Archive for July, 2009
{ July 31, 2009 @ 5:55 pm }
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{ Food, Recipes }
{ Tags: blanching vegetables, blueberry recipes, food safety, freezer jam, garlic croutons recipes, homemade chocolate chips, Italian dressing recipe, make your own chocolate chips, make your own wine, soaked tortillas, zucchini recipes }
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{ July 30, 2009 @ 8:13 pm }
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{ Books }
{ Tags: Books, Read it Forward }
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{ July 30, 2009 @ 8:40 am }
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{ Clothes, Coupons }
{ Tags: Banana Repubic coupon, Friends and Family coupon, Gap coupon, Old Navy coupon }
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Yay for a great coupon!
Give & Get!
You’re Invited…You are one of our valued partners, so we want to offer you 30% off during our Friends & Family event. For every purchase you make, we give 5% of the amount you spend to Feeding America.
When: 4 Days, July 30 – August 2
Where: Gap, Gap Outlet, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Banana Republic Factory Stores
How: Click on the coupon link above, print out the coupon and use it as many times as you like at the above listed stores.
When I used this coupon before, I was able to use it on sale items too. Happy shopping!
{ July 29, 2009 @ 5:41 pm }
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{ Food, Freezing }
{ Tags: freezer organization, shoebox organization, Works For Me Wednesday }
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An easy way to help organize items in my freezer is to put similar or same items in a shoebox. It keeps them in one place, and they are easy to find.
I currently have two shoeboxes sitting in my garage, near my freezer, waiting to be put into the freezer. I just need to find time to defrost my freezer soon, so I can reorganize it, and hopefully find more space!
Read about more tips at WeAreThatFAMILY.com.
{ July 28, 2009 @ 1:34 pm }
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{ Clothes, cleaning, saving money }
{ Tags: retractable clothesline, Tuesday's tip jar }
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For the last several months, or possibly a year, I have mentioned several times to my husband that I would like a clothesline in our backyard. Personally, I don’t like how they look, but I know it would be better for the environment, as well as our electric bill, if we had a clothesline to dry our clothes. My husband was not thrilled with the idea and tried to ignore it.
I decided to look online to see if there were options for something besides a regular clothesline. I was quite pleased to find retractable clotheslines. You attach them to the side of your house and they had between 1-5 lines to hang laundry from. Of course, after further research, it seemed that many of the retractable 4-5 line ones did not hold up well, according to various reviews. Many said the single line usually were sturdier.
After walking around my yard, I decided I wanted to get a single line, attach it to our deck, and hang the other end on a nearby tree. We went to our local hardware store and bought one, which was around $17. My husband found a bungee cord in our garage and wrapped it around a branch, so I won’t be scratching up the tree when I hang the clothesline on it.
So if you want to have a clothesline, but don’t want to have it up all of the time, look into getting a retractable clothesline.
Check out more tips at BlogMommas.com.
{ July 23, 2009 @ 2:07 pm }
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{ Books }
{ Tags: book preferences, Booking Through Thursday }
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Which do you prefer? (Quick answers–we’ll do more detail at some later date)
Reading something frivolous? Or something serious?
Paperbacks? Or hardcovers?
Fiction? Or Nonfiction?
Poetry? Or Prose?
Biographies? Or Autobiographies?
History? Or Historical Fiction?
Series? Or Stand-alones?
Classics? Or best-sellers?
Lurid, fruity prose? Or straight-forward, basic prose?
Plots? Or Stream-of-Consciousness?
Long books? Or Short?
Illustrated? Or Non-illustrated?
Borrowed? Or Owned?
New? Or Used?
Here are my answers:
Reading something frivolous? Or something serious? depends on my mood, probably frivolous
Paperbacks? Or hardcovers? hardcover
Fiction? Or Nonfiction? fiction
Poetry? Or Prose? prose
Biographies? Or Autobiographies? biographies
History? Or Historical Fiction? historical fiction
Series? Or Stand-alones? series
Classics? Or best-sellers? classics
Lurid, fruity prose? Or straight-forward, basic prose? straight-forward
Plots? Or Stream-of-Consciousness? plots
Long books? Or Short? long (but not too long…)
Illustrated? Or Non-illustrated? illustrated (I think more books should have maps and other illustrations)
Borrowed? Or Owned? owned
New? Or Used? new
{ July 21, 2009 @ 1:11 pm }
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{ Beauty, cleaning }
{ Tags: facial, facial at home, quick facial, Tuesday's tip jar, washing your face }
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One way I save time with washing my face is by washing it in the shower. I obviously only use my cleanser and scrub in the shower, and then will use my toner and moisturizer out of the shower.
For a quick facial, use cleanser, scrub, and masque at the same time. I highly recommend the Spa Warming Trend Green Tea Masque. It warms up on your face and makes your face much softer. You can order this product on my BeautiPage. (This product will last a long time, I use it 2-3 times each week and still have not finished my first container, which I’ve had for 7 months.)
Read more tips at BlogMommas.com.
{ July 15, 2009 @ 1:08 pm }
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{ Food }
{ Tags: meadow tea, meadow tea concentrate, meadow tea recipe, recipe, Works For Me Wednesday }
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Meadow tea is a favorite summer drink of mine. Mint was always growing at my house when I grew up, and if I remember correctly, the mint was given to my parents by my grandparents who also grew mint. Whenever they (my grandparents) would move, they would dig up some mint and plant it at the next house. It’s very easy to grow, spreading everywhere quickly!
Even though I have always loved meadow tea, I struggled to make it the way I remembered it. It was either too weak or not sweet enough. Several months ago, a friend of mine mentioned she always made her tea from meadow tea concentrate and then sent me the recipe. It’s so easy, and I am so excited that I will now be able to drink meadow year-round! Currently, I have around 7 containers of frozen concentrate in my freezer.
Meadow Tea Concentrate
1 quart container stuffed tight with mint leaves (this is a lot of leaves). Wash and drain mint. Bring 4 quarts water to a boil in a 5 quart kettle. Put mint leaves into boiling water, using spoon to push down into water completely and remove from stove. Add 4 cups sugar, stir until dissolved. Let steep several hours or overnight.
In morning drain tea leaves, may squeeze lightly but not much. Strain into 4 – 1 quart containers, freeze. When making tea, add 3 quarts water to 1 quart concentrate to make 1 gallon.
If you have tons of mint leaves that you don’t know what to do with, try this recipe.
Read more Works for Me Wednesday ideas at WeAreTHATFamily.com.
{ July 14, 2009 @ 8:55 pm }
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{ Do It Yourself, Food }
{ Tags: make your own mix, mix recipe, Tuesday's tip jar }
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One of the ways I am trying to save money is to make various foods myself. An easy way to do this is my making mixes. This is both easy to do, and handy to have mixes kept in your pantry, ready to be used at any time.
I recently tried this taco seasoning mix and it worked very well.
This cinnamon brown sugar pancake mix sounds great, but I haven’t tried it yet.
Here are more links for other mixes you might enjoy:
Hot-Chocolate Mix
Buttermilk Pancake and Waffle Mix
Budget101.com has a very comprehensive list of mixes. You definitely will want to check that site out!
Do you make any mixes? If so, why kind of mix?
Read more tips at BlogMommas.com.
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