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Yesterday, I made homemade pasta from scratch.  It was delicious and I used an extremely simple recipe from All Recipes that had four ingredients in it.  It did not take me very long, and it got me to thinking about how many simple things in life we don’t do, that cost us money.  Our society has become very focused on ‘convenience’.  We have Campbells Soup at Hand cups and bagged cookie mixes and drive-thru’s, and instant oven cleaners, and all sorts of products designed to ’simplify’ our lives.  But, are these things really making our lives better or are they costing us money and possibly making us less healthy and happy overall?   (more…)

The Twelve Days of Christmas have gotten pretty expensive this year.  So, I’ve compiled my own list of the twelve days of Christmas- twelve things you can and should do this Christmas season to save yourself a little green at what tends to be a time of year when a lot of peoples budgets go into the red.   (more…)

I was inspired by Money Saving Mom’s Baking Day and I decided to do my own little mini-baking day this weekend.  I have been keeping up with my modified once-a-month cooking plan and so I thought a little baking to help be prepared for other meals might be in order.   (more…)

We filled the entire 17.0 cu foot freezer we bought a few weeks back.  It is too much to have our food and the dogs food in the one freezer.  We bought a chest freezer to store their stuff in, since it doesn’t have to be as organized (it just has to be sorted by type of meat).  Now, the upright can hold our stuff.  Good thing, because hunting season is coming up and we are hoping for some free meat!  

What do you think, wise purchase or extravagant to have 2 freezers?  I felt OK about this because it is extra-paycheck month, and because I am bringing in a lot of extra $ this month from various side work.  Plus, I think they will pay for themselves based on all the savings from buying in large bulk orders & getting stuff for free.  Besides, we’ll have them for 20 years (hopefully, knock on wood!)  My DF thinks I’m crazy because we now have over $1000 in freezers… 

I finally got some pics uploaded yesterday that offer you a little tour through my frugal world.  I hope you enjoy them.  We’ll be back tomorrow with a continuation of the How To Coupon And Have a Life series.  In the meantime, enjoy my stockpile pics and coupon binder pics! (more…)

The cold weather is approaching here.  We’re starting to ready ourselves for a long cold winter, lol.  The good thing about winter is that I don’t like to drive in it, so we save a lot of gas money.  I also don’t like to go out in it, so if we had entertainment expenses (which we now do not) we’d save a lot of money on those.  But, aside from the stay-inside-and-never-leave plan, here are 5 more Frugal Fall Tips: (more…)

I have a busy cooking day planned.  I’m going to try my hand at making pie crust from scratch! And then I’m going to bake some apple pies.  I’m also going to make a huge batch of Pesto to freeze with the last of our basil before winter sets in.  

If my pie crusts turn out well, I’ll share the recipe here.  I’m working on compiling a list of simple basic frugal recipes.  My goal one day is to make everything from scratch, not only to avoid paying the premium for convenience foods but also to improve my health.  There’s so much bad food and so many bad chemicals out there, I want to return to the simpler days when everything was home cooked and delicious and didn’t slowly kill you.  

I’m also working on compiling a list of 101 ways to save money on groceries, hopefully it will be up by the end of next week. Stay tuned (or subscribe! please subscribe!) so you don’t miss it.  

This past weekend, our freezer broke  For us, having a freezer is a necessity not a luxury.  We raw feed our puppies, and since they go through about 60 pounds of meat a month between the two of them, it is essential that we buy in bulk when meat is very cheap or that we have a place to store meat we got for free from hunter friends.  I also like to cook a bunch of meals at one time and freeze them.  So, it wasn’t a question of whether we would buy a new freezer or not, it was more a question of “who can we buy a freezer from tonight at 7 PM on a Saturday that will deliver it tomorrow before all 500 pounds of food in our existing warm-box goes bad.”   (more…)

This weekend we said a sad goodbye to our freezer  We paid $150 (plus $25 for delivery) back in May for a 17.6 cu upright freezer, which I proceeded to fill and fill with food.  Well, our freezer began to cry for help, letting us know he wasn’t happy with his over-full state by refusing to keep foods on the bottom 2 shelves cold.  I’m going to post more on the freezer we bought and why at a later point, but suffice to say, we ended up with a lighter pocketbook. (more…)

What is a money pit purchase, you might ask.  It is a term I just borrowed to refer to a purchase that just keeps on costing after it has been made.  Now, to some extent, most of the stuff that we buy has a cost that continues to mount even after you’ve made the purchase and brought it home.  For example, after you shell out $1500+ for that brand new LCD tv, you have to pay for the electricity to use it and maybe even for cable TV with HD service to enjoy it.  Some items, like swimming pools and pets for example, end up costing thousands and thousands of dollars over long (15-20 year) periods (although the joy these items add to some people’s lives can far outweigh the cost). But, there are some particular items that just scream out “Money Pit Purchases” to me- items that continue to cost us money without really adding any noticeable value to our lives.  I’ve made a list of a few of them here: (more…)