What's better than ice cream?

Why, free ice cream, of course!

Oh yes!!

Go check out the Walmart website and put in your zip code to make sure they are participating in Free Ice Cream Day. Then get your bottoms over to your Walmart on Saturday, May 30th between 11am and 4pm and enjoy!

Just don't miss it! It's Saturday, May 30th only!

coleslaw

This is actually pretty versatile. I make mine with shredded cabbage, shredded carrot, onion powder, salt, mayo, cider vinegar, sugar, salt and celery seed. Coleslaw is based on cabbage which is cheap, but also, since it is not a cooked food, you get the health benefit of both the green leafy cabbage and the orange carrot raw which keeps it's nutrients intact.

My basic recipe, and I do modify for fun pretty much every time

2 heads cabbage (any variety you like - or are given)
1-2 carrots (depending on how much you want in there)
2 cups may0
1/4 cup cider vinegar (you can try varieties here, could be fun)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp celery seed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp onion powder

Mix the mayo, vinegar, sugar, celery seed, salt and onion powder in a large bowl. taste it after you mix it to see if you need to make any changes because remember, this is the dressing and it's easire to modify before you put the slaw in it than after - trust me on this!!! After you get it right (and please writed down what you changed as you did it so you don't forget). Shred your cabbage and carrot and add it to the bowl and mix well. It's best if you refrigerate it for at least an hour so all the flavors can mix, but if you don't have the time, it will still be great.

Teaching Tools - Placemats

In Wal-Mart, KMart and most Family Dollar or Dollar General type stores you can get laminated place mats to use not only to keep your table a little cleaner at lunchtime but to help get an educational point across to your child. They make them with the alphabet, numbers, planets, presidents, colors, shapes, cursive letters, addition, subtraction and even multiplication tables. They are about $1 each and are very handy.

If you can't find one to fit your needs, here is a frugal alternative: Create an 8x11 document with the information your child is studying on it, decorate it with colorful fonts and graphics, print it off and laminate it yourself (if you have a machine). This gives you a little more versatility with the information on the placemat and the child can help you create it.

The Response Letter From Harris Teeter

Thanks for your email and for taking the time to respond to your shopping experience. Our pricing program during the summer months/peak season (Memorial Day to Labor Day) in this store will in fact differ from other stores; as the store is so much different than our ?regular? stores. This store during the summer months will have great prices on summer items all summer long to support the need of the thousands of vacationers.

Great prices on summer items, great service, fresh products and clean stores are how we will best meet the needs of our summer customers. Concentrating on these areas will enable us to spend less time/labor changing prices every week and allow us to put our efforts on great service, fresh products, and clean stores to get our customers in and out of the store and back to the beach in the fastest way possible.

During the off season as the market changes to mainly serving our local customers, the Outer Banks store(s) will be on the same advertising program as the other stores in the nearby area.

We are truly appreciative of all our shoppers and find our pricing program flexible enough to meet the needs of all customers.

Thank you again for taking the time to share your concerns. I hope this letter gives you an understanding of our pricing program and how we plan to meet the needs of all our customers. I hope your enjoy your new Harris Teeter and we are able to meet your shopping needs.

Sincerely,
Tom

Harris Teeter Customer Relations
Reference: #873005


- so, in essence, they understand that I was not excited about their decisions, but they are justifying it with catering to the vacationers - I guess us local folk will be important again after Labor day

Grinding

I was at Sams' Club today and was looking at the prices of meat. Chuck roast was 1.98 per pound and ground beef 80/20 was 2.48 per pound. So, I am going to try something new tomorrow - I am going to dice up the chuck then grind it myself. I already have the food grinder I have just never used it for meat. I'll let you know how it goes. If it goes well, I will have saved .50 per pound and instead of a 'mystery mix' of meats for ground beef, it will be all chuck, or round or sirloin or whatever I want. You could also do it for turkey, chicken or pork. You can grind veggies with the food grinder for sauce making if you have folks in your family who want the benefits of homemade sauces, but don't like chunky vegetables. I can live with making sauces smoother so my hubby is happier. He doesn't mind veggies, he's just not into chunky sauces. What else could I use a food grinder for?



5/18 - I did the ground beef today - very easy and it looks much better than the store stuff. Took all of 10 minutes.

Free Coupons

I recently emailed a few companies to ask questions about where the produce for their products comes from, 2 of them were Welch's and Florida's Natural. Both of these companies mailed me coupons after I got their email responses. It pays to ask a question.

BTW both companies' products are grown, harvested, processed, packed, shipped and are sold right here in the USA.

Frugal Friday - Harris Teeter

There are a few things about this store that make it a good frugal choice:

1) Double coupons every day and triple every month or so

2) 5% discount for seniors every Thursday

3) Sales on their organic merchandise

4) Their discount produce cart is almost always available, the produce is not already rotten to the core when it makes it there, there is usually some organice choices on the discount produce cart, The discount produce is cheap, and it gets emptied within a day so that the same old stuff isn't there day after day after day

5) Repeat #4 for their meat section

6) Variety - there are so many brands and variations to choose from it will make your head spin. Why is that frugal? Because the more options you have for eating at home, the less likely you are to just say "Forget it, I'm going out"

7) Ready to take home food. They have preprepared chicken, sushi, mac & Cheese, wraps, chicken strips, etc so that 'take out' can be a little better for you and probably cheaper than sitting down at a restaurant

8) Products made in the USA. What in the world does that have to do with frugal? Easy - take apple juice for instance. Did you know there are only 3 brands that I can find that are 100% made in the USA? Murray's out of Roanoke, Virginia; Floridas Natural out of FL and Martinelli's out of either PA or NY. Buying made in the USA means that the growers, packers, processors, shippers, distributors and retailers are here in the USA, so buying from ourselves is keeping ourselves at work and having a job gives us the money we need to be frugal with in the first place.

9) Eggs - 2.97 for 2 1/2 dozen - a good frugal food

10) Open 24 hours - this lets you pick a time to go without the kids because we all know that when you take the little ones, they get bored, we get tired and we rush and don't take the time to look at the options and get the best deals and selections (You don't need 2 hours to grocery shop, but a good hour without bored kids every once in a while may be a good idea

11) They give away groceries for a year every week for VIC card holders (see website)

12) Promotions, I recently got $50 in gas cards from them for spending a certain amount of money ( like $50 a week for 6 weeks or something like that). I was going to spend the money anyway, so it was nice to get the $50 in free gas

Take a minute to look around, there are frugal deals to be found everywhere, it just takes a little know-how.

Frugal Friday - Math Manipulatives

Buttons. Plain and simple, bright and fancy, you name it, you can have it. Buttons can be found or purchased dirt cheap and used as math manipulatives with you homeschool curriculum or if you just want to teach you child how to count items, group items by size, shape or color. You can even use them to teach addition, subtraction, multiplication and simple whole number division. My son likes to take items like this and use them to make letters. Have a wonderful and button smart day!

Comet

I love this stuff. I really try to go low chemical and low odor in my home (youngest child has milk asthma), so this stuff works well. Yes, it has chemicals, but not too many and there is very little smell. It's also been around for about a hundred years, and YES!! it cleans wonderfully!! Sinks, tubs, microwaves, grout, toilets, toaster ovens, faucets, and so much more. Plus the best thing - IT"S CHEAP!! It costs only about a buck a can and the can lasts a looooooong time!

Frugal Friday - Envelopes

You know how every piece of mail you get nowadays comes with it's own envelope, well do you just toss the envelopes? Save them! Use their backsides to make lists, plan meals, doodle, brainstorm, let the kids draw, or just use them as envelopes. No matter what you do with them, they were free for you, they have already been made into a piece of paper, so you might as well use it instead of throwing away that perfectly good piece of scrap paper to reach for a piece of 'pretty' scrap paper that you paid good money for - Remeber, every penny saved counts, especially if it's not a painful way to save the pennies!

Spring has sprung, and so have sprouts!

Vegetables are one of those things that elicit 2 types of reactions: yum and yuck - mostly dependant on your age group. If you are one of those people who likes to serve veggies to your spouse, your kids, yourself and pretty much anyone else that comes along, try growing a few. I planted a few things in my flowerbed right along with my flowers last year and had a great return. For instance I had 3 grape tomato plants, that probably cost about $2.50 each, but it yielded at least 600 tomatoes over the course of about 3 months. Now, in the grocery store a pint of conventional grape tomatoes is about $2.50, and the organics are about $4. Each pint is worth about 40 grape tomatoes. So, let's do the math:

• 3 plants at $2.50ea yielded 600ish tomatoes = 200ish per plant (.013 each tomato, about 16 per week for 3 months in the summer)
• 1 pint at $2.50 = 40 tomatoes (.063 each tomato)
• A tomato plant in the Southern US will yield fruit for about 3 months
• 1 pint of tomatoes a week for 3 months = $30
• 2 plants that produces for 3 months = $5.00

You can save about $25.00 by having 2 plants that produce during the summer, plus you make your plants as organic or not organic as you want depending on the water and fertilizer you use. If you want to go even cheaper, plant the tomatoes from seeds inside about 4 weeks before the last frost - then you get probably 20 plants for about $1.50 - you'll be giving away tomatoes! Or better yet, let your kids open up a front yard produce stand and you can sell the surplus and teach your kids about money. I personally also planted basil, rosemary, parsley and oregano in my flowerbed because the cost of 1 plant is generally equal to the cost of 1 of those little plastic prepaks of the same herb, so if I just use each plant one time I'm even, if I use it twice or more, I'm saving money already. And as an added bonus, my rosemary, parsley and oregano have survived the winter to give me a second year of fresh herbs!!!

This year, I have also planted green beans, broccoli, mixed lettuce, greeen leaf lettuce, spinach, green onion, chives, cilantro, and bell peppers. My husband is going to till up a portion of the backyard so I can have a small garden to work with the kids. We'll both be learning this year, but I think it's a good lesson for both them and me. If you can't have a garden due to space and or time, go for just a couple of herbs in some flowerpots, they'll be easy to maintain, and give you lots of savings since fresh herbs are so expensive anyway - more bang for your buck

PS - If you're local, I'll be happy to give you some clippings of my own herbs for you to root and grow yourself. I'll also share a few sprouts if you want to pot something.

***If you feel intimidated by the thought of 'gardening', please don't. It is not that hard - but start small. I think most people feel like failures over this because they start too big or too complicated. Find something you like - maybe tomatoes and green beans and just plant 2 of each to start. Next year, you can go onto some more adventurous stuff. You need the encouragement of having a few plants do well in order to gain the confidence to work with many.

Mascara Remover

A few months ago, I was reading a book entitled "Cheap Talk with the Frugal Friends" and came across this tip - it's a great one.



If you wear mascara and want a macara remover that is easy, effective, safe for your eyes, clean rinsing, nonirritating and recommended by pediatricians - (drum roll please) - baby shampoo, especially the tear free kind. The cheap brands are about $1 a bottle, but if you have sensitive eyes, I would go ahead and splurge on the $4 per bottle brand - it's gonna last you a long time anyway!

Put a Lid on it

I mean that literally. If you need to boil water, make tea, or pretty much anything that is heated on the stove (except frying and one or 2 other things) put the lid on the pot/pan. When you put a lid on your pot, your liquids reach their peak temperature faster AND at a lower energy level. I have a gas cooktop, and what normally simmers at a 3 now simmers between 1.5 and 2 with the lid on. Boiling water boils faster, but make sure you don't forget it's boiling or you may end up with spillover. So, save your time and your energy dollars (electric/gas) and put a lid on it!

Let nothing go to waste *edited*

I was peeling oranges yesterday and it got me thinking. How many times have I tossed the peel? More often than I would like to admit to!

So, I started thinking about all the things I could do with the peels and I did a google search. Here is what I came up with.

1. Put peels and water in a pot. Then put it on the stove and simmer to release a (hopefully) pleasing aroma.

2. Pet deterrent. Rub the orange peel on the leaves of your plants and animals shouldn't bother them. They don't like the scent.

3. Insect repellent. Rub the peel on your skin for an all natural, healthy alternative to commercial repellents.

4. Sugar softener. Brown sugar a bit too hard? Toss a peel or two in with the sugar and it will soft in a few hours.

5. Orange oil. This one is by far the most interesting to me. For the full details you can visit this site and it will give instructions as well. I think I'll be doing this over the next few days!!

For more ideas you can visit here and here. Or you can google "orange peels" (or some variation of that) and you'll see the ideas pop up before your eyes!

No peel will ever be tossed by me again!

edited: I needed to make laundry soap this morning (see this site for homemade laundry soap recipes) so I decided to add several orange peels to the soap/water mixture just to add a nice, natural scent. So far it seems to working pretty well. It's cooling right now so I won't really know until later on today or tomorrow. I'll keep you posted though.

Redbox *updated*

If you like to rent movies, but are trying to be frugal....try redbox. We have 3 of these redboxes in my area (at grocery stores). They rent movies for $1 per night...and no membership or subscription fees. You can rent at any box, and return at any box. The best thing to me is the opportunity to have free rentals. When I signed up, they emailed me a code good for one free rental, and I have found some free-movie monday codes listed online, so potentially you could get one free movie a week (if the free monday code continues). This is about all my family would have time for anyway. You can use the online page to see what inventory is available in each box (each box varies), and you can reserve your titles from your computer...and pick it up when you run your errands.

(Apparently, there are weekly free codes emailed to you as well...I'm still pretty new to this, so I haven't personally recieved one, yet.)

* Update...I got the email for the free monday movie code...and it worked beautifully...you have to sign up in a different spot for the free code email*

Temptation

My husband and I resisted temptation like crazy mad people this weekend. We borrowed a friends Wii to try, and of course we enjoyed it. So, later that same day, hubby offers to let me run free for a few hours while he has the kids (yay for me), so I go first to wally-world then to a myraid of other spots. Well, I look at the Wii's then the Wii Fits and I'm just uneasy about dropping that much dough on a game. Then I go to kmart - out of Wii, then yesterday we go out of town for church and went to their local wal-mart - no wii. By this time, we were not only okay with the fact that there were no Wii's to be bought, we were a little giddy - and then when considered the fact that we had just saved about $400 smackers, we shared a kiss of joy.

There are still a lot of activities you can do for cheap or free - do them instead.

Freecycle

If you have never looked this up, I highly recommend it. Freecycle is a group whose philosophy is to recycle and reuse, share, and oh yeah, it must be free. No bargaining, advertising or trading is allowed. You offer something up, people contact you that are interested, and they come pick it up. You can also post a want or need and if someone has that item, they contact you and you pick it up. And it's FREE!!! Locally, I have seen dishes, clothing, food items, furniture, paint, shipping supplies and tons of baby items go around. I have even seen plants and cuttings go up for grabs - what an excellent way to have a garden with lots of variety and very little overhead. so, search for your local freecycle chapter and let the free fun begin!!

And did I mention it's FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why choose ramen?

I am not a fan of ramen noodles. When I was a kid, I loved them all, every salty flavor. Of course I am also a chip lover, but I have been appalled at the price of chips lately - over $2 and sometimes oer $3 a bag. Ramen noodles are about $.11 a package, and cook in about 3-4 minutes in the microwave, and you don't even need the special microwavable kind, the plain plastic wrapped kind will work in a microwave safe bowl with water in it. Plus, the ramen noodles are filling. I'm not saying it's a healthy snack, but it is a cheap snack that most teens will eat, and remember that chips are not a healthy snack either.

Personally, I would prefer a slice of homemade whole grain bread and some sliced cheese, and yes, that is healthier, but the title of this blog is 'money saving mommies' so I have to keep the ideas in context

If you show a teenage boy how to microwave his own ramen noodles, he can safely do it himself and take care of his own snack attacks - and teenage boys have lots of these, and they can get expensive. So, pass over the chips and try some ramen instead, and save a big chunk of change.

If times get REALLY tight, and if the economy gets worse, it may come to that, then you could feed a family of 4 on ramen noodles for about $1 or less, depending on everyone's appetite. (I'm not recommending people start doing this on a routine basis, but I do know that sometimes when disaster strikes people feel like they are at the end of their rope and they don't know how they will feed their families, this is just an idea if you have only a buck or 2 to spend for food for a few days)

Plans, Planners, Planning

I love those three things. I love everything from looking at the selection of planners at my local Staples (and trust me, this could take an hour, easily), to picking out the color, opening it up and taking a whiff of the fresh paper, thinking about how I could use each and every section, etc, etc. Then I look at the price tags. My goodness. Oh my goodness. I do not want to spend $15-$50 on a planner. I can't do that, that's crazy. I have heard people say "Yes, it's expensive, but it can do this, this and this and organizes this, this and this for me." FOR me? When I see a planner get up off my desk, grab my papers, file them in itself (neatly of course), and scribble down my appointments, deadlines and inner thoughts - THEN it might be worth $15-$50. But it otherwise doesn't DO anything for me because I still have to do the work! So, of course I have a money saving solution from the same Staples store, on the same day:

1" 3 ring binder= $.60 on clearance (ugly gray, but who cares)
1 ream 92 brightness, 20lb copy paper = $3.92
1 full package HP printer ink= $35

Now that's enough materials to last probably 5 years of printer planner related stuff. Of course I'm not going to use the whole package of ink just on that, but let's say I just use 10%, that would still only be $3.50. And I'm really not going to use all 500 sheets of paper on planner stuff, but if Used say 25% (125 sheets - still a bit of a stretch), that would be a whopping $.98. So right now my total comes to $5.08. Not too shabby.

Now all I need is a good website. Well, that is the easier part. donnayoung.org has ton of planning related printables including calendars of all types free to print, just browse around for a little while and you'll see them.

The main Microsoft Office Templates site allows you to browse through tons of free printables too, some are in pretty colors, some in black and white - find something you like and looks useful.

Organized Home has nice calendar and planner printables in addition to cleaning, organizing and pretty much any checklist you can imagine.

Of course you can google what you want like "Free printable planner pages" or whatnot. In the end, if you can't find exactly what fits your needs, but have lots of ideas you can start up your good ole' Word program and make what you want tailored to your needs with columns, sections, colors, checkboxes, or whatever else you love!!

Scrubs

I am not a huge body and facial scrub user - not because I don't like it, just because it can irritate your skin if used too often and there was a point in my life that I felt like I had to use it every day because it made my skin feel super-soft. Unfortunately after 2 weeks, my super soft skin was red, itchy and irritate - even my moisturizer burned. So I cut back to about once a week for my face and whenever I can remember for my heels. Okay, so maybe that was a little personal to share, but anyway -

There are several things you can use for scrubs without having to break the bank for the fancy smelling-good kind (especially since the scent doesn't last very long and you generally lotion up anyway. The most common one i see is: place fine granulated sugar in a screw top jar (about an 8-16oz flatter, squattier shaped jar - something like an empty chicken base jar - and oh yeah please remove the label and write scrub on it) up to about half full, the fill with baby oil until it reaches the base of the neck of the jar. Put the lid on and agitate until mixed. It's ready to go. If you like it thinner just add more baby oil, if you like it thicker, use less

However, the most interesting one I have ever heard of came from a comment left on this blog on Sunday evening:


zolocafe said... I also use coffee grounds as a bath scrub. Instead of buying fancy scrubs (which I love), I have a moisturizing soap bar that I coat in the coffee grounds and scrub my needed areas. It really makes my skin feel soft. Although it does look messy, it rinses off cleanly. My DH thought I was crazy! BTW, don't fill the bathtub with water, do it in an empty tub or shower. March 1, 2009 8:06 PM

I never would have thought of that one, but what a clever idea! Think about it - the high dollar moisture creams claim 'skin brightening' and 'lifting' effects, but most of them just contain some caffeine - so why not just get it for free from a good source of caffeine - coffee!

You guys rock!! Keep the ideas coming!