse under the canopy. The henhouse refers to the place where the chickens sleep at night and lay their eggs. We filled in any cracks with a foam insulate and covered the floor with a piece of linoleum for further draft protection and easy cleaning.

4. With the walls completed, we moved on to the safety of our chickens. The frame we set the canopy on is mostly 4 X 4s, very easy to staple gun chicken wire to. Make sure the chicken wire is taut and secure. Raccoons and other animals are very strong and tricky, and they want your chickens!

coop before decoration? or leave it old school.

5. Finally… decorate! The chickens probably don’t care what it looks like, but you do! Paint, glitter, macaroni art that coop up! Ok, maybe not macaroni… But I definitely want to see pictures of your masterpieces!

If you gather all the materials beforehand, you can kick out a quality chicken coop in one weekend. Don’t forget to have fun!

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A small baby collection!

I can understand using a picture of your baby as a bookmark. If you get bored mid-sentence, you glance over at that sweet cherub and smile. Unfortunately, boring books means you leave your bookmark between the covers, it gets sent off to a warehouse such as ours, where one of us finds it, takes pictures of it and posts it on our company blog.

Are any of these yours?

What else have you used in place of a “real” bookmark?

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My two young sons and I have been going to the same few parks since they were born. We all love being outside, playing together, finding new friends and I love the fact that they are free! Researching local parks for a company picnic, I came upon huge lists of all the local parks I’ve never even heard of – and an idea was born! Visit and enjoy as many parks as we can in all seasons to find the best! … Or just play around as much as possible.

A little about us…

My name is Bronwyn, I like parks so crowded with people that you lose yourself and I love deserted playgrounds. Adrian is 3 and a half, he prefers walking to running and likes gross things that I don’t want him to play with. He loves swirly slides and the swings. Isaiah just turned a year old, he likes any animal that he can grab and stick his face on. He also enjoys swinging and yelling as loud as he can in the open air.  These two adventurers are happy to join me on my park find and I hope you find equally great company to join you on yours!

Pirate Park in Bethany (NW Portland)

Pirate Park

In the middle of a suburban neighborhood an adventure awaits young pirates and their parrots (or little brothers, as I like to call them). This park is AWESOME. Two substantial play structures both shaped like pirate ships; one ship for the youngin’s – shorter slides, easier to climb, closer to the ground – and one ship for the older folk. At either end of the playground are identical swing sets and in the middle is a BIG sand pit with a push-button water fall! This is where we spend most of our time, building castles and sand lady bugs – a new one Adrian did all on his own! This park is primarily playground structure, but there are walking trails and some small fields a short distance away. I have to pry Adrian’s little fingers from the waterfall when it’s time to leave.

Tualatin Hills Nature Park (Beaverton)

At the entrance to this park is the Nature Park Interpretive Center, which houses a small library, classrooms for preschool, a nature store, meeting room and exhibit area. My friends actually held their wedding reception there! The park itself is forest with paved and non-paved trails. Both of my children love to wander the paths like new explorers, finding newts, listening for birds and squirrels dropping nuts. Several times now we’ve even had deer cross our paths. Bridges span marshlands and creeks. Wild bunnies run past, making my boys squeal. Several different trails lead to different things or circle back. The park is highly frequented but it never seems “busy” with how big the park is (222 acres!) and everyone you meet is extremely respectful and friendly. This is the park that Adrian requests more than any other… “Mom! Lets go to the nature park, I NEED to see some slugs!”

So this is my free idea! Go find new parks for you and your family; you could even make a log book, take pictures, and describe unique experiences. Not only will you be having fun discovering new places, but you’ll have a wonderful memory book, too. It would be great to hear from you about the fun things you find!

Here in the Portland Metro area we are lucky to have www.thprd.org and www.portlandparks.org which will give you complete lists of all the parks. Here is a link to all the National Parks www.nationalparks.org and I’ve been googling “New York parks”, “Kansas parks”, etc. and found many websites with lists. Or go old school and peruse a map! Another, more involved, park finding tool is to read books about your town, a lot of the time they make mention of parks that no longer have names or have hidden entrances. Its a great way to find a one-of-a-kind park.

I hope you have fun park hunting! We’ve already begun and we love it!

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  Have you ever bought a book from a used bookstore and found some small treasure inside? A bookmark, a picture or maybe something really cool like money? Here at Cash4Books, we look through thousands of books every week – guess how many of those have something hidden in the pages? The rule of Finder’s Keepers applies here more than ever.

 Some things we’ve found recently:

Valentine found in a Psychology Text Book

A hand written valentine on red construction paper: “Happy Valentine’s Day!” on the front. On the inside, in child’s script: “Hundreds of years ago in England, lots of kids dressed up as adults and went singing from home to home. In the Middle Ages, people drew names from a bowl to see who would be their Valentine. If a woman saw a robin flying overhead on Valentine’s Day, she would marry a sailor. In Wales, wooden love spoons were carved and given as gifts on Valentine’s Day. If a woman saw a goldfinch flying overhead on Valentine’s Day, she would marry a millionaire.” You can bet I’ll be bird watching next Valentine’s Day.  

Your horoscope on a bookmark

A bookmark about the 4 of Clubs in relation to your birthday. April 30^th, May 28^th, June 26^th, July 24^th, August 22^nd, September 20^th, October 18^th, November 16^th and December 14^th. “You have a practical mind and are a builder of ideas. Your later years are often filled with financial blessings…” I wish my birthday was one of these.

A High School Musical 3 bookmark! YES! With all the characters on a sparkly background!

 A Weight Watchers bookmark that proclaims: I LOST 5 POUNDS!!!! (I didn’t. But I might keep this one.)

 An empty invitation to “Miss Laura’s School of Dance and I love dance week! February 10^th through 14^th 2003”. Heck yes! I’d go if I had a time machine.

Who wouldn't want this postcard?

A postcard of Bruce Lee!!! ← I might take this one home, too.

 All of these things (unless we decide to keep them for ourselves) get put into a big stuffed drawer by my desk, and I later use them for giant collages on cubicle walls or the carts we use for shelving. We probably have the most decorated warehouse in the nation.

 This is just one more reason you should buy used books, you never know what you might find. On the other side of this, next time you’re selling or donating some books, maybe place some cool finds in the pages and make someone’s day!

 Until next time…

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We’ve all heard about Twilight and True Blood. Some of us might even be sucked into them a little bit. But what about the books you haven’t heard of, the ones that defined what a Vampire is? What about the bone-chilling, night-crawling, no remorse kind of Vampire? What about the comedic “I’m stuck like this forEVER?!” Vampires? Or the beauty and terrifying romance of taking someone’s life to save your own?

I can’t say I’m an expert, not even close.  But I do enjoy a really good Vampire story. Luckily, there are enough genres around this one topic that we can never get bored. From the classic Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which remains the ultimate go-to Vampire read, to the newly printed Vampire Testament series by Terence Taylor. I’m just going to give a little taste here of the thousands of Vampire books you can choose from…

Looking for something funny? How about Christopher Moore’s “You Suck” and the sequel “Bite Me”.  Need a quick read in the romance section? The Dark Series – The Carpathians by Christine Feehan may tickle your fancy. Did you know that Interview with a Vampire was a book before it was a movie? Check it out! Young adult vampires? Buffy the Vampire slayer by Richie Tankersley Cusick or perhaps Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith or Vampire Kisses by Ellen Schreiber. Ever heard of the Penny Dreadfuls? A collection of horrific short stories from the 17th century, definitely worth reading.

Here are a few favorites from employees here at Cash4Books!

• Bottomfeeder by B.H. Fingerman
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
• The Vampire Earth Novels by E.E. Knight
• 30 Days of Night by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
• The Last Vampire Series by Christopher Pike

When you’re done reading all of those (haha), try a movie! More recommendations by our bloodthirsty crew:

• Let The Right One In
• Interview with the Vampire
• Underworld
• Dracula (1992 with Gary Oldman)
• Shadow of the Vampire
• Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein
• John Carpenter’s “Vampires”
• Lost Boys
• Dracula – with Bela Lugosi

These lists are a good place to start, but if you want to delve even deeper into the dark, beware what you might find… In the meantime, be careful, tread lightly, and tell me… what’s your favorite Vampire story?