Green Willow Pond

What I've Been Up To And A Special Announcement

2012-02-09T16:52:00.000-05:00

Mysterious packages. The whirring of a sewing machine late at night. Tables disappearing. Mysterious things have been going on around here. Is it ghosts?

BOO!

Nah! Had ya goin' there didn't I? It's just me ordering supplies, burning the midnight oil, cutting, sewing, beading and more. Disappearing tables? That's because they are buried under piles of fabric, beads, glue and...stuff.

So what's this special announcement? I am opening (actually reopening) my Etsy store. I opened one ages ago, but the timing wasn't right for me. Circumstances have changed. And I couldn't be more excited. I hope you won't mind if I feature some of the things I'm making from time to time.

The store isn't open yet. I want to have a nice stock ready before I start listing things. But I can give you a sneak peek at some things I've been working on. Let me know what you think. I've taken a lot of pictures, narrowed them down and there are still too many. I really would like your feedback.

I know that the bookmarks are too stark. I need to take those over again. Anyway that's what I've been up to. So if you hear any ghostly moaning, that's just me realizing I have to do something over again. Later gater.

Burlap and Roses Wreath

2012-02-04T13:41:00.016-05:00

Last fall I met with my blog friend Debbie, from The Lake House, for a day of shopping. It was the first time we met in person and we had such a great day, but I didn't know where the Goodwill store was until after we had said our goodbyes. I stopped for a quick run into another store and there it was, across the parking lot, so I ran in for a quick look around. That's where I found these goodies, which I don't believe I ever posted.

On the far right is a french bread pan. I had been wanting one for awhile, and even had one in my cart at Amazon. It was around $20 there, but I got mine for about $2! Today's post isn't about the pan though; it's about that reed wreath.

I knew I wanted to paint it white, but beyond that I wasn't sure which direction I'd go. If you've been following my Pinterest, you would know I'm smitten with ruffles and flowers. I had some burlap, but wanted red flowers too. Funny story that. I didn't have a red t-shirt or even a scrap of red fabric. My youngest son, however, has a bunch of red t-shirts.

I asked him if he had an old red t-shirt that had holes in it that I could have. He stood up and literally gave me the shirt off his back. To be sure it had a hole in it, but it was one of his favorites that he only wore around the house. What a kid!

I zigzagged the edges of the burlap, ran a basting stitch around one edge, pulled it to ruffle it loosely and wrapped it around, then hot glued it it underneath.

I cut strips of the red t-shirt about 1 1/2 inches wide, folded them in half, ran a basting stitch just like the burlap ones, but I pulled these tighter. After hot gluing them together, I hot glued them to the center of the burlap.

The large single rose was not folded before basting. I just left the edges raw. Then I lightly hot glued them all to the wreath. I wanted to be able to pull them off to change the look, so I just tacked them in one little spot.

Finally I tucked in a few sprigs of berries I picked up at JoAnn's during their Christmas sales.

Ruffles and flowers...my addiction is appeased...for now.

I've linked to these great parties. Come join the fun!

Old Basket is New Again

2012-01-28T23:56:00.015-05:00

Remember when baskets and basket making were really popular? At one time I had so many baskets my dad commented that if a tornado ever hit our house I'd get poked to death. I'm sure he was just being the concerned father. Yeah...right. Thanks dad!

I got rid of most of my baskets long ago, but a few favorites have hung around. Literally, hung in the basement or barn. This is one I couldn't part with. I love the shape, but the colors were faded and blah. So I decided to do something about it or get rid of it.

Somewhere between this picture and the next, I either lost the step-by-step pictures, or forgot to take them. I did this project a while ago, so I don't remember.

I stained just the handle and diamond shapes with some old stain I had, using a foam brush, squeezing most of the stain out of the brush first. The stain happened to be Spanish oak color. After letting it dry, I taped off the stained parts and spray painted a coats of white primer, followed by several light coats of white. Very easy, and I love the way it turned out. I'm storing my dishtowels in it. Here are some pictures of it on my new shelves.

I've been playing on Picnik too. I love the sepia feature. I'm hoping all these features stay when it transfers to google.

Have a lovely day!

I've linked to these fabulous parties:

T-Shirt Refashion

2012-01-26T23:18:00.020-05:00

I have a slight addiction...to purple. Amethyst to be exact. I love that soft grayish purple. It's really hard for me to walk away from a pretty amethyst shirt or sweater, especially when the price is right. Well the price was right. I found this top at our local Salvation Army and couldn't pass it up. But there was this little problem, actually it was a big problem. It was several sizes too big for me.

Before

(Pardon the poor picture. This was taken at night in our tiny half bath. My hair looks like a pointer dog pointing quail. Actually it's pointing at the wall and whispering in my ear, "rip that wallpaper off this wall now!")

I'd seen so many cute refashions on blogs and Pinterest, that I decided to give it a try. For a couple dollars that I spent on the shirt I didn't have much too lose. After a good washing, I started wacking away at it. The neck opening was too large, so I sewed a pleat in front first.

Then I took in the sides about 6 inches each. I started at the hem and sewed up the side, gradually tapering as I kept sewing around the armpit and down the sleeve. After trying it on again, I trimmed off the excess fabric. I used the part from the sides of the shirt, to form the ruffle around the neckline, setting aside the smaller pieces from the sleeves.

I cut two long rectangles about 1 1/2 inches wide and as long as I could get from each side. Then I sewed them together on one short end, forming a long strip. Once I had my strip, I sewed two basting stitches down the middle, along each side of the seam. (Originally the side seams of the shirt.) That seam became the middle of my ruffle.

After pulling my basting stitch (you can just barely see the threads being pulled to the left of the strip) I started pinning it onto the shirt.

I pinned the ends at the shoulders, centering the middle of the strip on the neckband. Then I pinned the middle of the strip (where I seamed it together) on the middle front of the neckline, over the pleat. Next I adjusted the gathers, pulling it tighter as needed, and pinned it all down.

At this point I sewed the ruffle to the shirt, leaving the gathering stitches in, and sewing right over the original side seam of the shirt.

I tried it on (remove the pins first...just sayin), and then removed the basting stitches.

To hide the seam at the front and to jazz things up a bit, I added another of my current addictions. Can you guess?

This bit of lace has been gathering dust for a millenium or two in my lace bin. I cut a bit of it down to about 1 inch wide and ran a little 'OK To Wash It' fabric glue along the raw edge.

What am I making?

Figured it out yet?

I'll give you a hint. Glue, roll, pinch and hold. Rinse and repeat.

Clothespins...not just for laundry!

There you are! Yep, it's a flower, my new addiction. And because he looked so lonely by himself, I made a couple of tiny friends from the scrap pieces I cut from the arms. There wasn't a usable scrap leftover.

I sewed all three flowers onto the front of my new shirt and walaa! I love my new girly, ruffly, flowery top.

The streaks and spots are my old mirror. It's just old enough to look bad, but not cool yet. Hmmm...I see another project in the mirror. Oh heaven help me...

My t-shirt has been featured on the Best of Crazy Cute Party at Between U & Me! Pop on over and see who else was featured too!

Check out these fab parties...I'm there!

Our Subway and Canvas Board Gifts

2012-01-24T14:35:00.021-05:00

I promised I would share some of the Christmas presents I made. I was just getting my energy back, when I caught a cold and didn't feel like doing anything again. Late is better than never though, right?

I was making these Subway style quote boards for the kids, they were cooking up some handmade gifts for us that blew us away...but more on that later. I asked each one for a quote from a song or bible verse that was special to them. My daughter had pinned these boards on her pinterest. I wanted to combine the two, using a silk cherry blossom (her favorite flower).

Source: mamamarcie.blogspot.com via Jamie on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com via Jamie on Pinterest

Here's the one I made for her:

Pin It

It was an easy process using my new Cameo Silhouette. Yes!!! I got one for Christmas! I thought I had blogged about it, but in looking back through my posts I couldn't find it. I can't believe I haven't told you yet. I am in serious love...with a machine. I made several Christmas gifts with it (I got it early). It cuts up to 12 inch wide material.

I used plain white contact paper for the lettering. Instead of making a stencil, I did the reverse. I wanted the words to be wood and the rest painted, so I adhered the letters to the raw wood first. I made sure to place some of the letters on the natural knots in the wood.

Then I painted the board with Plaid Apple Barrel paint in Caribbean, toned down with a little brown paint. After it dried, I dry brushed the whole thing with watered down brown paint to age it.

Finally I let it dry and pulled the letters off to reveal the wood underneath. I could not find just what I wanted for a flower, so I left it blank for now. Jamie is pretty creative and may just find or make something herself.

Here is the one I did for Tyler.

Pin It

Again, I centered some letters over a knot in the wood. I think it gives it character.

After it dried I gave it a light sanding to age it a bit.

Jared's favorite song is the contemporary version of Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone), by Chris Tomlin. We sing it often during worship at our church. This is the board I made for him.

I didn't sand his. It's more in keeping with his room.

Pin It

Christmas morning I had them tucked behind packages. I removed the packages and they loved them. I didn't even have to tell them which was whose. A few minutes later Ken and I got a big surprise. Our precious children had made two very special gifts for us.

One day before Christmas they all headed over to my mom's house. I was led to believe they were wrapping gifts for us there, and helping Grandma with a project. They were actually working on these gifts. When I opened mine I almost cried, and I am not a cryer. They are the most special gifts we've ever gotten besides the gift of our children themselves. Take a look for yourself:

For Ken

I love their hand prints superimposed over top of one another!

For me

I was blown away! I have the best kids in the whole world...of course I am a bit biased ;) They are hanging in our bedroom facing the bed. When I someday get around to remodeling our bedroom, I'll show you.

I will share some other Christmas gifts I made later. Have an awesome day!

I've joined in these fabulous parties:




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Purse Organizer

2012-01-18T10:04:00.017-05:00

Here I am climbing back in the saddle again. Forgive me for a few weeks absence. With the projects I had going on before Christmas, then Christmas with my family unexpectedly moved up two weeks, and a lot of Christmas gifts to make, I burned out. My get up and go, got up and went. My mojo took a hike.

I was so exhausted that I needed a break from everything for awhile. I have been working on a project for myself, a little at a time, that I finished tonight. One of my goals this year is to organize everything. With remodeling, things get shoved around, misplaced, junk piles up and pretty soon I can't find anything. It's so frustrating.

So my first project of the new year was a purse organizer. I wanted it custom made for my stuff. Simple...right? Famous last words. I didn't buy a pattern. I should have. In fact, I should have just bought the darn thing already made! It took far longer than it should have. But it's done, my purse is organized and I love it!

Now you ladies who carry around a postage size stamp purse with nothing in it but keys and a credit card won't be interested. I don't get you. There is just no way. I know you must be stuffing things in your pockets, behind your ears, and in your bras.

Uh...back to my purse organizer. Actually it is two organizers, because two of the purses I use the most are divided in the middle. I need one for each side. At first I was going to have them zip or velcro apart, but after I already had a hundred million hours into it, I dropped that idea. Without further ~~whining~~ ado, here it is.

This is the business side. The serious side of me. Yes there is one...I just keep her tied up in the closet most of the time.

On the inside, there is one side for keys,

Credit/Store cards and gum (yes the gum is serious...bad breath is no laughing matter!)

The other side of the inside holds receipts while I'm out shopping,

and my business card holder.

One of the outside pockets has 3 skinny pockets for pens, one for my cell phone, and two extra pockets. One might hold an ipod touch someday ;)

The other outside pocket is for coupons and another extra pocket

The middle has just enough room for my wallet and checkbook.

The other half of my purse organizer is what I like to call the party side. It holds all my feel good stuff, like makeup, motrin and hair stuff. There's plenty of room in the middle for a comb and folding brush and some yummy bath and body lotion.

One inside pocket holds dental floss, hand sanitizer, motrin,

lipstick and tissues.

The opposite inside pocket holds a measuring tape (ok it's serious), my folding scissors,

and a pocket for my reading glasses...showing my age here.

One outside pocket is divided into three nice size pockets for makeup compacts. Right now it only has my blush, but I'll be putting an eyeshadow and probably powder in the others.

The other outside pocket hold receipts for things I need to return and gift cards for me to go shopping with. Oh yeah!

Here it is all tucked inside my purse. I feel so organized already! I'm forever digging through one purse to pull everything I need to change purses. Now I can just lift out the organizers and plop them in the next purse. Oh yeah...organized is good.

Now you know I like to make things myself, but this one almost ended my sewing career. Do not ask me for a tutorial. I will never make another one like this. Sorry...find a pattern. Or better yet, buy one.

I've joined these fabulous parties:

2011-12-25T13:04:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas to you and yours from our family. May you be blessed today and in the New Year to come. Thank you for being a part my life this past year. I am truly blessed!

Luke 2:1-20

New International Version (NIV

¹ In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. ² (This was the first census that took place while^[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³ And everyone went to their own town to register.

⁴ So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. ⁵ He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, ⁷ and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

⁸ And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child,¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Bleach Pen Shirt - Quick Last Minute Gift

2011-12-14T20:51:00.005-05:00

If you are looking for almost instant gratification and a very quick last minute gift, here's another Pinterest inspired project I tackled last week. I had a favorite blue shirt that got a bleach stain on it. (That happens far too often around here!) Rather than relegate it to the painting shirt pile, I decided to try the bleach pen to make a design. I love, love, love how it turned out! You could buy some cheap t-shirts and make them look really special.

Here is my inspiration:

Source: showtellshare.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

And here is my shirt. Using the top left shirt above as a my idea, I freehanded the design onto my shirt. I placed a piece of cardboard inside the shirt first.

Here's the spot where the original bleach stain was. Can you spot it?

It worked very quickly and as soon as the last bit that I drew bleached out, I quickly rinsed it in the sink, then put it in the washer immediately by itself. I wanted to make sure no further bleaching would take place, or that any runoff would not bleach other areas of the shirt. Now I like the shirt even more! Hmmm...wonder what I should splash bleach on next...might make cleaning toilets a whole new adventure!

This post linked to the following blog parties:

Glass Christmas Tree

2011-12-12T01:30:00.001-05:00

I apologize for not posting lately, but I've been busy with lots of projects and Christmas preparations. I've got a nice fat file of projects I want to share with you though. Some will have to wait until after Santa comes because snooping eyes might be lurking!

One thing I can share is this glass marble Christmas tree. I can't take the credit for the idea though. That goes to Sarah at Alderberry Hill. She used a "stacked" Christmas tree. Of course no such animal exists in this neck of the woods, so I used a plain cone from the dollar tree. I did find one on Amazon though and it is winging it's way to me now!

I still like the way mine turned out. Because of the flat top, I had to finish mine off a little differently, hence the star on top. I don't know why it looks like there's a white spot under the star. It may be a reflection from the flash. No matter how many pictures I took it was there even though there is no white spot on the tree. Here's a quick picture tutorial of how I did mine.

I didn't end up using the white glitter shown here.

Toothpick sandwiched between two punched chipboard stars, hot glued together.

Christmas with my family is this weekend. We are going to pick up our daughter from college Thursday. She will be home for around 3 weeks...Yipee! I may not have much time to post until after Christmas, but I do have lots of projects coming up. Stay tuned!

Have a very merry Christmas!

This post linked to these wonderful parties:

Christmas Decor for Our Church

2011-12-01T02:08:00.002-05:00

Most years I help decorate the church for Christmas. This year was no different. There is a half wall around the stairs to the basement. I placed poinsettias atop wired ribbon along the ledge, but it was missing something. So off to the dollar store I went to find that missing something to place between the pots of poinsettias.

Here's what I came up with. Easy and cheap. Five chunky square vases and 3 tubes of mini bulbs (15 per tube). Total cost $8.00.

Now I don't want to part with them. Good thing I bought 3 more for me ;)

This post is linked to these fabulous parties:

Stamped Paper Covered Books

2011-11-30T10:45:00.007-05:00

Tied book bundles are all the rage right now. I'm sorry, but I just can't get into it. Not that it isn't cute, but I've been taught, and have taught my chidren, to treat books with respect. It just goes against my grain to tear the covers off of books and ~~put them in bondage~~ tie them up. If my kids saw me tearing up a book it just might scar them for life. Although there are many books that I would burn before I allowed them in this house!

Now that all the book tier-uppers are up in arms (ducking), I'll show you what I did with some of my favorite cookbooks. They were looking pretty shabby after years of use, and I just couldn't bring myself to set them on my freshly painted bookshelves. So I made covers for them. (No books were harmed in the making of these covers).

I used blank newsprint because I always have some on hand. Our local newspaper sells end rolls for a couple bucks each. You could also use butcher's paper or brown packing paper. The newsprint is very thin, so I folded it several times to strengthen it. Here's how I went about it.

Lay your book sideways on the roll of paper to make sure it will fit with several inches left on each side. If it is too large lay the book the other direction and cut paper off the roll.

Measure the book from top to bottom

Make a 1"-2" fold on the edge of the roll.

Fold the paper the exact amount of the measurement of the book. Fold up twice (for thin paper) to give it extra strength. Cut paper off the roll leaving an extra two inches.

Fold that extra two inches down for a nice clean edge at the top and bottom of the book.

Lay your book on the paper again to check for size. You may have to make some adjustment to your folds. I kept measuring at each fold to try to avoid this.

I used Stampabilities "Le London Script" background stamp and black pigment ink.

Press the ink pad onto the stamp, pressing harder in some areas than others.

You want it to look faded out in some areas.

Flip the book cover over so the outside is up. Line up each stamp as best you can and fill the cover. It won't matter if you're off a little. It just adds to the charm. I used the stamp twice before reloading with more ink.

When finished stamping, flip it back over and center the book on the cover.

Fold one edge in and tape it down. I used packing tape for a tight hold. If I ever remove the cover, I will use an exacto knife to slit the tape rather than peeling it off to avoid damaging the book.

Close the book and wrap the cover around it tightly. Tuck the excess under the cover. I wanted it nice and tight so that didn't catch and tear easily. Tape the second flap.

I used a Calligraphy pen to write the title on the spine after it was on the book. You could do this before taping it, but knowing me I wouldn't get it straight!

I added a bird stamp to the cover of this one (can't remember the company), and used Stampabilities "Fleur de Lis" on the spine. I also used a leaf stamp on one spine (company unknown). The bird looks a little lonely. I think I will write the title on the cover of the book too.

That's it. Very easy. I may cover it with clear contact paper if I can find a matte one. I think they look a lot better on my new shelves than my mismatched, tatty old books. Even a new book got a cover, because I didn't want any bright clashing color.

This post linked to these fabulous parties:

Kitchen & Hallway Progress

2011-11-28T13:12:00.000-05:00

I didn't write a Thanksgiving post as I was busy helping my mom, along with my sister's and our guys help. We all pitched in to bring and make food for Thanksgiving. Mom's been feeling under the weather lately and we didn't want the burden to keep her from getting together. We always pitch in but we stepped it up a notch this year.

I did want to say just how blessed and thankful I am for so much. We've got wonderful family and friends, a roof over our heads, plenty of food on our table, my husband has a job and we have our health just to name a few blessings. I am also thankful for you, my friends. You welcomed me with open arms when I started this blog. I've made many wonderful friends here and I hope I get to meet you all someday. When I sit down to blog I usually have my cup of tea right beside me and I feel like I'm sitting down to a cup of tea with friends chatting about what's going on in our lives. I love ya ladies!

Okay, I'll put down my tissue now and show you the progress on the kitchen wall and back hallway. We moved the bookcases to the kitchen. The wall isn't done yet, but it already looks so much better. I ~~refused~~ forgot to take pictures of the before. It was pretty bad. We had a huge bulky buffet which by itself is pretty cool, but it sat next to a green metal bakers rack. It was a cluttered mess, but I needed the storage they provided.

This first bookshelf doesn't have doors. I know you used to be able to purchase parts for these, so I'm trying to find doors for the bottom of this bookcase to match the other one.

The bookcases are at each end of the wall. There will be shelves and a skirted table between them soon. Yes, that is my coffee pot on the floor. What...you don't keep your coffee pot on the floor? It will go on the table when it's finished. I plan to have a little coffee bar and toaster there. I just pulled the stuff from the buffet and bakers rack and put it on the bookshelves for now. It will get rearranged later.

Eventually there will be a pantry off the kitchen, behind that open door you see to the right in the picture above. That door leads to the basement. There is a blank wall behind it which we will bust through to make a large walk in pantry. I can hardly wait!

The back hall is also getting a facelift. No more wallpaper border! I painted and we've started installing beadboard paneling...in the kitchen too! It will get primed and painted soon. I was hoping to get the rest of it installed yesterday, but the weather wouldn't cooperate. It was rained all day here. Blech! Hopefully we can finish it today.

Here's what it used to look like:

Here's some rather unexciting pictures of where we are at now. Not there yet, but still a big improvement!

So much work left to do, but it is coming along nicely. Watching the transformation happen puts a smile on my face that would put the Cheshire cat to shame! Have you smiled today?

Painting and Painting and Painting

2011-11-22T01:32:00.000-05:00

I haven't disappeared. I'm working on a large project and have had my nose to the grindstone. I've been painting everything that will stand still for two minutes. Well, not really, but it feels like it.

I'm working on the wall opposite the kitchen cabinets that I refaced last summer. Here's a sketch of what I think it will look like when I'm done. Of course that is assuming I don't change my mind...again. Don't laugh at my dorky drawing...well ok...laugh if you must.

The bookcases are painted. I sanded the edges lightly and am debating about glazing. I may just use some briwax on them and call it done. The middle part is going to be a rustic table with two shelves underneath for large appliances. It will have a skirted front. Above it I plan to hang two shelves for storing my white dishes and other pretties. Those things underneath the first shelf are my mugs..I know...dorky.

Here's a sneak peek at the bookcases:

Sorry the pictures are dark. It was night out and I'm too ~~lazy~~ tired to wait for better ones. Remember when I showed some pictures of painting the kitchen walls? Well I did, except for this wall, because there was a huge old buffet and a loaded down bakers rack in front of it. I was not going to move those babies twice! So I waited until I was ready to put the bookcases in place. The wall got painted today and the bookcases will get moved in the morning. The rest of the project will have to wait until after Thanksgiving.

And because I had the paint out, and the back hallway is right off the kitchen, of course I had to paint the hallway, which meant stripping the wallpaper border, and washing the walls, and, and, and! My husband wonders why I don't stick to one project. He just doesn't get it. It's like the old song, "The hip bone's connected to the leg bone, the leg bone's connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone's connected to the foot bone..." There's just no good stopping place!

Oh my though, what a difference. It doesn't look like much yet, but it will! Here's some before shots of the hallway. Again, dark pictures, too pooped to fix them.

Here I had removed the border, primed the red at the top of the wall and cut in the edges.

This last picture is a hint of things to come. There's a reason I didn't bother painting the bottom of the walls.

I Won!...And a Blogger You Don't Want to Miss!

2011-11-16T22:34:00.000-05:00

I have been totally remiss in announcing a giveaway that I recently won. First let me say how excited I am. I.never.win.anything. Never. So when Brittany of Pretty Handy Girl emailed me to let me know I'd won the UPrinting giveaway for a 16 x 20 rolled canvas, I was shocked...but in a "well butter me and call me a biscuit" kind of way!

The reason I hadn't blogged about it was because I wanted to have it ordered and hung before I did. But when I told my daughter about it and the picture I planned to use, she talked me into waiting until she comes home for Thanksgiving, and doing a new family picture, which is a really good idea.

So you and I will have to wait to see it. But I know where I am putting it, I have a long wall above our sofa that I want to do a gallery wall on...after I tear down the yucky wallpaper border and paint the walls. But I'll show you the canvas before then, I promise! I plan to order some other rolled canvas prints too. They are very reasonably priced at UPrinting. Then I can frame them any way I want.

Thank you Brittany for offering this giveaway! If you haven't visited Pretty Handy Girl, you reaaaallly should. She is one handy lady and a beautiful and generous gal inside and out. Every Friday she has a Tool Time Tutorial with videos, in which she tells about a tool and how to use it.

My favorite posts are the amazing step-by-step tutorials for the awesome things she makes. With tons of pictures, she explains just how she puts her creations together. Creations like these:

She made this hall storage bench unit for a friend. I told you she was a generous lady, with a big heart!

I highly encourage you to pay Brittany a visit. Tell her I sent you :)

Fleur de Lis Tray

2011-11-10T22:15:00.008-05:00

My bookcase project is coming along slowly. The last two days of rain put a bit of a damper on it. I was so pumped to get it done, that I decided to use my Zinser BIN primer in the back room. Bad idea...think I killed a few brain cells...and I need every last one of those suckers!

Stupid, I know. I will wait for a sunny day and prime the second bookcase outside. I did get the first bookcase painted. I need to finish lightly distressing it and wait for the Briwax I ordered to arrive. I've never used it before, but I love what I've seen on other blogs.

In the meantime I grabbed a resin tray that I bought at a garage sale or thrift store some time ago. I can't remember where...must be with those missing brain cells. I primed, painted and lightly sanded the high points.

Here's the before, pretty scratched up, but I love the fleur de lis design.

After spray primer and 3 light coats of heirloom white:

After sanding:

It will probably go in my kitchen when I get "The Wall" finished. I'll explain "The Wall" in a later post.

This project is linked to these great parties:

Projects Underway Again

2011-11-07T23:50:00.000-05:00

The flower beds are done and the flower pots are either brought in, or put to bed in the barn for the winter...cue the angels singing! If I had to cut anymore plants down I think my hands would freeze in that position. I know I'm late, but there has been so much going on. Anyway, it's done now and with the outdoor stuff done, projects can commence. Yipee!

In fact, I started today. The boys helped me carry the school books upstairs, then Tyler helped me carry the bookshelves out onto the deck. I got them sanded and one primed before it got too late in the day. They are back inside now in anticipation of rain tomorrow. The wood bled through the primer (boo), so I'm going to have to crack out the bin primer.

This pair of bookcases was bought many years ago at K-Mart, believe it or not. They used to carry a line of unfinished furniture that were very inexpensive and really well built. I stained and put a very light coat of finish on them. They've taken a beating over the years. This stain was not going to come out easily. So I didn't feel the least bit bad about painting them.

I only got primer on one cabinet before it got too late. It's a pretty awful priming job. It was windy and in the mid 50's, so not the ideal conditions. The primer was drying very fast. I'll have to give it another sanding, before repriming.

Operation Kitchen Wall Transformation is underway. Stay tuned!

31 Days: Day 31- Smart Strip & Wrap-up

2011-11-01T13:49:00.000-04:00

I have one last budget busting tip for you, but before I share that, I want to wrap up this series with some parting thoughts.

This final post in my 31 Days to Slash Your Budget Painlessly is written with a sense of achievement as well as a bit of relief. It has been a huge stretch for me to post about one subject for 31 days straight...well almost straight. I did have to double up a few days here at the end for some missed days. I was also running out of ideas! It will be a relief not to have that pressure anymore, but it was also a hugely beneficial to me. It forced me to look at 31 areas of spending habits that I didn't realize, or at least hadn't run the numbers on to see if I could save some money.

Some things I thought would save me a lot, really didn't, like making my own cake mixes, or making jam from bottled or frozen juice. It might taste better, which alone is reason enough to make them, but neither really saved much money. Those posts never made it past the chopping block.

Other things shocked me, that I had been wasting so much for so long, like my first three posts about laundry room savings. Just by using cold water to wash, hanging clothes instead of using the dryer and making a very simple homemade laundry soap (which I am still loving...and my mom, who was a died in the wool Tide user for years, is now also using and loving), I am saving about $30 a month. That amounts to $360 a year!

I far surpassed my goal of saving $200 a month. Even factoring out savings on things I've already been doing for some time, like buying bone-in chicken breast, buying grated cheese in bulk at Gordon Foods, making my own laminate floor cleaner, or cutting my guys hair myself, I still managed to find enough areas to save almost $300 a month!

My last savings tip is buy yourself at least one of these:

It is the Smart Strip energy saving power strip with surge protector. It isn't just any old surge protector, which won't really save you any money. It powers off the peripheral devices connected to your computer, gaming systems and TV, like your computer monitor, printer and keyboard. These devices use energy even when the main source (TV, computer tower, etc.) are turned off. You can read more about the Smart Strip and how it works here.

The only way you can know for sure just what you are saving is to use a mini electric meter, which you may be able to borrow for free from your electric company. Based on the figures at Five Percent: Conserve Energy I believe just buying one for our desktop computer should pay for itself within 6 months, thereafter, saving me about $4.20 per month or $50.40 per year. I'll try one and later may buy one for our TV, which has a Roku box, DVD player, and Wii player hooked up.

It's been a great, although busy, month. I hope you can take one, two or a few of my ideas and save yourself some money. If you have other ideas, I'm all ears...just leave me a comment. Now it's back to my regular programming ;)

My tally so far:

$4987.22/year
$415.60/month

31 Days: Day 30 - Recharging

2011-10-31T23:10:00.000-04:00

I've been using rechargeable batteries for my camera for some time now. But for everything else we have continued to use regular alkaline batteries. I guess it was the initial cost that kept me from investing in more batteries. But now that I've been able to save in so many other areas, I am going to order more rechargeables.

My favorite brand is Sanyo eneloop. They come pre-charged, have a very slow discharge rate, meaning they maintain 75% of their charge even after 3 years of non-use and they can be recharged up to 1500 times. They also last a long time even in my camera.

The first package I bought from Amazon included the charger and 4 AA batteries. There are different packages available. I am going to purchase a package of 8 AA batteries that include a storage case for $20.45 (free shipping) and a package of 4 AAA for $9.35 (including shipping). If you average that out it comes to $2.47 per battery.

About the best deal I've gotten on regular batteries within the last year, is 9.99 for 16 Walgreen brand batteries, which averages .62 cents per battery. After 4 uses, the rechargeables will pay for themselves. Everything after that is savings.

These batteries are supposed to recharge up to 1500 times. Let's just say they only last 1200 recharges. Even at that, my savings would theoretically add up to $744 per battery. Multiply that by 16 batteries (I already have 4), and that's $11,904 over the life of the batteries. Say what?!!! I should have gone all rechargeable a long time ago.

I'm pretty sure I'll never have to buy more AA or AAA batteries in my lifetime. I also know I wouldn't use that many batteries in the rest of my life. When my kids were young, with more battery operated toys, I used far more batteries than I do now. I probably go through 60 AA and AAA batteries a year. Even so, rechargeables will save me about $37 per year or $3.08 per month.

If you use more batteries, and/or buy name brand batteries, especially in small packages of 4, which run around $5 these days, you could save considerably more than that.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:
$4936.82/year
$411.40/month

31 Days: Day 29 - Homemade Gifts (Including Cool Ideas!)

2011-10-30T22:02:00.000-04:00

Hershey Kisses in a Wisk
for that Christmas Dinner Host

Source: todaysfabulousfinds.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Tear off Shopping List for the Busy Mom

Source: u-createcrafts.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Cookies in Wrapped Pringles Can for that Teenage Nephew

Source: jengrantmorris.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Flavored Sugars for that Special Cook

Source: ohweddings.net via Deborah on Pinterest

Headband for that Sweet Little Niece

Source: Uploaded by user via Deborah on Pinterest

Scrapbook Paper Coasters for Anyone

Source: thecottagehome.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Stenciled Onsie For the New Baby Boy

Source: google.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Ruffled T-shirt Dress for the Young Fashion Diva

Source: sumossweetstuff.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Sisal Wrapped Bowl filled With Fruit for Anyone

Source: centsationalgirl.com via Deborah on Pinterest

DIY Photo Canvas for Dad

Source: bluecricketdesign.net via Deborah on Pinterest

Log Carrier for Dad

Source: thehappyhousewife.com via Joe Lindsey on Pinterest

Heating Pad for Grandpa or Grandma

Source: tipjunkie.com via Melissa on Pinterest

Leather Bracelet from a Belt for Teenager

Source: themayfly.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Decorated Flip Flops for any Female

Source: tracys-trinkets-treasures.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Vinyl Decorated Candle for Mom

Source: houseofhepworths.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Fabric Covered Magnetic Board for Grandma

Source: jaimelyn11.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Although we will still buy many of our Christmas gifts this year, I've decided to make at least one item for everyone on our list. It will save about $120 of our Christmas budget this year.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:
$4899.82/year
$408.32/month

31 Days: Day 28 - Hairway Robbery

2011-10-30T00:46:00.001-04:00

PunjabiGraphics.com | Funny Cat | Forward this Picture

Finally I decided to try my hand at cutting my own man/boys hair. I invested in a set of clippers and proceeded to weed-wack my oldest son's hair and add 2 "parts" to my hubby's hair that he'd never had before! I had to take Tyler to get his hair fixed, which ended up being buzzed (could have done that myself!) Soooo...I put down the clippers, watched a bunch of videos on You Tube and switched to scissors.

Fortunately my boys were little and very forgiving. I thought hubby would never let me near his hair again, but he was a good sport about it. I started on the youngest and cut a simple style and didn't do too bad. By the time I got to hub's I was practically an expert. Each time I cut their hair I got better at it. Everyone of them has very different hair. I still use my clippers for trimming so they were not a waste of money.

Recently my oldest son needed a haircut. I was very busy with canning, homeschooling and some projects, so I kept putting him off. Finally he said that he would go get his haircut in town because he knew I was really busy, but he would rather not because he liked the way I cut it. Well don'tcha know I got out my scissors and gave that boy a haircut then and there. After a compliment like that, how could I not?

You can save big cutting your own families hair. I used to just trim my own mid-length hair, but now I get it styled by a friend for very reasonable amount. Based on what my friend charges per haircut, I save at least $45 a month, or $540 a year.

Here are a few You Tube videos to help you get started.

Here is a video for using a new type of scissor that I would like. The video shows basically how I cut my guys hair too.

Here's another product that looks great, especially for girls hair. I've don't own, nor have ever used it, so I can't comment on the quality or use of the product.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:

$4779.82/year
$398.32/month

31 Days: Day 27 - Lazy Sunday Meals

2011-10-29T10:00:00.002-04:00

We used to eat fast food a lot on Sundays after church. By the time we get out and arrive home, everyone was starved, and I didn't feel like cooking. In fact I don't cook at all on Sundays. It's my day of rest...from cooking at least!

Our church now has a fellowship hour after church where different teams prepare a light luncheon. It is just enough for my husband and myself, that we usually don't even need more for lunch.

Now, the rule at our house is that you fend for yourself on Sundays (unless we have guests). There is always a jar of peanut butter, lunchmeat, or leftovers. Sunday evening is snack night. Again we forage and usually end up with popcorn, ice cream or leftovers.

A meal at a fast food joint costs our family anywhere from $15.00 - $25.00. At an average of $20 per visit, even 2 times per month saves us $40/month or $480/year.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:

$4239.82/year
$353.32/month

31 Days: Day 26 - Breakfast Anyone?

2011-10-28T22:40:00.001-04:00

Another way to reduce the amount of meat you eat is to have breakfast for dinner. It's certainly not a new idea. I just have never done it. Eggs are still one of the cheapest sources of protein (next to beans) that you can buy. My family won't touch beans, so eggs it is. Whether it's an egg casserole, scrambled eggs or fried eggs, serve them with pancakes made with a homemade mix and you've got a very cheap meal. Two of my kids also don't like eggs, but they love pancakes (which has egg in the mix ;).

For my family (4 during the school year/5 in the summer) I can feed them with about 8 eggs. Currently eggs for are about $1.30. However, I usually can find eggs for $1.00 on sale, and when I do, I stock up. Eggs will last for weeks in the refrigerator as long as the temperature is kept between 35- 40 degrees. So as a replacement for meat, 8 eggs cost me .67 cents. A pound of meat would cost me anywhere from $1.60 - $2.50 per pound. I don't buy anything more expensive. The average is $2.05 and I use an average of 1 1/2 pounds per meal (more for roasts, less for spaghetti) so I could save an average of $2.40 per meal over using meat. Having breakfast for dinner once a week will save me about $10.40/month or $124.80/year.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:
$3759.32/year
$313.28/month

31 Days: Day 25 - Saving Face

2011-10-27T23:58:00.003-04:00

I'm at the age where I look in the mirror, put my fingers on my temples, and pull up to see what I used to look like. I have always had oily skin, which I think has held off the aging process a bit. People always tell me I look younger than I am, but time marches on and it's beginning to look like it marched all over my face!

Even at my age I still have problems with acne now and then. Many of the skin care systems aimed at ~~old ladies~~ women my age and older, cause my skin to break out. I recently bought a two-week sample skin care regimen from Avon to try, called Anew Ultimate, for around $25, I think. To buy the full size products would cost $95. It doesn't say how long it would last, but three of the jars have 1.7 oz each in them. I'm thinking two months tops. It made me break out. Gee I feel so young again...acne days are here again!

Don't get me wrong, I love Avon's products most of the time. I had been without an Avon rep for years, so when I found one I went a little nuts the first couple of orders. But whether it's Avon, Olay, Mary Kay, or Loreal, skin care products are expensive! And I'm a one product kind of girl. I really hate having to apply two or three or more products.

Because of my tendency for break-outs, I am still using Clean & Clear to wash my face, but it also really dries my skin out. I can hear the woman at the make-up counter now..."So you want something, that will clean off make-up, dry up the acne, moisturize the rest of your face, and reduce ~~elephant skin~~ wrinkles, all in one product. " If I've shown restraint and she is still standing at the end of that, I would reply..."For $95, why yes...yes I would."

I recently read about a homemade skin cleaner on Pinterest. It consists of two or three ingredients: extra virgin olive oil and castor oil, with a little tea tree oil for acne if you like. I had the last two and ordered a 16 oz. bottle of NOW foods castor oil from Amazon for $7.35. My olive oil was around $4.00 for a 16 oz. bottle. I used 3 parts castor oil to 1 part olive oil (recommended for oily skin). You'll have to go read about it at Simple Mom. There are other oils you can use too, and different recommendations for different skin types.

I will be totally honest and tell you I would personally never pay anywhere near $95 for skin care. But even if I don't have to buy my normal cleanser or moisturizer anymore, I will easily save $6.00 a month. If you do purchase more expensive face cleaners, you could stand to save a lot if this works for you. It's worth a try. I can tell you my skin feels amazingly soft after washing, instead of feeling like it's going to crack if I smile. I haven't used it long enough to make a complete judgement yet, but the early results have me smiling...without cracking!

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:

$3634.52/year
$302.88/month

31 Days: Day 24 - TV for Free? Almost!

2011-10-26T23:56:00.001-04:00

Remember the good old days when as long as you had an antenna, you paid nothing to watch your own TV? Of course there were far fewer channels, but you didn't pay a dime for those channels.

We had a cable package, which included our TV, internet and phone. At first it was about $100 or so. After the first year, the bill took a jump and started climbing. We eventually locked in for 1-2 years and were paying a total of $147 a month. Our locked in rate expired and we had to decide if we wanted to lock in again at $160. Are. you. kidding. me?

I looked into Roku, a company that manufactures little black boxes, not for aircraft, but for your TV. Basically you choose your box, plug it into your TV, follow the easy instructions for connecting to your wireless router, and start watching. You can also get the most expensive box if you want an ethernet port for wired internet connection.

There are 3 Roku boxes to choose from. We chose the mid priced one. It seemed to fit our needs best and cost us $79, about the same amount we were paying for one month of the TV portion of our cable bill. There are no monthly fees with Roku, unless you decide to add Netflix or some other paid channels.

It comes with several channels already on, and you can add more from the channel store. There are some paid channels, like Netflix, which we were already subscribed to anyway.

Another channel we will probably add is Hulu Plus, for $7.99 a month. Although you can watch Hulu on your computer for free, with Hulu Plus, you can watch it on your TV, and it has more channels. We are going to try the free week to see how we like that. We've barely scratched the surface of the programming available.

Deciding to cut our cable TV out was a pretty drastic move for us. Not that we are couch potatoes, but we have our favorite shows, and it's hard to make changes. We've had our box for about three weeks, and although it took some adjustment, we are liking it.

It may not be for everyone. For instance you can't just sit down and watch the evening news. But we rarely watched our local news, and we can watch our favorite national news channel online for free. We are not sports fans, but I don't think you can watch live games, however, I could be wrong about that.

You can check it out Roku.com (At the time of this writing, I am/was not being compensated by Roku in any way. I may in the future become an affiliate because I really like the product.)

Cutting our cable TV saved us $80 a month. We already had netflix for movies, so I am not counting that. We may add Hulu Plus for 7.99, but currently are saving $80/month or $960 per year!

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:
$3562.52/year
$296.88/month

31 Days: Day 23 - I'm Floored!

2011-10-25T22:22:00.000-04:00

Several years ago we put in laminate wood floors in our kitchen and living room. I later regretted it as every little spot showed. I couldn't use just any old cleaner. The manufacturer specified laminate floor cleaner, or vinegar and water. I tried the latter, but it left water spots, so I had to clean and then wipe dry with a towel on my hands and knees. Just cleaning one room left me tired!

I decided to buy some laminate cleaner. The price varies depending on the brand, but Home Depot carries Zep Hardwood and Laminate floor cleaner, in a 32 oz spray bottle, for $4.98. It worked, but I could easily go through a bottle a month. I decided to try to make my own and found a recipe online. This was several years ago, so I have no idea where it came from.

I loved it! It works very well, is super cheap to make and I use it on all my hard floors now, eliminating the need for other floor cleaners. Here is the recipe:

2 Tablespoons ammonia (not sudsy)
1/2 Cup rubbing alcohol
1/2 teaspoon dish soap
few drops of essential oil for smell (optional)
water

Use a funnel to pour the first 3 ingredients into an empty 32 ounce spray bottle. Add water to fill gently. You don't want to create a lot of suds. Once filled, replace lid and shake to mix. Spray directly on your floor and mop clean. I use a Swiffer mop with my own rags attached.

It costs about .27 Cents to make versus $4.98 for store bought cleaner. Each bottle saves me $4.71. Since I use about 1 bottle a month, I save $56.52/year.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:
$2602.52/year
$216.88/month

31 Days: Day 22 - Rolling in the Dough

2011-10-24T22:20:00.001-04:00

Once again, I did not have a post for Sunday. Are we sensing a pattern here? It seems I am destined not to post on Sundays. Maybe there is a reason for that...hmmm. I will make up the missing posts though...that is if I can come up with enough ideas! I admit I am running out.

Today I want to talk about dough...bread dough that is. I have always hated making bread. I hate to knead and my bread always falls flat. I stink at making bread. Now baking cookies, cakes, pies...that I can do well. But I decided I'm going to face my nemesis and win.

The bread we buy cost us about $2.00 a loaf and we generally go through two loaves a week for sandwiches. At $4.00 per week that is costing us $208 per year. That's my motivation.

Recently I purchased Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. You can buy it on Amazon starting at $13.99. You can also visit the authors' website for tips and updates here.

There are many different dough recipes in it. They are "wet" doughs that you keep in the refrigerator and break off a piece when you want to bake a loaf of bread. I've tried one recipe for the dough so far and it was good. There are three recipes I plan to try for Soft American-Style White Bread, Light Whole Wheat Bread, and Crusty White Sandwich Loaf. The Soft American White recipe would cost me .49 cents a loaf, saving me $1.50 a loaf, $3.00 a week, and $156 a year.

What I love about these breads is that you do not knead them. Now that is right up my alley! You mix them up in a 5 - 6 quart container with a lid, pull of a hunk when you want to bake a loaf, shape it and let is rise according to the recipe, then pop it in the oven. The doughs take just a couple minutes to stir together, and about 5 minutes or less to prepare for baking...so simple!

Sorry I haven't pretested these, but it's been a little crazy lately. I will write a post when I have tried them...soon I promise :)

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far: (Whoo hoo! I just exceeded my goal of saving $200 a month!)

$2546/year
$212.17/month

31 Days: Day 21 - Driving Miss Debbie

2011-10-22T15:45:00.001-04:00

Do you consider yourself a good driver? How about a frugal driver...a what? Can you actually drive frugally? I found out that you can. We have this neat feature on our van that lets me see how many miles per gallon (MPG) I am getting at any moment. It also keeps track of the average MPG over time.

You can tell this is an old picture. No, not by the style of clothes or hair, but because she is actually looking at the gas pump and smiling!

A few months ago the average MPG on our van was 23.4. Not too shabby, but I wondered if we could do better. I read, and my daughter confirmed from chemistry or math class, that the best gas mileage can be had at 45 miles per hour. I checked it out on my van, and it seemed like it did do a little better than at 55 and especially at 60 or more.

Confession time - I am a bit of a lead foot. I use my cruise control for a reason people! It seems I'm always in a hurry and running a tiny bit behind. We live out in the country, with a 15 minute drive to town. I take a less traveled road to town, so I thought I'd test it out a bit. When I had no one behind me that would be irritated by my leisurely pace, I drove at 45 mph. Going up hill it used more, of course, and going down it would read up to 99 MPG, which confirmed what my mom had said once, that taking your foot off the gas and coasting downhill uses almost no gas...there is such a thing as a free ride!

I also started coasting in town as much as possible, like when I see a red light ahead, I take my foot off the gas and coast to the light. Coasting uses very little gas.

Whenever someone is behind me, I drive the speed limit of 55 though, and even at that, the gas mileage is better than at 60 MPG. I've watched that average MPG over time go up, until now it is at 24.8 which is up 1.4 MPG. That may not sound like much, but over a years time, at current gas prices, it will save us about $102. Not too shabby.

I realized a couple things too. One, driving 10 mph slower only takes me 2.5 minutes longer to drive to town. With just a little more forethought, I can leave a little sooner, and not worry about being late. Two, it gives me a little bit more down time (driving in the country is relaxing). I found myself noticing my surroundings more. When I'm not barreling down the road, worried I'll be late, I can enjoy the fall colors, or the brilliant blue sky. I'm also more relaxed. Constant hurrying is tiring. An added bonus is that I'm praying more during that time...eye's open of course!

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far: (I am almost at my goal with 9 more posts to go!)
$2390/year
$199.17/month

31 Days: Day 20 - You Light Up My Life

2011-10-21T23:51:00.000-04:00

Today I painted around trim in the sunroom at my parents house all day. I have a wedding tomorrow, church Sunday morning, and more painting Sunday afternoon. On that note my next two or three posts will be short and sweet and most likely point you elsewhere.

Today's savings is lighting. I'm sending you back to the Saving Energy site. There is a calculator where you can figure out how much you can save with compact fluorescent bulbs over incandescent, based on your electric rate, how many bulbs, and how many hours you use them. I tried to average my use, as we don't use every bulb in the house all the time. My savings is around $17/month or $204/year.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:
$2288/year
$190.67/month

31 Days: Day 19 - Good for a Cold & Good for Your Budget

2011-10-20T23:48:00.000-04:00

While the jury is still out on whether chicken soup can help a cold, it definitely can help your budget! Actually many types of soup are very frugal. Soup can stretch a pound of meat out for two meals or more. A pound of meat will barely feed our family for one meal.

Considering that meat is usually the most expensive part of a meal, it only makes sense to stretch it as far as you can. Of course you can stretch it in many casseroles too, but for my family, casseroles, lasagne, basically meat mixed in with noodles or vegetables doesn't fly. I love them, and my husband likes some of them, but my kids are the worlds pickiest eaters. That's a whole other story. We tried everything...don't even want to go there!

My kids don't like many soups either, but chicken soup is good for 4 out of 5 of us. Other soups that my hubby and I like are chili and Spanish hamburger soup (carrots, onions, mushrooms in a tomato sauce base).

Chicken soup is super economical for us. Just tonight we had it for supper. I boiled the bones, with bits of meat still on them from when I cut a 10 lb. bag of chicken breasts off the bones. I had frozen the bones until I was ready to make soup. There was enough meat from that to fill an 8 ounce cool whip container. It all went back in the soup, but I made a nice big pot of it. That meat would have been thrown out with the bones otherwise, so really the meat was a freebie. (I actually used to throw that out!) The chicken broth was also free, compliments of the bones.

Even if you bought boneless chicken breasts, cooked it and chopped it up, you could use about half the meat you usually would eat. And for vegetable lovers, go meatless. The amount you save just depends on your families tastes and whether you use the bones or not.

Making a frugal soup 4 times a month will help with your bottom line. Since I spend about $2.79 per pound for hamburger, and $0.99 per pound for bone-in chicken breasts (I would need about 2 pounds of this chicken to feed my family if I just baked it), I estimate I would save $9.60 per month or $115.20 per year.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:
$2084/year
$173.67/month

31 Days: Day 18 - It Doesn't Compute

2011-10-19T23:05:00.000-04:00

I was shocked when I found out how much I've been wasting in electricity by leaving on computers 24/7. I can remember when having just one computer was a luxury for us. Now we have the desktop and 3 laptops in this house! I have a notebook, my son just bought himself a laptop and my hubby uses my daughters old laptop to play card games. When my daughter is home in the summer, she brings her laptop home too.

There is a lot of variance in how much energy is used by different computers, used in different ways. Gaming uses more energy than emailing for instance. If you set your computer to sleep automatically after 10-15 minutes, you will use much less energy.

Laptops are much more energy efficient than desktops. I set my laptop to sleep mode the day I turned it on for the first time. Sleep mode saves 80-90% energy. According to Mr. Electricity at Saving Electricity a laptop consumes anywhere between 15 - 45 watts. So I downloaded Joulemeter at Microsoft to test my laptop. It registered 22.7 watts.

Using the formula found at Saving electricity my laptop would cost 7.6 cents per day or $27.84 per year if I used it 24 hours a day without sleep mode and never turned it off. I do use sleep mode and turn it off at night, except Sundays when I leave it on to run my antivirus scan so I'm consuming very little electricity with it. We are now shutting off all computers at night, or when not in use for extended hours during the day.

Our desktop, on the other hand, was usually on all the time. It runs Windows Vista, and Joulemeter is only available for Windows 7, so I couldn't get an accurate watt usage for it. I used the calculator on this page at Saving Electricity to get an estimate of what my desktop probably uses. It is constantly crunching for whatever reason, so I know it's working all the time it is on.

According to the calculator a desktop computer with a 17 inch LCD screen, like the one above (if you have an old CRT monitor - the great big kind, like the one below - you will use more energy), that is on 24 hours/7days a week, at 14 cents per kwH (kilowatt hour), which is our local rate, averages $15.68 per month or $188 per year. Needless to say, it is now turned off most of the time.

My tally so far:

$1968.77/year
$164.07/month

When Bloggers Meet

2011-10-19T17:20:00.000-04:00

Wow! This 31 Days series I'm doing is challenging me! Not only is it challenging me find ways to save some mula, but it is a challenging task to blog every . single . day. I am stoked about the savings I am racking up, but I will be truthful and tell you that I'll be glad to get back to my regular programing!

In that spirit I have to share with you the absolutely lovely day I had yesterday with fellow blogger, Debbie, from The Lake House. It was the first time we've met in person, and actually the first blogging friend I've ever met in person!

She is an absolute delight. I had such a wonderful time getting to know her. I felt a kindred spirit through her blog and it was confirmed yesterday. We went shopping in a nearby town with more stores than either of us has in our own towns. We are both Debbie's, we were both oohing and aahing over the same things, we both like to go thrift shopping, and most importantly we are sisters in Christ. It was such a refreshing day.

The only bad thing was that I took my camera and completely forgot to get a picture of us together. We were having so much fun I just didn't even think of it!

I did come home with some treasures too. Maybe my next 31 Days post should be "Leave your Wallet at Home!" Actually, I so rarely do this and I had money set aside, but I could have bought a lot more...so many pretty things.

I took a list and I actually got everything on my list! That never happens. The main thing I wanted was some mercury glass and boy did I score! I've never seen it in my hometown. There is one store that might carry it (though I've never seen it), but their prices are, well, a bit out of my comfort zone. We went to Hobby Lobby and the prices were unbelievable...and in a good way! Here are my first pieces of mercury glass.

I am in love with these pieces! Look at the detail on the tall silver jar.

These blue pieces are gorgeous...be still my beating heart!

I also bought these awesome chippy planters.

Debbie (the other Debbie) bought some too. Take a look at how pretty hers are arranged. I just plunked mine on a counter and shot a quick picture.

I had a Bath and Body coupon for a free signature item with a $10 purchase. Score at least one Christmas gift. I needed socks from Dress Barn, because they are the only place within an hour and a half of me I can get socks my size...yes I have big feet. I'm tall so I guess I need skiis to support me! Scored the socks too. I also found the Goodwill store after Debbie left town. Sorry Debbie, but next time I'll know where it is ;) I'll share my purchases from there later. This post is long enough for now, and I have to get started on my 31 days post!

31 Days: Day 17 - Cream of Soup Mix

2011-10-18T23:55:00.001-04:00

I'm squeaking this post in at the last minute. I've been gone all day (I'll tell you where in another post), but I can't miss two days in a row! I'm going to make this one quick, then send you off for the recipe.

I found another homemade mix for cream of "something" soup. I did the math and this recipe would cost about 24 cents per use. A can of cream of anything costs at least $1.00, so this recipe would save 75% of the cost of every can of cream soup you use.

I use approximately 6 cans a month which would save me $4.50/month or $54.00/year.

I found this recipe at One Orange Giraffe. Head over there for the recipe.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:
$1780.77/year
$148.41/month

31 Days: Day 16 - Scruba-Dub-Dub

2011-10-17T21:14:00.000-04:00

If this is your first visit I welcome you to my little corner of the world! You might want to start at the introduction of this series. It explains what 31 Days of Change is, and has links to each day's post as they occur. Just click on the 31 Days to Slash Your Budget Painlessly button at the top of my sidebar on the right.

First I want to apologize for not having a post on Sunday (again). My daughter was home from college this weekend. We hadn't seen her in two months, so I spent the time with her. I will try to do a double post at some point or just tack a day on at the end.

Yesterday evening, after Jamie had left to return to college, I made my own liquid hand soap. It was really easy. I found the recipe on Pinterest.

Source: ckrasmussen.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

All you need is 1 cup of grated soap (pressed down), 1 tablespoon of glycerine (available at drugstores), and 10 cups of hot water.

I just added the glycerine and water to the bowl that I shaved the soap in and microwaved it, rather than heated it on the stove, so I'd have less dishes to wash.

I did some other things a bit differently. Sera used Mrs. Meyers soap; I used what I had on hand, which was Ivory. Like she recommended, I used the blender, but I found it made it super foamy. I left it on the counter overnight and it got so thick I thought it was ruined, but when I stirred it, it became liquid again. The foam had dried, so I gently stirred it back into the liquid. I don't think the blending was necessary.

I did not double the glycerine and soap like she did. My bar of soap was the smaller 3.1 oz size that made about 1 1/4 cup of soap, so I just used it all and it turned out fine. It made about 10 1/3 cups of soap. My son loves Arnold lemon tea, so his girlfriend got him this huge gallon jug of it. The empty container was perfect to store the soap in.

I usually buy Great Value refill soap in the 64 oz size. It runs $3.68 and lasts us about a month. This recipe made about 83 ounces for about $1.00 or $0.77 cents for the equivalent amount of my store bought soap. Ounce for ounce my savings will be $2.91 a month or $34.92 a year. Not huge, but it's all the little things that really add up.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:

$1726.77/year
$143.91/month

31 Days: Day 15 - All Mixed Up

2011-10-15T07:00:00.004-04:00

I love boxes of premixed staples...cake mix, biscuit mix, brownie mix...they make my life a lot easier. Thinking I could save a lot of money making my own mixes, I did find some recipes, did a couple of trials, and realized I wouldn't save a lot making my own.

Ummm...so why am I writing about mixes then? I realized I was looking at individual mixes. For instance when I compared a brownie mix I tried this month, the cost of one batch of brownies from my mix was 65 cents. I can usually find brownie mix for about $1.00 per box. That's a savings of 45%, which is really good, but considering I probably bake brownies only twice a month, posting a savings of 80 cents a month just looks ridiculous.

However, when I start adding up the savings from multiple mixes, something beautiful happens...cue the angels singing...the savings start to multiply. Hmmm...so what mixes could I make? Here are just three mixes I am currently making or plan to start making this month.

Mixes                         Average Monthly Use             Savings

Brownie                               2 boxes    $0.80
Biscuit                                 2 boxes                              1.90
Pancake                              3 boxes                              4.95
   $7.65/month

There are homemade alternatives to almost any mix you can think of, including seasonings, flavored rice, granola and many more. Do a google or Pinterest search and you will find all kinds. Start small and add 1 new mix a week, and before you know it the savings will really start to add up! Just with these three mixes, I will save $7.95/month or $95.40/year.

The other major benefit of homemade mixes, is that you know what's in it. Unless your ingredients themselves have it in them, you aren't going to have artificial preservatives, flavorings etc. Plus you don't have to run to the store to get a box of mix to make biscuits. You can whip up a batch much faster than you can drive to the store and back.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:

$1691.85/year
$141.00/month

31 Days: Day 14 - The Spice of Life

2011-10-14T07:00:00.004-04:00

Do you ever hold your breath when you pick up a jar of spice to check the price. I think ounce for ounce some of it costs more than gold! I recently ran out of poultry seasoning. I waltzed into Walmart, picked up a little plastic jar of it, then quickly glanced at the price before I chucked it in the cart. I think customers all over the store heard me shout, “HOLY COW!” The Walmart police were closing in on me getting ready to say, “step away from the spices lady.” That little jar of spice went right back on the shelf.

That teensy jar of poultry seasoning cost $3.78 for .65 ounces. That’s over $93 per pound, people! I waltzed myself over to my local Gordon Foods where I can buy spices in bulk containers. Their big honking container cost $9.79 for 10 ounces. There are about 5 ½ cups in the jar. That comes out to $15.67 a pound, which is a savings of over $77. What a difference!

I can hear you say it. “What in the blue blazes am I going to do with 10 ounces of poultry seasoning? Well, it would take me more than 5 years to go through that much, so I split it with my mom and friends. We all get spices super cheap that way. You could freeze it and take out a little at a time too.

Cinnamon runs around $6.00 I think, but they often have it on sale for $5 for 15 ounces. That will run you $5.33 per pound as opposed to $17.42 at Walmart. I buy taco seasoning this way too.

This one is really hard to put a savings figure on. It all depends on the spice and how much you use. I'm going with a guesstimate (for myself) of a savings of about $6 a month or $72 a year. Your savings will vary.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Come on back & keep the savings adding up!

My tally so far:

$1596.45/year
$133.04/month

31 Days: Day 13 - The Great Pizza Stampede

2011-10-13T07:00:00.003-04:00

This is the second go around with this post. I had it mostly done, then I hit something on my keyboard and poof, it all disappeared, and before I could hit control Z, blogger saved it. Grrrrr...does anyone know how to turn off that automatic save feature? I have a love/hate relationship with my laptop. I love that I can sit in the recliner and use it, I hate the keyboard. It's forever jumping places I don't want to go. Anyway, rant over.

I can slave all day over a meal (not that I ever do ;) and when I call the ~~pigs to the trough~~, family for supper, I hear 10 minutes of "just a minutes." But the minute I yell, "PIZZA," I have to jump out of the way of the stampede!

Pizza is my take-out of choice when I've been in town all day and am too tired to fix something for supper. We usually buy take-out pizza at Little Caesar's; one hot and ready three meat, and another 3 topping large. We always have leftovers for the next day's lunch. It costs about $16. We usually do this about twice a month.

I decided to compare the cost of homemade and see if I could save anything. The recipe I used below costs $2.35 for 8 crusts, so about 30 cents each. The total cost of the pizza will vary a lot depending on what toppings you use. I used 1/2 lb. of lean hamburger, 3 slices of ham lunch meat, 1/6th of a 6 oz. package of Armour pepperoni, 1 can of mushrooms and 2 cups of mozzarella (I only made one pizza). I probably used a little more toppings then what we would get on a take-out pizza, so adjusting a little for that, I estimate it cost me $5 to make one pizza. Since I spend $16 on two, I'd save $6 each time. Since we pick up pizza twice a month, we would save $12/month or $144 per year.

This week I found a recipe on Cooks.com that makes 8 pizza crusts you can freeze. We tried it last night and it was yummy! My youngest son said, "did you make this mom? It's really good!" High praise indeed from a twelve year old pizza hound. Here's the recipe I used. (I've inserted my own pictures of the process)

PIZZA DOUGH MASTER RECIPE (MAKES 8 CRUSTS TO FREEZE)

5 lb. unbleached flour (one bag)

3 pts. water, warm

2 pkg. dry yeast

1 tbsp. salt

2 tbsp. sugar

In a large bowl, combine salt and flour.

In another bowl combine warm water and yeast to dissolve.

Add sugar and allow foaming to develop (5 to 10 minutes). Gradually add water mixture to center of flour, stirring to blend thoroughly. Knead for 5 minutes then let it rest 5 minutes.

On floured flat surface, form dough into long roll and cut into 8 equal portions, place in quart size Zip-lock bags and store in freezer until ready to use.

When ready to make pizza, remove a portion for each pizza from freezer about 6 to 8 hours to warm to room temperature or about 12 hours in refrigerator. Flour needs to be room temperature for further processing.

Roll out ball on floured surface to 2/3 size you wish to make pizza, stretching rather than pressing. With floured hands, pick up dough and stretch and or toss and spin to stretch to final size.

Dough may be placed on baking sheet for topping, but using a circular pizza baking screen allows the bottom to brown. Top with favorite sauces, meats and cheeses. Bake in very hot oven, top rack for about 8 minutes.

My note: I baked mine for about 12 minutes. Maybe if I had rolled it a little thinner, it would have taken less time, but we really like a thicker crust. I baked mine on a stone and the crust turned out fine.

I didn't do a very good job stretching it the way the recipe recommends. Next time I think I will just roll it. As a trial, I pressed one onto a pizza pan and froze it to see how it turns out. If it works, it would be perfect for those times I'm tempted to pick up a pizza in town. I can prepackage my ingredients, then it would be so simple to just dump everything on a crust and bake it. I'll let you know in an update.

I'm sure there will still be times when we pick up pizza, but having crusts ready to bake will make it a lot easier to avoid that cost.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Until tomorrow, God bless!

My tally so far:
$1524.45/year
$127.02/month

31 Days: Day 12 - Dishwasher Detergent

2011-10-12T11:21:00.002-04:00

I love my dishwasher. For years I didn't have one. I shouldn't complain, because my hubby often did dishes, but we homeschool, so the kids and I were in this house round the clock and the dirty dishes were never ending. Now I can just stick them in the dishwasher and I don't have piles of dirty dishes waiting to be washed.

One thing I didn't like was the cost of dishwasher soap. It was a bit of sticker shock for me, having washed dishes by hand for so many years. I tried different off-brands that I didn't like, then found Walmart's Great Value worked well. It was more reasonably priced too.

Is it just me or has Walmart raised it's prices on their brand to almost as much as name brands on many things? Anyway I went in search of a homemade alternative. I wasn't having much luck, until I found this recipe at b-ecochic.com.

Homemade Dish Detergent Recipe #3

1 cup baking soda

1 cup Borax

1/2 cup Kosher or Sea Salt

1/2 tablespoon of citric acid as a rinse aid

You can use powdered citric acid found in the baking aisle of some stores, or lemon kool-aid. LemiShine also works.

I used kosher salt (it's coarser than table salt and I'm guessing acts like a scrubbing agent?), and 2 packets of Great Value sugar free lemonaid mix, in place of citric acid. I also filled my rinse cup with vinegar, although as little as it dispenses, I'm not sure if that helps or not. The citric acid in the lemonaid is what helps with that I believe.

So far I am liking it. I will be totally honest. I pre-rinse my dishes well. I've always done this, so it's not a bother. No homemade soap, or commercial "green" detergent is going to clean bits of food off very well. I usually have a sink of soapy water going while I am fixing dinner, to wipe down as I go and wash things I don't put in the dishwasher. We just set our supper dishes in the sink of water (doesn't matter that it isn't clean anymore), let them soak for 5 minutes while putting food away, wiping off counters and table, then load the dishwasher.

There are several recipes for dishwasher detergent listed at b-ecochic. So if this one doesn't work well, you could experiment with the others. I think different formulas work better with different water. We have hard well water with lots of iron in it, although our water filter helps with that some.

Here's another recipe I'm going to try next time that I found on the diaperswappers forum:

I make my own and have found with my hard water I need 
1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1/4 cup pickling salt
4 packets of lemon kool aid (I only had lemon lime and used that with no issues)  

I used about 2 Tablespoons of the first recipe listed above, 1/2 Tablespoon in the rinse cup and the rest in the main cup. So this recipe nets me about 20 uses for about 82 cents, which is 4 cents per load. Many people recommend 1T, but I have hard water and need more whether I use this or store bought detergent. There are about 19 uses in a 75 oz box of dry dishwasher detergent. Great Value costs me $2.67 which amounts to 14 cents per load.

Therefore I save 10 cents per load. I usually do 1- 2 loads per day, depending on if I'm doing extra baking, or if we are away from home for the day, so I'll say 1.5 loads per day average. Over a year I will save $54.75, or 4.56/month. If you use cascade you would save $130.82/year or $10.90/month (as compared to Cascade Lemon Scent w/Shine Shield Dishwasher Detergent, 75 Oz for $4.54).

I just found another recipe with just baking soda and a few drops of dishsoap that I'm going to try. I'll update this post if I find that works as well, or better. It would be even cheaper to use. Update: I tried this and it didn't work at all. Everything had a white coating and not clean. Maybe with soft water it would, but not with my hard water.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you an average of $112 per year. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Hope to see you tomorrow!

My tally so far:
$1380.45/year
$115.02/month

31 Days: Day 11 - Say Cheese!

2011-10-11T00:24:00.000-04:00

Is your mouth watering? Mine is, just looking at that pizza dripping in cheese! Doesn't cheese just make everything better? We use it in casseroles, on pizza, in scrambled eggs and omelets, on sandwiches, in salad, in vegetable dishes and just plain on crackers. But the price of cheese seems to be tied to the price of gasoline these days. It just keeps going up! The cheapest I've seen shredded cheese lately is on sale for $2.50 for 8oz. That's $5.00 a pound on sale! It's almost as expensive as steak.

So how does a frugal cook keep herself in cheese? Buy it in bulk and freeze it. Cheese freezes just fine for cooking with, especially when it's preshredded. The closest Sam's Club or Costco around here is around 3 hours away. We do have a Gordon Food Store however, and they sell shredded cheese in 5lb. bags. It is running around $13 a bag right now, but they periodically have it on sale for a dollar or two off. I wait until it's around $11 dollars and buy 1 or 2 bags.

When I get home, I usually pop the cheese in the fridge until I have a few minutes to deal with it. I measure out 2 cup portions and put them in individual zipping sandwich bags. We go through them fast enough that I don't worry about freezer burn, but if you think you wouldn't go through them in less than a couple of months, you could put all the individual bags into a gallon size bag for double protection.

When I can get cheese this way, I only pay about $2.20 per pound. That's less than half the price of cheese at the grocery store when it's on sale! I buy both mozerella and cheddar this way.

Each 5lb. bag of cheese will make up ten 8oz. (2 cup) bags. We probably use that much a month of the cheddar and about half that of mozerella. That equals 7.5 lbs. of shredded cheese per month. At a savings of $2.80 per pound as compared to sale price (not even regular price), that nets me a savings of $21/month or $252 per year. Can you say cha-ching!

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Later Gater.

My tally so far:
$1325.70/year
$110.48/month

31 Days: Day 10 - Addicted to Cappuccino?

2011-10-10T01:40:00.001-04:00

First I apologize for no post on Sunday. We went to church, then to my mom-in-law's to help her move some rooms around. Then we headed to my parents to return some cots the boys borrowed, and spent some time with them. By the time we got home I had just enough light to plant a bush and some ground cover I picked up last week on clearance, and get a start on trimming the raspberries. So Sunday's post didn't happen. I did give you a twofer (two for one) on the first day of this series though...so am I forgiven?

Okay, all Starbuck's and coffee elitists please step away from your computer. I am slightly addicted to gas station french vanilla cappuccino. Gasp! I know, I know. For a coffee elitist, gas station and cappuccino don't belong in the same sentence.

But I.love.them. Yes I have a sweet tooth. No I can't stand coffee unless it is totally adulterated with flavored creamer and plenty of sweetener. I tried Starbucks once. It was...let's just say...it was not for me.

I know they are loaded with calories and fat. I know they are not good for me. Fortunately I don't go to town everyday. I do limit myself to one or two a week, usually in the small size. They are a little indulgence for me...and a very affordable one at on around $1.00 per 8 oz cup. After all, if I buy 2 a week that's only $2.00/week, which is an average of $8.67/month...ummm $104/year. Yikes! I can think of a lot of things I'd rather do with $104 than add inches to my waistline. But ooooh they are good!

So in the interest of saving some of that $104, and maybe coming up with a less calorie laden cup of joe, I went in search of a recipe. I found one that sounded good, but it was way too weak and not nearly as sweet as the gas station cappucino. So I added a little more of this, a lot more of that, and a touch of chocolate. I think I hit it pretty close.

One of my modifications was to use decaf instant coffee. Caffeine and I don't get along very well. I have to limit the amount I drink to a couple cups of tea in the morning. I also used splenda to cut some of the sugar in the mix. Here's my recipe.

French Vanilla Cappuccino Mix:

1/3 cup instant coffee
1 cup instant dry milk powder
1 cup powdered coffee creamer
3/4 cup sucralose (Splenda - I used Great Value)
1/4 cup instant sugar free vanilla pudding mix
1/4 cup powdered chocolate drink mix (like Nestle quick)

Mix well and store in airtight container. Makes about 3 1/2 cups of mix which makes about 19 cups.

To Use: Add 3 level Tablespoons of mix to 8 oz hot water.

Next time I think I will try it without the vanilla pudding and instead use french vanilla coffee creamer. You could use any flavor creamer you want to get different flavored cappuccino.

This recipe cost about $3.30 to make. Each serving costs about .17 cents. Assuming I buy two cappuccino's per week, I will save $1.66/week, $86.32/year or on average $7.19 per month.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. See you tomorrow, same time?, same place.

My tally so far:

$1073.70/year
$89.47/month

31 Days: Day 8 - Wipe Your Mouth Please

2011-10-08T10:52:00.000-04:00

In a previous post I talked about the rising cost of paper products, and focused on the price of paper towels. In the same way, the cost of paper napkins is also on the rise. When you think about it, every time you throw away a paper napkin, it’s like throwing money in the garbage.

Cloth napkins are often thought of as “fancy,” something only for restaurants or special occasions, but they are really practical. Unless you have an unusually messy eater in the house, you can instruct everyone to leave "their" napkin at their spot at the table, and use the same one for the day. That way you will only go through as many napkins per day, as you have members of your family.

If that makes you squeamish, think about your dish rag. You use it all day too, to wipe your table, your counters, etc. Besides, you're not sharing germs if you keep the napkins straight. Of course if company comes, do them a favor and get out clean napkins :) If you choose to use a new napkin at each meal you will obviously need more napkins.

You can always purchase napkins, but they are pretty pricey. Most are about 20" x 20" square. I decided to make my own. I bought 2 yards of fabric for six napkins (20 x 20). If you want to make smaller napkins, you can, but I like to use napkin rings at times, and this size is nice for that.

My fabric for this set was 2.97 a yard, so I paid about $6.00 for 6 napkins. Next time I think I will look for a mark down sheet. You could get a lot of napkins out of a sheet.

Another consideration is fabric content. Cotton is great for absorbency but polyester doesn't wrinkle as badly. I will look for a cotton poly blend. Many sheets are just such animals. Another tip is to look for dark colors, or patterned fabric to hide stains. Napkins are going to get stained. I will throw mine in a bucket of water with some oxiclean, but if some stains do persist, the pattern or dark color will hide them.

If you want to make your own napkins, I've got a couple of tips to make it faster. It's the simplest of sewing and a great beginner project if you've never sewn before. First prewash and dry your fabric to shrink it. You don't want it shrinking after you sew it or it will pucker. My fabric was about 42 inches wide. I folded it in half lengthwise, then trimmed off the selvages. If you don't trim them, they tend to pucker the hem. Cut along the folded edge so that you have two long pieces. See my tutorial on sewing kitchen clothes for rags here.

Next, hem down both long sides, turning under edges about 1/4 inch twice. Then you can cut them into individual napkins. An easy way to get them square, without having to measure, is to fold the fabric on the diagonal, so that the one edge extends about 1/2 inch or more off the edge like so:

You can put a couple of pins in it along that edge, but I just held onto it and flipped it over, making sure that extended edge didn't move. Now you will cut as shown below about 1/2 inch from the hemmed edge.

This allows for the hems along the other two edges, so your napkin will be square after you finish hemming it. When it's finished and folded, it looks like...well, a napkin!

I buy paper napkins at our local Save a Lot for $1.49 for 250. I'm not sure how much napkins run at Walmart anymore, but on Walmart.com Bounty napkins are $2.97 for 200. I'm going to figure my savings as well as the savings of someone buying Bounty.

I will assume each family member uses on average 3-4 napkins a day (which is probably a low figure), without figuring in company, parties etc. For our family of five that would be 15-20 napkins per day, so my pack of 250 napkins would last about two weeks. I would save about $39 per year or $3.25 per month. If I used Bounty I would save about $98 per year, or $8.17 per month.

Now I do have to buy napkins, or fabric and make them. But since I will probably set out a napkin for each person to use for the day, I would need 5 napkins per day, or 35 per week. However, I do laundry almost daily, so I can get away with about 15. At $1.00 each I would spend $15. They should last at least two years, probably more.

Is this worth it? For someone who buys premium napkins, it is a significant savings. And with the cost of paper products on the rise, it will become more and more so. Paper products use a lot of natural resources too. Even though my own savings won't be huge, I think it's worth it for that reason alone. Besides there's just something about a cloth napkin that elevates an everyday meal. Now if I can just train my family to put their napkins on their laps!

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Come on back now y'all...ya hear?

My tally so far:

$987.40/year
$82./28month

31 Days: Day 7 - Are you Chicken?

2011-10-07T07:00:00.005-04:00

The debate rages. Is it cheaper to by bone-in or boneless chicken breasts? Did the chicken or the egg come first? That second one is easy. Genesis 1:20-21: And God said,...let birds fly above the earth...So God created...every winged bird according to their kind...

Notice it didn't say let the eggs fly above the earth. Imagine that mess! Now that first question is a little trickier. After much research...about an hour on google...and many years in my kitchen, I think I have the answer. It depends.

Go ahead, say it. "That's a lot of help." Seriously though, it depends on the size of the breasts, and price. If the bone-in breasts are big (I got some huge ones recently that I had to cut both sides of the breast in half, yielding 4 servings), then you will have a higher meat to bone ratio. Always check the size. I once bought a 10# bag of bone-in breasts, but when I got it home and checked, the pieces were scrawny, with a very low meat to bone ratio.

Here's what Flyfish had to say at the Chowhound forum:
"In terms of converting skin-on, bone-in breasts to skinless, boneless - I've checked on the yield with a kitchen scale after doing my own several times, and it hovers right around 50%, so if boneless, skinless is what you're looking for, anything less than double the price of whole breasts is a good deal. Flyfish comment at http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/300340

This figure seemed to be echoed in a couple other places online, so generally if the price of boneless is more than twice the price of bone-in, go with the bone-in. A couple of other factors to consider are that bone-in are simply more tasty than boneless. The bone and skin add taste that you just can't get with boneless. Also you have all those bones to make soup or chicken broth with.

When chicken breasts are at their lowest price, which around here has been .99 cents for bone-in and $1.99 for boneless, I stock up. I buy most of my meat at a local IGA that is famous around here for it's meat counter. When they have a good sale, I buy at least one, but usually two 10# bags of chicken, whether it's breasts or leg quarters. I remove some of the breasts from the bones, and leave some on for different recipes. Any bones I usually put right on the stove to boil for broth. You can also put them in a bag and freeze them for later.

The savings add up when you consider the bones and the leftover bits of chicken on them. I like to boil them just until the meat is cooked, take the bones out and pull any meat off. Refridgerate or freeze the meat for soup or other recipes, and put the bones back in to boil for a couple of hours. You can throw a whole carrot and celery stalk and a small onion in if you like to flavor the stock.

My family loves homemade chicken soup, so I usually use the meat for that, and make a large pot that provides us with two meals. Plus I get enough extra broth equal to at least two 15 oz cans. Just refrigerate the broth overnight, skim the fat off the next day, then either use or freeze.

So, assuming boneless breasts are .99 cents, and bone-in are $1.99 I would buy the bone-in and get not only the meat, but also another couple meals of soup, plus at least two, cans worth of broth. It's hard to put a figure on this, but if an average main dish costs me $5 to feed a family of 4, and 2 cans of chicken broth cost .67 cents ( sale in our paper this week). Then I'm saving $10 for two meals plus $1.34 for chicken broth, or $11.34 (for each 10# bag). I do this at least once a month.

Savings per month - $11.34
Savings per year - $136.08

*Note - I am just comparing chicken breasts here. There's a whole other discussion over whether whole chicken versus breast is a better buy. Again, it all depends, but it's tired, I'm late (I seriously just typed that) - I need to go to bed!

Before I do, scroll down to see the tally, then if you are interested, scroll back up and watch this video, showing how to quickly and easily debone chicken breasts.

How to debone a chicken breast

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you an average of $? per year - I'm still working on it ;) I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Come on back now y'all...ya hear?

My tally so far:
$948.40/year
$79.03/month

31 Days: Day 6 - Do You Know the Muffin Man?

2011-10-06T08:23:00.000-04:00

English Muffins, as opposed to sweet muffins, are my favorite breakfast, usually with just butter (real butter, no margarine in this house). Sometimes I'll put a little jam on them. They are actually pretty popular with most of my family. At $1.88 for 6, for the brand we buy, we go through about half a package a day. I only buy 2 per week and when they're gone, they're gone.

2 packages cost us $3.76. Most brands cost more, but these are the ones we like. I can't even remember the brand, but I buy them at Walmart. I can make two loaves of the most fabulous english muffin bread for about $1.00. I get at least 12 slices of bread out of each loaf. Two loaves yield 24 slices for $1.00 as opposed to 12 english muffins for $3.76.

This bread freezes perfectly and is absolutely to die for. I'd make it even if I wasn't saving money. It is super easy to make too...no kneading at all. I found the recipe at Simple Organized Living. But before you take off, take a look at what I save. I get much more, so we can eat as much as we want. I'd have to buy 4 packages of store bought english muffins @ 1.88 = $7.52 as opposed to $1.00 for homemade. We eat about 1 loaf per week.

Store bought: $1.88 x 2 per week x 52 weeks = $195.52

Homemade: $0.50 per week x 52 weeks = $26.00

Savings per year: $169.52

Average savings per month $14.13

Don't forget to check out the tally of savings below.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you an average of $136 per year. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. See you tomorrow!

My tally so far:

$812.32/year

$67.69/month

Fall Swag

2011-10-05T11:01:00.000-04:00

I'm a little slow getting started on my fall decor. What with all the canning and harvesting the garden, it kind of snuck up on me. It's been hard to get in the mood to decorate partly because I'm being dragged into winter kicking and screaming, and partly because my house is upside down with all the changing I'm trying to do.

It's kind of hard to appreciate the decor amidst paint cans, canning jars and boxes of stuff being moved around! But I saw some gorgeous silk flowers at Dollar Tree several weeks ago, and they were sitting there making me feel guilty. The roses I got at Salvation Army last fall for a song. So I built me a swag...or rather rebuilt. This is what I started with:

You can see it was a bit bedraggled. I rearranged the red berry sprigs and started adding in stems from these piles:

Here's some shots of the process. I don't think you need me to narrate. So I'll let the pictures do the talking.

It is hanging above my kitchen sink. Please ignore the bare bulb. There will be a pretty light there eventually.

I'm not sure I like the swag there. I think it needs a warmer backdrop, so I might move it above my sofa. So far that's all the fall decorating I've got done. I know...pretty pathetic. Now off I go to can tomatoes...wish it was as fun as decorating.

31 Days: Day 5 - Swish, Swipe, Repeat...Repeat...Repeat

2011-10-05T07:00:00.002-04:00

Quick...how many paper towels do you use per day? How many rolls per week? I really didn't know for sure, but I guessed I use about 1 roll per week. I did a quick check online, and it seems the average consumer uses 1.5 to 2 rolls per week. Since I don't have the time or the inclination to stand at towel bar and monitor paper towel use...I'm going with 1.5.

In case you hadn't noticed, the price of paper products is on the rise...like pretty much everything else you buy. But I've always cringed at the price of paper towels, and I don't even buy the more expensive brands. I use Sparkle brand. They do the job for me.

Am I going to quit buying paper towels? No, not altogether. They have their purpose...like when the cat reverses his digestive process on the floor. Not going there. Other uses will include camping, cleaning the toilet, and cleaning any other really gross stuff. But for average spills and cleaning, I'm going with cloth rags.

With cloth, I can reuse the same rag many times throughout the day, unless the mess is particularly yucky. Just rinse and reuse. I'm not talking about using these on the kitchen counters after wiping the floor...just want to clear that up. That would just be gross!

You could easily use any old cloth rag and hide them under the sink or in a drawer or bin, but I like my "towels" out where I can see them and grab one quick. The thought of a pile of ugly rags on my counter just doesn't cut it for me. So I thought about what I could use that would be attractive and cheap.

I've recently discovered flour sack, or hucking towels. I love them for drying dishes. They are roughly $5.50 at Walmart for a 5 pack, and they are huge. I figured since I loved their absorbancy for drying dishes, they ought to make great rags too. I priced just buying the fabric and making them, but it was cheaper to buy the towels.

I didn't want big huge towels for rags though, so I cut each towel into four. Actually, to save some time hemming, I cut them in half first like so:

Then I hemmed the long edge I'd just cut on both pieces.

Once again I cut these in half,

and hemmed all cut edges.

You can see that these are just a little larger than a paper towel.

I used a little metal basket I already had to store them in.

From 1 package of 5 towels, I got 20 rags. I think that will hold me between washings. If not, I will get more. I plan to keep a bucket in the laundry room sink with a little Oxiclean in it to throw the dirty rags for presoaking before washing.

Since I will still use some paper towels, I'll figure I will use 1/4 of a roll of paper towels per week. Now subtracting that from an average use of 1.5 rolls per week, means I will use 1.25 rolls less per week.

I buy Sparkle towels from Dollar Tree in the 6 roll pack of regular size (45 sheets per roll). They cost me $5, so each roll is about .83 cents. This should save me $53.80 per year or about $4.50 a month. You can see that the savings almost pays for the towels I bought in one month. The towels should last at least a couple of years.

If you use a more expensive brand of paper towels, than your savings would be considerably more. The size and number of sheets in different brands varies a lot, so you will have to calculate your own savings.

Now some people would add in the cost of washing them, but I rarely have a load of whites larger than a small load, so even if I run a medium load, my water is free (well water), I will wash in cold, and I would have been running a load anyway, so no more electricity than normal.

I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you an average of $165 per year. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Come on back now y'all...ya hear?

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar.

My tally so far: (Hey...I'm already 1/4 of the way to my goal...cool!)
$642.80/year
$53.56/month

31 Days: Day 4: Breaking Fast

2011-10-04T01:37:00.001-04:00

Breakfast literally means to break a fast...fasting, meaning a period of not eating. However, your breakfast doesn't need to break the budget!

Cereal is expensive. My kids are cereal eaters. We go through about 4 boxes weekly, and that is when my daughter is away at college. Mostly that's my fault. I am NOT a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. I'm also not much of a breakfast eater. I sip my tea for an hour or so, then have an english muffin mid-morning.

For me to get up and fix a hot breakfast in the morning is pure torture...and dangerous. My brain doesn't really engage until around 10:00 a.m., no matter what time I get up. I can picture myself a towering human flame because I dragged my robe sleeve into the gas stove. Not my idea of painless... Yikes!

Despite the danger, I'm determined to try to cut back on our dependence on expensive, store bought cereal. No, I'm not going to risk being a flaming torch. There are lots of things I can make ahead, when my brain is fully engaged, green light on, all systems go. Waffles come to mind...and muffins, peanut butter and jam on toast, breakfast casserole made the night before and cooked in the microwave the next morning. I think I'm safe with a microwave. And for those more lucid mornings, pancakes on the griddle. You get the idea.

The way I figure it, if I cut out just two boxes of cereal per week at $3.00 per box (my kids might turn me into a flaming torch if I cut all cereal out), I will save $312 per year or $26 per month! That isn't taking into consideration the cost of ingredients I will use to make alternative breakfasts, but I would bet my morning tea (you would have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers), that I can make breakfasts for no more than a third of the cost of cereal.

Me in the morning

So if homemade breakfast costs me $2.00 to replace $6.00 worth of cereal, I would save $208 per year, or $17.33 per month. Now if you have other great ideas for homemade breakfasts that can be made ahead, I'm all ears. Please don't suggest oatmeal. My husband makes it for himself sometimes, because I cannot stand the smell of it. It literally makes me retch...which could really spoil someone's breakfast dontcha know?

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you an average of $53.80 per year. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. See you tomorrow, same time, same place.

My tally so far:

$589/year
$49.08/month

31 Days: Day 3 - How Dry I Am

2011-10-02T23:51:00.002-04:00

This is the last time I'll be in the laundry room, I promise, but there is one more way you can save some serious change in there. No turning out pockets for loose change...I'm talking savings of around $200 per year! (for an electric dryer...gas runs a little cheaper)

How is that possible? By not using your dryer. For some this one may be a little less painless than the other tips so far. It takes more time to hang clothes on the line, but I'm here to tell you that this has been anything but painful for me this past summer. It is almost a religious experience to be out listening to birds serenade me as the sun caressed me with it's warmth (100 degree days not withstanding). Umm...now where was I...oh yeah... I really enjoyed laundry days when I could hang out clothes on the line. The smell of air dried laundry is a big bonus too. I love to crawl into freshly laundered and air dried sheets.

Another consideration is weather. There were a few times when I couldn't wait for a sunny day and had to resort to my dryer. I'm not sure if I will want to hang them in the dead of winter either, however, we have Amish neighbors who hang their laundry all year long. I am considering hanging some clothesline in the basement for winter drying. We have a long area on one side of the basement that this would work. The savings potential may sway me, even though the trek up and down the stairs will be a bit of a pain. Putting a positive spin on it though, it will be good exercise, which I could really use!

Using the calculator at Saving Electricity, I figured I can save $240/year or $20/month if I never use the dryer. That is probably not reasonable. I know there will be days when it's raining, or I'm in a really big hurry and don't have time. I also don't like to dry my underwear out where all God's creatures can see them. I do have a vintage wood drying rack that I like to hang delicates on. Also they could be hung in the basement. I'm going to estimate that I will use the dryer about 1/3 of the time. Therefore I will save about $160 a year, or $13.33 per month.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you $208 per year or more! I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Come on back & keep the savings adding up!

My tally so far:
$381/year
$31.75/month

31 Days: Day 2 - Cold & Wet

2011-10-02T14:19:00.006-04:00

I know what your thinking. Cold and wet is NOT painless! Well in this case it is. Today's post ties in with yesterday's in that we are still in the laundry room. I have always heard you could save money by washing your clothes in cold water, but I never broke the habit of using warm water in the laundry.

I did a little poking around, and what I found out made me feel all cold and wet when I think of all the money we could have saved over the years with this one little tip. I honestly didn't realize how much. I'm not going to regurgitate all the figures, but quoting Saving Electricity, you can save an average of $112/year or $9.33/month if you have a top loading washer like I do. There are too many variables to be able to tell you exactly what you would save. It all depends what type and how old your washer is, what your electric company charges per watt, and in some areas of the country, at what time of day you use your washer.

You can read more about it here to get a better idea of your unique savings, but whatever your circumstances, you can save a lot. My hubby is a bit of a grease monkey, always tinkering with motors and other stinky, greasy stuff, so I may continue to wash his work clothes in warm water, but I'm switching to cold for the rest of it.

Based on our electric rates, with a top loading washer, I should save about $164/year or $13.67/month. You can figure your savings at Saving Electricity, using their handy calculator. Be sure to click "none" for dryer, so you are just looking at the figures for your washer.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you anywhere from $150 to $250 per year!! I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Hope to meet you here tomorrow!

Tally so far:
$221.00/year
$18.43/month

31 Days: Day 1 - In the Laundry

2011-10-01T08:57:00.002-04:00

If this is your first visit I welcome you to my little corner of the world! You might want to start at the introduction of this series. It explains what 31 Days of Change is, and has links to each day's post as they occur. Just click on the 31 Days to Slash Your Budget Painlessly button at the top of my sidebar on the right.

Ready? Here goes. This first post is a bit of a cheat, but you are getting a twofer today...two for one :) I already posted about my homemade laundry soap and free dryer sheet substitute. Before you click off because you've seen a ton of laundry soap recipes, give this one a look-see. I've tried the liquid and didn't like it. My clothes still had odors and the whites turned gray. But this recipe has an added ingredient that has made all the difference. Plus it's a dry powder that is much easier to make than the liquid. I absolutely love the clean fresh scent my laundry has now! And my whites are staying white.

What I didn't get into in that post is the cost breakdown. Now if you're eyes glaze over reading through the breakdown, you can just skip to the bottom and find my savings! So here it is: (To level the playing field, I am using prices from Walmart.com unless otherwise noted. Your prices may vary.)

I had been using All liquid laundry detergent in the big 150 oz containers. It states on the bottle that it will clean 96 loads, but that is for the smallest amount marked in the lid. If you do larger loads like I think most of you do, you are probably not using the smallest amount.

The directions state, "How much to use: line 3 (1.9 oz) large load. Line 2 (1.5 oz) normal load." When you divide 150 oz. by 1.5oz for a "normal load," you actually get 100 loads. I'm not sure why the bottle states 96. If you use the top line for a "large load" you should get 79 loads.

To be fair lets split the difference, which would be about 88 loads. Using the price at Walmart.com of $10.97, the price per load is 12.5 cents per load. I do about 10 loads per week (more when my daughter is home from college). So my cost for using the All would be $65 per year, or an average of $5.42 per month.

If you use tide, at $17.97, (you get 78 loads from a 150 oz bottle using line 2 (middle line), your price per load is .23 cents, or $119 per year, for an average of $9.97 per month.

These calculations assume you use the 150 oz. bottles. You're savings will be even greater if you buy smaller sizes.

Now the breakdown for my homemade laundry soap: (for the actual recipe, click on the link)

20 Mule Team borax 76 oz. @ 2.98

Arm & Hammer washing soda 55 oz. @ $3.24 at my local Walmart (not listed at Walmart.com)

Ivory bar soap 4.5 oz bars @ $4.27 per 10 pack

Oxygen cleaner i.e. Oxiclean (I used the brand at The Dollar Tree - 16 oz @ $1.00 - also not listed at Walmart)

Following the recipe I used here, each batch will cost about $2.95. If you use about 1.5 tablespoons for each load (I use 1 heaping tablespoon per large load, and I have hard water), you will get about 75 loads per batch. That will cost about .04 cents per load or $20.80 per year, for an average of $1.73 per month.

Bottom line savings:

If you use All liquid in the 150 oz size, you would save $44.20/year, or about 3.70/month.

Tide users would save $98.20/year, or about $8.20/month.

Now if you add in my tip about dryer sheets I save about $13/year ($1.08/month), over using Great Value dryer sheets in a 160 pack. If you use Bounce you would save about $20 a year ($1.67/month).

When you break it down by the month, it may not seem like much, but over the year it really starts to add up. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you an average of $112 per year. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Come on back now y'all...ya hear?

My tally so far:

$57.20/year
$4.78/month

31 Days to Slash Your Budget Painlessly - Intro

2011-09-30T19:32:00.031-04:00

If you are a new visitor, welcome to my place! If you're already a follower, welcome back! I've chosen to participate in 31 Days of Change, hosted by The Nester and 7 other bloggers. My topic is 31 Days to Slash Your Budget Painlessly, because I am on a mission to lower our expenses. If a penny saved, is a penny earned, then $200 saved is better!

I would love it if you would grab my button and post it on your site so others can join in the savings!

My mission...to lower our expenses by $2400 a year, or $200 a month...and to do it painlessly. Most of the cuts I am making will actually be improvements, in my estimation. Some may work for you, others may not fit. But I hope these posts will inspire you to look at your own spending, and see what you could do to keep some of your hard earned money.

This first post will be a portal to all 31 days posts. You can click on the button in the sidebar, near the top, and it will direct you to this page, which will have links to each post in this series (at the bottom of the page). That way you won't have to sift through all my posts, trying to find the one you want.

What I won't be posting are obvious things like stocking up on sale items, using coupons, or shopping at garage sales, second hand stores, etc. I'm guessing you are already doing some or all of those things. These 31 posts will be about specific things you can do to save some money. Some will save a few dollars a month, some will save a lot more and one in particular will save me $80 every month! Most will be very quick and easy.

I would love for you to join me October 1st and for the next 31 days. Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to see how much you can save during the month of October. Maybe you have a goal you would like to save for. If so, I'd be thrilled if you posted about it in the comment section below. Also be sure to take a peek at what others are posting about this month. Check out the link party at the Nesting Place

Tomorrow's post could save you around $50 - $100 a year. Ya'll come back now ya hear?

Posts in this Series:

1. In the Laundry
2. Cold & Wet
3. How Dry I Am
4. Breaking Fast

5. Swish Swipe, Repeat...Repeat...Repeat

6. Do You Know the Muffin Man

7. Are You Chicken?

8. Wipe Your Mouth Please

9. See Day 10

10. Addicted to Cappuccino?

11. Say Cheese

12. Dishwasher Detergent

13. The Great Pizza Stampede
14. The Spice of Life
15. All Mixed Up

16. Scrubba-Dub-Dub
17. Cream of Soup Mix
18. It Doesn't Compute

19. Good for a Cold & Good for Your Budget

20. You Light Up My Life

21. Driving Miss Debbie

22. Rolling in the Dough
23. I'm Floored
24. TV for Free? Almost!
25. Saving Face

26. Breakfast Anyone?

27. Lazy Sunday Meals
28. Hairway Robbery

29. Homemade Gifts (Including cool ideas)

30. Recharging

31. Smart Strip & Wrap-up

31 Days to Change Starts Oct. 1

2011-09-28T14:07:00.001-04:00

It was late, it sounded good at the time, and I was high on pear syrup. I signed up for 31 Days of Change hosted by Nesting Place. My topic is "31 Days to Slash Your Budget Painlessly."

I have been tossing around the idea of posting a series on reducing your budget anyway. I'm on a mission to cut our spending by at least $200 a month. I am well on the way to that, so I thought I'd share what I'm doing, in the hopes that it might help others too.

It all starts October 1st. I'm nervous and excited. You still have time to join in and be nervous and excited with me if you want. Click the link above and see what all the excitement about.

Pinterest Inspired #5 - It's a Trap!

2011-09-26T00:42:00.000-04:00

A fruit fly trap that is. I've been canning pears, and pear butter and pear syrup. The pear syrup is something I came up with on the fly...no pun intended. It is soooo yummy!

We don't have a garage, just a barn, but the barn is too far away from the house to make it handy to store pears until ready to can. So, I had to bring boxes of pears into the house and store them in the laundry room until I could can them. Can you see where I'm going? In a word, "fruit flies,"...okay that's two words, but about a gajillion and three fruit flies!

I'm finally am down to two boxes of pears yet to can, so I put them out on the back deck for the night and set up my Pinterest inspired fruit fly trap. And it is working.

It's hard to see in the picture, but there are already dozens in the trap. I'll let it sit overnight, take it outside tomorrow to let them out, retape it and bring it back in until all the nasty critters are gone. It's just a piece of paper rolled up into a cone with a tiny hole at the tip, taped up the side, then set into a jar with a piece of overripe fruit in it. It doesn't have to be a pear, I just had a bajillion and one available. Tape the cone to the jar all around the rim, making sure there are no holes for the flies to escape through.

I pinned the idea from here:

Source: theidearoom.net via Deborah on Pinterest

On a much more pleasant note, I have 38 quarts and 3 pints of pears canned so far, along with 3 pints each of pear butter and pear syrup. Take a peek at all the yumminess:

I'll post the recipe for the pear butter and syrup in the next day or three, depending on how my canning goes. Must make hay while the sun shines!

Pinterest Inspired #4 - Never Need to Buy Dryer Sheets Again

2011-09-22T00:54:00.005-04:00

Did you ever forget to use, or run out of dryer sheets? Don't you hate it when you go to get dressed, and you have a lightening storm right there in your pants?

I have a story that could have been one of those "most embarrassing moments" stories. Thankfully it happened here at home. I got up, got dressed and started going about my day, after surviving the lightning storm. Suddenly I felt something strange and soft fall down my leg and around my ankle. I looked down and a pair of my underwear was falling out of my sweatpants leg. Yes I did put my underwear on correctly that morning. Just sayin.

Apparently static electricity had held them in there when I took them out of the dryer and folded them. How I didn't feel them, or knock them out of the pants while dressing I don't know. I laughed...probably as hard as you are now. It could have been worse...I could have gone to town and flaunted my underwear to the public...or worse they could have been in my husbands pants! Oh my...he would never have lived that down!

I'll tell you what, I became a believer in dryer sheets that day. But no more dryer sheets for me. Reckless abandon? Naw...I found something that worked just as well for free!

This just amazed me. I didn't believe it when I read it, but I thought, what the heck, all I've got to lose is a lot of static. So I tried it and now I'm a believer. I will never buy another dryer sheet. They just cover up the nice fresh, clean scent of my homemade laundry soap anyway. Plus I'll save around $13 a year. Not a ton, but every little bit adds up. If you use name brand dryer sheets, you would save even more.

So what's the secret? No it's not liquid fabric softener, or something to add to the wash cycle. It's not dryer balls, moth balls or fur balls. It's something you would normally mindlessly throw away. Are you ready for it?

No I'm not the goose that laid a silver egg. It's a wad of aluminum foil. I was going to throw it away after using it to cover something. It was still clean...and then I remembered the idea I pinned on Pinterest. I was doing laundry that day, so I wadded it up tight and threw it in the dryer, not really expecting it to work. Well I was wrong. It worked perfectly and the foil just became more tightly packed and smooth in the dryer. I finished up the rest of the laundry with just that one foil egg, and it's still in perfect shape.

The original post is here:

Source: apartmenttherapy.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Yes it should be up on a pedestal, right up there with Eintstein...it's that genious! Try it and let me know what you think.

I've linked to these awesome parties. Go check them out!
The Ironcrafter at Fireflies and Jellybeans
Terrific Under $10 Tuesday - At Home with K
Sunday Scoop @ I Heart Naptime

Is it Granite or is it Giani?

2011-09-20T16:11:00.001-04:00

I am over the moon about my new kitchen counters. I've always wanted granite...well, not always, but for a reaaaally long time. Now I have them! Okay, okay...I cannot tell a lie. I used a Giani granite paint kit in Black Onyx. Hold onto your hat, because you are not going to believe this.

Can you stand it? Ignoring the ugly wall where I ripped off the original backsplash, just look at the shine on those counters! I'm doing back flips in my head...they don't call me a dizzy blond for nothing (grin).

Oh...and here's what they used to look like:

Just a wee bit of difference wouldn't you say? Can you see me doing cartwheels in the reflection of my new counters? Ahem...let's not and say I did...that just wouldn't be pretty.

No Turning Back - New Looking Countertops!

2011-09-18T23:29:00.000-04:00

I am so stoked! I just finished the first 4 steps of painting my kitchen counters with Giani countertop paint. I haven't even used the top coat yet, and I'm already loving it! Here's a peek at the before and after.

I'll show you the finished counters soon, I promise, but I couldn't wait to post the difference so far!

Painting the Kitchen Walls & Pinterest Inspired #4 - Tub Scrub

2011-09-16T22:54:00.000-04:00

Woo Hoo! I am finally painting my kitchen walls! After weeks of not being able to get back to the kitchen remodel, I'm finally taking another step forward in the process. I'm only painting the top 2/3rd of the walls, because we are installing beadboard on the bottom. I can't find my paint swatch at the moment, so I'll have to post paint colors later, but it's a light taupe, replacing the more yellow-based tan I had originally. You can see the difference here:

Sorry these pictures or so bad, but this corner of my kitchen doesn't get much light and it was really hard to capture the color. anyway, you can see I've started. It looks like the walls are the same color as the cabinets, but they aren't. I'll post better pictures when it's done. I'm feeling really punky today, so progress is slow. I think I'm catching the gunk Tyler had this week. My chest is tight and I'm reaaally tired. But doggone it, I had a whole day at home today and I was determined to get these walls painted if it kills me!

On another note, I tried another cleaning recipe from pinterest a couple days ago. We have very hard water with lots of iron in it...hence rust stains. We really need a water softener, but since our water heater is on it's way out, the softener will have to wait. The only product I could find that would take the rust stains out was The Works. It works great, but it's very toxic. My mom once had an asthma attack when she came over just as I had sprayed the bathroom tub with it. She didn't even go near the bathroom, but ended up using her inhaler and finally had to leave. When I spray it, I have to hold my breath, then rush out of the bathroom and close the door, leaving the window open to air it out. Nasty stuff.

Source: marthastewart.com via Deborah on Pinterest

I really wanted to find something else that wasn't endangering mine and my family's health. Pinterest to the rescue. This tub scrub takes a bit more elbow grease, but not much. Even with the other cleaner, I still had to scrub, and often had to spray a second time to get it all off. It's so worth it to not be fumigated when I clean, and if I scrub a bit more, I'm building a little arm muscle right? To be perfectly honest, it won't remove really bad rust stains. But once the rust stains are gone, it should keep them at bay if used a couple times a week.

Although the cost of the other cleaner is quite reasonable, I figure one batch of this tub scrub costs about .29 cents. I use about 2 Tablespoons per cleaning, so I get about 8 cleanings (approximately 1 months worth) from a batch. I was spending about $1.50 - $2.00 a month on
The Works. It's not huge, but it should save me around $15 - $16 a year.

To make it, add 1 teaspoon liquid dish soap and 4-5 drops of an antibacterial essential oil, to 1 cup of baking soda. Stir it up well. I keep mine in a cool whip container with the recipe written on top. To use, add enough water to a couple tablespoons of this mixture to make a paste, and start scrubbing. You can use any essential oil to make it smell nice, but tea tree oil has antibacterial properties, which is always a good thing in a cleaner.

What have you been inspired to make from Pinterest lately? I'd love to see. Comment with a link to your post.

Pinterest Inspired #3 - Easiest Granola Bars Ever

2011-09-12T19:22:00.000-04:00

Source: frecklesandfun.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

Ok...I'll be the first to tell you that these are probably not quite as healthy as some granola bars. But they are at least a bit healthier than plain Rice Krispies. The recipe is just as simple as Rice Krispy bars because it pretty much is, with a couple of modifications. Basically you replace 2 cups of the Rice Krispies with 2 cups of quick oats, and use the whole bag of marshmellows. You can add chocolate chips like I did (what else is there?), or you can make these even healthier by adding dried cranberries, nuts, or whatever you like.

The next time I make them, I will probably mix the chocolate chips in with the rice krispies and oats. Even pressed into the top, they tend to fall off. But that didn't stop them from being delicious...and so simple!

I pinned this recipe so I can't take credit for it.  That goes to Julie at Freckles and Fun.  I pinned another of her ideas that may be cropping up here soon.  She's got a sweet blog and a sweet family.  Thanks Julie for a great recipe!  This one will make it into the recipe box. 

Pinterest Inspired #2 - Picture Hanging Tool

2011-09-09T20:54:00.001-04:00

Once again my plans to work on my kitchen fell through, but for a very worthy reason, that I was honored to help with. My good friend, who usually coordinates funeral lunches for families in our church, has been spending the past 5 weeks down at Devos Children's hospital, where her son is undergoing radiation treatments for a brain tumor. It appears he is going to be alright, praise the Lord!

She asked me to take her place in the event we had a funeral in our congregation. Unfortunately, a dear man did pass away Saturday. So I was very busy lining up volunteers and food. Thankfully another lady took charge of buying the ham and potatoes and cooking. Many wonderful volunteers brought food and helped set up, serve and clean up. I love my church family!

I did manage to accomplish one tiny job in my kitchen remodel. I was in JoAnn's a few weeks ago to pick up some thread, for the jeans I took in the legs of, when I saw these hooks marked 50% off.

They've been sitting waiting patiently for me to hang them. In the meantime, we've been draping dish towels everywhere to dry. Tired of dish towels draped over my mixer, cabinet doors and dish drainer, I decided I was hanging those suckers if I had to stay up until midnight to do it!

Don't you hate it when you are hanging something and trying to figure out just where to put the nail? Me too, but Pinterest came to my rescue. Michele at The Scrap Shoppe came up with this ingenious tool.

Source: mmscrapshoppe.blogspot.com via Deborah on Pinterest

If you haven't seen this you've got to try it. This is mine (below). Tip: I recommend pre-drilling a hole with a tiny drill bit first. The first one I tried, split when I tried to hammer it in.

Here's how this ingenious little tool works. Put the head of the nail through the hook on the back of whatever you are hanging.

Hold it against the wall where you want your picture, hook, or other decor to be placed, the point of the nail toward the wall, then press or gently tap it into the wall. Remove it and you will have a tiny hole right where you want your nail to be.

Here is my hook, perfectly placed.

And here it is in action.

I love how well the hook matches my curtains! I also love that my kitchen isn't decorated in dish towel tents. I actually bought and hung two of them, right across from each other, over the sink.

A little tip: This hook would have rubbed against my cupboard and scratched it up, so I put a dab of hot glue at every contact point. As a bonus, it helps to hold the hook in place better.

Ok...quick, go find something to hang. You've got to try this!

I've linked to these awesome parties...go check them out!

Pinhead Project Party at Remodelholic