The Cost of the Stealth Van

Original cost: $17,000.00 give or take a few. (used-26000 miles- summer 2001)

Maintenance: $8000.00 an educated guess – includes three sets of tires, numerous tune-ups, scheduled maintenance, and a couple of Big Fixes.

Gas: $15,500.00 a ballpark figure based on some back calculations from miles driven, gas mileage, and price of gas.

License fees: $675.00

Insurance: $3600.00 approximately.

Total: $44,775.00

Days owned: 3010

Cost per day: $14.87 per day.

Miles driven: 177,000 or .26 cents a mile

The moral of this story is that even normal, boring, frugal vehicles are expensive. Either walk and save a lot of money, or buy an awesome vehicle so you can really enjoy blowing all your money on transportation.

New Project

Project of the day - really project of the winter is a new Fancy-Dance outfit for Hannah. She has been wearing Meredith's for a couple of years new, and since she is fully grown It'd time for one last mom made outfit. I made her a couple of fancy dance dresses when she was a little girl, but the last two have been hand-me-downs. Above is my table of craft stuff and the one rosette I finished today at the upper left. Along the bottom of the canvas you can see what will be a head band. (Paper pattern just below the tracing on the canvas.)


Here's a closer pix of the sort-of finished rosette. I'm changing around the colors on the other ones. These beads are different than any I have used before. These are 11o tri-cuts. They are very sparkly, but a pain to work with since they are a little inconsistent in shape. Lots of beadwork and satin applique on this outfit - but not as much as a competition outfit.

It took all of my free time for a week to make this one piece. It's going to be a long winter.

~Marci