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by Tricia

Tomorrow is the deadline to enter the FNBO Pay Yourself First Challenge. There’s a bit of money on the line. In fact, the grand prize winner will bring in $13,000 when it’s all said and done.

*sigh*

I’ve been trying to make a video using iMovie, but I am not very creative in the movie-making department. I can make a mean cherry picker and I was able to combine green and purple for the colors for this blog, but that’s about it for creative ideas from me.

We’re also pretty boring when it comes to what we want to save for. There’s no real goal except to have a lovely cushion of cash so we can sleep better at night knowing it is there. Let’s see…if we won the $13K we’d pay off the rest of our debt (about $8K) and that would leave $5K for savings. Add that to the almost $4K in there and we’d have $9K.

I still am not used to the fact we have over $3K in a savings account. I can’t even imagine having close to $10K!

I’m hoping a creative idea will come to me tonight. If not, I guess I will not be entering the contest. There are already some really creative videos there. By the way – have any of you entered the contest? If so, please leave a link to your video in the comments. I’d love to see them!

by Tricia

Back in December of 2006, I mentioned that one of the ways that I save money is to be resourceful. I described a swing that I made for our son.

I don’t have enough pics on here, so I decided to show you how I am resourceful. Prepare yourself – I love using duct tape!!

First of all, the problem that needed to be solved…

We are fortunate to have cherry trees in our yard. We were also fortunate to have been left a decent ladder by those we purchased our house from. With that ladder, we can pick a lot of cherries. The problem lies with the last 1/4 of the tree. We cannot get to those cherries. The birds eat some, but as soon as the cherries get dark purple, they seem to stop by less often and if we don’t pick them they go bad.

The dark ones are the real juicy and sweet ones. It’s hard to see them go to waste. Sure, we could buy a higher ladder or a fancy gadget that could help us pick the high ones. We could even buy a cherry picker truck (which would thrill our son), but there’s no way we should be spending money right now. Money is tight.

What’s left? Making something new from things we already have.

I sat down the other night and started brainstorming ideas of how to make our very own cherry picker. While I won’t be rushing to patent this idea (it definitely has its flaws), it is working as I had hoped and my son cannot quit talking about how neat it is. He wants to use it every chance he can get.

Here it is (you can click on the smaller pics to see the full picture).

Here’s what I used to make it:

• The handle from a Swiffer Sweeper (which can be put back after cherry season)
• Cardboard to make the box
• One rubber band
• Two shoelaces (which also can be put back after cherry season)
• And the best thing of all…duct tape

How does it work?

The rubber band on the back of the cherry picker keeps the lid semi-open. I find a cherry, get it inside the box, then pull the shoelace to close the lid. Pulling on the entire picker causes the cherry to come off the stem and stay in the box. The box is lowered to an anxious hand and a lovely cherry rolls out.

I totally impressed my son, we didn’t spend any money, I stretched my imagination a little and we have more cherries to eat this year. It may not be the prettiest cherry picker, but it works 😉