Frugal Friday!

Here is my Frugal Idea this week.

Spring is in the air and I am looking forward to hanging clothes on the clothes line again.

Of course hanging them out does save on the electricity but what if you do not like how the clothes feel when they come off the line?

Well a dear friend of mine gave me a great tip.

If you want your clothes to feel softer when you take them off the line especially the towels :)
just throw them in the dryer for about 10- 15 mins than put them out on the line. This works wonderful. The towels are softer from the drying time in the dryer and they smell spring fresh from being on the line.




Have a great day and enjoy the Spring weather ! :)

God Bless, Kathy
Check out some other Frugal ideas at Life as Mom Frugal Friday

Making Yogurt Stretch!

Hi, I wanted to share how I try to make our Yogurt stretch. Now I know that there are some of you who probably make your own yogurt I have not gotten that far yet, but with 8 children who all love yogurt I needed a way to make it stretch and to make it tasty at the same time.

My daughter Rebecca and I have been trying to lower our calories and exercising in an effort to lose some unwanted pounds. :) I have purchased some low fat lite yogurt and of course the children all want some.

I usually do the majority of my shopping at our local Aldi's . They have a 32 oz plain or vanilla yogurt which they sell for $1.59. That is pretty good.

So what I thought I would try was to take one of the low fat yogurts with fruit and to put about a tablespoon or so in each serving of the Aldi's yogurt and mix. My children love this. It helps me to stretch that yogurt and to keep every one happy at the same time . :)

Do you have any ideas. I would love to hear them. God Bless, Kathy

Saving Saturday!

Here are the deals that I was blessed to find this past week.

Rite Aid:

They had Bounty Paper Towels B1G1 Free. At our local store they were 1.29 each reg price.
I had a $1.00 Mfg coupon for 2/1.00 .
I had two coupons so I was able to purchase four rolls for .15 cent each !



Shoprite:

This is a local grocery store up here in New England and lately I have really be finding some great deals.

Here is what I purchased last week.

4- Colgate toothpaste
On sale for .99 cents each (reg 2.19)
I had 4 $1.00 Mfg coupons so they were Free

4- Mennen Speed stick deodorant.
On Sale for .99 cents each (Reg 1.89)
I had 2 Mfg coupons for 2/1.00
.49 cents each

4- Robitussin cough Formula 4 oz.49*
On sale for 1.99 (reg 4.99)
I had 4 Mfg coupons for $1.00
.99 cents each

3- Sucrets Ice 6 pk
On sale 1/2 price 1.49 (reg 2.99)
I had 3 Mfg coupons for 1.50
Free for all of these!

$47.83 worth of items for $6.53 oop

Praise the Lord! :)

Have a great day God Bless, and Happy shopping! Kathy

Yummy Chocolate Syrup!

Our Frugal idea for this week is homemade chocolate syrup!

We found this recipe over at Hillbilly Housewife some time ago and we just love it!

My daughter Rebecca made this just the other night.

It only takes a few ingredients and it comes out really good!

My children love this in their milk and it is great on icecream as well.

Give it a try I am sure that your children will love it!

God Bless, Kathy

Our Weekend Getaway!

Hi to everyone! I am so excited this weekend my husband and I will be going to our church's annual couples retreat! This is something that I look forward to every year!

I wanted to make sure that my children will have a bit of fun also while we are away so we are planning some fun and frugal ways of doing this.

Crystal mentioned over on Money Saving Mom that she was going to be baking and freezing ahead of time.

I decided this week to do a bit of cooking and freezing ahead of time also.

Yesterday I made three pizza's. I cooked the dough partially, let it cool and than added the toppings. I froze them so all our children have to do Friday night is just pop them in the oven and enjoy! No major mess. Here is the recipe we like to use.





We are also going to splurge and buy some Costco muffins for Saturday morning breakfast another treat. Off to the Red Box to rent a few movies for the weekend and a few snacks from Aldi's and they should be able to have a fun and frugal weekend!

We have even decided to grab a couple of those yummy muffins for our selves for our Saturday breakfast so we can just relax in our room a little longer and not feel rushed. Not to mention that it will also be much cheaper than running out for breakfast at a restaurant.

I will try to post some pictures of our weekend when we get back! Have a great and blessed weekend! God Bless, Kathy

Yummy Apple Pie!

Can you smell that crisp fall air? See the leaves changing colors?
Up here in New England that is what we are seeing and with the change to fall is the wonderful smells of Apple Pie!

I always look forward to fall for those wonderful apple pies. We went to a local apple orchard and we were able to buy some second apples for 38 cents a pound. So my husband bought us 23 pounds of apples.

We have made some fried apples and of course apple pie.

My dear friend Pam moved to upper state NY and she asked me a couple of weeks ago to write a post about making apple pie. Now that I cannot make her one, since she is no longer here, I told her that I would post the recipe on our blog.

Here is how we make our apple pie.

First I pick about 7-8 nice large apples. Peel and core and slice into nice size pieces. If you want the apples really soft you can slice them really thin. My husband likes a little bit of a bite so I do not cut them really thin.

After I place them in a bowl and add sugar, flour and cinn. I set this aside to let the sugar create a nice apple juice in the bottom of the bowl.


Then I prepare the pie crust.

Combine flour, salt and shortening.

Cut shortening into the flour mixture.

Then I ad 7-8 tablespoons of very cold water to form the pie crust
I add ice cubes to my cold water a trick that I learned from a friend to make sure that the crust really forms well.

Then form into a nice ball on a floured surface and I wrap with syran wrap and place in fridge for a little bit. I find that if the dough is nice and cool it rolls out better.

Cut dough into two equal parts and flour counter. Roll out dough for bottom half.

Carefully lift crust and lay into pie dish.

Add apples, pile up nice and high!:)

Add a few pats of butter. ( I often forget this part:) )

Roll out the other crust and lay onto the top of your apples.

I like to fold and tuck the upper crust under the bottom crust to seal the pie and to give me a nice thick crust.

Then I pinch the edges to give it a pretty look.

Add a few slits on top of the pie to release the steam.

Now it is time to bake. Oven temp 425 degrees 40-50 mins

I like to place foil around the edges so they will not over cook. I remove them about 10 mins before the pie is done.

The best way to know that the pie is done is when the juice begins to bubble out of the slits that you made in the top of the pie.

Yum, doesn't that look so good! It smells good too! Add some ice cream and you are all set!

Here is the Recipe:

Pie Crust-
1 cup of shortening
2 2/3 cup flour
1 tsp salt
7-8 tablspoons cold water (add a little bit of Ice)

Pie filling-
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 tsp cinn.
7-8 large apples peeled and sliced
3 tlb spoons of butter or margarine


Well Pam I hope that you enjoy!

God Bless, Kathy

Fried apples are also good so give that a try too!

Frugal Friday Make your own cards for free!

Make your Own Handmade Cards!

What do you do with all those cards once the holidays/birthdays are done and gone?
If you were like anyone else, you would probably just throw them a way after a while.
But. . .Did you know that cards are wonderful to use to remake FREE cards that are unique?!

So, keep all those cards!
You can make more cards, or bookmarks too!

I also use paper design sheets that someone gave me.
Other things to collect are magazine pictures that are really nice, and any other odd or end.



My mother had a birthday recently and I was able to make her a very nice card.
I used card stock, textured papers, and even some dried lilac leaves!

The "Happy Birthday" came from a Birthday card I had received. I tore it off the card to give it a nice look.

This design could be for birthday or anniversary.
The word "love" was printed on Card Stock off my computer.
I printed a whole sheet of inspirational words.

These last are for a Mother's day/or Birthday design.

My homemade cards are very special to all those who receive them.
I enjoy making them.

God Bless!

~Rebecca~

(I hope you give this a try!)

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Frugal Friday!

This week I thought I would mention a wonderful quick recipe that my family really enjoys!

One day about a year ago I was watching The Food Net Work and I saw Paula Deen making this really easy recipe.

Now I am always looking for some side dishes to add to our dinners to fill up all of our families hungry tummies! Bread is one item that I like to make. It fills them up and tastes great.
The problem is that I do not always have time to make bread that requires rising time.

This recipe is for Sour Cream Muffins. These really work out great and are quick and easy to make! Even your children could make these with a little help.
The Frugal part of my recipe is the flour. This recipe requires using Self Rising Flour.
I bought this the first time I made this recipe ,but I could not believe how much more the self rising flour cost compared to regular white flour.

So to the internet I went to find a recipe to make my own self rising flour and here it is.

Self Rising Flour:
1 cup of white flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt

So for every cup of flour you use you just add these amounts of the other items.

This works out great and you could even make some up for later use.

These muffins are so good you just whip them up before supper and they come out of the oven smelling great!




You have to try them ! You just won't believe how good they are!
Here is the recipe just check them out here at The Food net work.

I hope that you give them a try and let us know what you think of them!

Oh I just realized that I forgot take a an after picture of them I am sorry!


To find some other great Frugal ideas just check out Biblical Womanhood.

God Bless, Kathy

Check out the rest of our Blog @ In My Mothers Garden!

Frugal Friday! Cooking from Scratch!

I wanted to post today about frugal cooking!

Several years ago my wonderful husband found this great website called Hillbilly Housewife. On this site there are many wonderful recipes that you make all from scratch!

My daughter and I have made many of them.

We have made homemade pancake syrup, homemade chocolate syrup for some yummy chocolate milk.

There are recipes for pancakes and muffins too. There is so many recipes that I could not possibly name them all here.

It has been fun making the many different recipes from scratch and paying pennies for these items.

With a large family we go through a lot! So it is great to be able to make your own and not have to pay the higher store prices. Not to mention the fact that you also know what you are putting into your recipe.

Now I cannot say that I always make these items every week, but when things are really tight or I just do not have the item on hand it is wonderful to know that I can just go to this great site and find a recipe to use to make what I need.

There are many convenience food recipes as well.

Last night my daughter made this favorite bread for supper. It is great because it does not need any kneading and not much time for rising. It is called Quick yeast bread.


It really is very easy and so delicious so why not give it a try and check out this great web site Hillybilly Housewife !

God Bless, and have a great Week! Kathy

Home Made Sauce Fresh from the Garden!

Homemade Sauce fresh from the garden hmmm can you smell the aroma?

This is my frugal idea for this week.

Our garden has not done as well as I had hoped this year but the tomatoes sure are doing great!

This year my husband had bought a few tomato plants and some cherry tomato plants so we thought we would have enough to make salads and just enjoy.

Well shortly after my dad called and told us that he had some tomato plants for us and we now had 12 plants!

As you can guess we now have a lot of ripe tomatoes so it was time to do something with them!

Here is our sauce recipe!

First pick some ripe tomatoes, and wash them.






I than blanched them in boiling water for about 2-3 mins each until the skin began to peel away.



I removed them from the boiling water and placed them in some ice cold water to stop the cooking process.





I than proceeded to skin them and to cut into chunk size.




I placed them into a large pot to cook down.




(Note I did not remove the seeds but you could if you wanted too)

As this was simmering a little bit of foam began to form so I skimmed this off the top.





When the tomatoes were cooked down I added some other cans of tomato sauce that I had on hand and some paste.




I than added all of my spices. (oregano, salt, pepper, hot peppers) I also added some sugar I like our sauce sweet.



I let this simmer for a little while.

I now had my base sauce.



This past Sunday I cooked up some onions and ground beef. I added a little minced garlic and added some sauce to the pot. Yum this was so delicious over spaghetti!



Add some fresh bread or our pepperoni bread that we posted about here, and a salad and you have a very frugal meal that is absolutely delicious!

God Bless, Enjoy! Kathy

A Fun and Frugal Dino Craft!!

What do you do with all those empty laundry soap bottles hanging around? Throw them away? No! Inside those little bottles is a Dinosaur waiting to be born!

So, We are going to make a dinosaur craft/toy out of a couple of ALL laundry soap bottles! Completely Frugal and completely free, (not to mention better then throwing them away!) Don't think I can? Just wait and see!

First, remove the wrapper of an empty bottle. ANY bottle with a similar shape works great! Wash out the inside really good. (if you don't rinse it out really well you are going to have a BIG mess! Believe me!)
Also, this craft requires parental assistance!!

Next, make 2 marks with a marker like so on both sides of 1 bottle. The top mark is for the arms, the bottom for the legs.

Draw a leg template on a piece of paper. On a 2nd bottle trace the template.

With a craft knife or a good pair of scissors cut out the leg peice, cut out a 2nd from the other side of the bottle. (don't forget to give him a left and right leg! so flip the paper template over!)

OK, with what is left of the 2nd bottle- make a paper arm template, trace and cut.

So, we now attach the arms and legs to the 1rst bottle with the 2 marks. We do this by first drilling a small hole through the leg/arm and body and then drilling a screw. Does it look more like a dinosaur?

Using the remains of the 2nd bottle trace and cut out a tail shape. Screw it on , for extra strength I taped it on too. Although not shown, I also taped this little guys legs too.

The head is up to you! I used more bottle parts and kind of taped it on and"into" a head shape!

OK! Now we are ready to paint! Do whatever you want, or whatever your child wants! This part is more kid-friendly! depending on the paint you use, it will chip off. If you wrap the whole Dino with tape this will be less likely to happen! Glue on some googly eyes for a really great "look!"

So here is the finished project! Isn't he cute???

My little brother, Matt, actually won a contest for "Most Realistic Dino!"

So, start crafting!!

God Bless, Rebecca!