Category: Frugal

Thanksgiving made me think about fun and inexpensive ways to decorate the table and here are some of the results, a potato turkey, an apple turkey and a nutty turkey.  These food animals can be used to decorate the table at Christmas, Thanksgiving or any other time of year that you need a bit of a laugh.  I thoroughly enjoyed making them and I hope you enjoy the post.  This is a great activity to do with kids of any age.

Potato Turkey

This could be a great Thanksgiving or Christmas dish for the vegetarian at your dinner table.  Healthy potato and yummy radish make a pretty good little snack.  Or you can just make gobble, gobble noises while you play with the potato turkey.

Ingredients for 1 turkey:

• 1 Potato
• 1 Radish
• 1 Asparagus stalk
• 3-4 Bok choy leaves
• 2 Peppercorns

You can substitute any of these if your fridge is missing something.  Any leafy vegetable can be used in place of bok choy, a sweet potato for the potato, spring onion for the asparagus and so on.   Initially, I had rosemary stalks for the tail, but it ended up looking too much like a peacock that way.

1.  Bake the potato.  This will be the body of the bird.

2.  Once it is cool enough to handle, cut a slit in the front and scoop out a little hole.  This will be for inserting the asparagus stalk as the neck.  Cut slits across the back of the potato for the tail.  Cut the asparagus down to about 2-3 inches for the neck.

3.  Prepare the bok choy leaves by cutting the stalks into points.   Insert them into the slits at the back of the potato.

4.  Prepare the radish by  scooping out a hole for the neck and little holes for the eyes.  Push the peppercorns into the eye holes.  I found that the hardest part of making this turkey was getting the neck hole just right for the neck.

5. Insert the asparagus into the neck hole in the potato.  Add the radish on top and enjoy your handiwork.

If you find that the peppercorns are stubbornly refusing to stay in place, then a dab of mayonnaise or sour cream will work wonders as glue.  I used mayonnaise to put a leaf of rosemary on the beak for the photo.  In person, so to speak, you could see the tip of the radish just fine for the turkey’s beak.

Apple Turkey

This design is extremely healthy (since it is just an apple) and it looks very modern so if you have one of those modern-style box houses then this might be the proper table decoration for your holiday party.

1.  Choose a nicely shaped apple and wash it.

2.  Make a cut straight down from the top starting about 2/3 of the way down.  This vertical cut should be about 1 1/2 inches long.  Then make a horizontal cut just deep enough to meet the first one and be able to take the piece off.

3.  Make another vertical cut 3/8 of an inch or so higher than the first one and a corresponding horizontal cut to take that piece off.  Keep doing this until you have 4 or more pieces.

4. On the opposite side, make two shallow cuts to take out a wide pie-shaped slice and repeat that to make 4 or more slices.

5. To finish it, make cuts on both sides of the smallest slice to hint at eyes and a beak.  Then slide the slices on both sides upwards, each the same small distance apart. Turn the smallest slice upside down.  The moisture from the apple should hold it all together.

The apple turkey is easy to do, but needs to be eaten before it starts to discolor.  Some varieties of apples take longer to discolor.  This one was a Honeycrisp.

Nutty Turkey

You can get very creative with nuts – this one is fun and funny.  All it takes is a walnut, a peanut in the shell, a couple of lentils, 5 pumpkins seeds and some glue.

1.  Glue the two lentils to the peanut as eyes and one of the pumpkin seeds on as a beak.

2.  Glue the peanut to the walnut.  I had to put an elastic around this to make it stay in place while the glue dried.

3.  Glue two pumpkin seeds together for feet.  Once the glue has dried glue the feet to the bottom of the bird.

4.  Laugh at the result.

I’ve done a number of posts on extremely cheap individuals (Daniel Suelo, Charles Long, Don Schrader) and groups (Freegans) but have always had a soft spot for stories about the Economides (self-professed to be “America’s Cheapest Family”).

While they certainly aren’t shy about self-promotion, I think they’ve actually built a unique lifestyle that works for their entire family (at least they seem to all be in it together when the TV cameras are rolling).  Basing their philosophy around tips like “Don’t go to the grocery store often”, “Leave the kids at home” and “Slice your own luncheon meat” (for grocery shopping), they’ve raised a family of 7 on $350 / month of groceries.  They also managed to pay off their first house in 9 years (while earning an average income of $35k), so they’re definitely living on the cheap.

I mentioned in a comment on my Charles Long post that I’d worry about putting my children through a lifestyle like this.  By the time your kids have really made up their mind whether this is ok or not (once they’d seen how differently their friends live), they’d probably already feel scarred for life if they were unhappy about it.  In interviews the kids seemed fine and happy with the lifestyle.  Their daughter fielded questions about this in one interview and said that she wears brand named clothes she got at the thrift store and drives a fixed up used truck that she loves.  The one part that bothers me is one of their few splurges is for professional hair styling for the mother.  If I was in their shoes I’d focus on “we’re all in this together” and either everyone in the family who wants a store haircut get one or none of them do (“sorry honey, your mother needs to look as good as possible, but you can go to the prom with a brush cut”).  Who knows though, maybe the mother is the only one able to cut hair and no one else has ever been interested in learning in order to cut hers.

I think it’s really cool that this family has been able to turn their frugal philosophy into a “family business” of spreading the gospel (through their website and newsletter). Much as with Charles Long, I get the feeling that by choosing not to chase the “consumer dream” they’re able to focus on spending time with one another and what they really value (beyond “stuff”).

Videos

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKJTxuzvkXw&hl=en&fs=1&]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdN5jDkH7iA&hl=en&fs=1&]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5O8ZzJfro4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Ixduy9VKc&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Would you want to be a part of a family like this?  How would you handle it if part of the family wanted to live this way and part didn’t?

I touched on hitchhiking in a previous post, but felt that it deserved a deeper treatment than I gave it at the time.

For those not familiar with the term, hitchhiking refers to getting rides, for free, from generous motorists who have a free seat and are willing to take you to (or at least closer to) your destination.

To give a bit of personal background, I’ve hitchhiked in Canada and across Europe (throughout the UK, Holland, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, etc).  I based my philosophy initially on Europe on 84¢ a Day, then developed my own approach after getting bit of experience under my belt.  I haven’t hitchhiked in years myself, but I do pick up hitchhikers (and keep thinking I should try hitchhiking up to my hometown at some point).

Why Hitchhike?

First and foremost hitchhiking is a way to minimize travel costs (and save money for more important things, like beer).  Whether to allow a trip that couldn’t be afforded, travel further on a set budget, or just to save money, hitchhiking lets you go further on less (in 1996 I traveled Europe for 4 months on $5000, including airfare).

Often when traveling you end up in a bubble that protects you from the locals.  You’ll spend time with other travelers, which is great for learning about the world, but somewhat sad that you’re finding out about India when you’re staying at an Amsterdam hostel.  Often the locals that you do interact with, such as hostel staff, don’t have much interest in you as a person (they’re just doing their job) and aren’t particularly keen on a cultural exchange. Hitchhiking makes it FAR more likely you’ll be talking to a typical member of the culture you’re traveling in, and it will probably be someone very interested in talking to you (as often that’s why they picked you up).

Social Contract

There’s a number of unspoken rules when hitchhiking.  Both parties are interested in safely and enjoyably spending time with one another.  The hitchhiker does this to get closer to her destination, the driver does this to have company on the road (or to feel good about himself for helping someone out).

When someone picks you up your have an obligation to be a pleasant traveling companion.  Talking to the driver and keeping the conversation friendly and enjoyable are necessary – this isn’t the time to debate religion or politics.  I still feel badly about one time I got picked up with a woman I was traveling with at the time.  We’d tried to camp out the night before, and slept VERY badly, so shortly after being picked up we both fell asleep for the next 4 hours of the drive.  The driver didn’t pick us up to listen to us snore, and was very gracious when I apologized profusely after waking up at our destination.

Small exchanges are certainly appropriate (if you’ve packed a small lunch and want to eat, certainly offer to share – standard etiquette applies).  SOME hitchhikers will offer payment (in cash or gas), but to me this kind of defeats the whole point: if I’m going to pay for transportation, why not just take a bus?  I took a small bag with Canadian pins, coins and other small gifts that I gave to drivers (especially if they picked me up with children, the kids were delighted with small trinkets).

Since drivers have been good enough to pick me up in the past, I feel obligated to pick up hitchhikers when I’m driving.

Appearances Matter

Sadly, as in many areas in life, first impressions matter.  Particularly when drivers are speeding past at 80 km / hour, often they’ll be too far down the road by the time they decide to pick you up if its a tough decision.  Everyone should be clean and decently dressed when hitchhiking.  For men, having short hair and no facial hair is probably a good idea.  For women I’d probably err on the side of modest dress (the last things you want drivers to think is that you’re offering physical affection).  Standing on the side of the road puffing a cigarette is probably not the best idea (I’ve never smoke cigarettes, so this wasn’t an issue for me, but I recently hesitated to pick a guy up because he was smoking).

If you can do something to get attention, look harmless, and look like fun it’s probably worth doing.  While traveling Europe, if I had to wait more than 5 or 10 minutes I’d pull out a Canadian flag I was traveling with and start dancing with it on the side of the road.  One time a bus full of Asian tourists slowed down, they all took pictures of me, then it sped up and disappeared (I felt so used 😉 ).  I giggled at the time thinking about the starring role I was going to have when they went home and showed their friends the European vacation pics.

Two guys will have a tough time getting picked up (most drivers would find it intimidating to be in a car with two young guys).  Traveling on your own, or with a woman, is probably the best approach.  Two women traveling together have an easier time getting rides than two men.

Location, Location, Location

Where you hitchhike is probably the biggest factor to determine how long you’ll wait for a ride.  Sometimes the country itself is a problem:  when I was in Sweden, I couldn’t get picked up to save my life.  I was told that all students in the country can take buses for free, so motorists had the feeling that no one should have to hitchhike and wouldn’t pick you up.  After spending a morning on the side of the road, I sprang for a bus ticket to Stockholm and got out of the country.

The best places to hitchhike are where drivers are traveling slowly or stopped (giving them more time to decide they want to pick you up).  A gas station is therefore a MUCH better place to find a ride than a highway on-ramp, which in turn is better than along the shoulder of the highway.  Often drivers will be happy to drop you off at a restaurant or gas station if you ask.

In some countries (and in certain areas within them) it is illegal to hitchhike.  The Dutch police pulled over and told me that they’d be back in 10 minutes and would arrest me if I was still there.  Usually I think the police will understand that you aren’t a local and hopefully give you a warning if you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be.

Safety

Hitchhiking has a higher chance of getting into a dangerous situation than many other forms of travel.  The first comment on my review of 84¢ a day was a fear of ending up in a Hostel horror movie.  If you’re worried about this to the point that it makes you uncomfortable (or worse, decide to carry a weapon to protect yourself), you’re better off just paying for travel and avoiding the hitchhiking experience entirely.  I had two bad experiences over four months (a German guy tried to talk me into letting him fondle me, and two stinking drunk Fins offered me a ride) and in both cases I just stayed polite, alert and got out of the situation as soon as I could.

I’ve met a woman was raped while hitchhiking, so bad experiences happen (although I’ve met men and women who have hitchhiked extensively and had overwhelmingly positive experiences).  Weigh your feelings of the pros and cons and decide for yourself if it’s worth hitchhiking as a form of travel.

Have you ever hitchhiked?  Have you ever picked up a hitchhiker?  What was the experience like?

The Bag Lady recently posted about Daniel Suelo, a man who has “quit using money like a bad drug“. I always find people, like Charles Long, Don Schrader or the Freegans to be interesting in their ability to opt-out of the Western economic and social system and chart their own course, living how they want.

Much like the others, there’s a very specific philosophy behind Suelo’s life. He was doing development work with Ecuadorean tribespeople and saw that as they became more prosperous, their health declined. He took the view that, counter-intuitively, money was impoverishing them. He spent time with the sadhus (“the revered ascetics who go penniless for their gods”) and decided that it would be easy to be a sadhu in India along with others doing the same thing, but how much harder (and more worthwhile) it would be to do the same thing in hyper-consumption America?

The “noble savage” has been a particularly obnoxious idea that glorifies living primitive lifestyle close to nature. I think Suelo is buying into an illusion that money is corrupting a society that he would rather see continue to live as subsistence farmers. Some people will make unhealthy choices, when they have the option to make them. To keep a group poor (or hope for their continued or future poverty) so they can’t access these choices is short-sighted and patronizing.

A quote I love from a Danny Devito movie (I never saw the actual movie, this was just from the trailer) was “a million dollars is a motive with a universal adapter”. This is true about any amount of money. If someone has desires in life, money can assist them (directly or indirectly) in fulfilling them. Money can help you find love (ask any guy who has taken someone out on a date or any woman who has bought makeup or a push-up bra), food, knowledge (bookstores, internet connections), or pretty well anything else you might want.

Money is the ultimate symbol: it can be anything. As Suelo (and the Bag Lady) point out, money only has meaning in the context of the marketplace it is used in. They say if you gave an alien a trillion dollars it would be meaningless to them. This is true, but so what? Money is incredibly useful WITHIN this context. It’s like saying computer software wouldn’t be anything other than long strings of 0’s and 1’s if there wasn’t any hardware to run it on. This is true, but it doesn’t make software useless (it’s just part of a system).

Heidemarie Schwermer (also mentioned by the Bag Lady) apparently has lived without money for about 12 years, by bartering within “exchange circles”. I can’t understand for the life of me why she feels this is a more noble lifestyle than bartering with the global exchange circle that money makes possible (I guess I’ll have to watch the documentary). Similar I don’t understand why Daniel Suelo will accept a winter jacket from a friend, but he won’t accept money from the same friend to go buy a jacket.

In each case, people (including Mr. Suelo) are able to adopt their lifestyle because of the excess from Western living. He uses a library provided free computer and internet connection to maintain his website, and often receives food and goods from friends in the nearby town. I don’t have a problem with this, but some may attack a lifestyle that is so completely dependent on the society it rejects.

For retirement, Suelo plans to die in the canyon he has been living in instead of in a geriatric ward. I respect his fortitude to live his own life in such a manner that is radically different (and far harsher) from the society he exists in. I don’t completely understand (or agree with) his outlook on money, but I admire his resolve and the courage of his convictions.

Mr. Cheap is on vacation this week but eagerly looks forward to reading your comments when he’s back in town.

I’ve written in the past about people like Charles Long and Don Schrader who make me seem like I should be called Mr. Spendthrift, not Mr. Cheap.  An entire group who also makes me look like I’m throwing money around like a drunken sailor are the Freegans.  At our recent get together, neither Preet nor Mike had heard of Freegans, so I thought it might make an interesting post.

What Are Freegans?

People who have embraced Freeganism are scavengers, trying to minimize the social and environmental impact of our consumer society by extreme reuse of the waste of others.  They dumpster dive to secure the necessities of life (and for non-necessities discarded by others), and by doing so are able to release themselves from having to be a wage-slave.  They’re basically human raccoons.

Freegan is derived from “free” and “vegan”.  Some Freegans eat discarded meat (yum), but these are more accurately called “Meagans” (no, I’m not making this up.  If you’re wondering if this is a joke post, it’s not).

Apparently restaurants and grocery stores will often wrap up food that’s being discarded, so it’s possible to dig out food from the trash that’s still quite clean and hygienic (if you’ll allow a broad definition of both terms 🙂 ).  Restaurants and grocery stores have been sued in the past when food they donated made people sick. Rationally, they’ve responded to these lawsuits by no longer donating food, which is a shame for everyone involved (why do a few bad apples always need to spoil things?).  There was a recent bill signed into law in Florida that provides liability protection for restaurants to donate food.  Clinton signed The Federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act which supposedly does the same thing (I’m not sure why Florida had to create a similar law if there was Federal protection provided 13 years ago).

Things I Like About Freeganism

I admire people who are able to take their dissatisfaction with some part of modern living and change how they live.  I’m perpetually annoyed at people who complain endlessly, but do nothing to change things.  I’m even more annoyed at people who try to force change on everyone else (most activists).  People who say “I don’t like this part of the system, so I’m going to change how *I* live so that I’m not part of the problem and to show people that there’s another way” are very, very cool.

I find efficient resource consumption endlessly appealing.  I like the Walden-esque element of structuring their life such that they can be fairly independent from society at large.  Beyond the positive impact of not having products produced for them, they also save all the associated costs and impact of distribution.

Apparently Freegans don’t panhandle, which is a very good thing (in my opinion).

People make the criticism of Charles Long that his system of living wouldn’t work if everyone does it (which he acknowledges, but rightfully responds that most people won’t).  Similarly Freegans need people to generate the trash for them to live off of, so we can’t all live this way (and, I suspect, very few people would be willing to).  We can’t all live this way (and won’t), but it’s great for some people to do it if they’re willing.  Some people criticize Freegans for living indirectly off of a system they condemn, but I don’t have a problem with this.

I love that Freegans are able, by drastically reducing their cost of living, to be far more selective about what employment they take on.  Often they will volunteer or focus on projects of personal interest to them.

Freegans tend to find good garbage dumps that they’ll visit regularly.  Hopefully this means that they don’t make a mess when garbage picking.  I’m disgusted by littering in general and it always annoys me when I see homeless people dumping trash, sorting through it, then leaving the mess for someone else to clean up.

Things I Don’ t Like About Freeganism

I’m a pretty easy-going, open guy, but eating garbage is past where I draw the line.  I’m happy for other people to do it, but I’m not going to.

Part of the Freegan philosophy is moral support of theft (look about 2/3rds of the way down the page).  They advocate shoplifting as “better than forking over big bucks”, employee theft (they’re “stealing” your time, so steal things from the workplace), and scams such as returning goods they’ve dug out of the trash (for a refund).  I think they lose the moral high ground in a hurry when petty thievery becomes a part of the lifestyle.

While I like the libertarian elements and philosophy behind Freeganism, I think I’d have a very different perspective on life and society compared to most Freegans.  I don’t think our economic system is broken to the degree that it requires a complete boycott.  Ironically, it could be argued that the incredible strength of our modern economic system is what allows them to live a decent (debatable perhaps) lifestyle off of the system’s discarded trash.

More Info About Freeganism

A couple blog posts about Freegans are available at the Go Frugal blog, Tigers & Strawberries (a pretty blistering criticism of the movement) and at The Everyday Economist.  Two very comprehensive overviews are at “How Stuff Works” and a “lens” at Squidoo.  More mainstream news coverage is available at MSNBC (with video), Green Living Tips and Mother Nature Network (also with video).  If you don’t mind some really ugly English accents, there’s also a YouTube video.  An interesting critique of Freeganism is available here (it’s Tribe.ca, a message board about club culture in Toronto).

You can read what Freegans say about themselves at their main US website, their main Canadian website, and on the Canadian Activism Archives.

What do you think of Freeganism?  Would you ever consider a Freegan lifestyle yourself?  Have you ever met a Freegan (or know one as a friend / family)?

My apologies again for anyone who tried to comment on the “Bedtime Stories” post.  Somehow I managed to turn off comments on it.

A couple of times I’ve referred to a trip across Europe I took after my second year of my undergraduate degree.  I was originally inspired to take the trip after Gil White came to my university and gave a slide show about his various backpacking trips abroad, and articulated his vision of ulta-low cost student travel (and hawked his self-published “Europe on 84¢ a day”).

The 84 cents in the title of his book isn’t meant to be taken literally, as he admits that some days he spent far more than this (and others he spent nothing).  It was more meant to capture the reader’s imagination that there are other ways to travel instead of the pre-packaged (and expensive) tours or Euro-rail passes.

His philosophy of travel is built on the idea that most people are good, nice individuals who are interested in learning more about travellers (and telling them about their own lives and cultures).  He feels that travellers fears keep them isolated from the real countries they travel to, and much like in all-inclusive resorts, we end up paying top dollar to have a sanitized experience.

His major suggestion to save money is to hitchhike.  While everyone these days lives in terror of people they don’t know (“stranger danger”) he believes that hitchhiking is far safer than most people realize and has seldom had a bad experience.  My experience was the same, and after hitchhiking for most of 4 months I only had 2 experiences that could be classified as negative (and they weren’t THAT bad).

His recommendation is for men to hitchhike alone, and for women to hitchhike with one other person (either another woman or a man).  He says, rightfully, that two men will have a hard time getting picked up.  He also admits that its a double standard, and feels that hitchhiking is generally safe, however a woman on her own is at the threshold of acceptable danger and is better off with another person.  Having met a woman who was raped while hitchhiking alone, I wholeheartedly agree (feel free to call me sexist, I can take it).

He pushes this further, providing some ideas on how to get the people who pick you up to let you stay with them over-night.  He claims that many drivers are willing to host people they meet, but assume that you wouldn’t want to stay with them (and justifies trying to get them to let you sleep over as “letting them know you WOULD like to stay with them).  This goes beyond what I’m comfortable doing, and the two times this happened for me (once in Germany and once in Finland) they were AWESOME experiences, but I still felt like a bit of a mooch.

In this 1995 edition, he provides extensive information about most European countries, including maps and embassy contact info.  Like the “Let’s Go” travel series, this sort of information is obsolete before the book is published, and modern travellers are able to dig this up on-line.  I think in a current version this should all be chopped out and his book should focus on the core value offered:  his philosophy on travel.

I’ve searched for the book (and author) on-line, and he still seems to be visiting universities in Canada and the US, but I have no idea if the book is still available or in print.  In the 1995 version it has the contact address for the author as “R.R. #1, St. Anns, Ontario, L0R 1Y0 Canada”.  If anyone knows where this books can be purchased on-line (other than used copies at Amazon and E*Bay), please post the info in a comment below.  Thanks in advance!

I’ve been finding that it’s increasingly difficult to even understand, let alone benefit from, the “deals” that are being offered by stores.  It’s apparently a Canadian thing (according to a friend in the US), but we regularly get coupons for fast food.  It’ll be something like a free fry and drink, if you buy a meal deal, plus another sandwich, when the moon is gibbous and Stephen Harper has recently worn a red tie.  I’ve just started scanning them and sending them to Thicken My Wallet and Money Grubbing Lawyer and they explain to me what my legal exposure is if I try to make a purchase using these coupons.

There’s out-and-out scams, which I definitely wouldn’t consider a special offer stuffed full of conditions and exclusions to be, but to me stores issuing these are playing games with their customers.  Half the time I see people trying to use coupons or take advantage of a deal, I see an employee pushing back explaining to them why it doesn’t work the way they were led to believe.  At Pizza Pizza there is a current deal where they say “ANY Slice and a Pop for $2.99!”  A man was ready to pay for his, and the clerk asked for over $5.  The man hesitantly asked why he wasn’t getting the $3 deal, and got sneered at by the clerk.  In tiny print, it says that ANY slice refers to pepperoni or cheese.  So “ANY” in all caps, refers to 2 of the dozen options available.  Right…  The thing that really got me is the customer then apologized and paid the higher price.  Why do we let stores treat us this way?  I think this is what almost all customers do, apologise (“Sorry I let you trick me”) then pay full price.  I think we’re embarrassed to be discussing the deal that the store OFFERED!  What’s up with that?  Do people have so much cash they can just throw it around like a bored aristocrat instead of suffering the indignity of clarifying a transaction being offered to us?  And isn’t walking away from someone who just tried to deceive us the right reaction, not doing business with them!

My parents recently went to a sale at Zeller’s (think a smaller, dirtier version of Wal-Mart) and they couldn’t understand why customers were mobbing everything except the Pop (aka Soda, aka “Coke”).  They asked a woman working there, and she said most things had already gone on sale, but the pop sale starts the next day.  They were going to head to a grocery store immediately afterwards, but after checking the flier they had they saw that some of the sales didn’t start until the next day, while others didn’t start until the following Monday.

Bell and Rogers are famous for this bullshit.

I can’t understand how businesses could be unaware of the long term effects of this strategy.  Customers will get increasingly suspicious, and eventually just start ignoring deals, assuming “there’s got to be a catch”.  I’ve already got to that point.  Offering a deal to get a customer into your store, then revealing that you tricked them really doesn’t seem like a good way to build a business to me, but it seems to be so widespread that most people must accept it.

What’s the worst example of misleading advertising you’ve run into?  How do you react when you discover a deal you thought you were going to get was misrepresented to you?  Is there any solution to this?

With two little people around the house, Easter is a time of fun.  Here is one of the ways we enjoyed ourselves.  We made edible art out of eggs and some onion skins we had collected the last couple of weeks.

1. Collect onion skins.
2. Wrap the eggs in onion skin.  For varied patterns, add smaller bits of onion skin close to the egg and wrap the whole egg in larger pieces.
3. Fasten the skins to the egg.  I used elastic bands, but have heard of people using string or wrapping the lot in cheesecloth.
4. Put the eggs in a pot with about 1 inch of water.
5. Hard-boil the eggs.
6. Unwrap and inspect them.
7. Enjoy your one of a kind artwork.