You probably have a collection of something. We have collections of favorite things, and we use some of them to decorate our home.

On my kitchen window sill, you’ll see an arrangement of blue pottery items. This started about five years ago when we moved to our current home.

Since the kitchen colors are blue and white, I started pulling out knickknacks that I had acquired over the years and set them on the window sills if they were blue or white. For example, the solid blue creamer and sugar set is something I inherited from my grandmother.

My daughter thought this arrangement was so clever that she’s been finding items to add to the collection – she’s the one who got me the small bowl at a craft show, and the vase and the pitcher at gift shops.

Probably the most unique thing I do with my collections is feature my Barbie dolls on rotating displays on the china buffet. We don’t have a fireplace so the china buffet is where we put seasonal or floral decorations such as those would find on a mantel piece. If I don’t have a centerpiece for a given time of year, the dolls go on display in various arrangements such as this:

Yes, these are all Native American dolls! I usually do this arrangement in the fall. I’ve also done arrangements with Asian dolls, African and African-American dolls, the historic era princesses.

And yes, I do take my Barbie dolls out of their boxes. I have no intention of reselling them. Most of them are birthday and Christmas gifts from my husband and daughter.

If the dolls get dusty, and they do when I have them on open display like this, I’ve found the dolls and their outfits clean up pretty easy with a dusting cloth sprayed first with a mild non-toxic cleaning solution.

We also have an “Asian corner” that features gifts from students we hosted who were from Japan, South Korea and China and through our involvement in the Monroe International Friendship Association. The only item I purchased in this collection was the candle. The shelf was repurposed from another display.

Why is decorating with your collections a frugal thing to do?

The main thing is: you’re not spending money on additional art or knickknacks if you are featuring or building upon things you already own, and enjoy looking at, as the “color” and personality for your home.

You will also find, as I have, that friends and relatives will cheerfully add to your growing collections on gift-giving occasions. I have bought exactly one Barbie doll on my own during the past three years. It was a doll people didn’t expect I would like, so I was on my own to seek it out.

And if you focus on a collection of items that other people like and enjoy, you might also might some great finds on the second-hand market. I picked up some really cool 1970s-era Bicentennial plates at an estate sale this spring. They go nicely with the colonial / country American items we’ve picked up here and there to showcase in the living room and dining room areas.

What do you have stuffed in a storage box somewhere that can perk up your house?

If you have a student in high school in Monroe County, applications and announcements have been sent to the local schools about the summer sister city student exchange opportunity to Hofu, Japan.

My family belongs to the Monroe International Friendship Association, which sponsors this program. (Click here for contact information or e-mail me if you want a copy of the application packet.)

My husband and I hosted students in 2001 and 2008 and the daughter was one of Monroe’s student ambassadors in 2006.

Now, as you look through the application details, you’ll see what fees the students are expected to pay. And I can hear local parents asking, “Doesn’t the club have volunteers, sponsors, fundraisers and grants to help out with the cost for participants?”

Yes, the club does recruit volunteers, sponsors, fundraisers and grants on a constant basis. And this year’s student fee of $1,500, plus money for gifts to your hosts and new friends and your passport expenses, is what is left over in the budget after all those efforts. Most of the student fee basically goes toward the plane ticket.

If you have checked into the cost of other student travel programs that are advertised in direct mail campaigns, you’ll realize this opportunity is far less expensive than many alternatives. And with this being a sister city program, a lot of the same families are involved year after year. We’ve made a lot of friends in Monroe through MIFA.

There are no fees to be a host family, although the host family will pay for any expenses of entertaining their student guest during the stay. (The details of those plans are entirely up to each family. For example, we took our 2008 student to a Toledo Mud Hens game and to the Monroe County Fair.)

But for the three to five students who will represent Monroe County in Japan this summer, that is a lot of money for a family on a tight budget to come up with.

How did we do it?

We started planning about a year before we expected our daughter to go.

She asked for money for birthday and Christmas and set that aside. The relatives who prefer to provide gifts instead of cash understood where the money was going, and were therefore more likely to give her money than “stuff”.

She worked a part-time job for about three months and saved up that money.

And because she was going to Japan, we were very picky about whatever other fundraising or out-of-pocket expenses for travels she did with her other clubs and organizations. She did go on trips with her Girl Scout troop, in part because the troop always did very well with its cookie booth sales. She was also a member of the Mackinac Island Girl Scout honor guard and we kept those expenses in mind as we planned out her activity budget.

But my daughter didn’t travel with the Monroe High School choir although we volunteered at the Madrigal dinner fundraisers for the choir. Another trip was just too much to add to the mix.

Click through my Japan archives for more discussions about the financial details of hosting and going abroad.

Does this sound like a unusual activity for a family on a budget? Look at it this way: it’s an example of figuring out how to do something you’d like to do — without spending more money than necessary.

Besides, it’s an international twist on that “stay-cation” trend where people are seeking out entertainment close to home rather than travel during their vacation time.

Here’s the background: Monroe has had a sister city student exchange with a city in Japan since 1992. The sponsoring organization is the Monroe International Friendship Association. We got involved as a host family in 2001, and my daughter went to Japan through this program in 2006.

When my husband found out his factory’s summer layoff would be longer than we expected, we realized his time off overlapped with sister city season in Monroe. To take advantage of his time off, we signed up to be a host family for this summer.

With this program, students visit host cities for 3 weeks, with each student splitting that time between two host families. The sister city club arranges for day trips, social gatherings and formal appearances for the students, while the host families transport students to carpool sites and events while adding in their own family activities.

My husband and I knew we could manage our house guest expenses with research and planning. Here are some of the details we worked out:

When and where to spend money

• The Japanese host families are extremely generous with gifts to our Michigan students, so we should certainly reciprocate. We looked for UNIQUE gifts that would not be terribly expensive. Our daughter is in Texas right now, and she sent up some seashells and a little building replica from the Houston area to give to our student on her behalf. “Mom and Dad”’s gift to the student is a Monroe High School T-shirt made-to-order at Cook’s Sportland. And for her family, I purchased patriotic-themed fabric placemats on sale earlier this month at Elder-Beerman.
• Our family outing at the Monroe County Fair will piggyback on the day that I’m assigned to work at The Monroe Evening News booth. When I get off duty, my husband and the Japanese student will meet up with me. Then we will eat dinner on the midway and look at the exhibits. But we’ll park in the free parking area. And since I will have already entered the fair on a vendor’s pass, my admission is free.
• We’re hosting a family picnic with possibly 20 people attending, and will spend the money to get a party sub. My husband and I usually host a summer family party at our home each year with hot dogs and hamburgers, so we really aren’t spending more money than we normally would to be sociable with the relatives.

Using resources we already have

• There’s no need for us to purchase Japanese language books and dictionaries, because we already have them on hand from our previous experience with the program
• There’s also no need to purchase chopsticks, Asian-style serving dishes or cooking utensils, because, well, we have those too! (It’s customary in this program for students to prepare some Japanese food for their the host families.)

Conserving gas

• We’ll carpool with another host family to a Toledo Mud Hens baseball game, but eat at the ball park. The concession menu features Ohio regional foods such as Toft’s ice cream and Root’s chicken that we can introduce to the Japanese students as a cultural experience. So, in this case, concession food is money well spent.
• We also have a family day trip scheduled for Toledo when we’ll go to Westfield Shoppingtown Franklin Park Mall, tour the University of Toledo, stop by a candy store and possibly tour Wildwood Park. Even with lunch at the mall’s food court, this will not be an expensive day out and will keep us busy.

Planning out the schedule

• To help the host families plan their outings, I went to the Michigan Welcome Center on I-75 and The Monroe Evening News downtown office to pick up tourism brochures, maps, and event schedules in the Monroe, Ann Arbor and Detroit area. I handed those out to the other host families at our orientation meeting. I also sent discount card information from the Toledo tourism bureau to the other host families; and made a list of links to the MonroeTalks calendar and other community calendars in the Monroe area.
• After we had our final calendar of social events and activities, I started planning breakfast and dinner menus according to where they would best fit. For example, the day we’ll be in Toledo is the day I’ll have a Crock-Pot chicken dinner cooking. And the “hot breakfast” days will be the mornings when I’m home, rather than the mornings when I need to go to work. (My husband’s idea of breakfast is a bowl of cold cereal with milk or Pop-Tarts.)

Well, to be honest, daughter did pick out the paint color for the wall ahead of time. It’s a light green with a tinge of gray. Officially called “heath green.”

But all she can do for now is watch her e-mail for pictures to see what happens, because we’re taking over the rest of the details.

While it would be nice to have daughter at home to help with painting, it’s just as well there’s only two of us at home during this project. Her furniture and boxes and shelves are crammed into the rest of the house. It’s all my husband and I can do to find a place to sit down to eat and get on our computers.

What make this a Monroe on a Budget-style project?

• It’s a do-it-yourself project. You can’t get any more frugal than that.
• I spaced out the purchase of new hardware and switchplates in this bedroom, and throughout the house, over several months’ time. The white ceramic with nickel plate hardware collection I picked out was perfect for our home, but a bit pricey.
• I took the traded-out / unwanted hardware and switchplates to Habitat for Humanity’s Restore for someone else to re-use.
• I used up the last bit of ceiling paint from a previous project. It was nasty smelling paint anyway, I won’t buy that brand again.
• I bought really good quality primer and paint. I want my work to hold up over time, especially since our walls have been sucking in two coats of primer before they are ready for color paint. (We bought a newly constructed house and the paint job at move-in was very basic.) Oh yes, that’s a lot of paint strokes. And a lot of Tylenol.
• I’m using newspapers as drop cloths. The one big plastic sheet I had left over from a previous project has been protecting the dresser during the paint work.
• My husband did much-needed repairs on the dresser, which is why we left that piece in the bedroom. He needed work space.
• I bought the new curtains and curtain rods with the least expensive window treatment products that had the appearance I wanted. (This was after shopping at three different stores in Monroe …) They are cotton white tab curtains with nickel finish hardware.
• The old curtains and curtain rods will be recycled to our basement window and garage window, neither of which had any window treatments yet.
• I have a can of carpet shampoo remaining from a 2-for-1 sale that I’ll use to clean the carpet before the furniture gets moved back into place.
• We’re using / re-using daughter’s own collection of Japanese knick-knacks and souvenirs as the main decor. No need to spend money on artwork when we have “one of a kind” stuff readily accessible.

Here’s where I was at around 5:30 p.m. today July 14:

There actually are several programs available in Monroe County where you can take in an international visitor for an entire school year if you like, or for a much shorter time, depending on the particulars of that program.

The one my family has been involved with is the Monroe International Friendship Association, which coordinates summer high school student exchanges between Monroe County and a city in Japan. The visiting students in that program spend 10 days with one family, 10 days with another.

We’ve also hosted weekend international visitors through family and co-worker connections.

Anyone who has been involved with, or volunteers, for international exchange programs will tell you one of the challenges is finding good host families. There are usually so many questions that potential host families have that they often stall out before they find the answers.

But money is not as much of a stumbling block as you might think. Here’s how my husband and I look at the situation: when we host an international visitor, we get a chance to learn about other countries or cultures without the expense of leaving home.

Yes, you do want to pay for the international visitor’s dinner, water park fee or movie ticket if you go on a family outing. Yes, you do want to provide a gift for their parents, a Christmas gift, an Easter basket, a birthday cake, etc. depending on the circumstances of their stay and the cultural expectations. Yes, you should purchase a language dictionary if your visitor will be staying for more than a couple of days.

However, the short-term visits in particular do not need to be budget busters. Conversation, experiences and patience are far more valued than money. I have even amused some international college students by taking them on a tour through downtown Monroe and insisting they pose for a photo at the Little Brown Bear statue.

What we’ve found that international students (and visiting out-of-state college friends) really want are:

• Home-cooked American food.
• Home-cooked food from their culture if those products or equivalents can be found.
• Regional or local restaurants. Avoid taking your visitors to restaurant chains they already know – find ones they haven’t tried yet. Maybe do this once during a short-term stay.
• Laundry services.
• Internet connection.
• Learning what American (or Michigan) families do for fun – be that sports watching or participating, attending a concert, going to the beach, visiting a festival or the county fair. Aim for active, hands-on activities so language skills don’t get in the way.
• Sight-seeing at little-known places with great stories. Once, we had a chance to show a visiting college student where a mutual friend went to high school.

You may also want to read one of my previous posts, “Hospitality on a budget.” And there is a thread on the Frugal Village forums about hosting foreign exchange students.

Join the crowd.

My co-worker Doug Donnelly has this story for monroenews.com, and page 1A of today’s print and e-editions of The Monroe Evening News about some of the trips that Monroe Public Schools students are taking this spring: Monroe students on the move.

A snippet:

This is typically the time of year a lot of school districts plan field trips and student learning trips, from day-long events at the Toledo Zoo or an art museum. At Monroe, there are hundreds of students who have the chance to travel this year.

“These activities are wonderful opportunities for our students not only to learn, see and experience other areas of our country, but also to represent their community,” Superintendent David Taylor said.

Now, how can a school district afford these outings for students?

Here’s the behind-the-scenes fact: students and parents usually foot at least part of the expenses through fundraising efforts and their own pockets.

Sometimes there is money in a department budget or booster club fund to contribute toward competition and academic travel.

But even in cases of financial need, students and parents are very often expected to contribute to the cause through volunteer efforts or fundraising projects. In some cases, these “individual student accounts” may have been months or years in the planning.

And today’s article focused on just the school-sponsored programs.

What about those sports travel leagues, summer dance camp, church youth group travel to international events, and in our case, Girl Scouts?

What can you do, as a family on a budget, when faced with these opportunties and no idea how you will pay for it all?

We set our priorities based on what my daughter really, really wanted to do and what could be done with any and all available funds.

Girl Scout service on Mackinac Island, yes. A student exchange with Monroe’s sister city in Japan, yes. Representing her school at Family, Career and Community Leaders of America competition, yes. Monroe High School choir trip, no. Participating in a sport that would involve pay-to-play fees, no.

Look, if you’re a family on a budget, you’re doing well to send your student on one major trip during the high school years. Careful planning, saving up part-time job money, limiting expenses elsewhere, a lot of time spent working at fundraiser events, and some luck in lining up grants or donations might allow your student to travel on two or three major trips during those years.

You can’t assume that if even if such an opportunity exists because of academic, musical or athletic talent, that someone else will provide the funding.

It’s particularly dicey right now, given the regional economy, to rely on traditional donation appeals to cover the expenses. A lot of potential donors just don’t have it in their budgets these days to contribute to student programs. You may need to get very creative, and put in a lot of time, on fundraising efforts in order to meet your financial goal.

So if you get a brochure in the mail, or a filer from the club advisor touting the wonderful opportunities for an academic or competition trip, you should plan to spend a lot of time on discussions around the kitchen table as your family figures out the financial details.

If you have a high-school student at home who’s been looking at the youth travel brochures or a service and educational program overseas, this article has a lot of good information about the popularity and benefits of such travel and some questions you need to ask ahead of time from the sponsoring agency or organization.

But these overseas student trips can cost several thousand dollars. A snippet from the story:

Often parents write checks for the trips, but some students raise money, especially with school-sponsored trips where kids work together on community fundraising events. (Teachers who agree to chaperone typically travel free.)

Sometimes travel organizations offer scholarships for low-income students; others provide advice on finding sponsors — everything from asking local merchants for donations to sending a form letter to everyone you know with a request for $25.

I’ve talked about this topic before. My daughter went to Japan in summer 2006 with the Monroe International Friendship Association’s sister city program. But we’re a family on a budget. We did not have money sitting around in a bank account waiting for an excuse to be spent. How did she come up with the funds?

From my previous post Study abroad programs: do your homework before signing up. (Please note what I have put in boldface because the local economy has since become an even more important issue to consider):

Now, how will you pay for this experience? Every year, it seems, at least one student or high school club in Monroe County holds a fundraiser dinner to help raise money for a trip overseas. (Yes, those notices can be sent to my attention at paula@monroenews.com for publication in The Monroe Evening News.) But with the competition for non-profit funds so tight in our community these days, you cannot rely on getting a significant amount of money through donations and fundraisers. The reality is … if the trip you want to take will cost $6,000 (or whatever the quote is); you have to come up with that money yourself.

For example, my family spent a year planning for my daughter’s student ambassador trip to Japan. She worked part-time at fast food and saved up her birthday and Christmas money. The grandparents pitched in more than they usually would for gifts, because we all knew she really wanted to go to Japan. And she did.

At my daughter’s college, estimates are that half of the students will participate in at least one of the school’s officially recognized overseas programs before graduation. She plans to do a study abroad during her sophomore year.

My daughter also had the opportunity to represent Monroe in the high school student sister city exchange to Hofu, Japan, in summer 2006. So she’s already had a short-term experience with overseas travel and living with host families.

So what should you do with the glossy brochures mailed to your home, the posters hanging on the walls at the school office, the packets from your college’s international studies office, the notices you see on the Classroom and Community Pages in The Monroe Evening News, etc.?

Check them out. And don’t rely on just the information you get from the sponsoring company or non-profit. Ask around your friends, high school counselors and teachers, and international studies staff at your college as to which programs they recommend, don’t recommend and why. Talk to local alumni of study abroad experiences, the local or regional staff who help place students into homes or into overseas colleges, and do your research on the Internet. Find out what the language requirements are for that specific trip, what’s involved with the application process and what you will be expected to do on behalf of your sponsors when you return home.

Before you sign up for anything, you need to pin down exactly what you want from your international study experience:

• Some are educational opportunities intended to place a student with a host family for a few days, weeks or months so he or she can experience the region’s culture first-hand.
• Some programs are short-term community service or missionary outreach efforts, which might just be your cup of tea or fit better into an academic schedule.
• Some programs are not much more than sight-seeing trips hosted by a chaperone with stays in hotels. This can be enjoyable, but be aware that your college admissions officer and future employers will be far more impressed by travels that are more directed to educational or service opportunities.

So if the packet or brochure or ad that attracted your interest doesn’t offer what you want, start looking around. There are so many opportunities available that you are certain to find a program or excursion or schedule that is a better fit.

Now, how will you pay for this experience? Every year, it seems, at least one student or high school club in Monroe County holds a fundraiser dinner to help raise money for a trip overseas. (Yes, those notices can be sent to my attention at paula@monroenews.com for publication in The Monroe Evening News.) But with the competition for non-profit funds so tight in our community these days, you cannot rely on getting a significant amount of money through donations and fundraisers. The reality is … if the trip you want to take will cost $6,000 (or whatever the quote is); you have to come up with that money yourself.

For example, my family spent a year planning for my daughter’s student ambassador trip to Japan. She worked part-time at fast food and saved up her birthday and Christmas money. The grandparents pitched in more than they usually would for gifts, because we all knew she really wanted to go to Japan. And she did.

Now we are looking ahead to the expenses for her college sophomore year trip (most likely to Spain). Because we will work directly with the college on one of its officially recognized programs, we will have a pretty good idea when application season starts of what’s covered and what’s not with her tuition bill and related financial aid package. We also know, that because she is participating in an endorsed program, her classes will be arranged so she can stay on schedule for graduation. (We don’t want to get into a five-year academic plan when her partial scholarship is good for four years.)

If you participate in a semester or year study abroad while in college, it seems sophomore year is the time to do it. I recently read an article in Newsweek magazine that explained the schedule problems that college juniors who study abroad run into during interview season for summer internships between their junior and senior years. Although some recruiters will work with the overseas students’ schedules (because they really want those candidates), the better alternative seems to be make sure the students are on their home campus during spring of junior year.

Now … what if you can’t afford to go overseas as a student? Actually, that’s the situation I was in as a high schooler. I am the oldest of seven children. While my parents had good middle-class jobs, the reality is they also had a lot of expenses raising us kids! I never asked for a study abroad overseas, assuming my parents just couldn’t afford it.

So what did I do instead? In high school, I joined the local American Field Service chapter. It was a club for exchange students and their families. The American high school students like me attended social events and conferences with the international students.

As a freshman at Bowling Green State University, I signed up to live on the international floor in the dorm. My roommate was from Japan. My next-door neighbor was from Greece. Etc. I have lots of pictures of that year when my international friends and I taught each other about our culture, language and traditions.

When I transferred colleges, I went to University of South Carolina and experienced an American culture down South that was different in many ways from the Midwestern attitudes and atmosphere I grew up in.

After moving to Monroe, my husband, daughter and I hosted a Japanese student in 2001 through the sister city program.

This summer, my daughter worked at a Girl Scout camp where some of the staff members were college students from other countries. On three occasions, we had two to three of those girls staying at our house for a couple of days. (We live in a small house with no guest room. The girls slept on sleeping bags on the floor in my daughter’s room. We told them about that arrangement ahead of time and they still wanted to spend a weekend in a “real American home.”)

So it is possible for families on a budget, if you are creative and determined enough, to arrange for an international (or at least a multicultural) experience for their students. But do your research and ask a lot of questions ahead of time, so that you get the best possible experience for your time and money.

My daughter eats any food that comes from another country, so she’ll really enjoy this site.

I learned about the site on a MonroeTalks thread “What’s your favorite blog?”