blog carnivals and festivals

Wow! GREAT Carnival of Personal Finance this week! It (Carnival No. 180) just went online over at Living Almost Large, who also included Funny’s rumination about the patriotism (or not) of frugality. You have got to see the editor’s picks! It’s hard to be hilarious about a recession, but I laughed over Kevin’s witty 12 Days of Christmas During a Recession, at the Red Stapler Chronicles. After days of red-eye travel, Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck comes up with a nice metaphor for life in the indebted lane. How LAL managed to separate out just a few editor’s picks escapes me, because so many of the posts are really excellent. Check out Andrea’s theoretical journey at Fools and Sages, for example. This carnival is more than worth a visit.

Eco Joe reports getting hundreds of submissions for this week’s Festival of Frugality. More than the normal number of submissions also came in for the Carnival of Money Stories, which I just posted. Bloggers must be taking this week off work and spending some of the time working on their sites! At any rate, with that competition I was flattered to see my post on the boutiqueful of clothes my friend inherited from her shop-loving mom. Speaking of acquiring loot, want some free stuff? Check out Madison’s list of Black Friday freebies at My Dollar Plan. At Saving Advice, David wonders whether this is the year to get a fake Christmas tree. OMG! At Raising 4 Boys, good ole’ Dad has figured out how to get LEGO blocks on the cheap! Wish I’d known about that when M’hijito was little.

The Make It From Scratch Carnival has just gone up at Feels Like Home. Hmm…lookit this interesting idea for recycling one of Dad’s shirts or sweaters to make a cute dress for a li’l punkin. With the holidays coming in, you’re likely to have some house guests; here’s a clever, quick, and delicious-looking breakfast croissant casserole! Awesome idea. After you’ve eaten your Thanksgiving turkey (with Funny’s brown gravy recipe that was included in the carnival), go on over to Out of Debt Again and follow Mrs. Accountability’s recipe for making turkey stock—she throws in an extra for potato-zucchini soup, too. As Christmas comes up on us, here’s the secret to how to make scented bath salts. Who knew?

The 179th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Money Ning, where Funny’s squib on speculators bidding up real estate appears. This is a very large round-up. Check out Cash Money Life’s advice on year-end retirement investing. The five recession-proof ways to get hired at Just Thrive may interest you, especially if you’ve just been laid off or are about to be. If rehiring isn’t in your future, though, My Wealth Builder has an interesting post on taking early retirement during the downturn.

At what I hope is the right site this time, Make It from Scratch has posted this week’s Make It from Scratch Carnival, where Funny’s discovery about olive oil as the skin care product from heaven gets a mention. In the “Wish I’d Though of That” department, FWP came up with an awesome idea for clothesline rope, described at Financial Wellness Project. If you’re into amazingly wonderful food, you’d better check out Mary’s recipe for wild mushroom strudel at Simply Forties. If that’s not enough to impress your Thanksgiving guests, follow it up with Mama Bear’s thick & chewy chocolate chip cookies at I’ve Got a Little Space to Fill…good grief! And if you enjoy photos of extremely cute kids and tales of what moms will do for them, check out ChristineMM’s great story at The Thinking Mother.

Financial Wellness Project hosts the 152nd Festival of Frugality, where the recession has come home to roost. Funny’s plans for living in poverty over the next 2½ years appear there. Credit Withdrawal reports that frugality has become fashionable, highly entertaining. John is Fit reveals four ways to get PR people to send you free stuff (fifth way is to get on the staff of a popular magazine!). The Shark Investor comments, as I did Monday 11/18, on the new trend to blame the deprecession on frugality. This festival has about a jillion really interesting posts—if I highlighted all the ones I’ve enjoyed I’d probably have to paste the whole post in here. Be sure to make a visit!

BTW, FWP announces a new blog carnival, the DIY Jubilee. This sounds like fun—check it out, and send in a submission; next deadline is Nov. 23.

The 85th Carnival of Money Stories is up at Ask Mr. Credit Card, with an entertainingly Snopesian theme of myth-&-reality—about money. In the Karma department, check out Smart Spending’s story about why she did what she did when a friend and a stranger were in financial trouble. Money Ning has a nice piece on how recycling & reusing has helped his financial life. And Budgets Are Sexy wonders what the actual bill for Mrs. Budget’s emergency gall bladder surgery will be.

Hallowe’en comes to the Festival of Frugality at Living Well on Less, where some very weird characters appear at the Monster Mash. Funny’s report on the fall garden (you have to live in Zones 9 or 10 to appreciate it) appears in this round-up. For those of you who live in more normal climates, check out Frugal Pursuit’s tips for how to prepare your garden for autumn and winter. Check out the amazing photo and Money Ning’s self-questioning about the wisdom of buying certain products in bulk. Saving Advice has an interesting post on the “freegan” lifestyle which has elicited some even more interesting comments.

Hot diggety! If you blog, check out Financial Wellness Project, where FWP uses a heuristic theme for the 82nd Carnival of Money Stories that generates about a jillion new ideas for posts: he asks a series of questions related to his plan to move to full-time freelancing. Along the way, he fills the carnival with a treasure chest of very interesting pieces, among which he has kindly included one of Funny’s several rants about the Qwest misadventure. In FWP’s editor’s pick, Mr. Credit Card’s Mrs. describes what happened in the couple’s lives after they declared bankruptcy. The story is at once inspiring and cautionary, and shows that the bankruptcy laws should never have been changed to cut off this avenue for ordinary people trapped in credit-card debt to turn their finances around. The Financial Blogger tells a funny job interview story, one that will especially entertain anyone who’s ever had to screen job candidates. For those of us who are blowing around on the winds of layoff rumors, Retired at 47 has some encouraging words…his story makes me think I may be able to pull off unemployment without too much agony.

The current Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Master Your Card.

The 175th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at J. Money’sBudgets Are Sexy, featuring a humor theme to perk us up in these otherwise humorless times. One of Funny’s moans about the mess across the street appears in this edition. Quite a few interesting posts appear this week. About investing, I especially enjoyed Patrick’s explanation, at Cash Money Life, of the difference between dollar cost averaging and value averaging. If J. Money’s jokes don’t cheer you, try Jim’s great stress-relief sites, including alink to the ultimate LOLCATs site, at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. Cindy S at Oh My Aching Debts brings a light-hearted approach to budgeting with a personal finance game. And Be This Way discusses the wisdom of returning sub-par products to retailers.

Funny’s photo essay about Dave’s Used Car Lot, Marina, and Weed Arboretum appears in the 81st Carnival of Money Stories, at Socal Savvy. Check out Wandering Tax Pro’s attempt to educate politicians on the meaning of various tax terms that are being thrown around during the current campaign—maybe unintentionally, this description of a ludicrously complicated and patently unfair set of Byzantine laws explains why American voters blithely elected a pack of morons and craven opportunists on the promise of less or no taxation. Personal Finance Analyst offers several tongue-in-cheek strategies for getting some use out of your redundant SUV. DebtPrison’s angry story reveals that Firestone is still up to the tricks I knew many a year ago.

At Mighty Bargain Hunter, this week’s Festival of Frugality just went online. Stop the Ride describes her strategy for living on an income that grows more flush during a busy season. FruGal makes great fun (!) of the current trendiness of “frugality” (as it were). Meanwhile, CheapHealthyGood tries to eat on $25 a week. The eye-opening result is something to see… Oh heck. We’ll all love living on unemployment and Social Security, eh? For those of us who aren’t lining up at the soup kitchen, Organic Eating offers a few ideas for how to get your hands on bargain organic foods. In describing JetBlue’s seven-buck fee for a pillow, Personal Finance Analyst puts in a nutshell all the reasons I’ve quit flying. And while Funny’s jeremiad against the proliferation of expensive gadgets appears in this festival, Fiscal Zen offers 16 freebies for the Mac.

So it goes.

Greener Pastures hosts a huge 174th Carnival of Personal Finance and kindly includes Funny’s hand-wringing rumination on how to prepare for the alleged coming layoff (about which we should hear today, BTW, assuming there is any such thing). Neat Columbus Day theme with nifty illustrations! This week’s carnival contains so many wonderful posts, it’s hard to figure out which to point to. Five-Cent Nickel begins a lively conversation on the long-term effects of steady investing and how (or whether) it works to recover from a downturn. Harvesting Dollars has a rumination on whether (and how much) to fund a kid’s college education. Andy at Saving to Invest posts an eye-opener about what it costs to fire an employee in various countries—and how cheap it is to do so in the US. On one of my fave topics, consumer psychology, check out Julie Sherrier’s interesting post at Taking Charge on the rationale behind minimum payments. Be sure to visit the carnival to enjoy the many, many other excellent posts.

At Stop the Ride, Stephanie has posted the Make It from Scratch Carnival with a lovely fall colors theme. Ah, to live in a place where they have actual seasons! Funny’s recipe for white bean salad appears this week. Those who live in cooler climes should check out One Krusty Mama’s hearty and delicious smokey shepherd pie, which sounds like true autumn fare.

Whoa!and hold the phone! While you’re exploring Make It from Scratch, check this out! I’ve only watched one of these videos but will be back to see more, for sure: it’s a grand old grandmother who SHOWS you how to make Depression-era food and, in the bargain, tells you stories of what life was like back then, how people got by, and how to save on literally everything. This link appears at Y2K Hippie’s site, which surfaces at MIfS. What a hoot!

Back at MIfS, Heather explains how to make colorful ball and cup toys—great stocking-stuffers for next Christmas. If you haven’t managed to get that far ahead of yourself but are still decorating for Hallowe’en, Squawkfox has posted a set of very classy pumpkin-carving stencilsand Mary at Simply Forties provides recipes for cooking up the pumpkin meat.

At Out of Debt Again, Funny’s rumination on “dumb tax” appears in the 80th Carnival of Money Stories. Iowa Hippie Chick learns some bad news about one of her dogs and agonizes about how to deal with it. Todd at Harvesting Dollars reminisces about the four (!) layoffs he’s been through during his working life. At The Happy Rock a family exchange is going on that reminds me of myself and M’hijito… Free Money Finance has got his readers continuing the discussion about the saga of the neighborhood foreclosures. And Finance Girl posts a funny story about trying to save on a haircut at Finance Gets Personal.

At Girls Just Wanna Have Funds, Ginger has posted the 173rd edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. She has kindly included one of Funny’s chapters on the job saga, among many possibly more distinguished entries. For example, Silicon Valley Blogger, proprietor of The Digerati Life, offers some wise advice on how to cope with the current market unrest. Over at Living Almost Large, a lively tho’ mostly one-sided conversation is going on about some people’s kids who walk away from mortgages they actually can afford. If you’re feeling a little nervous, you can bring on an attack of hyperventilation by perusing Terence Gillespie’s piece, at YourOptimal.com, titled “Your Optimal Bailout Plan.”On the other hand, if you intend to stay the course, My Dollar Plan has a very interesting piece on strategies you probably haven’t used in your 401(k). Need a break from hyperventilating? Try a little Canadian humor with Big Cajun Man’s Stupidest Bill Ever.

The 146th Festival of Frugality is up at Dollar Frugal, who provides an entertaining Ben Franklin theme. Funny’s story of the pursuit of the new barbecue shows up here, along with a very nice compliment. 🙂 Lots of good stuff in this festival. Free Money Finance reminds us to ask for discounts–and don’t be shy about it. At Saving to Invest, Andy has an interesting tip about a tax-free money market fund. Think Your Way to Wealth sorts all those gas-saving tips we’ve heard into fact vs. fiction. And Cheap Healthy Good reports on the new country of origin labeling that we soon will see in the grocery store.

Living Almost Large hosts the 79th Carnival of Money Stories with a fun (and funny!) cartoon theme. The “beat the stress” chapter of Funny’s layoff saga appears in this carnival. And oboy! Here’s another update in the Blueprint for Financial Prosperity story of Jim’s garden project! Since I just filled up the backyard flowerbed and a gigantic pot with vegetable seeds in preparation for coming unemployment, this tale has taken on special significance. SVB posts a thoughtful rumination on bailout pro’s and cons that has spawned a long series of interesting reader responses. And at Simply Forties, Mary tells the story of a very fine money day.

The Make It from Scratch Carnivalappeared at Make It from Scratch. Funny’s discovery that you can clean your kitchen cabinetry with baby oil was among the many entries. Check out Almost Frugal’s incredible endive-gorgonzola soup, which she reports is offered in France as a recipe for small children. I actually looked for gorgonzola when I was at Costco yesterday (they often have a very nice version, but not at the ghetto store near my house, alas)…next time I find it, yum! More my speed in the upcoming days of unemployment is Cheap Healthy Good’s low-down curried root soup, which sounds like delicious comfort food and may be affordable on the dole. At Little House in the Suburbs, the Tomato Lady explains how to make home-made whole wheat pita bread, mighty tasty-looking. At Stop the Ride, Stephanie shows how to help the kids make personalized drinking glasses—lots easier than kid-painted ceramics, and just as fun.