Amy made me do it....

If you haven't seen it yet, Amy at Mom Advice has a great weekly feature she calls it Amy's Notebook. It is like her own hand picked carnival of crafts ideas, recipes, and more.

In the last few months she has taken it a step further and started to experiment with her notebook entries. She tries one of the ideas and shares the results with her readers. Now she is inviting us to join the fun.

This week I am joining in and making coffee pops that were originally posted at Yum Sugar, and can be found in Amy's Notebook 6/26/08. I will let you click over to the original post for the recipes, but let me just say coffee, condensed milk, YUM! I also added some vanilla to mine.

We are going to a swim party today. I cannot wait to come after the party and pull one of these mommy treats out!

Using the Drug Store Stockpile

It is easy to get caught up in the drug store games. It is fun and exciting to get things for free or practically free. Some people play the game and max out on all the freebies and good offers. Others only take advantage when there are deals on their current shopping list. I am trying to take a moderate approach by loading up on items we will use, and skipping the items that we will not.

Even with taking a moderate approach, I find myself with a stockpile of items. What can I say? I find it very hard to pass on free toothpaste or shampoo, even if I already have several in the cupboard. But that doesn't mean that it will go to waste. Here are some ideas to use up the stockpile of drug store deals.

1. Sell it.
In her article, Making CVS Work for You, Crystal shares that she sells some of her surplus items in their bi-annual garage sale.

Seem like an odd thing to sell at a garage sale? It has been awhile since I've had a garage sale. (Those of you who know where I live are probably rolling on the floor at the thought of me having a garage sale here.) The last time I did have a garage sale I threw in some opened perfume I'd received as a gift and didn't care for and some other odds and end health and beauty products. Those things went like hot potatoes. Imagine how quick something brand new in the box would go.

2. Donate it.
This idea came from my sister in law. She works for an agency that helps at risk families. She donated many of her CVS items to the agency. Even if you don't have a connection like that, items can be donated to shelters, food banks or other agencies that help those in need.

3. Take a shopping break.
Amy shared last week how she took used her stockpile over the summer. This let her spend less time shopping, and more time enjoying her family and her summer. That is a great way to use that stockpile!

4. Create a care package.
Recently I created a care package for a loved one who will soon be living in the dorms. I filled a box with lots of health and beauty items from my stockpile. I also added in some Amish bread, jam, and herbal tea. I think it will be appreciated by this student who pays for all her living expenses, and it cost me practically nothing.

So play the game. Get the free stuff, and create a stockpile. But don't cross the line into hoarding. Use that stockpile up, either for yourself or to help someone else who would appreciate it.

If I had a hot tub. . .

Once upon a very long time ago, when I was in college, my parents had a hot tub. Funny how they put in a hot tub after I left for college. My dad made the hot tub out of a water tank. It had its glitches, but it was huge and set in the ground. He finished it off with stone and it was nestled in a corner among the trees. It was a very relaxing place to be.

The last time I was in a hot tub was on vacation a couple of years ago. While the hot tub itself was relaxing, the view was less than inspiring. You could look at the pool that still had its winter cover on, the white fence, or the underside of the hot tub cover.

If I had a hot tub, I'd want to put it someplace with a view. If I didn't have a view, I'd at least want to create one with some spa accessories. I'd want my hot tub to be a little get away spot where I could at least pretend to be in a tropical location, instead of looking at the back of a fence or the underside of a hot tub cover.

If I had a hot tub.......

A Free Day with Friends

Last week we went on a field trip with some friends to the local art museum. The sculpture behind them is made of glass. It was beautiful.

Wordless Wednesday

Make It From Scratch #77

This week Maria is our hostess at Life on Both Sides of the Pond. This week's edition has plenty of ideas for how to use the vegetables from your garden or farmers' market. There are some great ideas! Beyond the recipes there are also some fun and practical ideas to try around the house. Head over and check them out!

For more information about the carnival or about hosting see Make It From Scratch - the carnival

I must be a slow learner

In July I posted about how we were feeling the crunch on our finances, and how I was feeling overwhelmed by everything. Then almost as suddenly as I turned the page on the calendar, everything looked so much better. How can that be?

There are some tangible reasons. Gas prices have come down a bit. I had to laugh at myself the other day when I was excited to get gas for $3.66. Like that is cheap or something! HA! We are seeing a harvest, and have purchased very little meat or veggies lately. Work is picking back up for Tim, and the house in Akron just got rented. Though neither of those last two listed have actually hit the budget, they will soon. Yes, there has been some tangible relief to things that have been putting the crunch on the budget and the stress on me. But there is more to the story than that.

The real relief has come in the form of a less hectic schedule. When I looked at the calendar last week and realized there was nothing on it, I wanted to dance a jig! This summer was busy, too busy. I don't know how the schedule got away from me, but it did. There were too many activities, and too many trips coinciding with the responsibilities here at home. Some of the blame can be put on underestimating the time certain activities would involve, but I think the real blame lies in the fact that I have not learned my lesson.

Busyness creeps up on me. Being too busy is exhausting. Being exhausted makes everything more stressful. I posted about it and the cost of being too busy in May of 2007. I obviously did not learn my lesson.

What a cool tool!

I've been working on launching a new site for Make It From Scratch. It will be a new home for the carnival and blogroll. Plus it will have informative articles on building basic skills for cooking, sewing, crafts and more. I am really excited about it, and will let you know more details soon.

I've enlisted the help of a friend to help with the design of the page. She did an awesome job making a header for me, but I ran into a problem getting the rest of the page to match. I could not get color combinations that I liked with the header. Then I remembered a tool I had bookmarked some time ago and never used, the Color Palette Generator.

This a free tool. You enter a picture that you would like to match (the picture must have an url location,) and the tool generates the html colors that are in the picture. Here is a screen shot of the page using a picture of our hen and her new chicks.

If I was making a blog using that photo as a header, then I could plug in those color codes to make the background and font colors match. How cool is that?

Saturday Carnivals and Festivals

Here are the links to some carnivals and festivals from this past week:

Make It From Scratch
Carnival of the Recipes
Carnival of Family Life
Carnival of Home Preserving
Money Stories
Festival of Frugality
All Things Eco

Enjoy your Saturday blog hopping!

Don't Assume

If you can't find your wallet, don't assume, just because things do have a way of getting misplaced, that your wallet is simply misplaced.

And when you check your bank account and don't see anything unusual, don't assume that to be confirmation that your wallet is simply misplaced.

About a week ago Tim noticed that his wallet was missing. Things do have a way of walking off around here. Remember the $100 bill? He checked the bank account and everything seemed normal, and we assumed that the wallet would turn up.

We looked in the vehicles. We looked under the bed. We looked in the closet. He looked at work, and in the vehicles at work. We tried to track back where he had been and last used his wallet. We could not figure out where else it could be.

A few days ago, I was paying bills and noticed charges on a credit card we never use. There were a couple to a gas station and a $50 transaction to McDonalds. My first thought was why did Tim use that card? My second thought was who in the world did he take to McDonalds? He does sometimes take his customers out to lunch, but not McDonalds. So I asked him. His response, "I didn't take anyone to McDonalds. What are you talking about?" ALARM! ALARM!

A closer look and I saw those transactions were from the day he missed his wallet. We looked at the checking account together. At first glance nothing seemed unusual, but there were three transactions on the same day that the $50 McDonalds transaction took place. They were all for reasonable amounts to places we normally go. Tim had just assumed they were my transactions. They weren't.

The remainder of the night was spent in a mad furry trying to remember what exactly was in his wallet and calling banks. Over the next few days he placed a fraud alert with the credit bureaus and tried to get the fraudulent charges removed from the bank accounts. The process isn't done yet. His social security number was in there. So we will have to keep a close eye on his credit report for awhile.

A few lessons we have learned from all this:

• Don't assume your wallet is simply misplaced.
• If you have a joint account, both spouses need to look at the activity, when there may be a problem.
• Don't carry items in your wallet you don't need.
• Don't carry anything in your wallet with your social security number on it.

It really could have been much worse, but what a hassle this all has been.

Pumpkin Cranberry Amish Friendship Bread

After a summer of not making any friendship bread, I was ready to pull a starter out of the freezer and start the process again. I wanted to try something different with it, so I experimented with some items I had on hand; pumpkin, cranberry, and walnuts. The bonus to this recipe is that it uses half the oil of the original cinnamon bread recipe. It is still moist and delicious.



Friendship bread can be a bit overwhelming if you follow the directions and make it every 10 days. I've been managing the starter by only feeding it half, and I don't exactly follow the five and ten day feeding schedule. I feed it when I think of it really. At the second feeding I take out one cup of starter for the freezer, and make a huge batch of bread.

This recipe is for a normal starter size, but when I made it, I made a triple batch. I made loaves, mini loaves and muffins. I kept out one loaf and the muffins. Everything else was frozen for later use. Handling the starter this way keeps the amounts manageable, and lets me enjoy the bread instead of feeling overwhelmed by it.

Another variation: Chocolate Banana Amish Friendship Bread

New Sprouts

Maybe I'm strange, but I get just as excited for my August seedlings as my May ones.
Wordless Wednesday