One of my favorite ‘arguments’ of the people who refuse to use coupons is that: “They’re only good for junk food products.”

Granted, if you’re the kind of shopper who hits only farmer’s markets and co-ops (good on you, btw) couponing will do you little good. But those of us who hit up ‘regular’ markets will stand to save a lot of money on some surprising items.

So here’s what I have saved money on in the past 3 months:

• Orange Juice
• Yogurt
• Egg Noddles
• Frank’s Hot Sauce (for free!)
• Organic Eggs
• Organic Milk
• Cereal (Special K, Total, Fiber One)
• Chicken Broth
• Brown Rice
• Refrigerated Dough
• Cheese
• Frozen Veggies
• Mayonnaise
• Mustard
• Foil
• Storage Containers
• Freezer Bags
• Regular Bags
• Garbage Bags
• Band-Aids
• Neosporin
• Tooth Paste
• Mouth Wash
• Whitening Strips
• Tampons
• Toilet Paper
• Razors
• Shampoo
• Acne Medication
• Laundry Detergent
• Bleach
• Make-Up
• Pregnancy Test
• Rechargeable Batteries

And that’s just the stuff I need for my household. There are coupons for things ranging from diapers to hearing aid batteries in addition to the food items. And then you get the occasional $ or % off entire order coupon.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I was reading Frugal Dad this morning, because I enjoy a different perspective on things, but I had to laugh a bit at today’s post.

Just because you live in a neighborhood, rather than a 5-acre ranch, it doesn’t mean the same rules of self-sufficiency do not apply.  There are a number of things you can do to make your small homestead more efficient, like building a square foot garden for vegetables, installing a clothesline to lessen the energy demand from your dryer, and reducing your waste by starting a compost pile (also great for gardening!).

I’m not laughing at his advice, because those really ARE great ideas. I’m laughing because the fact I live in a neighborhood rather than a ranch is exactly why the only one those I can do is plant a very small garden, so long as the plants don’t grow higher than my fence and no one can see it from the front yard.

The closer you get to the city, the more draconian the HOA agreements get. When an area has high property values, they tend to want to keep them that way even if it means totally inconveniencing everyone in the neighborhood.

The first thing that jumped out at me when I read through the agreement was that I couldn’t build a pool in my front yard, which is perfectly reasonable. The second thing was that clothes lines were specifiically forbidden anywhere on the property. I plan to purchase a portable standing clothes tree I can take down when I’m done and hang my laundry outside anyway, but still. And compost piles are verboten, because they can really stink in hot weather. I’m going to ask if I can have a contained pile in one of the modern, stink-proof compost rollers, but I have a feeling I’ll be shot down.

I’m also not allowed to have ANY livestock. Not a chicken, not a goose, not a goat, not even a pet house pig. I can’t do any activity that reaches a certain decibel level for more than 8 hours a day, making DIY projects drawn out and making some home businesses impossible. I can’t plant more trees for shade. I can’t put out solar panels (eyesore) and any water barrels have to be totally hidden behind the house because heaven forbid it offends my neighbors delicate sensibilities.

Not that I’m really crying all that hard over my HOA. The neighborhood is lovely because all the houses are reasonably taken care of and the association gives owners a reasonable length of time to fix things when a complaint is made before issuing a summons or a fine. 3 bedroom houses are still selling at over $300,000 here, so I guess they’re doing something right.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Just a quickie tutorial today. One of these throw pillows will take you maybe half an hour if you’ve got a sewing machine. If you’re sewing by hand, they’ll take longer but you can still handle them with a simple running stitch.

You need a pillow form and a piece of fabric as wide as the pillow form and twice as long plus about 5 inches.

Hem the short ends.

With the fabric right side down, place the pillow form on top and about 3/4 of the way up on one side. Mark this on the sides, then turn sew the sides with the right sides together to that mark.

Repeat with the other side. The opening edges will overlap. This is normal and what creates the envelope opening.

This is the end result. Now slip it rightside out and stuff the pillowform in.

Voila, a pillow you can easily slip the case off of so you can shove it in the washer.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I’m going to skip the ‘we’re all beautiful in unique ways’ and get straight to the practicalities of our beauty routines. They can get really expensive really quickly if you’re not watching your spending, usually as a result of a ‘it’s only X amount of dollars’ syndrome. Sure $10 for a new mascara isn’t expensive, but then you add a new lipliner, lipstick, foundation, concealer, blush, eyeliner, eyeshadow, hair cut/dye, mani/pedicure, shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, facial soap, styling product, styling tools, moisturizer…

1. Get pretty from the inside out. You’ll need less product on the outside if you’re healthy. Drink lots of water for healthy skin (and to avoid nasty dehydration headaches – which is what hangovers are). Get enough sleep and you’ll naturally minimize the bags under your eyes. Get enough exercise so you’re not piling the makeup on your eyes to draw attention away from a double chin. Eat properly so your nails, hair and skin get enough nutrients and you don’t need to buy fancy products to put them back in.
2. Adjust your ideals. The beauty ideal in the US is unrealistic unless you have a full-time styling team to spend 4 hours doing your hair end make-up in the morning and to follow you around all day for touch ups. Oh, and you would have to somehow Photoshop yourself in real life. Get a grip on reality and recognize that it’s our ‘flaws’ that make us look human and unique features can actually add to your face.
3. Know that you’re one hot lady. If you know you look fabulous, you will look fabulous. If you slouch and look like you think you’re an eyesore, you will be one. You can look ‘polished’ without makeup if you have the bearing and confident attitude of someone who spent hours in front of the mirror that morning.
4. Consolidate and Reduce. Do you REALLY need the entire new MAC eyeshadow palette or can you settle for just 3 or 4? Can you use one of the 3-in-1 blush/lipcolor/shadow products? Do you really need 5 kinds of soap in the shower? How many different fragrance lines from Bath and Body Works do you really need? A lot of the time we buy into the consumer frenzy and buy a million and one ‘new’ products that are really just the same thing in different packaging. Pigment is pigment and soap is soap.
5. Only use what you need. Don’t slather everything on. You only need a quarter sized amount of most hair products, and you don’t need half a cup of bodywash to make a satisfying lather.
6. Use every last bit. Dont’ waste the last 1/4 of a product because of poorly designed packaging. Scoop the last of the lipstick out and put it in an old lipgloss pot (this is also a fun way to combine multiple colors into a new one). Swish some water into your shampoo bottle and get that last wash out. Turn that lotion bottle upside down and shake, shake, shake.
7. Let your hair grow. No, I’m not advocating you stop shaving your legs. Longer hair styles need fewer maintenance cuts. A pixie cut needs work every 3-4 weeks, but long layers only need a trim every few months. Shorter styles also generally need more product to style.
8. Work with your hair. If your hair is naturally stick straight, don’t aim for a wavy or curly style for daily wear. Curly-haired ladies, don’t try to straighten your hair everyday. You’ll use less product, waste less time, and won’t require fancy heat styling tools or chemical treatments  in order to get what you want.
9. D.I.Y. There are plenty of salon treatments you can do at home, ranging from dyeing your hair to waxing to a manicure. A quick google search will bring up tons of tutorials and videos on how to do these yourself. (If you are bleaching blonde or going red, get your hair dyed at the salon, you don’t want to mess those up.)
10. Make your own. If it exists, someone has made a homemade (and possibly green) version of it. Try bathnbodyrecipes.com.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I was supposed to finish my throw pillows yesterday so I could post a tutorial, but instead I spent 2 hours waiting for Toyota to finish my Safety and Emissions inspections.

Instead, today I’m just going to point out that I joined Twitter (well, actually I joined before privately but never bothered to use it). You can see my feed in the sidebar, and I’ll probably be using Twitter to mostly pass along links and such that I don’t have time or space for here in the main blog.

I also added a ‘similar post’ function to the RSS feed. Hopefully it works.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Sometimes my generation really amazes me with their sense of entitlement. I know most of us grew up in the ‘Me’ decade, but I really want to slap people sometimes.

Case in point: My buddy was doing the usual woe-is-me, ‘I am so horribly busy I don’t have time to cook and must get take-out, why am I getting so fat” whine. I know she only works 8 hours a day (gov’t worker) and her commute is 30 minutes each way, after subtracting another 8 hours for sleep, that leaves her with seven hours of free time (not to mention the weekends).

So I asked her what the hell she was doing with all her free time, and she came up with a laundry list of luxuries like gym time, checking her e-mail/facebook/whatever, tv time, volunteering, spending time with her kinda-boyfriend-but-not-really, and socializing with the girls, apparently completely unaware that those were wants and not needs. Of course she insisted those were all necessities,  so I asked her if she had time in the morning to do prep work (chopping and such) so all she has to do when she comes home is literally cook the food.

No, it took her two hours to get ready in the morning. What the hell are people doing in the morning that takes that long? The answer is usually hair/makeup and staring at the computer monitor, but once again, no one seems to recognize that being able to take that much time in the morning is a luxury, and one you can serious cut down on.

Seriously, let’s see:

• < 10 for shower
• 5 minutes to towel dry hair/brush teeth/pee
• 5 minutes for bowl of cereal
• 5 minutes to dress
• 5 minutes for makeup
• 10 minutes to dry hair
• 5 minutes to find keys/check purse/decide to change shoes.

That’s what, 45 minutes? Hell, even with 15 minutes added for obsessively checking your inbox, it’s still only an hour. Yes, it’s possible to do hair and makeup in 15 minutes, it just requires people to recognize that having a complex style is a luxury, and not one everyone can afford. And notice that spending 30 minutes reading the blog-o-sphere is not on there. I’m not knocking you if you are high maintenance or are internet addicted, but please recognize that these are luxuries.

Anyway, back to Whiny McWhineyPerson. I could not convince her that she had plenty of time to cook if she would just make a few adjustments, like only checking her e-mail once a day, cooking with kinda-sorta-not-really boyfriend instead of always going horizontal, or spending one night a week at home to cook and freeze meals.  I may have convinced her that at least buying SmartChoice dinners was cheaper and possibly better for her than Sweet and Sour Pork every night.

I also may have convinced her to stop talking to me because I’m some sort of crazed-housewife, money-obsessed, hard-ass, but at least I won’t have to listen to her crying about her life and then not doing a damn thing to make it better. I swear the more time I spend in the personal finance sphere, the less patience I have for people digging themselves into a financial hole and then bitching about it. Sacrifices must be made, so suck it up.

Popularity: unranked [?]

If there’s one thing I do right in my life, it’s make an amazing grilled cheese sandwich. I highly recommend using a cast iron skillet or griddle, but any heavy frying pan will do. Just remember to keep the heat on the low side. You don’t want to end up with a blackened sandwch with cold cheese.

Cast of Characters

• 2 slices sandwich bread – Now is not the time to get fancy, regular, white, sandwich bread is fine.
• ~ 4 very thin slices of cheese -  You need a lower fat cheese that melts well. I recommend Muenster, Mozzarella or even ‘American Cheese’. Cheddar by itself will turn into a greasy mess unless you mix it with a better melter, this works for other cheeses as well.
• ~1-2 Tbsp butter – Yes, butter. Margarine has too much water and will evaporate before the sandwich is done. If you absolutely must do lower fat, why are you eating a grilled cheese sandwich? (Olive oil lightly brushed on the bread will work too.)

“Directions”

Butter your bread. You want to give it the thinnest, most even shmear you can. If you use too much, this sandwich will sit in the pit of your tummy like a White Castle belly bomber. If your bread starts to tear, you can try melting the butter and applying it with a pastry brush.

Get your bread, butter side down, and start layering on the cheese. Less is more, so make sure all the bread is covered but don’t pile it on 3″ thick.

Let it do it’s thing in the pan and start peeking underneath after about a minute. When it’s golden brown, flip it. If you end up with blond edges like here, squish your sandwich a bit around the edges with a spatula. (It’s a good idea to squish anyway, so your cheese adheres properly to the bread.)

When the bottom is golden, rescue your sandwich.

A properly cooked grilled cheese will be crispy enough to cut in half with a plastic spatula. All grilled cheese sandwiches taste better when cut in half with a spatula. Everyone knows this.

I really shouldn’t have written this post before breakfast. Just look at the crunchy bread and slighly oozy cheese…

Some people try to add things to their grilled cheese besides cheese. I consider this a form of blasphemy, but if you’re going to be a dirty heathen to try to make this nutritious, at least do it properly:

• Sandwich your extra ingredients between two layers of cheese to make sure everything stays together.
• If you’re going to add meat, make sure it’s cut razor thin. Ask for ‘shaved’ if you’re buying lunch meat at the deli counter.
• Veggies should generally NOT be added to grilled cheese sandwiches unless they are precooked and drained. If you are a tomato person, either used roasted and dried tomatoes or have a few slices on the side. Or Campbell’s cream of tomato soup. No homemade stuff. Campbell’s.

Popularity: unranked [?]

But cleaning isn’t expensive you say? Next time you’re buying cleaning supplies, take a look at how much a refill pack of Swiffers is.

• Do your cleaning yourself. Maid service is a waste of money.  So you’re a busy, busy person and just don’t have time to ever clean? I call bullshit. Simply by doing 15 minutes a day, you can keep a small house or apartment in reasonable shape. At the very least, save those calls to the Merry Maids until you’re moving out of the apartment or you just found out your parents are coming in 8 hours.
• Make your own cleaning supplies. I’ll spare you a rehash of everyone else’s posts and just send you here for lots of eco-friendly, homemade cleaners that actually work. You may need a little elbow-grease, but they’ll clean your house just fine.
• Skip the paper towels. The next time you accidentally bleach a towel or it starts to get ratty, rip it into cleaning rags. Old cotton cloth (t-shirts, sheets, etc.) make good cleaning cloths and especially good dusters.
• Don’t buy into the hype. This usually is a result of watching evening television with commercials for all sorts of ‘miracle’ products. You don’t need them, honest.
• Do daily maintenance cleaning. You won’t need to waste an entire bottle of cleaner to take on a stubborn stain if you take care of things while they happen. Every day you should wipe down your counters, stove tops, mirrors and faucets, take a brush to the toilets (no cleaner necessary), squeegee the water off of your shower walls, sweep the floors of visible debris , and wipe up any obvious spills or stains. This should take maybe 15 minutes and you can do it during commercial breaks.
• Don’t break out the vacuum unless you absolutely need it. Try to get a carpet sweeper (shouldn’t cost more than $25) and make sure you have a decent broom and dust pan. Not only will you save electricity, but you won’t piss off your neighbors if you want to clean at 2am.
• Put some effort into it. With the proper effort, you don’t NEED expensive cleaners that do all the work for you. Sometimes you may need to whip out a scrub brush, but in the end it will help out your arm muscles, your wallet, your lungs and the environment.
• Bring your coupons. If you are going to buy commercial cleaning products, be on the lookout for coupons. Almost every week Lysol or Clorox has a coupon out for some new product, and if you wait three or four weeks after the coupon appears, they’ll usually be on sale in stores as well.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I will say in advance that some of these recipes require a few specialty ingredients, but these are all available online or from food wholesalers and that things like flavored syrups keep forever because of the high sugar content. The initial investment can be a little eyebrow raising, but you can always split the cost with a friend with similar taste.

In the end, these are cheaper than buying them at your favorite coffee shop regularly and being able to pour myself a mug of delicious hot cocoa definitely helps me refrain from turning that thermostat back up to 75. A couple of pots of these also make a fantastic winter tasting party.

Chai
Anal retentive note: There’s no reason to tack on ‘tea’ to the end of chai. That’s what chai means. That’s like calling something a “chocolate-coffee mocha”.

There are a ton of chai recipes out there, so feel free to adjust if you don’t like a certain spice or find one flavor overpowers another. This recipe is for instant chai powder (which is what you usually get in coffee places), but you can always brew a pot the ‘correct’ way.

• 1 1/2 cup non-fat dry milk
• 1 1/2 cup non-dairy creamer
• 2 cups sugar or substitute
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground clove
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground clove
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
• 1 1/2 cup instant tea powder

Mix 2 Tbsp of the mixture with 1 cup boiling water for every cup of chai.

Continue reading »

Popularity: unranked [?]

Ronzoni has always been my pasta brand of choice, so when I spotted the new Smart Taste line in a “buy 2″ deal, I took the plunge.

I know that whole wheat pasta is better for you, but I’ve found the texture of every kind we’ve tried to be utterly repulsive. Ronzoni Smart Taste is a white wheat pasta, but it’s been altered to have 25% of your daily fiber and 30% of your calcium (along with a bunch of B vitamins), making it a good choice for people wishing for the benefits of whole wheat without the whole wheat taste or texture.

I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between Smart Taste elbows and the standard Ronzoni. It had the same flavor, texture and cooking time. It baked up the same in Macaroni and Cheese and also tasted fine with just a little butter as a side dish. There were no complaints at all when I served it to company.

Assuming I can keep finding good deals on it (or some sweet coupons come out) I’ll happily keep using it. It’s a little bit more expensive than the standard blue box, but the price is worth the extra nutrients.

Popularity: unranked [?]