Weekend Wind-Down: Expensive Hobbies

It’s finally Friday!

I am taking name requests for the dancing frog.  I feel after all this time together, we should really take the time to give some love to the creature who entertains us every week.  Please comment or email me some suggestions.  Then next week, we’ll take a vote!

Anyway, welcome to the Expensive Hobbies version of the Weekend Wind-Down.  We’ve completely traveled the gambit this time, with topics that are just barely related.  Well, at least to me.  I would normally never relate bowling balls with crinkle cut scissors with paperback novels.  But, it’s been a lot of fun.  I’ve found lots of really good sites this week.

So without any further ado, I present to you…

• 1.    Scrapbook Sisters: The Scrapbook Sisters love to do what they do.   Every couple days, they post a bunch of photos of new scrapbook pages they have created.  Some are being sold and others are just there for different ideas.  They don’t give any ideas on how to save money, but I’ve included them because their pages are absolutely beautiful and can inspire some new ideas.  This way, if you like what they’re doing, or think of something that bounces off their pages, you can keep your eyes open for inexpensive alternatives!

• 2.    Crafting on Alfred Avenue: Kaylen is a colleague of mine and has an obsession for crafting that she would call a passion.  What’s great about her is that she has a wonderful sense of humor and is Just Starting Out, like all of us!  She can’t afford to spend bookoo bucks on a single project.  Check out her blog for some ideas, tutorials, and hidden tricks to saving money on a variety of crafty things!

• 3.    About.com: This is another scrapbooking article that I found to very helpful.  It’s all about using recycled materials for scrapbooking.  It also explicitly lists easy ways to save money that go beyond using coupons!  There are 65 different ideas, so I’m sure that you can find at least 2 that will work with your specific needs!

• 4.    Consumer News:  The Consumer News is one of the best magazines for consumers.  I mean, just check out the name.  Anyway, this particular article has a bunch of different ways to make hobbies less expensive.  The advice given is very helpful and very doable.  They are not intimidating in any way.

• 5.    Money Central:  Just in case on Monday you didn’t have enough advice on saving money on books this week, here is one more great website!  There are 10 different ways, very few repeated.  If you’re a complete bibliophile like I am, check it out.  It will definitely save you some dough.

I hope you can find these sites helpful, and I definitely recommend Crafting on Alfred Avenue and the Oakville Running Times!

Check these out – they are the best articles and blogs/blog posts that I’ve found on all of the topics that we’ve followed this week.  They were too good to just add in as a link in the weekday posts, so I’ve given them an extra special place.  So, please, click on them and let me know what you think!

I hope you all have a great weekend!  If you get the chance to come online and check out tomorrow’s post, make sure you read (or re-read, hopefully) Monday’s post!