How To Cook A Turkey: For Poultry Thawing Phobics
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I love Thanksgiving but I loathe the idea of thawing the turkey. Having to handle the thawed turkey and it’s drained juices, totally creeps me out. The whole, juices making contact with kitchen surfaces thing, really creates anxiety. Laugh if you must, and I can appreciate that some of you will, but those that can sympathize, stay with me. You, that brave the turkey-thaw easily, should stay too, because you may have a loved one that needs this information. Poultry Thawing Phobics deserve love and workable strategies, especially at Thanksgiving. This year, I decided I’d find a better way to deal with my phobia.
Circumvent it, head on! Read more
Filed Under Frugal Food | 1 Comment
Get Free Samples: Added 11-18-03
Following are free sample offers and their links, added 11-38-08. Getting free stuff is easy and fun!
(Remember to use your alternate email address when you sign up for free samples. Click How To Get Free Samples to learn why. Also learn how to make filling out samples forms a snap).
UPDATED: A strike through means the offer is no longer available.
Free Samples = Frugal Living!
- Mystery Shampoo from P&G- here
- AuqaOne Free Case of Water (TX,OK,UT,NM- only) - here
- Old Spice Razor- here
- Yogi Tea - here
16 more offers provided Read more
Filed Under Free Product Samples | 3 Comments
Jar Of Blessings
I came across a really, neat idea to actualize blessings. We’re going to make it a family Christmas tradition. Here’s my version of it. You create a calender and each day, the family marks off the day’s blessing and places the associated monetary value in a jar. On Christmas Day, the family makes a plan to donate the money to those less fortunate. Here are 25 blessings that we are starting with and we’ll add some additional blessings since we are starting before the first of Dec. You can adjust the blessings to better reflect your family dynamic such as blessings that are easier for young kids to appreciate.
1. 10 ¢ for every hot water tap in your house
2. 75 ¢ for every vehicle your family owns
3. 5 ¢ for every pair of jeans you own
4. 25 ¢ if your family subscribes to the newspaper
5. 5 ¢ for every bed in your house
6. 3 ¢ for every /beauty makeup item you own
7. 3 ¢ for every pair of footwear
8. 3 ¢ for every light switch in your house
9. 20 ¢ for every tub/shower
10. 10 ¢ for every flush toilet
11. 2 ¢ for every bar/dispenser of soap
12. 15 ¢ if you have dishes to eat off of
13. 15 ¢ if you have cooking pots in your cupboards
14. 5 ¢ for every window in your house
15. 10 ¢ for every outside door
16. 20 ¢ for every television in your house
17. 5 ¢ for every magazine subscription
18. 25 ¢ if your family has more than 25 CD’s (music or video)
19. 5 ¢ for every meal you had meat with this past week
20. 10 ¢ for every non-water beverage you drank yesterday
21. 25 ¢ if you have a snow blower or a gas/electric lawn mower
22. 3 ¢ for every item of hair care stuff
23. 15 ¢ for every bedroom in your house
24. 5 ¢ for every blanket in your house
25. 15 ¢ for every gift you received this Christmas
If you have any blessings to add to the list, pass them along with what you think their value should be. I’ve added 25 cents for every pet. While I don’t agree with everything at buynothingchristmas.org I thought this was a thoughtful idea and I share their sentiments about the over-commercialization of Christmas. I doubt they would agree with or like everything on my site either and understandably so.
Filed Under Family/Children, Frugal Christmas Gifts | 14 Comments
Free Custom Mosaic Maker
Want some fun photos to use for a custom mosaic? Give your teen a digital camera and tell them to take photos of themselves (these photos were taken by my 16 yr. old son). You’ll get variety and fun photos with some attitude. Download your pictures to your hard drive and head over to Big Huge Labs to sign up (it’s free). Then go to the Mosaic Maker and upload your photos. You can choose from several mosaic patterns and tweak the project till your heart’s content. Save the project to your hard drive and print. How simple can it be? Not much more! Shop around for a cool frame that’s on sale, of course, and you’ll have a great Christmas gift for somebody special on your list.
Filed Under Family/Children, Frugal Christmas Gifts | 5 Comments
Giving Cash Instead of Gift Cards
After doing some research on gift cards, I have decided not to give any this Christmas. Gift cards can have penalty fees, expiration dates and other balance dwindling features. Additionally, in these economic times it would be a shame to give a gift card from a store that goes bankrupt after the first of the year. There are some concerns about that. Leverage Card online is offering insurance and swap out programs but to me it’s something I’d rather not even worry about. So… instead, I’m giving cash to some on my gift list this year. I think most people welcome cash, as much as, a gift card. The problem with giving cash is how to present it in a way, that is unique and fun.
Here’s an idea, I came up with for one of my teenage nieces. It was easy to do. All I needed was a vase, ribbon, filler and 30 one dollar bills. I still have about five more boxes to add to the vase. I folded the bills into little boxes with slide covers. In the little boxes you can put small earrings, rings, toe rings etc.
Here you can find the money box folding directions. It only takes a few tries to get the folding down and it is best to use crisp bills. There are many origami money, folding patterns like birds, rings, pyramids, giraffes etc. Origami Resource Center has some interesting designs. I liked the little boxes most because I was giving this as a Christmas gift. If you have a creative idea for giving cash, you are welcome to share it in comments.
I definitely need to spend some time on blogs about how to take digital pictures. Sorry, these photos didn’t come out better. If you’ve got a instructive blog about taking pictures to upload to the web, let me know about your site.
Filed Under Frugal Christmas Gifts | 20 Comments
Get Free Samples: Added 10-30-08
Following are free sample offers and their links, added 10-30-08. Getting free stuff is easy and fun!
(Remember to use your alternate email address when you sign up for free samples. Click How to Get Free Samples to learn why. Also learn how to make filling out samples forms a snap).
UPDATED: A strike through means the offer is no longer available.
Free Samples = Frugal Living!
- True Lemon (skip the request that comes up after unless your interested in Eversave, I’m not, myself- here
- Cyber Security Toolkit for Teens - here
- Dunkin Donuts Coffee - here
- Haydee Truffles - here
- Fresh Mineral Makeup - here
15 more offers provided
Filed Under Free Product Samples | 8 Comments
Granite: Our World
Is this not one of the most glorious works of nature’s art? Granite. This is our “real” world. This is what we do for a living. We take these great pieces of granite and fabricate them, by hand, into kitchen and bathroom surfaces. In saying, by hand, I mean we cut and polish without any high-tech machines. I think it is fair to say that in Texas we are only one of a few such operations, left. While we often wish we were a bigger enterprise, a granite slab like this comes along, to remind us why we also glad we are not. For a slab like this to be cut without forethought is a real waste. However, an artist/fabricator (like my husband) can appreciate the uniqueness of the slab and cut it in such a way as to keep most of it’s beauty and flow in tact. There’s something to appreciate about all granite slabs but some are just stunning, like this one. This is called Juparana Classico Supreme and you can click the pic for a better view. I’ve almost completed a series of posts about how to save money when your in the market for granite. They should be up soon.
Filed Under Household | 1 Comment
Entrecard: Deleted and Reinstated
If you are not an Entrecard member (terrific blog community) this post will not mean much to you. Thanks to my other readers for indulging me.
I was having trouble with my ecard widget showing up in the IE browser (it worked fine in FireFox). If I refreshed IE and/or cleared temp files the widget would return. I thought it was a problem that was specific to my IE browser. I inquired with others and they said they could see the widget just fine in their IE. Evidently, that was only true for some and not for others. I received an Entrecard email saying I was deleted because of the IE problem. I was a little freaked out and didn’t really know what to do about it. I knew it wasn’t Entrecard’s problem.
My first plan was to copy my widget code again and replace it, thinking maybe the code was broken for some reason. I couldn’t do that because I couldn’t login to Ecard. So, I decided to race over to Impnerd.com and email for some help; see if he might know what was causing this problem.
I went to my widget code in my “Got Banners” plugin settings. I copied it and put it into a text widget and into the sidebar. Ta Da- that worked. It showed up just fine in IE without refreshing or clearing temps. So, the problem had something to do with code in “Got Banners”. I don’t know why? I have had it set up like that for months with no problems. I have a suspicion that it has to do with the use of the tilde in the “Got Banners” settings. I will play with today and see if that was it.
I apologize to those that were in queue to advertise with me. Those were all canceled. Juliana’s Lair card was the active advertiser at the time and I have returned her credits.
Thanks to Entrecard for the super, fast reinstatement of my account and credits. And now would be a good time to thank all the ecard community members that drop on my site. I appreciate you all. I started sending out individual notes to my reciprocal droppers and then slapped myself for not realizing that a better method, was to post.
Filed Under Blogging | 14 Comments
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