The Importance of Celebrating Fridays and Weekly Treats

Siesta with Wife Hulda in the Hammock, 1885 by Johan Krouthen

I Hate Mondays. 

          -GARFIELD

13 years ago, Mr. Peasant and I were married. The fall of that year, we went on a vacation to a little cabin in the North Carolina mountains. It was the one and only typical vacation we ever went on. On this trip, we decided that we wanted to start saving for our own little cabin. Spoiler, we never got a cabin in the scenic mountains. We did save up and got a little house in our small town ten years later. All this to say we cut out vacations completely to save up for a house. We eventually realized that we wanted a life we didn't need to take a vacation from living. We wanted a quiet life. 

In lieu of trips, we do treats instead and lots of them. These are not once a year cruises or credit card fueled weekend get aways. We want our treats weekly. I think most people would be a lot happier and richer if they ritualized their joys into scheduled weekly treats. You can look forward to these treats. Frequency matters. A two thousand dollar cruise once a year or a 700 dollar beach getaway weekend is still one moment in the year. I say spend small amounts every week on little treats and celebrate Fridays or Saturday nights. You can make an Aunt Bea Sunday meal or pancakes to add something special for the Lord's Day. 

If you are at a loss for ideas, try to jog your memory of times past. It wasn't too long ago when small treats were the norm and travels were a very rare occasion. A big trip or cruise would be for a huge celebration like a 25th wedding anniversary. When I was a kid there was an excitement over Friday pizza nights. The radio station echoed the friday celebration of the end of the week by playing "I don't wanna work I wanna play on the drums all day" song. Ice cream, air popped popcorn, or potato chips and a night of watching SNL would be something to savor together. 

Five teenage girls with ice cream cones, Gainesville, Georgia, 1952

The truth is you can have a lot of treats throughout the year for a fraction of the cost of a big blow out treat once a year. Let's say every week you spend 25.00 on treats. That would be only $1,300.00 a year! We are very frugal so we keep our treats simple, at home, and spend almost nothing. But you could go bigger with a movie at the drive in, a dinner out, a pint of ice cream, a fancy coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, a frozen pizza tv night, buying a magazine to read in bed, baking a sweet every Sunday or cooking tacos on Tuesdays. Whatever you do, make it easy to repeat financially and planning wise. Set it and forget it so you can look forward to something special every week. 

Mr. Peasant and I have movie night on Fridays. We pick out the movie early in the week, so we can get super excited by Friday. I play the local 80s radio station and get excited for the night. We make popcorn and watch the movie with battery candle lights in the living room.  Saturdays, we watch a Perry Mason TV show episode. We don't eat sugar much, but on Sundays I'll make a frugal sweet treat to enjoy. These little treats are weekly rituals that refresh our hearts. Life is hard. And it's easier to enjoy small frequent child-like joys than to plan and pay for that one week dream vacation. Keep your treats simple, inexpensive, uncomplicated, planned and frequent. Ultimately, what we really want is time together with our loved ones. Spending quality moments together doesn't have to be expensive and only once a year. Start scheduling treats now.      

This is the day which the Lord hath made: 

let us be glad and rejoice therein.

-PSALM 117:24 DOUAY-RHEIMS

The Reagans eating on TV trays in the White House, 1981

Duty Over Aesthetic: Heatwave Paper Curtains

Young Woman Relaxing, 1894. Francesc Masriera 

See the curtains hangin' in the window

In the evening on a Friday night

A little light a-shinin' through the window

Lets me know everything's all right

Summer breeze makes me feel fine

Blowin' through the jasmine in my mind

- SEALS AND CROFTS

There is a heatwave coming this week to South Carolina. The forecast is for highs in the 100s! This scares me mostly because of our electric bill. Our summer electric bills are already the highest bills of the year, and we already keep our thermostat at 78 degrees. I haven't been able to thrift any black out curtains. I've made do with curtains I could find cheaply and using cardboard boxes in my windows to block out more light. For all my beautiful home friends, you may want to look away. I am not going to win any awards for my interior design. What is more important is covering my windows with something to cool the house down and save money. We will not let money or the perfect be the enemy of a temporary better. Perhaps with the money we save over the summer, we can buy some nice blackout curtains. 

You will need the following:

Any paper products you have laying around. Paper grocery bags, newspapers, card stock. Tin foil or light pieces of fabric would work great too. I am using the light weight brown paper strips they use to pack Amazon packages. 

Broken down cardboard boxes.

A roll of brown craft paper or old wrapping paper.

Clear tape.

Clothes Pins.

The goal is to cover our windows with stuff we have laying around. Use whatever you have. We always save boxes and papers for gardening projects.  I sandwiched cardboard boxes in-between the glass pane and my curtains. The cardboard sits on the window ledges. Sometimes, you can stuff the cardboard in the windowsill snugly. Other times, the cardboard is a little wobbly, but the cardboard stays up good enough leaning in. Even if you can only do a couple windows, DO IT. Even if you don't have enough materials to cover your entire window, just cover as much as you can. Anything you cover will block the light and will help.

In the living room windows, I have cardboard boxes balancing on the bottom window ledges and held up by the curtains. I added layers of Amazon packing paper to cover more of the windows. I attached the paper with clothes pins to the existing curtains. I also placed a long piece from a brown craft paper roll on two windows in the dining room. I secured the craft paper to the top of the curtains with two clothes pins. I also used two clothes pins at bottom corners of the paper to weigh the paper down. It ends up being a paper roller shade. The roll fit perfectly width wise and I just cut to fit the length.

Dining room before with just cardboard boxes in the windowsills.

After, craft paper roll "shades" to sides and extra paper top middle window

Brown craft paper roll "shade", used on left and right side windows.

Before, with only cardboard in the windowsill.

After adding Amazon packing paper, two sheets to the top.

The packing paper wasn't always perfect. I just taped together a big piece.

Put packing paper in the side of the door window. I just taped it in poorly.

This has helped tremendously. I have upped our thermostat to 79 degrees from 78.  Even with the increase, it feels so much cooler in the house. I had a long list of reasons why I couldn't do the project. I didn't have the right black out curtains, I couldn't afford the correct and lovely ones. We have 14 large windows and they want 30 dollars a set on Amazon. Maybe I could DIY the curtains one day? I didn't have the blackout fabric figured out yet and I wasn't going to figure out the perfect solution by Monday. My mind went round and round over this. Finally, I thought, what if I just used what I had at home for free and it wasn't lovely? What if it was more important to cool the house and help our a/c unit not work itself to death? What if saving our money from going down the drain is just as lovely? 

Is there a project that you've been putting off because you can't do it aesthetically pleasing or just right? Maybe there is a creative way you can move forward on it imperfectly and with things you already have. I hope this helps change your mindset. A practical solution today beats a perfect solution tomorrow. Being industrious is better than being pretty.  I am so glad I didn't wait to black out the windows until I could find the right curtains. Ladies, throw some trash up in your windows and stay cool and save three hundred dollars this summer. Thank you so much for stopping by and God bless you. 

Better is the poor man that provideth for himself, 

than he that is glorious and wanteth bread.

PROVERBS 12:11 DOUAY-RHEIMS

Interior with a woman at the window. 1880. Christian Clausen

5 Things Mr. Peasant Is Keeping Alive In 2025

The Trapper's Camp. 1861. Albert Bierstadt

Use it or lose it is a cliche because it’s true.

JULIAN COPE

Modern life has brought us many good things like washing machines, automobiles, television sets, and the internet. The downside is that modern life also eradicates many good things that we should not lose. We are in an age where the intelligent ones among us realize that new solutions breed new problems. I think many problems were solved with old solutions that are still good. Here are five things I am using in order to not lose them.

1. Radio

AM radio has been in the cross hairs ever since FM became a thing. AM was saved by the likes of Art Bell and Rush Limbaugh, but those guys are gone now. No one has yet to fully fill their shoes. Regardless, I still listen to my AM radio along with my FM stations. Because of AM radio, I can listen to many radio stations from across the country when the sun goes down. I like that.

The tech powers would prefer that I get my audio content through a streaming app with a paid subscription. They already want to do this with television content. I refuse to do this. Long live radio!

The Important Letter, 1858. Pieter Willem Sebes 

2. Snail mail

Mrs. Peasant puts a lot of effort into her Christmas card campaign each year. Likewise, I have taken to writing letters instead of sending emails to people. For some reason, people appreciate that effort more than an email, text, phone call, or Facebook emoji. We also prefer to pay our bills through the mail. We do not trust auto pay options.

3. Paying with checks and cash

Our culture is primed and ready to take the mark of the Beast when that time comes. We use electronic payment for some things, but we use checks and cash equally as much. We agree with Catherine Austin Fitts that we need to keep those options alive for the sake of freedom. Once they control the money, they control you. You can prevent this with cash and checks.

4. Cursive handwriting

I was disappointed to learn that today's schoolchildren do not know how to write in cursive or read cursive handwriting. How do they sign a check? I forgot. They just swipe the mark of the Beast for that. Regardless, I write exclusively in cursive now when it comes to my personal letters. I write legibly enough that my script can be read by someone who is literate. From what I have heard, AI cannot read cursive handwriting. That's a good enough reason to keep cursive alive.

5. Using a flip phone

I am famous for the flip phone thing. I never upgraded to a smartphone mainly because I like devices with physical buttons. I cannot pledge that I will never buy a smartphone because they may force the issue. But I will hold out for as long as I can. Fortunately, I am not alone on this issue. The age of chronic tech distraction needs to come to an end.

That's it for my five things I am keeping alive in 2025. I can drive a stick shift, but I don't want to do that. I read physical books, but they have never been on the endangered species list. I gave up vinyl records in the 1980s and prefer CDs and cassettes. I am also hanging on to my DVDs and the DVD player. Get back with me at the end of the decade to see where things stand then.

Thank you for reading!

Campfire, 1888 Winslow Homer