Do you worry every little thing you do might harm your children? Many parents worry about buying lots of expensive children’s gifts, but it’s not necessary. [Read more…] about Don’t Worry So Much About Your Children’s Gifts
debt free living
Homemade Gift Baskets
From: Donna
I have a great and cheap idea to share for Christmas savings. I love giving gift baskets. They’re versatile, personal, and best of all… cheap.
This year I am making a candle and potpourri basket for my sister in law. I bought a bunch of the $1 tiny jar candles from Wal Mart and Dollar General so she can test out new scents, and a big bag of potpourri on clearance for $2. ($10.00)
My best friend’s husband loves to grill, so I bought a basting brush, paper plate holders, grilling spices, and marinades. ($6.00)
And for my best friend (an Air Force wife and employee and mother of a one and a half year old), a spa basket. She always seems to be stressed out and never gets downtime. I bought a 4 piece green tea bath mix ($3) from Wal Mart, added two small candles, potpourri, a bath pouf, and a sleeping mask. ($18.00)
Needless to say, most of my ideas came from Dining on a Dime. I just switched them around a little to compliment my friends and family. I have a few more people to shop for, but so far I have not spent over $20 on any gift, and everyone is getting about 6 different items.
Dining on a Dime contains a very large section on gift baskets and jar mixes. At different times in her life, Tawra worked in floral shops and part of her job was making gift baskets, so we added that as part of the cookbook.
In addition to the large lists of ideas to use for gift baskets, Dining on a Dime includes many recipes for gifts in a jar that you can make yourself and add to the gift baskets. For example you could make an Italian basket with bread, noodles, sauce and some homemade Italian Seasoning from Dining on a Dime or make a basket with soup fixings with our Bouquet Garni Bags. If they like spicy we have a Cajun Seasoning, BBQ sauces or special mustards.
You could make up a basket with the ingredients for pumpkin pie, adding our homemade pumpkin pie spice and our recipe for pumpkin pie. And of course, there are lots of cookie mixes, muffin mixes, etc.
Besides the holidays you could give a laundry basket of cleaning supplies for newlyweds or for a housewarming gift. Make up some of our homemade cleaning supples (and of course a copy of Dining on a Dime 🙂 or use a cute container to help stock the couple with spices and seasonings, filling it with cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder etc. and adding homemade seasoned salt or taco seasoning from the book.
Dining On A Dime also includes recipes for hot chocolate, flavored coffee and spiced tea mixes, kids things like Easy Bake Oven mixes, play dough and slime. There are potpourri and sachets recipes. Homemade ornaments.
These and many more ideas are included in Dining on a Dime. Hopefully these get you started!
photo by: merelymel
Organizing Kids’ Schoolwork
How To Organize Your Children’s Schoolwork
School has started in many places, which means more mounds of paper clutter to keep under control. Here are some tips to help keep all of that school paperwork from multiplying, reproducing and generally taking over your home and your life.
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Set a certain time and place to go through your kids’ backpacks and paperwork each day. Use this time to sign all those papers you need to sign, mark upcoming meetings or events on the calendar and sort through everything.
The best time and place to organize schoolwork will vary for each family. For us, it was best to do it the moment the kids walked through the door while it was fresh on their minds. I would have a snack ready for them, they would explain the papers to me and while I was dealing with them (signing, writing on the calendar or admiring their handiwork), they would tell me about their day.
Then I would return everything that needed to go back into their backpacks, trash the rest or put it in a special place or folder. This helps prevent things from getting tossed on the counter or table where they are eventually lost or forgotten.
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Of course you will need a calendar and/or small bulletin board or dry erase board.
My calendar has very large squares where I simply mark what needs to be done. If there is something very important that I must not forget no matter what, I mark it in red, but I write everything else in pencil in case I need to change it. Then I can just erase it and make the necessary changes.
There have been times when I used a purple pen if I wanted the kids to remember something. I read about a study which found that people will remember things better when marked in purple.
Use different colored markers or pens for different things. For example, one child’s events will all be in green, all dentist appointments are in blue or whatever works best for you.
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If there are special papers that go with an event, I either paper clip them to the calendar page, pin them to a small bulletin board or place them in a folder, making a star on the calendar so I know to look on the bulletin board or in the folder for the paper that goes with the event.
All my events seem to fit fine on one large square of a calendar. If your events don’t fit, you might need to look at changing a few things in your life and cutting back on some things. This could be a sign you are too busy.
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There are many many fancy and expensive calendar systems out there. I personally find them to be more confusing and more work than they are worth but if they work for you, use one.
I know that some of you who work away from home need day planners and other organization systems but that is another whole subject that I deal with in my e book Plan It, Then Do It.
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Another system some people like is to have a folder for each child with special papers in it. For example, if one child is having a class party, I will mark the class party on the calendar but then place the paper with all the info about it in the folder. Once again, I would place a star by the event to remind me more info is in the folder. Once a week these folders should be sorted through so they don’t get cluttered.
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Always keep folders of any kind in an upright position in a holder. Most folders or papers that are laid in a horizontal position get forgotten, lost, piled on or not used.
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KEEP IT SIMPLE. This could be the most important point of all. If it is complicated and too involved neither you or your family won’t bother to use it. Sometimes it isn’t our families which are the problem but the system we choice to use. Just because it comes highly endorsed by a famous organizer or some such does not mean it will work for you so don’t fight it and try something different.
Well I will sign off for now. I am looking at the piles of paper on my own desk and think I might need to take a break, practice what I preach and clear my desk. : )
      -Jill
Photo By: magma666
Water Savings
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I am a big fan of saving money in any way possible! We conserve water at our house. If we are just rinsing something out we save the water to put on our garden. If we do not finish a glass of water we put it into a special pitcher and it is given to our cats and dogs. If we find a bottle of water we pour it on an outdoor plant. Sheri D.
Some families couldn’t handle this next tip but we always drank after each other so I kept a small lightweight jug of water in the fridge. The kids would take a drink out of it and pop it back in to stay cold. I never had a pile of dirty glasses and at an earlier age the kids were able to open the fridge and get a drink so I didn’t have to get water out of the sink for them to drink each time.
I guess most people now have refrigerators with the water on the door but I sure did love my jug because it saved not only water but prevented me from having to wash so many glasses and finding glasses sitting all over the house.
-Jill
Fancy Inexpensive Dinner Breads
FANCY SCHMANCY dinner breads cheap…
Use a decoratively shaped Bundt pan,
a stick of butter or margarine,
3 cans of biscuits (jumbo or regular) (you could use frozen dinner roll too)
seasonings to suit the meal…for instance, serving Italian? Use basil and Parmesan cheese
Melt butter or margarine in bottom of Bundt pan evenly. Sprinkle seasonings. Then put biscuits in on end, like stacking dimes, one at a time, to allow seasonings and butter to ooze between each one. Bake as directed on the can. Then simply turn out onto a serving plate, and VOILA! –a beautiful bread ring. You can use cheddar cheese and jalapeno for Mexican…brown sugar and cinnamon for pull apart cinnabuns…rosemary and olive oil and olives for Italian or Greek… ANY assortment you can think of… dried tomatoes and olive oil… try it!
-Vicky B.
All I can say is yum! I am going to have to try this one!
Tawra
Photo By: C Jill Reed
How Do I Winterize An Outside Faucet?
How Do I Winterize An Outside Faucet
From: Janice J.
How do you use styrofoam to protect an outside faucet? It is getting colder and I am worried. Thanks!
I would duct tape a big chunk around the faucet. Maybe break it apart so it fits snugly around the faucet and then just duct tape away until it’s on there tightly.
      -Tawra
Depending on your faucet, I have taken 2 large styrofoam cups and put one inside of the other then taped. Be sure to get it as close to the house as you can.
This really works. I had my outside faucet freeze one year and what a mess so I don’t chance it any more especially since it is so easy to do.
      -Jill
Mike: It might also be good to stuff some rags into any places where air might get in, wrap the outside with a plastic trash bag and tape it with heavy duct tape to prevent moisture from getting in. (If it’s in a sunny area, a black plastic bag will keep it warmer in the daytime, too be cause the black absorbs sunlight.) If you manage to keep cold air and moisture out and provide some insulation with the foam, rags and/or some other insulating material, it should not freeze.
Of course, if it’s possible to turn off the water to that faucet from inside the house and then open the faucet to let any water drain out before you wrap it, that would be even better.
Photo By: rwkvisual
Easy And Inexpensive Cake
Easy And Inexpensive Cake
I just wanted to share a quick and inexpensive tip for making cakes. Buy a box cake mix on sale. If it is a white or yellow cake, add 10 oz. diet sprite, diet 7-up, or the zero calorie sparkling water. Then cook the cake as instructed on the box. You do NOT need to add eggs, butter, oil, water or anything else to the mix, just the soda and the cake mix itself.
Diet Dr. Pepper or Diet Coke are fine for chocolate cakes, but if added to the yellow cake mix, it makes it a yucky gray color. NO added calories, no eggs, no milk, no water, no oil…. Voila! A VERY MOIST cake for .99 + soda (you can get the whole 2 liter for .99 cents and you only need to use 10 oz.)
Ok, I admit, this does sound strange but I just might have to give a try. I have heard of doing this with pancake mix before so maybe it would work with cakes too.
-Tawra
For more money saving recipes and tips check out Dining On A Dime Cookbook.
photo by: kimberlykv
Menu – Yankee Noodles, Bottled (Canned) Fruit Cake
Tips:
Sometimes we tend to make our meals so much more complicated than they need to be. I was blessed to be able to watch many women prepare their meals who learned to cook during the 30’s and 40’s. Some were busy stay at home moms. Others were moms who worked away from home and some were moms who helped their husbands on the farm.
These women used some tricks to prepare their meals that made meal preparation easier and faster. Here are a few of them:
- They didn’t worry if they had homemade biscuits or muffins for every meal. Often for a daily meal they would just place a plate of bread (not always homemade bread, either) on the table to eat with butter and jam or honey. In some homes, this was a staple at every meal.
- They would keep things cleaned and ready to use for a relish dish like carrot sticks, celery sticks, olives, pickles, sliced cucumbers, tomatoes or fresh cauliflower.
- Hard boiled eggs or pickled beets were kept on hand to place in a bowl at the last minute.
- They didn’t hesitate to open some canned fruit to pour into a bowl and set on the table to eat by itself without whipped cream or any added extras.
- Canned vegetables were a life saver for many of them. Then they could just warm some canned peas to set on the table.
They served some combination of all of these at most meals. Then they would add a potato dish, rice or noodles and a meat and they would have dinner.
Sometimes we read cooking magazines and see very elaborate meals on TV and think if this isn’t the kind of food we make we must have failed as good cooks. Each dish doesn’t need five or more ingredients in it to make it good. That is probably one of the places where our diets started going down the tubes. We forgot to keep things simple.
You also save money when you keep it simple because you’re not using as many ingredients or extras like whipped cream or special spices.
Just like in the old days, your family will probably enjoy an icy cold canned peach just as much as a fresh organically grown peach you had to study to determine how ripe it was before you took it home to try to peel and slice it. It’s you, mom and dad, who make the meal special just by being together with the family, not the pedigree of your fruits and vegetables.
Menu:
Yankee Noodles*
Relish Dish
Bread and Jam
Bottled (canned) Fruit Cake*
Yankee Noodles
From: Alice B. (I learned this recipe in junior high. It’s tasty, quick to cook, inexpensive, and dirties only one pan!)
1 lb. lean ground beef
8 oz. uncooked noodles
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 large can tomatoes
Salt and pepper (to taste)
Brown meat and onion. Drain off excess grease. Add noodles and canned tomatoes. Chop tomatoes a little bit while in the pan. Bring to a boil. Reduce temperature and simmer covered for 7 minutes. Stir. Cover and simmer 8 more minutes. That’s it!
You can add other ingredients you may have on hand like chopped green peppers, black olives, mushrooms, fresh herbs, etc. You may want to top with grated cheese. (Never cook the noodles first. They must cook with the rest of ingredients to absorb their flavors.)
I love, love, love recipes that take only one pan and this one really does! Often, people will call something a one dish meal but they end up using 3 pans, 2 mixing bowls and 1 casserole dish. (That’s the one dish, I guess.) Now you can see why I really appreciated your recipe. : )
      -Jill
Bottled Fruit Cake
From: Ruth P.
CAKE USING BOTTLED FRUIT – (Sometimes we have an excess of home bottled fruit and need to use it up before it gets old. This is a great way to use it!)
1 quart of fruit with liquid
4 cups flour
4 tsp. soda
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup oil
4 eggs
Raisins and nuts if desired
Blend all of the above ingredients at the same time. Bake at 350° for 35 to 45 minutes. This makes one sheet cake or two cakes in 9×13 inch pans. This is a nice change from just using the fruit for a crisp, cobbler. or pie. You don’t need to put frosting on this, which can save time, too.
Photo by: Yoames
Medical Savings
Medical Savings
We had to take my son to the emergency room again the other night. We aren’t the type to go for every little thing and usually go only for big, gaping, bleeding things but it does seem like we have to go there pretty frequently– so much so that I keep an "emergency room" bag packed and hanging by my purse. It includes snacks, sewing supplies, books to read and so on because going to the emergency room can and usually does mean a many hour wait. When the kids were little, I would sometimes have to take the child that wasn’t hurt with me, too. They would get hungry or restless and the things in my bag would help.
Recently, my son dropped a large log on his toe, cutting it and smashing it severely. (This is a hazard you don’t always hear people talk about with regard to heating your home with wood) He is fine and needs just to be on crutches for a few days but he had a good tip for me to give to our readers.
When the doctors were fixing his toe, the nurse took out a large tube of antibacterial ointment to apply to it. He asked her "Are you throwing that tube away?" She said "Yes," and asked if he wanted it, since he had paid for it. He told me that it is a large enough tube that it contains enough ointment to last his family 3-4 years. Then she took a huge piece of gauze and cut a small piece from it. Again he asked to keep the remains.
You can ask for these things. My mom has gotten scissors that they used when putting in stitches or tweezers when they took out stitches. Also, be careful if you are admitted to the hospital to take your regular medications with you or have a family member bring them to you. These are called self administered drugs (medications which you take on a daily basis). Be sure to tell the doctor you are taking them and have them with you. Not all hospitals will allow you to do this but some will, so you might as well take them and ask if you can use your own medicines. It will be much less expensive than if the hospital provides them.
My mom had to go the the hospital and stayed there one night. They asked what regular (self administered) medications she took and she told them. The hospital staff gave the medications to her while she was there. Later, she received a bill for $529 just for 3 pills and 1 aspirin. She called the pharmacy and found out that a 3 month supply of all of the same pills together would only cost $125. If she had brought her own medications with her it would have cost nothing.
This is a perfect example of how many leaders (people in charge of hospitals, schools, government and business) are so messed up in their thinking and can’t use common sense regarding how to save money on medical costs, school costs, business costs, etc.
It isn’t that we need more money but we need to use what we have more wisely.
-Jill
P.S. I didn’t write this to open up a can of worms about the medical issues happening in our country right now. I’m not burying my head in the sand, I just don’t want arguing on the blog. Please keep this in mind when you comment because if there is negative stuff I won’t post it. I just wanted you to be aware of some things you can do to save yourself money and to let you know not to be afraid to ask to take these things home with you.
P.P.S. I do appreciate all of the great nurses and sometimes doctors who ask if I would like to take things home because I have paid for them and they are about to be discarded. These people are a super help and kind in so many ways. Thank you nurses.
photo by: agacombahia
Save Money Using Gift Cards Specials
Save Money Using Gift Cards Specials
If you like to eat out, check and see if your favorite restaurant is offering gift card specials right now.
I just drove by Applebee’s and if you buy a $50 Gift Card, you get a $10 gift card also.
At Spangles (a local hamburger joint), if you buy a $10 gift card you get a free Christmas CD. My brother and his family were going there to eat. They saw the deal, so they bought the gift cards first, then ordered dinner and paid for it with the gift card. They got a free Christmas CD to take home just for eating out that night which they were going to do anyway.
So if you’re eating out, see if the restaurant is offering any gift card specials before you order. If so, get a gift card first, then order, then pay for your meal with the gift card!
-Tawra
photo by: bfishadow