Make them with LOVE

It took me a little while to figure out what I was going to post about today. I guess I was thinking what can I write about fast so I can get into my craft room!! hehehe...so why not tell all you wonderful readers about making cards. Making our own cards has saved us a fare chunk of change. It comes in handy to have a stack of cards on hand for someones birthday, a baby shower, wedding, anniversary or just to encourage a friend. To start making cards I had some card stock, markers, 1 pair of crazy scissors, a stamp and a glue stick. Now that I have been at it for a couple of years my collection of stuff as grown so much that I have my own little craft room! Many of my supplies are bought on sale or given to me as gifts.


This fun hobby helps save us money in the long run. A card now a days can cost any wheres from 3-7 dollars!! I can easy make any cards for WAY cheaper then that. Also the fun part of making cards is its your own expression and you can put whatever you want on and in the card.

Another fun thing that I like to do is give cards away as gifts. People always need cards so it makes a great present to give a pack of homemade cards to family and friends. I recently gave these away for a baby shower gift.



For more frugal ideas check out life as mom

Frugal Friday

Happy Spring readers!!! We got hit with a big snow storm at the first of the week (30+ cm) but now its melting away with the warm temps and the little bits of sun.

I am re posting today because I have been working on a big presentation that I am doing tomorrow evening for 200; 8-12 year old gals!

Enjoy! Originally posted Sept 08




The other day as I was cleaning out the spare room I came across a bunch of plastic piture frames I had picked up at the dollar store years ago. My first thought was to toss these things but on my way to the trash can I had an idea.

I don't know about you guys but I have some recipes from people that are written on recipe cards. These are wonderful to have around but I find that my cards are starting to look like they have been in the recipe a few times if you know what I am saying. They get everything splashed on them and I always have to use my grubby hands to flip most of them over when I am in the middle of make the recipe.



Quickly putting two and two together I decide to save these and use them as recipe card holders. First I dug through my card making stuff to find some random stickers I have and placed Kate's Kitchen on the top to give it a little bit of decor. Now if something splashes on it I simply wipe it off with a wet cloth and my card is saved and can be placed back into the recipe box as clean as it came out.

Another idea that a wise friend of mine showed me is she places her cook books into a large Ziploc bag when she cooks. That way it preserves the pages.

For more frugal ideas check out Life as Mom

Stocking the Pantry

Having a stocked pantry that is well organized has really helped save me time when it comes to creating a grocery list and whipping together last minute meals and treats. Here are a few things that I keep on hand in my pantry.

1. A basket filled with extra baking supplies (you can tell from the picture I picked the basket up at the local dollar store). Here I keep extra sugar, brown sugar, chocolate chips, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder...you get the point.



2. The next basket I keep lots of extra canned goods. I have evaporated milk for my donair sauce, cream soups for my fast and frugal meals, tomato sauce and paste.

3. This next basket is great for keeping lots of homemade mixes. I have ready made flavored rice mixes, taco and fajita mix and then for those times when I want to whip something together fast but I have a baby crying and holding on for dear life to my leg I can simple throw all the drys in and just add the wets by reading the directions on the bottle. This is also good for days when I want hubby to whip something up; he just has to dump and add the wet!



Here are a list of great mixes to have on hand. Also any mix can be made in advance by just placing the dry ingredients all together in a reused glass jar.

Pancakes
Wafles
Corn bread
Cookies
Muffins
Brownies
Cakes

For more frugal ideas head on over to Life as Mom

Peterson Pizzeria

Every Friday I like to prepare a "take out meal". Pizza is usually the choice meal for our Friday nights as I have perfected my crust making skills and donair sauce!!



Using my favorite pizza crust recipe and my pizza stone I whipped together this thin crust pizza that was nice and crispy. One thing that I do for pizza is after it has raised I roll it out with the rolling pin. I find that this makes it into a really big pizza that will fit onto my stone and leave me with extras to make some garlic fingers. Another thing that I like to do is I cook my crust first with nothing on it for 15 minutes. Then I take it out and put the toppings on. I find this gets the crust cooked before you add the toppings so you aren't left with a soggy crust and a hungry impatient family.

For my garlic fingers I use the excess crust that I cut away from the pizza stone and spread it out onto a smaller pizza pan. Then I spread it with garlic butter (margarine with mashed garlic) and bake in the over from 10 minutes. Remove from oven grate with cheese and bake for another 5 minutes. Now this wouldn't be a special pizzeria night if I didn't have donair sauce to dip the pizza and garlic fingers into.

This simple donair recipe is a most for our pizza nights!!!

1 can of sweetened condense milk
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tsp garlic salt

whisk the 3 ingredients together and ta-da, the most delicious donair sauce.


During these past couple of weeks I have been busy preparing a presentation on frugalicious meals that I will be doing for the Ladies group at my church. With this presentation, and my love for $5 dinners blog, I began to price up my recipes to see if I was actually saving money. Pizza night was a great place to start so here is my breakdown on how much it would cost me to make

1 12 pizza (Pepporine, Salomi, Ham and cheese)
1 12 garlic finger
1 donair sauce


1 12" pizza crust $0.68 cents
Pizza Sauce $0.55
Toppings (Pizza meats 2.30 and 1 cup cheese 0.97) $3.27
1 12" garlic finger (crust 0.68, cheese 0.49, garlic butter 0.22) $1.39
Donair sauce 0.58


Grand total: $6.47

Can you believe that this delicious looking meal is under $10.


Now for fun lets see how much this would be at a local pizza shop.

Pizza Delight

15" pizza (3 toppings)
Large garlic finger

Grand Total : 19.99+ tax

As you can see making pizza at home is worth it for us. Ecspecially when you get cheese on sale!! The easiest thing we do with our cheese sales is grate, lay flat on a cookie sheet, freeze. Once frozen we place in a large Ziploc baggie and it gets tossed into the pizza basket in the freezer. Another thing in case you are wondering is what about the veggies on the pizza. This wasn't factored into my pricing because I always have frozen peppers and mushrooms diced up in the freezer pizza basket that I purchase on the reduced rack. I always use what I have on hand so even if I did add in their price it may only be 0.20-0.50 cents more.

For more great ideas check out we are that family

Powdered Milk

Since Micah and I have been married we have been drinking powdered milk. At first we were buying it at the Super Store but it didn't seem to taste as good as the skim milk I was use to drinking.

After about 1 year of drinking the stuff we decided to look into buying a large bag from dairytown in Sussex. This is where Micah's parents use to buy the milk for their family when they were growing up. So we got the number and for 3 years now we have been buying and drinking this delicious milk. For the first two years we shared the bag with couple friends of ours; however this year they didn't need any more so we actually having a whole bag.

The bags come in 25kgs. These little white garbage bins are used around our house to store the flours and our milk.

To make the milk we pour 4 cups of water into this blue jug.


Then we add 1 cup of the powdered milk and whisk it until mixed.

And finally we add 4 more cups of water. If we want it a little thicker then we add 3 cups at the end instead of 4.

Of course what kind of advantage would this be if it wasn't saving us money as we all know that milk is really expensive. Just so my US readers understand we pay anywhere from $3.05 -$3.65 for 2L of milk. And here is the break down for the powdered milk.

25 Kg = $190.00
$0.76 for 100 g

1 cup of powder = 140 g
140g = $1.06
140 g of powder = 8 cups of milk (2 L)
$1.06/ 2 L of milk OR $0.53/ L

~ As you can see from the math work above using powder milk saves us a lot of money/ per year or even longer as the milk is good for 18 months. Paying $190 for milk for ~ 18 months isn't bad.

So why choose to buy from Dairyland. Well here are the prices for the powdered milk at other stores around town.

Super store $21.99/2.5 kg ($0.88/100g)
Sobeys $10.49/kg ( $1.04/100g)
Co-op $ 22.49 ($0.90/100g)

It seems like a small difference but it sure can add up. Another factor for buying from Dairyland is the quality of the milk. The other brands are not as dense and you need to use more of them to make the milk. This is an investment worth making for anyone who drinks skim milk anyways and wants to save some money on the milk budget this year.

Wall Hangings

We moved into our house two years ago this Sept and it has been a work in progress getting things in order. When we moved in I was 6 months pregnant so the nursery was the biggest priory. It needed to be primed, painted and decorated for our little bundle of joy. So needless to say our room took the back seat. Although hubby did put up our favorite wedding photo in the room for me.

Since we don't have a head board I have been toying with different ideas as to what I would like to do to give our room some character. After much patience, lots of creativity and less then $10 I have finally finished 4 walling hangings that are now beautifully placed (thanks to my cute husband) over our bed.


I started out looking at canvas at the local dollar store but they were quite small and were not designed to hang up nicely. After Christmas the dollar store went through some changes and added new stock. So at an added cost I picked up these 4 canvases for $2 a piece, which is still way cheaper then at an art store. That same day I noticed in their scrap booking section this paper that has all the colors of our bed spread and get this the pack had 25 sheets of paper in it for a buck!!! I still can't believe how prefect it matches!!

After my big find last month these little puppies and the paper sat in my closet and were brought out every other day to be looked at to see if I could get a vision for what I wanted. I needed to add a little more creativity because the canvas was just a bit too big for the paper.

To fill the whole canvas I decided to go with the natural tare look. I tried to measure it out so I would have the same size white boarder. Once the paper was torn (and I did do one at a time) I used Mod Podge to stick the paper onto the canvas and sat it in the sun to dry.

Since these were going to be hung in our bed room I really wanted principles from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 written on them. So using a friends Cricut and brown card stock I cut out these words.






Once the letters were cut out I Mod Podge on this beautiful ribbon and the letters over top of it. I finished the canvas off by placing strips of paper around all four sides and then to give it more depth I took a brown ink pad and dusted around the canvas.


They look so beautiful I can hardly believe I did them for under $10!!! Now I am off to pick up more of these to do some for our living room and I think they would make great gifts.

For more frugal ideas head on over to Life as a Mom who is now hosting frugal Fridays

Scoops Ice Cream

Now I know that this post is not really applicable right now in this weather seeings how we still have a massive amount of snow outside but I can't wait to share what my creative (and handsome) husband did for me this week.

While I was out at a meeting, hubby was busy at home letting his creative juices flow. So when I arrived home later that evening this is what I walked through the door to find!


My handsome hubby behind a homemade ice cream stand that he called Scoops. The name comes from my favorite ice cream stand back home where I grew up. My friend Ashley and I would run about 3-5 times a week around the town then stop at Scoops to grab an ice cream and then walk back to her house! Sounds funny but the motivation of getting that ice cream after the run made it all worth it!


Sitting on the stove right before the stand was $1.50. I guess I was going to have to use that to buy my ice cream.

Unfortunately there was only one flavor at this ice cream stand, Vanilla. Just that morning I went grocery shopping and picked up 4 L of the stuff on sale so Micah had to be extra creative with all the toppings he had out. There was definitely so many to choose from and since I was a gals meeting I was pretty stuffed when I came home late to my ice cream stand so I asked for a baby cone and placed my money into the jar. Too bad I didn't have the 100 bones for the cone that ate Moncton! hehehe...

It felt like a real ice cream stand since Micah put our little tub into this "big" ice cream bucket.


He topped it off nicely with peanuts, chocolate chips, and of course cookie pieces.


What a fun and creative thing hubby did. We thought it will be a great thing to do with kids. What fun they would have ordering their ice cream and topping it up with lots of special toppings. *OH this is where my frugal friday post comes in* Since it cost an arm and a leg at an ice cream satnd these days you can set your own prices, use your own money and then get your own money back!!! Its a lot cheaper to make an ice cream stand out of things laying around the house then its is to go out and get a cool treat.


My husband is so creative and frugal!!!



For more frugal ideas check out Biblical womanhood

Hamburger buns

OK Ok so the title isn't as catchy as last weeks Fast and Frugal. But there is some great things in in this post so please keep reading it will defiantly help you be frugal.

I love having a freezer. It is probably the main reason (oh besides those hours of searching for deals and meal planning) why we save so much money and how we can live on $50 a week for grocery's. Here is how my freezer comes in handy.

This week well searching through the local grocery store I saw that an 8 pack of whole wheat hamburger buns were on sale for a 99 cents. This is a great deal seeings how you can't even buy store brand for that cheap. So without hesitation I quickly piled some into the chart. When I got home I took all the buns out of the bag and laid them on a cookie sheet and stuck them in the freezer.


That evening I took them out and placed them into sandwich baggies. I like to have them individually frozen instead of stuck together. That way when Kitkat gets a mini pizza for lunch he can have 1/2 the bun and I can get it out and cooked quickly before he has a total melt down.

Once they are all into baggies I put all the baggies back into the big bag and they get tossed into the deep freezer until needed.
Picking up breads and rolls when on sale can really save in the long run. Nothing like throwing some burgers on the grill to find that you don't have anything to put it on.
Side note ~ We love buying the bulk pack of hamburgers from Costco. For $13 you can get 24 quarter pounders. I don't usually like premade burgers...actually I never liked them but these burgers are 100% lean ground beef nothing added what so ever for a $1.89 a burger that I didn't have to mush together with my hand I am game!! Why I brought up the burgers is because they are a quick meal and nothing like scoring the buns that are only ~0.12 cents this makes a very fast throw together meal for last minute supper or lunch guest!

Hamburger buns are also great for:
Mini pizza (kitkat loves them)
sloppy joes
hot sandwiches (roastbeef and melty cheese or pulled pork)
tuna melts
garlic toast

For more great frugal ideas head on over to Biblical Womanhood

The Fast and Frugal: Coming to a table near you

The fast and frugal staring Penne Rigate and Cream of Mushroom Soup is one meal you don't want to miss! This delicious mixture of star ingredients is a great lunch or supper meal. Once Penne is cooked cream of mushroom does his job of reuniting Penne with frozen veggies and turkey leftovers. This is a one pot meal that will have your family feed in no time and raving with great reviews.



Penne Rigate is back in The fast and frugal part 2! This time Cream of Mushrooms sister, Tomato Soup, is starting in this one pot dish along side of lean ground beef. What a flavorful meal when combined with spices and frozen veggie may even do a guest appearance.



Now doesn't those descriptions make these two meals sound exciting! hehehe. Both of these meals are so easy, fast and frugal to make. And when accompanied with some frozen veggies or salad these meals meet all 4 food groups. The reason the milk is in the first picture is because I like to mix my soups with a little bit of milk to make the meal a bit more creamy. Some other things I add especially to fast and frugal dish one is cream cheese if I have any floating around in the fridge and some Parmesan cheese.

So readers let me hear about your "fast and frugal" meal ideas. If you have a meal that is super easy to whip up (5 ingredients or less) let me know and I would like to post it here for you!

For more frugal ideas jump over to Biblical womanhood


Recipes
Fast and Frugal

Penne
Cream of Mushroom soup
Milk
Left over turkey
Veggies
Parmesan (optional)

Cook noodles, drain and add can of soup, milk, turkey and veggies. Let heat up and serve!

Fast and Frugal 2

Penne
Tomato soup
Milk
Lean ground beef

Fry up hamburger (drain grease; can add onions and garlic to add flavor)
Cook noodles, drain and add beef, soup and milk. Parmesan may be added as well. Serve warm!

Bible Memory Game

Hey readers!

Some of you may have already read this post but I wanted to re post it to show how you can make learning scripture fun!!!


One of my biggest Christmas gifts this year was making a bible memory verse game for our nieces and nephews. You see last Christmas they received a gift from their parents which was the whole collection of PSALTY. Now I don't know how many of you readers know about Psalty but he is a big blue singing song book who sings praise and worship music. Micah and I have our own collection of Psalty and enjoy singing along. Eben has been hearing this wonderful music since he was in the womb and now dances around the house to it.



Anyways back to the game I made!! The reason the game is connected with Psalty is that Psaltys camping adventure is one of the best CD's and one that the kids love. On this specific CD there is on song called Hide Gods Word in Your Heart. Its a song that teaches kids how to memorize 26 verses!! What a great song. So my idea was born. I would make a memory game (since memory is one of their favorite games) using the bible verses from their favorite CD. Hopefully this will help them learn and memory 26 powerful verses from God's word.



The frist couple steps of the project were a little diffcult. Orginially I wanted to make the game out of costers but that was a lot of costers to try to find so my dad gave me 2 big sheets of pylwood. I sat down one night and drew 52 4* 4 squars, then my wonderful husband cut them out with a skill saw and together we sanded them so they would be smooth.

All the verses (list at the bottom) were typed on the computer, printed out and cut with fun scissors. Hubby made the logo for the tops of squares and the letters were cut out using a Cricut (a very fancy scrap booking tool that a lady from our church let me use).



I used Mod Podge to stick all the letters, logos and verses onto the wood. After they had dried I sprayed them with a stain. Now to play the game you simply take a few out at a time (it would be very overwhelming to be playing memory with 52 large blocks..haha) and put them face down on the ground so you see the logo like so

Then you take your turn just like memory flipping the blocks over to see if you can find the match. All letters were cut out in blue paper and the first letter of every verse was done in blue so the kids would have an easier job matching the verse to the proper letter


Hubby and I plan on making another one of these games for our own children. What a great way to get kids memorizing God's word. I guess it's not just for kids as I have learned the 26 verses and can almost sing along with the CD.

My time was the biggest investment into this gift because I think it coast me a total of $7.00 and that was mostly for the large bottle of Mod Podge.

For more cool ideas check out Rocks in My Dryer


Bible Alphabet Song

A: All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23

B: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, Acts 6:31

C: Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right, Eph 6:1

D: Depart from evil and do good, Psamls 34:14

E: Even a child is known by his doings, Proverbs 20:11

F: Fear not, for I am with thee, Isaiah 43:5

G: God is love 1 John 4:8

H: Honor thy father and thy mother, Exodus 20:12

I: I am thy vine, you are the branches, John 15: 5

J:Jesus weep, john 11:35

K: Keep thy tongue from evil, psalms 34:13

L: Look unto me, and be ye saved, Isaiah 45:22

M: Marvel not..you must be born again, John 3:7

N: No man can serve two masters, Matthew 6:23

O: O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, Psalms 118:1

P: Praise ye the Lord, Psalms 147:1

Q: Quench not the spirit, 1 Thessalonians 5:19

R: Remember the sabbath, to keep it holy, Exodus 20:8

S: Seek ye first the kingdom of God, Matthew 6:33

T: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, Proverb 3:5

U: Unto us a child is born, Isaiah 9:6

V: Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, Romans 12:19

W: Wait on the Lord, Psalms 27:14

X: Exceeding great and precious promises are given unto us 2 Peter 1:4

Y: Ye are the light of the world, Matthew 5:14

Z: Zion heard, and was glad, Psalm 97:8

Freezing Produce

During this time of year its hard to get produce without breaking the bank. One thing that we have done to help keep us on budget is buy produce during prime seasons and freezing. We do this with fiddle heads (that hubby picks), squash, blueberries, strawberries, and apples. Another thing that I do is when I go grocery shopping early in the morning I find lots of produce on the 50% off rack. I stock my chart up with green peppers, red peppers, mushrooms, and any other fruits that are not too rotten. When I come home I wash them up, cut into chunks, and freeze in a single layer on a cookie sheet.



Once these are frozen 3-4 hours after wards I bag them up in freezer bags and place them in the pizza topping basket in the freezer.


I love to have frozen produce in the freezer. Although you can't use this stuff for salads or veggie sticks its great cut up in chili, spaghetti sauce, casseroles and fried up on pizza.

For more frugal tips check out Biblical Womanhood

Pizza Pockets

This is one recipe that does take some time but the benefits of having quick and easy lunches or suppers are worth the little bit of work. Since hubby and I have been married I have never once bought pizza pockets. They are a tiny little ball of dough filled with processed meats that have been pre deep fried and will cost you a fortune for four...which would be one meal for us. Since I make pizza at least once a week I thought why not whip up a batch of pizza pockets to have in the freezer for days that I don't have leftovers for Micah to take to work or night when we need to eat in the car.

So one day last week I mustered up the courage to make my pizza dough into pizza pockets. Here is my step by step process.

First I started out by making a batch of my yummy pizza dough



After the dough had set I punched it down and divided it into 12 balls.

While the dough was resting I whipped together some ingredients for the inside of the pockets. I had sauce, some fried ground beef, grated cheese, pineapple chunks and I fried up onions, green pepper, red pepper and mushrooms.

Then take each dough ball and roll it out to make some what of a circle.



Place 1-2 Tbsp of sauce in the center and top with toppings. Then fold in half and using a fork press the edges together.

I then baked the pocket in the oven on 350 for about 12 minutes.

When the pan came out I let it cool off a bit then placed in the freezer for about 3 hours.


Once they were frozen I popped them into a freezer bag where they are ready to be taken out and placed into the oven. You can heat them up at 400 for 10-12 minutes. At work Micah likes to defrost it a little in the microwave then heat it up in the toaster oven.

These are such a frugal thing to make for the little bit of work it took. Now I have fast suppers or lunches for us. This is something that we will keep in the freezer!!

For more frugal ideas head on over here