Menu Plan Monday: Menu for Week of 12/14/15

I've been kind of out of the loop when it comes to menu plans the last couple of weeks, I'll admit it.  Things have been so crazy around here between holiday things going on, sick kiddos and money worries, that the idea of trying to complete a menu plan just seemed...well so HARD.  Which is really, really sad, but true.

So, it's time to get back to being more organized.  So, here's this week's menu plan!

Menu Plan for Week of 12/14/15

Monday:  Steak, mashed potatoes, holiday fruit salad (recipe coming soon)
Tuesday:  Pizza
Wednesday:  Chili and Cornbread, leftover fruit salad
Thursday:  Turkey Meatloaf, leftover mashed potatoes, green beans
Friday:  French Toast, bacon
Saturday:  Baked Chicken, rice, peaches
Sunday:  Leftovers

To Bake:  Bread, Christmas cookies.  Baking Day:  Friday.

Desserts:  Jello with whipped topping, vanilla pudding.

A Gift a Day Gift Thirty-Two: Photo Cards

This is kind of a combination gift and also Christmas card to the grandparents in the family.   I normally try to send out gift cards to my extended family, but didn't have much money to spare this year so the gift cards were kind of on the pathetic end of puny.  This, sadly, has been a continuing trend the last three years or so, but I figure one thing I can do to help make up for it is to make sure my step mom and my mom get current pictures of the kiddos.

I printed off the pictures of the kids myself.  I always buy the photo CD from the school picture taking people and print off the photos myself so I can control the size and number of photos I get.  Only downside is you only get one background to choose from, but I still think it's worth it for 15.00 per disc.

I printed off enough pictures for the grandparents and put them in different cards I had.  The ones I made for my mother and father-in-law are seen above.  I bought a bunch of  "print it yourself" cards at a yard sale one year for .50 (for packs of 50 cards) and these cards were one of the various styles.  They had a spot in the front to put your child's picture and I thought they were really pretty Christmas cards.

So, I printed off a picture of each kiddo and put them in the photo holder spot on the cards.  This way if my in-laws want to frame the photos they'll have a nice Christmas themed mat that they can just cut down to the size of their photo frame.

The cards that were going across country, however, I put those photos in regular nice and thick Christmas cards so that the at-home printed photos will survive the trip without getting beat up and scratched.  I figure my mom and step mom would appreciate the extra step for protection vs. hopefully getting really cute cards in the mail.

Total Cost of Gift:  I'm not really sure as I'm still working on the starter cartridges for my printer, but I'll estimate about .15 per card or so.

Total Time to Make Gift:  About an hour to get the sizes set right, get things cut out and envelopes addressed, etc.

Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

Well, despite my son getting another stomach bug yesterday (the bug took down half of his class by Friday...I was hopeful he wouldn't get it, but nope) and stuff, I was able to get stuff done this week.

1.  I managed to organize the video shelf area in my living room (seen above).  I hauled about three armloads of movies (VHS's mainly) downstairs to put on our video shelves and then moved the old TV stand so it stood against the wall instead of being in the corner.  It freed up some floor space, looks a lot better as things aren't falling into the open corner space anymore and I am happy with how it turned out.

I organized the hats and gloves area in our den.  Before we had tons of Rubbermaid drawers that constantly caught winter hats and I was constantly fixing snags.  We had no space for the kid's backpacks and we had boots (for all weather conditions) EVERYWHERE along with summer shoes, etc.

So, I took the hats and gloves and placed them in the top Rubbermaid container as those are the things we're going to be accessing the most this time of year.  The container below that houses dress shoes and summer shoes.  And the bottom container houses water boots and any "misc" types of shoe items we don't access until the Spring/Summer months.

Now the backpacks can sit on top of the Rubbermaid containers when the kids get home from school, everything looks a lot cleaner and I even have a spot for my daughter's umbrella. 

Feeling pretty good about that reorganizing.

3.  I wrapped the Christmas gifts (some seen in the pic above there). 

4.  I worked on Christmas gifts and SHOULD be down to just doing a few gifts for my husband.

So, yeah, the only thing I didn't get done on the goals list for last week was sorting the laundry, which is going to get rolled over onto this week's goals and will (hopefully) get done tomorrow *fingers crossed* if everyone remains healthy, so I can get work done.

We've got a tremendously full week this week.  We've got interviews for my son's insurance renewal, speech therapy, a visit from missionaries, a Christmas concert and gifts to deliver to teachers, therapists, aides and friends (in the case of my daughter).  I'm already tired and the week hasn't even started yet *laugh*.

So, this weeks goals are:

1.   Sort tremendous pile of laundry and put it away. 

2.  Try and finish the last few Christmas gifts.
 
3.  Drop food off to food drive box.  Pull out the few toys I have left to donate and drop off at "Toys for Tots".
 
4.  Make cloth napkins and embroider for fun.
 
5.  Take pictures of daughter's Christmas concert.
 
6.  Take kids to the Bright Up the Night Display.
 
7.  Deliver some gifts to family and make sure to deliver gifts to teachers, aides and therapists.
 
8.  Make Christmas cookies (Friday so daughter can help me).
 
9.  Shampoo upstairs carpets (again) to make sure 100% of nasty germs from my son's stomach bug are for sure dead.

 So, there's my list for this week.  How about you?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Well, today has been kind of stressful.  My son got a hold of another kid's cookie in his class before anyone could stop him today and it turned out it was made in a facility that processed peanuts.  Which led to a stressful twenty minutes for his teacher, the school nurse and me (I was on the phone with the nurse) as we waited to make sure he didn't have a reaction.  Luckily his teacher and aides reacted super quick and handled everything quickly and correctly (got food out of his mouth, rinsed out his mouth quickly and wiped anything they could find that resembled a crumb on him, etc).  Now, after everything has turned out alright, I just feel bad for the kid that my son stole a cookie from.

Then I get the mail and I was one of the lucky people whose personal information was compromised with the recent government hack, so I'm on a fraud alert for the next three years along with my kids *scowl*.

And then I make the mistake of opening my electric bill.  Due to the unseasonably cold temperatures of the last month and then the major hikes in electric rates the last six months, my electric bill was astronomically high (like 150.00 higher than normal, high and it's normally high this time of year).  Times like this I just get so discouraged being broke.  I'm panicking over utility bills.  Ugh.  Just ugh.

So, yeah, it was an afternoon for sure.  I am working really hard on not showing my worry over the electric to the kids right now as honestly this is the one time of year where I want the kids to be able to plug in their strings of Christmas lights and just enjoy themselves without obsessing second hand about how much the electricity is going to cost.  At least the lights are LED, so it's not like they are consuming much.

At least some things worked out well on the money saving front this week, so let's get to those shall we?

1.  This was a good week for freebies from the stores.  Carrs offered me some personalized freebies.  I was kind of surprised when I was offered free AP flour and a free thing of marshmallows as I'm not used to baking freebies, but they were appreciated for sure.

I also grabbed last week's Freebie Friday from Fred Meyer which was a container of juice. This, along with some allergy friendly foods I've gotten cheap or free due to coupons over the last year, will be going to the various food drives going on this time of year.  I've had kids with various food allergies through the years and know how hard it is to afford gluten free, dairy free or other allergy friendly foods.  I can't imagine if you are dependent on the food bank or other charitable areas for your food and your children have allergies.  The worry alone would give you a stroke.  So, I try to help out by donating foods that people would want with allergies but would not be able to afford in bad times.  Dairy free chocolate chips, rice pasta, gluten free gravy mix and things like that could be the difference between a holiday of pure survival and an actual enjoyable holiday.  So, I try to help out where I can.

2.  I combined trips when running my errands and while I was out, since I was out a good portion of the day running from store to store and such, I used a coupon we'd gotten off of a french fry we'd bought for my son when he was sick (McDonald's french fries are one of his food groups)  for a free small coffee.  That was the only thing I had to eat all morning, but it worked out alright and kept me going and it was nice having something hot to drink in the frigidly cold temperatures (seen above with the other freebies I got that morning).

3.  I also had a freebie that Sears e-mailed me for a free foot care kit or a shoe care kit, so I ran to Sears and looked EVERYWHERE to see if they carried either one.  Which they didn't.  I felt kind of stupid for wasting the ink to print the coupon they sent by the end of it, but by crawling through the store I was able to find some really nice and well built clearance socks for my husband for Christmas.  They were about 70% off with the markdowns, which was definitely worth it by the time it was all said and done.

4.  I was able to remember, despite my son (per usual) not sleeping, to drop off some toys to the local "Toys for Tots" box.  My grandfather was a proud marine, so I try to donate to "Toys for Tots" when I can in his memory instead of just dropping the toys in a random toy donation box :).

5.  I dug through my freezer and found the pork pieces and pork bones with meat left on them from cutting up pork shoulder roasts.  I put them into a pot and made bouillon to go over the top of the bones and meat and then added all the vegetables that were sort of past their prime from the pantry and the fridge.  I was actually really impressed how much meat came off the pork bones and the vegetables came out tasting wonderful with how flavorful the pork was.  My husband and daughter I just spooned out the meat and vegetables for, but I ate mine with the broth like a stew.  My daughter wasn't happy about it, but she did eat it (she doesn't like vegetables) and my husband was happy that I didn't make him eat soup.  Overall, we got three days worth of meals out of two big pork bones and a bunch of stock, so I was super happy with how that turned out.

6.  When I realized we were going to be out of bread and not have any for toast this morning I quickly made bread last night and we were even able to enjoy it with the leftover pork and veggies.  I was happy I did that as it saved me money when grocery shopping today and took a load off of my mind on breakfast this morning.  By the way I love this recipe for bread when I'm in a time crunch.

7.  I kept the lights out as much as I could this last week to avoid wasting electricity and I turned down the heat when I could during the day to try and keep the utilities as low as I could.

8.  I worked on Christmas gifts this week some more, which definitely has saved us some money.  I've still got a couple more to go but am hoping to finally be done with Christmas gifts this weekend.

9.  I made our meals at home, which saved us money.

And there you are folks.  Some different ways I saved money this week.  How did you do?

A Gift a Day Gift Thirty One: The Elsa Dress

Remember the fancy teddy bear I made for my daughter?  Well, I ran across some fabric I had and remembered that I'd wanted to make my daughter an Elsa (Frozen) like doll but had never gotten around to it.  So, I thought it might be fun to make her an Elsa-like dress for her teddy bear instead.

Boy was this dress a pain.

 First this is a two layered dress.  The upper fabric is sheer with little rhinestones in the fabric, which was cute, but problematic (broke two needles when I'd get that one in a million shot and hit two stones at one time with my sewing needle).  The lower fabric is a silver satiny fabric.  So, I had to double fold the seams all the way around to safeguard against the fabric fraying, which added time and more chances for my needle to break on the rhinestones.

I simply double sandwiched the two fabrics together, sewed them together and then went about my merry way using the "new fabric" as my fabric for the dress.  It worked alright overall...just dealing with the fabrics was kind of a pain.

After I had the fabric cut and sewed together I used elastic around the top of the dress so that my daughter could simply pull the dress on and off the bear.  Since this made a glorified tube (since it's a teddy bear and doesn't really have much of a form to speak of), I hand sewed a piece of ribbon loosely into the front of the dress.  I secured one end of the ribbon down at the side seam for the dress, leaving plenty of extra ribbon on the end to use for the tie on one side.  I then used a really huge straight stitch along the front the dress and when I felt that I had it pretty much lined up right along the front I tied a couple of knots in the ribbon to make sure it wouldn't get sucked into the dress very easy (kind of like the idea of sweatshirt ties and the knots that are in them so they stay put a bit better).  Then I just pulled the one side that wasn't secured to the dress to gather the front of the dress and tied the ribbon in place in the back of the dress.  It actually worked rather well.

I then hand sewed a tulle train onto the dress and embroidered (or attempted to embroider) a few snowflakes onto the tulle.  This was a PAIN as the fabric is transparent so you have to make sure all of your embroidery lines up on both sides of the dress so people can't see any stitches but the ones you want them to see.  And the tulle isn't exactly strong weave wise so you have to be really careful to not break it as you sew. I used a full thickness of embroidery floss for these as the tulle is so loosely woven together.

I did two snowflakes and quit as I was worried about doing too much structural messing with the tulle, but I thought it turned out alright.

Total Cost to Make Gift:  Nothing as I had all the materials in my stores.

Total Time to Make Gift:  Four hours.

Christmas Decorations on the Cheap Part 4: Throw it!

This is a decorating technique ANYONE can do in any type of financial situation, so I thought I'd share it.

This time of the year I go with the adage "throw it" when it comes to decorating for winter/Christmas.  What do I mean?  Use what you have in the way of material, sheets, or throws and just plain throw it over furniture for a festive flair!

This is my couch and trunk/coffee table in my den this year.  Remember the white duvet that I bought at the used store for cheap?  Well, I found it went really nicely with my winter themed throw pillows and so it found a home on the back of my couch.

Side note:  The throw pillows were actually one of the few things I've bought new when it comes to decorating.  I ran into them at Target three years ago, thought they were really nice and would go with a lot of different decorating schemes and bought them on sale (but not clearance or anything like that).  I put them into storage with the rest of my Christmas decorations and pull them out every year.  This is year three for them and they still look brand new doing it this way, so I'm happy.

Anyway, back to the original point.  The throw that I put over the trunk?  Was bought at a yard sale for .50 in the middle of summer three years ago (can't tell I was going through a "gee I need to really redo my Christmas decorating now that we've moved to a new house" can you?).  I originally bought it to throw over maybe a recliner to use as a lap throw, but found it too busy for that.  So, a tablecloth it became.  And I personally think it looks great where it is.  It will remain on the table through most of the winter as it's a winter themed throw vs. a purely Christmas one.  I love using throws as table clothes for coffee tables and such because they are 100% washable, which is ALWAYS a good thing.  The red tray some may remember I got at a local used store earlier in the year and thought it would look cute as a Christmas tray (I like to keep some type of tray on my coffee tables to catch any glasses that might end up in the room.  Helps protect the furniture).

The afghan was a gift from my step mom years ago and has rotated around the house into pretty much every room at one time or another.  Right now it's sitting on the couch in case someone gets cold (and also to cover up the shredding couch cushion that I switched out from upstairs for the photo.  Keeping it real folks!).

Upstairs in my living room I decided to go lazy and simple when it came to a coffee table topper this year.  This is just a piece of light blue flannel I found at a thrift store years ago and had in storage for a long while.  So, I washed it and just threw it over the table without any sewing or anything.  It looks nice, will stay in good shape through the holiday season and if I find I want to do something with the cloth later I can without being pegged into using it strictly for a tablecloth.  Yup, I'm lazy!

Oh and another side note?  The Little People nativity was purchased on the Christian Family Bookstores site on an after Christmas clearance sale for 14.00 when my kids were little.  This set is awesome, has put up with rough play from my kids and is still going strong 5 years later.  I highly recommend it!

So when it comes to decorating use your imagination.  Do you have a light blue, or maroon, or any "Christmasy" colored sheet you could use to quickly make a furniture cover of for the holidays?  Have any quilts with blue in them or afghans (which I have those over the back of furniture too right now around the house).  Think outside the super expensive store bought "only for the holidays" types of decorations.  You can still make your house look nice and reuse the things you used as soon as the holidays are done!

A Gift a Day Gift Thirty: Chocolate Filled Ornaments

I ran into a couple tutorials to make ornaments filled with different things on Pinterest and became intrigued with the idea of making some for teachers and aides.  So, when I ran across a box of clear glass ornaments that I could fill at the used store for 1.00 (not all of them are pictured above), I decided to give the idea of hot chocolate filled ornaments a shot.

I washed the ornaments out with hot soapy water and then let them dry, opening down, for a few days to allow the water to evaporate out of them.

I then took a funnel and measured out the amount of hot chocolate from the hot chocolate/drinking chocolate mix I made earlier in the year for one mug at a time.  I then added that amount (I found that three heaping teaspoons was enough to make a good cup of hot chocolate, so that's what I did for each ball with a little extra "for luck").  I then crushed up some candy canes that I had around, four of them to be exact, and then added the crushed pieces into the balls, about two teaspoons to each ball.  I then put on the lids and felt all proud of myself for only making a BIT of a mess in the kitchen.

And then the balls shifted and fell over a little bit and I realized what the tutorials on Pinterest had failed to mention.  That the balls are OPEN at the top because of the way the mechanism for the hanger works, so they leak EVERYWHERE if they shift a little bit onto their side.

Thinking on that for a few moments I took some plastic wrap, stretched it over the opening on each ball and then poked the two prongs for the hanger carefully through the plastic wrap to make sure the holes were really small at the top of the ornament vs. wide open.  Yes, the ornaments have some plastic wrap at the tops of the ornaments now, but I wanted to be sure that people would realize that there was plastic there so they didn't later try to drink it by accident.

Now don't limit yourself when it comes to these types of ornaments.  You could fill these halfway with glitter and call it "fairy dust" and then glue the lid shut with a hot glue gun so they don't leak.  You could fill them up with some ash from your fireplace halfway, glue the lid to prevent leaking, put a label proclaiming "floo powder" and give it to the Harry Potter fan in your life.   Use your imagination.  You could have a lot of fun with these :).

Total Cost to Make Gift:  Well 8 ornaments came in the box and I used four, so .50 for the four I made.

Total Time to Make Gift:  About an hour to fill the balls and figure out a way to stop them from leaking and about 32 hours or drying time.