3 Easy Dishes to Make When It Seems Like the Cupboards Are Bare

Every once in a while, usually right before payday, I catch myself standing in front of the fridge wondering where all the food went. That’s a pretty unsettling feeling when its 5 o’clock and you have four kids asking what you’ll be cooking for dinner. If I were to tell them I had no idea, it could very nearly cause a riot. So instead I assess what I do have and then pull out a few of my basic recipes to whip up a one of a kind, healthy meal. In fact, some of our family favorites were meals I created from a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So if, like me, you ever find yourself with a minimum of ingredients but plenty of hungry people, look no further. These sure fire recipes will put a delicious dinner on the table in no time.

Basic Quiche Recipe

A great way to use up bits of leftover meats, veggies or small pieces of leftover cheeses.

1. Choose a Crust:

• Simple Potato Crust: Wash about 2 potatoes, slice in ¼ inch thick slice and layer around the bottom and sides of 9 inch pie dish.

• No Roll Quiche Crust: mix 1 cup flour and ½ teaspoon salt with fork. Beat ¼ cup olive or canola oil and ¼ cup ice water with whisk to thicken. Pour into flour and mix with a fork. Press along bottom and up the sides of a 9 inch pie dish.

2. Make your Quiche:

• 5 eggs
• ¾ cup milk
• 1 cup of grated cheese (cheddar, American, provolone….)
• 1 cup veggies (tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, Swiss chard, shredded zucchini, onion, garlic…the sky is the limit)
• 1 cup cooked meat (diced lunch meat, ground beef, diced chicken breast, seafood, bacon, ham…)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl beat eggs and milk. Stir in all your cheese, vegetables and meats. Pour into unbaked crust, place pie dish on a cookie sheet and bake on the middle oven rack for 45-50 minutes. Quiche is done when top is browned and a knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Basic Pasta Salad Recipe

• Cook up any odds and ends of pasta shapes you have and run under cold water to chill. Or if you have leftover pasta that is already precooked that works great too.
• Mix in any variety of your favorite uncooked vegetables (cucumber, onion, peppers, olives, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, etc.)
• Mix in a protein. (canned beans, tuna, leftover bits of steak, ham or poultry from another meal)
• Mix in cubed pieces of cheese, feta, or whatever cheese you have on hand.

• Stir in a dressing. If you have a bottle of dressing that can work great or you can make your own whisking together 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, ¾ cup red wine vinegar, ¼ cup sugar, 1 tablespoon oregano, 1 teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper.

Basic Soup Recipe

• 4 cups water with bouillon added or 4 cups broth
• 1 cup of your favorite combination of veggies (potatoes, carrots, green beans, spinach, onion, garlic, etc.)
• 1 cup of leftover diced meat
• Other possibilities: canned beans, leftover mashed potatoes can make a thicker soup, A handful of pasta shapes
• Spice it up! If you’ve added more Italian ingredients, be sure to add some basil or oregano to the mix. If its chicken based I like to add a little curry powder. If you like it spicy don’t forget tobasco, creole seasoning or red pepper flakes.

Bring to a boil and simmer until pasta and vegetables are done. Remember to taste test frequently to get just the right flavor.

For more great ideas visit Works For Me Wednesday.

Sneaking Off For Some Mom Time

It's Wednesday morning and I still haven't done my grocery shop for the week. I'll get there at some point. So if you're waiting for the Round-up, It's coming. I'm going to have to shop soon.

This week I have a little tip for you. I find that as a mom, I have a hard time getting away from all the work and the constant need-filling to have some time just to myself. I can never truly relax at home because I know that at any minute someone is going to come bounding through whatever closed door I'm behind to ask a question or need me to be the judge in some important dispute over who got to the use the computer last. A few weeks ago I realized I had already created a remedy for my severe lack of down time and hadn't even realized it.

Whenever I have an appointment like coffee with a friend, doctor visits, hair cuts, work stuff....I always make sure I arrive 15-30 minutes early with book in hand. Then I have that much time to sit in a quiet lobby and read without anyone bugging me. I completely relax, absorb myself in one of my favorite pastimes (reading) and sip a coffee or tea in a place that has been cleaned by someone else and I can guarantee has no dust bunnies or little toys shoved under the couch. It's something I gladly look forward to when booking an appointment and keeps me sane so I can go back and save the world at home.

For more great tips visit Works for me Wednesday.

$5 Christmas Gifts - Works For Me Wednesday

***This is a repost from last Christmas time. Since it's that time of year I thought I'd repost to hopefully inspire you to get frugally creative in your gift giving.

Gosh, it just feels tacky to put a price tag to a gift. But in an effort to get your creative juices flowing (and mine) I thought I'd post a thrifty gift giving idea since we ARE getting close to Christmas and most of us ARE aware of the cost.

And if I know you in real life I might at some point post YOUR Christmas gift. Do me a favor and act surprised when you get it. OK?

If you have co-workers, secret sisters, hostesses, neighbors, or friends on your gift giving list this year then this just might do the frugal trick.

I got the cookbook off paperbackswap.com for free. (if you decided to join please use my e-mail address as your referral gaylebryant4@gmail.com) It's called 101 Things To Do With A Cake Mix. I found a simple recipe inside and bookmarked it so the receiver would be able to find it.

I had a basket stashed away so the cost was again free. You could use any sort of container...a garage sale mixing bowl, a decorated box, pretty Tupperware. Then I decorated it with a star Christmas ornament that I found in my craft stash.

I purchased a wooden spoon for $.25, a holiday towel at the dollar store for $1, a cake mix for $.99, and a bag of M & M's for $1.99. The recipe was for M&M cookies.

I laid the towel in the bottom, tied a scrap of ribbon around the wooden spoon and arranged the ingredients in the basket.

And the fun doesn't stop there. If you have lots of people to give this kind of gift to then the possibilites are endless. Each cookbook can be different, each basket will have different ingredients, different colors, etc.

So there you have it. The grand total was $4.23 and I have a nice gift for my friend who constantly has people over at her house and needs to have a quick snack ready to put together. And I didn't break the budget or need a credit card to pay for it.

Save $500 Before Christmas

With all the thrifty activity at our house, I have to be honest, I’m not a very good saver. That’s more of my husbands department. He’s great at setting aside 10% from every paycheck to stuff away into our savings account only to be used in case of emergencies. Me? I’m full of great short-term ideas for solving the immediate financial needs of raising four kids, two dogs and keeping my house from falling down around my ears. But when it comes to siphoning money into a savings account I fall flat on my face. So right about this time of year is when I start the Holiday Budget Panic.. I hate to bring this up, but did you now there are about 11 weeks until December 25th? If you haven’t started saving for it yet and hope to avoid the biggest frugal no-no; the “Credit Card Christmas“, never fear. Here are some simple ideas to boost your holiday gift giving budget in a very big way.

• An average fast food lunch is around $6. If you replaced this with a homemade lunch just two times a week for the 11 weeks until Christmas, your total savings would be $132. That’s a great start and your waistline will thank you too.

• Instead of buying that magazine or book you’ve been wanting to read, check it out at the library. If you normally buy one $5 magazine a month that’s a savings of $15. If you buy one $14 book per month you’ll be squirreling away another $42.

• Do you go through a $2 roll of paper towels each week? Use rags instead and save another $22.

• Is it normal to grab a $3.50 latte on your way to work every morning? Don’t completely deprive yourself. Drink coffee from home just three times a week and you’ll save $115.50.

• Is your car ready for an oil change? The average household has two cars. If you did two $20 oil changes yourself you’d save another $40.

• Any boys in the house? Save yourself a monthly $12 haircut and use the clippers to get the job done. That’s an accumulated savings of $36 per head.

• Take advantage of those cell phone plans. Most cellular providers offer free long distance during certain hours. A land line call can run you a good $20 for that monthly call home to your family. For the next three months use your cell phone during those set hours and save $60.

• Did you purchase mortgage insurance with your house? Guess what? If you have 20% equity or more in your home, whether it’s from paying your mortgage down or because property values have risen, you can cancel that thing. The average homeowner pays $45 per month. That will save you $135.

I bet there are many more areas that you can save in but see how easy it is to accumulate some extra money in a short amount of time? So grab your calculator and get creative. Challenge yourself to a debt free holiday season and come January you’ll rest easy knowing that the mailman won’t be delivering any extra bills in your mailbox.

For more WFMW go here.

How To Speak Frugalese

Chris and I attended a wine tasting a few years back. It made us feel sophisticated and adult for the evening. The only drawback was that I had no idea what anyone was talking about. We spent the whole evening smiling and sipping while our table mates tossed out phrases like, “Tremendously complex finish lasting more than a minute,” or “Lightly floral notes.” If they would have asked me what I thought I probably would have smacked my lips and said, “Beats that last drop of grape juice that I drank from the kids sippy cups today.” The same goes with a visit to the doctor’s office. It took watching all 15 seasons of ER before I had a clue about what the doctor was saying to me at each visit. And I hate being the only one in the room that doesn’t know what’s going on. It seems that there is a special code language for nearly everything, even frugality. Since that happens to be something I speak fluently, I consider it my personal mission to make sure you don‘t find yourself in the same situation that I did. Here are some definitions to help you understand what in the world we’re talking about if you happen to come across a group of tightwads hovering over a 75% off rack.


Frugality, according to wikipedia, is the practice of acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services, to achieve a longer term goal. I don’t know about the restrained part because normally we tend to get rather excited when we find a good deal or realize that we just fixed a broken appliance using a rubber band and a piece of chewing gum. MacGyver is our mascot.

A Frugalista is a step above. Not only is she resourceful and restrained but she does it with flair and fashion sense. The opposite of a designer-wearing fashionista, her outfit is more of a cross between Salvation Army finds, a great sale at Nordstroms, and a pair of used Jimmy Choo’s found at her favorite second hand consignment shop in the city.

Cheapskate can have a negative connotation but the frugal set wears the name with pride. It basically means someone who spends money only as a last resort and never at full price. Take note though that you can call yourself a cheapskate but never anyone else. Then it turns into an insult.

Tightwad is another one of those tricky words that you can attach to yourself but never anyone else. It’s a person who has trouble giving up their money. Isn’t that all of us to some degree? Isn’t everyone left with a feeling of loss as that phone payment drops into the mailbox never to gain interest in your savings account again?

Frugology, the study of all things frugal. This means searching for coupons, studying a money saving book or article, dreaming up new ways to save money and learning new skills to fix things yourself. It’s tantamount to a Masters Degree in Personal Economics.

If you slip a few of these words into a conversation with your frugal friends, you’re sure to blend right in.

For more WFMW go HERE.

10 Ways To Reuse It: Phone Books

Do phone books stack up at your house? My old one hasn't even been used much before I get another one left on my doorstep. Pretty soon my desk drawer is full of old phone books that we've just shoved in there. Here are some amazing and crafty ideas to turn these giant wastes-of-paper into some pretty useful stuff.

1. Make a Book Safe. Cut out a square of pages in the middle of the book under the cover and you now have a secret hidey hole.
2. Shipping. I regularly sell stuff on e-bay. Phone book pages are great packing material because they are thin and the pages crinkle up really well.
3. Booster Seat. Duct tape a few phone books together and you've got a FREE booster seat for that kiddo that doesn't quite reach the table. If you want to, you could sew a cover and wrap the books in quilt batting first for a little extra padding and decoration.
4. Make Seed Pots. I've done this with newspaper but phone book pages work just as well. Go HERE for directions.
5. Unique Gift Bows. Use THESE instructions and make yellow (or white) gift bows for your packages.
6. Coffee Table. Wow, wouldn't THIS be a conversation piece. This is a really neat looking table.
7. Occupy Bored Kids. Just how many paper airplanes or origami animals can your kids make with the hundreds of pages in a phone book? We're talking hours of quiet, I MEAN summer fun for your kids.
8. Desk Caddy. Use these directions to make a really cool desk caddy to organize your pencils, pens and other odds and ends.
9. Paper Flowers. These directions used newspaper to make adorable paper flowers. I'm sure you could use phone book pages as well and adorn all kinds of things with your creativity.
10. Get Some Exercise. Remember step aerobics? Build your own step with phone books and duct tape, rent a free aerobics video from the library and you've just created your own gym.

For more great ideas go see WFMW!

How To Immediately Save $50 A Month On Your Grocery Bill

*** This is a re-print from a post a while back.

Ok, I know that’s a rather lofty claim but your going to be amazed at this. Some of these you might already be doing but if you were to institute all of these ideas in one month you could easily save AT LEAST $50 bucks off your monthly grocery bill.

Drink Water With Meals – Most of us are drinking soda pop, milk, or juice with our meals but by switching to water (toss a slice of lemon in for some zing) you can not only improve the look of your skin, flush out toxins, and enhance weight loss, but if you normally consume 1 gallon of milk per week during mealtimes, at $3.50 a gallon, there’s $14 dollars off your budget right there!

Serve One Meatless Meal Per Week – Don’t let this intimidate you. It doesn’t have to be tofu, bean paste or some other strange vegetarian food. This could be a baked potato night with meatless toppings, a meatless chili with cornbread, homemade macaroni and cheese, or vegetable soup and rolls. If hamburger costs $2 a lb and a 4 pack of boneless-skinless chicken breasts is about $5 you could save between $8 and $20 a month by cutting out meat once a week!


Buy Generic – I know, I know, there are some brands that we are just not willing to budge on. But do you realize that most of those generic brands are made by the same company that is making your name brands? You’re paying for packaging and popularity in most cases and getting the same quality of product. Consider trying one or two generic brands this month instead of your name brands and see if you notice the change.

Make It Yourself – I can make a two dozen homemade donuts for close to 50 cents. I can make 4 gallons of liquid laundry soap (128 loads) for $1.42, and I can make homemade 409 for 35 cents. There’s not much out there that can’t be made yourself with a good google search and a willingness to try something new.

Reducing your family’s grocery budget can be done! We just have to think out of the box and be willing to experiment a little bit.

10 Ways To Reuse It: Empty Spray Bottles

I love spray bottles and I use them for all kinds of things. But I refuse to pay for them. I buy enough of them already, they just have a cleaner, hairspray, salad dressing or something like that in them. So when their contents get used up I clean them out and give them a new life. Here are some ideas to get a second (or third) life out of those useful spray bottles. Don't forget to label your bottles clearly.

1. Use them for your homemade cleaners. Here's a link to some recipes for homemade 409 and homemade windex. I also use them for homemade spray -n -wash.
   
2. Refresh your hair-do. The boys and I don't wash our hair everyday but often wake up with funky cowlicks. I spray my curls down in the morning to make them nice and tight and the boys spray theirs down to even out the occasional little-rascal-alfalfa style.
3. Plant Mister. I keep a bottle of water nearby to mist my house plants.
4. Pest Remover. My roses get aphids every year. I fill a spray bottle with a homemade mix of 1 cup vegetable oil, 1 1/2 cup water and 2 teaspoons of dish soap. Then I spray it on the leaves in the evening (not while the sun is beating down) every few days. It suffocates them and leaves my roses looking beautiful.
5. Get the wrinkles out of your clothes. Keep a spray bottle of water next to your iron. Mist your clothes to get nice crisp results.
6. First Aid. Keep a spray bottle full of apple cider vinegar handy. Spray on abrasions, mosquito or insect bites, or sunburn. Apple cider vinegar is an antiseptic and takes the sting out of sunburns.
7. Easy Clean Up For Dirty Pans. Sometimes I can't fit all my dirty dishes into my dishwasher and I have a few things leftover in the sink that I hand wash. Fill a spray bottle with half water and half liquid dish soap and you'll be ready for the stray wash job without having to fill a whole sink with water and suds.
   
8. Better Grilling. Fill a food grade bottle with liquid smoke to get an even layer on your grilled meat.
9. Train Your Pet. Use a spray bottle full of water to correct unwanted behaviors in your cat or dog such as barking, begging, or leaping onto a kitchen counter. They learn fast this way.
10. Keep the Tangles Away. Mix together 1 part conditioner and 4 parts water to make a home version of those expensive hair detanglers. Spray and leave in hair to remove tangles and calm frizz.

For more great WFMW ideas go here.

10 Ways To Reuse It: Fabric Softener Sheets

You open the dryer, take our your warm fresh clothes and out falls your used up fabric softener sheet. Do you throw it away? Most people do. I have to admit that I don't even use them anymore but I remember throwing away lots of those sheets without a second glance. And I'm willing to bet that there are a lot of you out there using fabric softener sheets and chucking them after one use. So here are some ideas to get the most out of those fragrant sheets.

1. Use it again! Guess what, they last more than once in your dryer and do just as good of a job as the first time. So save them and pop them in for the next load too!
2. Deodorize Stinky Shoes. Do you have a loved one with notoriously stinky feet? Shove your dryer sheet all the way to the toes of the shoes when you're not wearing them to fight odors.
3. Stinky Garbage Cans. If you were to take my garbage out and look in the bottom of my kitchen can you'd find a wad of dryer sheets soaking up the old garbage smell.
   
4. Nice Smelling Drawers. Freshen up your sock drawer (or any other drawer) by tucking a few sheets in the back corner of each drawer.
5. Lint Remover. Rub your clothes to remove pet hair or lint. No more purchasing fancy lint rollers.
6. Remove Static Cling. Sometimes during the dry cold months I get static in my hair. I've been known to grab a used up dryer sheet and run it over my hair to remove static. Works good on clothing too.
7. Deodorize Your Pet. Oh yeah. You can rub your dog or cat and remove extra hair and freshen them up a bit. Don't let them chew on them though.
8. Dust Your Furniture or your Blinds. These are great dusters, especially for kid hands. They pick it up fast and fun and you don't even need to spray furniture polish.
9. Clean Burnt Pans. Place a sheet in a baking pan that has burnt on gunk, fill with water and leave overnight. In the morning the gunk glides right off.
10. Scrub The Tub. The chemicals in the sheet remove soap scum and ring around the tub.

For more WFMW tips go HERE.

10 Way To Reuse It: Wax Milk Cartons

Periodically I buy whipping cream or milk in those plastic coated paper cartons. Juices and half and half come in them too. So what can you do with them when they're empty? Here are 10 ideas.

1. Seed Starters. Rinse out and cut off the bottom to use as seed starters or containers for your window herb garden.
2. Indoor Bowling. Clean them good and then stack them like bowling pins for the kids. Give them a rubber bowl and teach them to bowl. It's a great rainy day game.
   
3. Ice Blocks. Having a party with a punch bowl? Freeze ice blocks in the containers to make a long lasting rectangle ice cube.
   
4. Guard your garden plants. We live in the land of slugs so every year when my tomatoes are still young and tender I cut off a ring of the milk carton and place it in the dirt around my tomatoes. This keeps the slugs and bugs from getting to my plants.
5. Paint Holder. I just finished painting my front door and the trim around it. While hubby used the bucket for window trim, we poured a small amount of paint in a waxy milk carton for the trim around my front door. When I was done I just tossed it...no clean up.
6. Collect cooking grease. I use the waxy containers to drain the grease off my hamburger. The wax keeps it from leaking out and when it cools, the whole things goes in the garbage.
7. Organize your junk drawer. Doesn't everyone have a junk drawer? Cut off the tops and store loose paper clips, nails, staples or whatever you find in there.
8. Protect your floor. Cut off the bottoms and place under the corners of heavy furniture. This not only helps furniture slide across the floor from moving but can save your carpet or floor from getting permanent dents from the weight of the furniture.
   
9. Make a one of a kind coin purse. Some people are so creative. Check out this tutorial to make a really sturdy coin purse. I love this idea.
   
10. Bird Feeder. Give the kids a summer project and use these directions to make a bird feeder.

For more great ideas go visit WFMW.

1O Ways To Reuse It: Plastic Bottles

We sometimes have an over abundance of plastic bottles. The kids will go through spurts where they spend spare money on soda pop, they'll get sports treats with water bottles in them, or we have parties where we have leftover 2 liter bottles. They are big and bulky and a landfill nuisance. So here are some ways to get more use from your plastic bottles.

1. Make a funnel. We cut off the top spout of the bottle, invert it and use it to add oil to the lawnmower, car and weed wacker. You can use one in the kitchen too.


2. Flush Cheaper. If you fill a one or two litter bottle with water and put it in your toilet tank, you'll use less water when flushing. The filled bottle in heavy enough to stay on the bottom instead of floating up and the space it takes up keeps your tank from filling all the way but still give you a good flush.


3. Store Pantry Items. Make sure they are washed and dried well and then store bulk small grains in them. It's so easy to pour out just as much rice as you need from the narrow opening of the bottle. Great for cornmeal, lentils or other small beans, sugar, and barley.
   


4. Make a bird feeder station. This is a simple and fun activity for the kids. Instructions are here.


5. Homemade Juicer. Some bottles have a piece in the bottom that sticks up just like a hand juicer. Cut the base off and use the same way. The sides catch the juice. Here's a picture.


6. Medicine Doser. Did you use the little measuring cup that comes with your child's Tylenol? Use the bottle lid to replace it. Just make sure you measure and mark it well.
   


7. Make your own year round herb garden. Do you have a sunny windowsill in your kitchen. Cut the tops off the bottles and fill with dirt. Plant some low growing herbs in there and grow them year round in your sunny window. Nothing beats fresh herbs when cooking and this doesn't take much space. You can decorate or spray paint the containers to match your kitchen colors.
   


8. Make A Rain Gauge. We live where it rains alot. It's fun to measure how much rain we have and turn it into a science project. Here's some directions to make your own.


9. Frugal Coffee Maker. This would be great for camping. Cut the bottle into two pieces. Turn the top upside down so it is a funnel. Hold the funnel in place, and then place a coffee filter inside. Put ground coffee on the filter and pour hot water over it.


10. Make a Raft. Seriously. THIS is just one of many out there on the net. Kinda looks like some good summer fun. Can you say Huckleberry Finn for the modern child?

For more WFMW tips go HERE.

10 Ways To Reuse It : Egg Shells

Seriously, I think EVERYTHING has multiple uses. And just to show you what I mean, I'm going to take something that almost everyone just throws away without a second glance, and show you some different ways to get just a bit more life out of it. I'm talking about empty egg shells. And doesn't everyone have an over abundance of these right now after all those Easter egg hunts? I'm almost sick of eating up our colored eggs.

I'm just nerdy enough to really enjoy this and I hope you find some ways that you'll be able to get a second purpose from something you thought was garbage. Here's some ideas to get your creative juices flowing. I'd love to hear your ideas too!

1. Crush them up and throw them in the compost or directly in the soil around your plants. I know that's a no-brainer but I had to list it. The calcium is essential for cell growth in plants.
2. Do you have a metal thermos or coffee mug that's stained up from your coffee? Eggshells can clean it right out. Crack the eggshells and put them in the mug, add some water and shake it really good. The shells will remove residue without cracking the liner inside.
   
3. Take the bite out of your coffee. Add a washed egg shell to your coffee grounds inside the filter and then brew. The calcium in the shell removes the bitter taste from your coffee.
   
4. Clean your drains. Keep a few crushed eggshells in your kitchen sink strainer. They gradually break up and travel down your pipes, cleaning them along the way. The calcium carbonate leaches through the water every time the water is run.
   
5. Keep slugs away from tender garden seedlings. Crack eggshells and circle your tender plants. Slugs don't like to crawl over the sharp shells and they'll stay away.
6. Organic eggshells are great to make your own calcium supplements. Just crush them up with a mortar and pestle and then fill gell caps from your local health food store.
   
7. Do the same for your pets. Powder them with a mortar and pestle and sprinkle over your dogs food. This is great for older dogs with bone density problems.
8. Make mosaics with the kids. The colored shells left over from Easter eggs can make great art. Use a little glue to make a design on paper and then sprinkle the shells on.
   
9. When making homemade stock throw a few shells in. It will add much needed calcium to your broth and will be strained out later.
10. Make homemade sidewalk chalk!

For more great ideas visit WFMW!

10 Ways To Reuse It : Paper Bags

When I go to the grocery store sometimes I forget my reusable grocery bags. I know that's a heinous crime in the world of green living but yeah, it happens. So without my reusable bags, it's easy to accumulate a stack of paper bags that get shoved under my sink. And the stack can get out of control fast. So here are a few productive ways to reuse your paper grocery sacks.

1. Use it to ripen fruit. Place unripened fruit in a paper bag in a dark place and the ethylene in the fruit gets trapped in the bag and quickens the ripening process.
   
2. Make texture in your painted walls. Paint a base coat of color on your walls. Get another pain color a few shades lighter or darker and dip a wadded up paper bag in the paint. Gently dab on walls for an effect similar to ragging. I did this in my bathroom and it came out looking like Italian stucco.
   
3. Clean out your car. I leave a few paper bags tucked in my suburban. Every few weeks, when kids stuff starts to accumulate on the floor of my vehicle, I open up a few bags and shove it all in there so I can get it back in the house to be sorted and put away.
4. Grow your garden. When I get ready to put my homemade compost into my garden I put a layer of brown grocery sacks down first. They are a great organic additive, suffocate any weeds underneath them and then decompose fast to add nutrients to my garden along with the compost.
5. Make book covers. I remember doing this as a kid in School. Cut open the paperback and fasten it around the outside of your textbook. Then let your kids make custom decorated book covers.
6. Make Homemade Wrapping Paper. We do this alot and it's the same concept as the textbook covers. The kids wrap the present in the unprinted side of the bag and then decorate it with special drawings, sweet sayings or even glued on photos.
7. Ship things in the mail. I mail books or packages covered in brown paper bag. It saves on shipping supplies and it's easy to write the address on the package.
8. Catch Grease. When I cook bacon or other greasy foods, I use a paper bag to soak up the extra grease before serving. It's free and easy to clean up.
9. Clean silk flowers. Clean your silk flowers or greenery by shaking them, with salt, in a paper bag. The salt removes any dust or grime stuck to them.
10. Simple Snow Removal. Place flattened paper bags on the windshield and secure with the wipers. In the morning when you are ready to drive off, simply pull off the paper bag and all the snow comes off in one quick movement. No more frozen fingers or wet gloves.

Check back next week for more of "10 Ways To Reuse It" and for more great ideas go visit Works For Me Wednesday.

Freezing Onions

I went by my favorite dumpster today, the one outside my favorite grocery liquidator where they put the produce that looks a little shelf worn, and found a box full of onions, green chili's, a few oranges and an english cucumber. (I don't have to actually dig out of the dumpster. They are nice enough to set the box BESIDE the dumpster.) The only thing that didn't make the cut was the cucumber which ended up in my compost.


The oranges got combined with some apples to make fresh juice; extra vitamin C for my croupy kids, my allergy ridden kid and my other kid with a swollen, itchy watery eye and congestion. (No one person can be sick at a time around here.)


The onions were my favorite find though. I use lots of them in cooking but I hate whipping out my food processor every time to chop them up. So I put on my kids swimming goggles (so my eyes wouldn't sting) and processed all those onions at once. Each onion went into a bag for the freezer. Next time I need a whole onion in a recipe all I have to do is run to the freezer and pull out one bag. I won't even thaw it, I'll just add it to my recipe.


The green chili's mean no more high-priced 4 oz cans of diced green chilies when I'm making Mexican food. Those will get diced and frozen too to save me time and money in the long run.

To read more WFMW ideas go HERE.

Cleaning Up After Bed Wetting

I had a reader ask me if I knew how to clean up a mattress after a little one has wet the bed and I'm sad to report that I am highly qualified in this area. There are lots of fancy cleaners out there but really all it takes is some baking soda, white vinegar and dish washing soap.

If you have a repetitive bed wetter it's best to be pro-active. I used to take one of the large heavy duty outdoor garbage bags and place it between the mattress and the fitted sheet. Then when my little munchkin had an accident I never had the wet mattress problem. The layer of plastic caught all the liquid and my only clean up was laundering the sheets.

So if the urine got on the mattress here's an article on how to clean it up using inexpensive, earth friendly household items.

For more Works For Me Wednesday tips go HERE.

Homemade Peanut Butter in 5 Minutes Or Less

***this is a repost. Hope you enjoy.

I wasn't so sure how this was going to turn out. It's been a long time since I could afford the all natural peanut butter. We've been surviving on Jiff for the last few years which tastes nice and sweet but it's killing me one spoonful at a time with all it's sugar, fat and chemicals.

Still tastes good though.

And then through web surfing and recipe searches I came across loads of homemade peanut butter recipes and decided to give it a try. I ended up tweaking the recipes until I got the right consistency and flavor for my family and this is the end result.

Homemade 100% Natural Peanut Butter In 5 Minutes Or Less!


You'll need....

a food processor
1 1/2 cups unsalted, roasted peanuts
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
Honey (optional) hey, we're just coming off Jiff.

Pour all ingredients in food processor and process until creamy. We added 2 tablespoons of local farmers market honey to sweeten it up a bit but if you're already used to the all natural peanut butter it tastes just fine without it.

And (drum roll please) the total cost for 11 ounces of all natural peanut butter?

$.98

I priced Smart Balance, Adams, Hearts and Minds, and Crazy Richards peanut butters and for the same amount and similar quality it would have cost between $3.08 - 3.96 to purchase it pre-made.

Besides the fact that homemade is incredibly cheaper you can also control the salt, sweetener, quantity, and texture of the finished product.

And if you prefer chunky texture, just hold out 1/4 cup of the peanuts until the very end and then add them to your creamy product and process until coarsely chopped.

For storage, keep in a cool airtight container in your fridge for up to 2 weeks.

For more WFMW tips go Here!

Menu Plan Monday

Our state requires once a year standardized tests for homeschoolers and with four kids, it takes us a few weeks to get everyone taken care of. This week is our last week of testing. I think one of the main concerns homeschoolers have, regardless of whether they should or not, is whether their kids are keeping up with their public school counterparts and whether they are covering all their bases. It can be a nail biting experience as you await the test results so I'm relieved and happy to report that as anxious as I was, the kids that are finished, exceeded my testing expectations.

Whew! It's like getting my own report card.

So on to frugal stuff.

I found a ham bone tucked away in the back of my freezer from a September birthday. It will be making an appearance in our dinner menu this week. I also have my last craft bazaar on Friday. If you're local, come say Hi. I'll be at the Canterbury Inn. Since I'll be gone from the wee hours of the morning until dinner time I'm letting the family fend for itself for breakfast and I'll slip a yummy stew in the crock pot for dinner.

So here's what's cooking...

Breakfasts

Oats with fruit, cream and brown sugar

Fruit, yogurt and protein powder smoothies

Best Blueberry Muffins

Fruit cups and bagels

on their own for breakfast

German pancake with lemon and powdered sugar

Leftover muffins

Dinners

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup and rolls

Broccoli Rice Quiche and sliced pears

Skillet Taco Macaroni and corn

Eggs Benedict Casserole with easy Hollandaise Sauce

Hamburger Barley Stew and Buttery Bread Machine Rolls

Ham and Beans with Sweet Cornbread and honey

Leftover Buffet

Check back tomorrow to see how much this weeks groceries cost and for more great menu plan ideas go HERE.

Behold....The Fun Jar

We like to have fun around here. But sometimes the fun stuff costs money, especially with six of us. So we created the fun jar.

Since we make a habit of always spending cash we tend to accumulate lots of change. We took an old flower vase and began putting our change into the jar. The plan was to gather enough change to do something extra fun. Not the regular fun stuff like swimming or hiking or movie nights but bigger.

Pretty soon the kids decided to put their pennies in there. It became a fun game as we dreamed about what we could do with the money. The kids would pull it down from it's resting place above the wall oven and count it every time it looked a little fuller. The anticipation was as much fun as the day it was actually full. And on that day we dumped it out, counted up the loot, and the full jar equaled $324. We got a motel and went to the beach for the weekend.

Now we're filling it up again hoping for a trip to Great Wolf Lodge. We might need two jars for that one.

For more works for me Wednesday tips go HERE.

Organized Grocery Shopping - WFMW

What works for me, you ask? Ok. So maybe you didn't ask but I'm going to tell you anyway.

Being organized when I grocery shop.

Without a plan I would either over spend or my family would end up eating boxed macaroni and cheese every night for dinner. There is just NO way I could spend $60 a week on groceries without some kind of plan in place.

So I've put together a free Menu Plan Organizer as well as a free Grocery Shopping List for you to print out and use at your convenience. It's the same thing I print off and use every week to plan our family's meals and to take to the Grocery Store to make sure I'm not forgetting anything.

Go HERE to print them out.

For more Works For Me Wednesday ideas go look HERE.

WFMW - Laundry Soap Dispenser

This tip is more indirectly frugal because, hey, time is money right? And the time it takes to clean up a mess could be better spent making a meal from scratch or shopping the sale rack at the local grocery store. So on that note, here's my Works For Me Wednesday tip for this week.

Do you use liquid laundry detergent with the little dispenser cup? I make a homemade version and a use a 1/2 cup scoop to dispense it into my laundry tub. But that little cup gets gooey and drippy and gross after just a few uses. Plus I can never get every drip of laundry soap out.

So one day I dumped the soap in the laundry tub and the cup slipped out of my fingers and into the path of the water as it filled up. I decided to just leave it there rather than fish it out. And you know what? The dispenser went through the wash, used every little drop of soap, and came out clean when it was all over. No sticky goo. No wasted soap. No slimy fingers.

So now I do it on purpose.

That's what Works For Me. Anybody else have the same problem?