Breakfast Items that Freeze Well

One of the ways to save money is by avoiding the expensive cost of breakfast. You may be overspending on this important meal if you rely on convenience items, such as dry cereal, individual oatmeal packets, and store-bought frozen breakfast items, from sandwiches to pancakes. To reduce your spending in this area, consider preparing your own breakfast items and freezing them for later use. This way, you will always have a ready breakfast at hand, no matter how hectic the morning turns out to be. You can approach preparing freezer breakfast items in at least two different ways. You can … Continue reading

How to Be a Hero Mom on a Budget

Sometimes I don’t feel like a hero mom. Such as yesterday. It was very late, and my tween and I were in the grocery section of Target looking to pick up just a couple of food items to help us make it through a long week, since we missed our scheduled food shopping.  As we passed the frozen case on our way to hunt down cheese, my child asked me if we could get ice cream. Apparently he and his siblings already went through the one gallon container, the one quart container, and the box of ice cream sandwiches that … Continue reading

Freezer Pizza Dough

Make your own pizza dough, pop it in the freezer and have it available any time you like. The best part? You’ll be saving tons of money over the year in pizza costs, and with pizza dough from your freezer, you can make enough to cover everything from a busy weeknight meal to a kid’s birthday party. Now that is economical! Freezing this pizza dough recipe actually make the dough easier to work with, so you will make perfectly round pizzas with no tearing each time. You can also work the dough into a square pan or a rectangular jelly … Continue reading

Forget the Fiscal Cliff; It is the Dairy Cliff that Will Get Me

We are all are more than a bit concerned about the approaching fiscal cliff, but what about the dairy cliff? That is the one that I think is going to get us. We go through about three gallons of milk each week, along with about 20 cups of yogurt and a pound of butter (sometimes more). I haven’t even mentioned cheese, yet. It has its own overflowing bin in the refrigerator. No, I’m not raising sumo wrestlers, just kids who are active and happen to take their own lunch and snacks to school each day. Lest you think that we … Continue reading

Free Fall Fun!

If your calendar isn’t yet booked with fun things to do this fall, you might want to look around a bit. Now is one of the best times of year to find plenty of free events to entertain the kids and even the whole family. Check out the following options that may be available in your area. Trunk or Treat Many churches and places of worship sponsor trunk or treat events, that are either on a weekday or a weekend, during the day or in the evening, so there are a lot of scheduling options. During a trunk or treat … Continue reading

Get Ready For Baby – Fill Up That Freezer

As you near the end of your pregnancy, you have probably been thinking a lot about whether you have everything on hand that you will need once your baby comes home. Clothing, diapers, and other baby essentials are important and it is good that you have thought about what kinds of things you want to have at home in advance of baby’s arrival. There is one thing that many people may not think about, though. When you come home with a newborn baby, neither you nor your spouse or partner is likely to feel like cooking anything for the first … Continue reading

The Great Freezer Shut Down

Shutting down our freezer has led to some pretty interesting meals and decisions this week. My husband brought up a tub of his favorite rocky road ice cream from the basement freezer and was getting ready to enjoy a late night treat. I opened up the tub (maybe if I put it in a bowl and added some whipped cream he might not notice if I took a scoop for myself as well). The ice cream, although still frozen was pretty soft. Uh oh. Over the next few days, we kept checking on the freezer. While everything stayed frozen, some … Continue reading

Cleaning the Freezer

I’ve been thinning the house out again. It’s a sickness, this purging thing I have going on. I can’t stand to own things that are not living up to their full potential. This time, it’s my freezer. I bought the freezer when Hailey was still living at home thinking it would be great extra food storage. Turns out that all we ever kept in there was frozen pizzas and pie crust. Not the most efficient use of the space, or the money spent on the freezer. Now that Hailey is married and in a place of her own, the freezer … Continue reading

Freezing My … Off

This week, I am making it one of my frugal goals to freeze a little something each and every day. Today it is mashed potatoes and also banana chocolate chip muffins. Yesterday, it was sour cream corn muffins, and the day before it was regular chocolate chip muffins. I’ve been doing this by making extra and then packing up some aspect of our regular meals, such as the leftover muffins from breakfast or preparing a whole six pounds of mashed potatoes (before the butter and milk). By doing this, I really don’t have to do much additional preparation. I measure … Continue reading

Clean Your Kitchen, Get New Appliances

Did you know that it is Whirlpool’s “Kitchen Clean Up Month?” Apparently it is the third annual one but since I’ve never heard of it, it’s news to me! An entire month to clean the kitchen, the only thing better would be if they sent someone to do it for me. The idea behind this is that since the kitchen is the busiest and messiest room in the house, we need to take the time to clean and organize it. The kitchen really does take most of the abuse in your home and most of us use it for just … Continue reading