Today's Treasures

Now that summer has arrived, garage sale season is in full swing! This weekend is our local city-wide sale. (Although, city isn't quite the right size description of where I live.) I managed to get out of the house for a few hours to search for some treasures. I had a few things on my list, but mainly I was out looking for clothing for my kids to grow into, since I barely have anything in the next few sizes. I was able to find some nice kids clothing, a couple of garden tools I've been wanting, and a couple other miscellaneous items. Most of the girl's clothes were 25-50 cents, but pants for Adam were quite a bit higher than that. It's hard to find nice, inexpensive boys clothing when they get to be this age. They wear it all out!

It's so much fun browsing yard sales and uncovering treasures. Sometimes it's fun seeing how people value their junk, too. Like when people try to get $2 for a piece of trash or others who give away things that you might find value in. I prefer stumbling upon garage sales of the latter class. Today I found two of those! At my first sale of the day I was glancing over a few tables of junk when I heard someone say "the books are all free", so of course I had to turn and find out where these books were located. There, at my feet were a couple large boxes full of really nice books. I dug through and pulled out a stack that intrigued me. I found a couple old-school housewife books that are packed with tips on how to take care of your home, make things last longer, and keep stuff looking nice. For free, I might learn a few things! I also found a big bag of someone's old stamp collection in the free box. I peeked through a few of the envelopes when I got home, and there are a few sheets of unused stamps that originally sold for 2-10c a piece, as well as a few complete collectors sets. I plan to resell all of these. I have zero cost into them, so if there isn't much interest on eBay, I'm not out any money. If nothing else, I can show my kids how stamps worked when I was a kid. (Anybody else remember licking stamps?)

Years ago when I went yard saling, I looked for a lot of household and decorating items. Now my mommy status shows! At another sale, I found a huge tote of old puzzles and toys. Both Aaron and I have a love for all things vintage, and we prefer raising our children with wooden toys and old heavy duty favorites than battery operated, brightly colored cheap plastic stuff, so this was a great find. Growing up we had the Fisher-Price musical clock and it was one of my favorites. I could watch the hands go around for hours! (I literally did.) I had tried looking on eBay to buy one of them once, but found that I probably never would be able to afford spending that much on one toy, so I gave up the idea. They do make modern versions today, but they're made out of cheap plastic and aren't very sturdy and authentic. (I passed one of the new ones up at a yard sale last year.) Well, there wasn't a price on any of this stuff, so I asked, and the lady told me 25c a piece sounded good. It sounded good to me too, so I snatched up every piece I could find, and spent a total of $2 on all of the goodies pictured above. The bus even came with a complete set of 8 little people! Not only was I excited at this find, but Adam was a happy boy coming home, and he made sure all four of those new toys accompanied him at the table for lunch. :) 

Not a Maid

I have a hard time giving my four month old baby floor time. It's so good for her to kick and play and practice lifting her head, but it's not so good for her to be left alone on the floor, because ... brother. He sits on her, throws things at her, tries to make her eat and drink things, covers her with blankets, and smothers her with kisses. She doesn't last a minute before she's begging for me to step in and rescue her.

Today I decided to attempt another floor session, and distracted brother by asking if we should clean the bathroom or do the dishes. Of course I said we'd do the dishes. I'm not ready for him to help me with the bathroom. So we wandered out to the kitchen to get 'er done.

Adam is my little kitchen buddy. He has this little pot that he carries around with him, and if there's something he wants to reach, he'll turn it upside down and stand on it. If that's not readily available, he'll grab one of the 5-gallon buckets where I store my bulk foods. He is always at my side to stir the bread dough, watches as I spread butter on our toast in the morning, and waits for a sample taste from the supper pot. 

Normally when he helps me with dishes though, he'll stand at the rinse water and empty the drainer back into it, slurp water from a spoon, or else wait like a hawk to grab a cup or something that holds a substantial amount of water to enter his reach, which of course generally leads to a chance to wipe up a mess. We keep a pile of rags under the sink for such occasions, and he knows just where they are stored, so he gets to sop it up himself. 

Today's dish day was different. Instead of claiming his usual spot at the rinse water (which I really don't mind, except for the frustration of having to put things into the drainer numerous times), he set his pot at my other side, next to the dirty dishes. There he stood happily, handing me stuff to wash. When everything was cleared within reach, I moved the stack of plates closer for him. In went the first one with a splash. Only instead of slipping them in the water like we would, it was a full-contact level-with-the-surface smack. Then came the second one, only with much greater force, raining puddles of water and gobs of soap suds clear across the kitchen. I looked at the window in front of me, dripping with water, and soap covered the sill. Then turning to a sopping wet, sudsy little boy next to me, I laughed. Our eyes met and my little sidekick laughed right along, his face beaming with delight.   

There are so many ways I might never have experienced this split-second, day-making moment. I could've rejected his wanting to help. I could've placed him at his usual spot at the rinse water. I could've focused on the pools of water on the floors and countertop, or the soap residue on my windows. But I'm not a maid; I'm a mom. It's not clean dishes that matter. My job is to bring this one year old boy alongside me and teach him things. I get to spend time with him and show him that work can be fun. Too often we moms can be weighed down with a messy house and other stresses that come along with caring for a home, but I want to encourage you not to get caught up in the mundane. Now is our chance to invest in our children, for all too soon they will be grown up and wanting to take flight on their own. Let's teach them how. 

Cooking for a Crowd: Episode 4 - Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars {Recipe Included}

Here is it! My first dessert-themed Cooking for a Crowd episode. It has been a few months since I've been on the dessert rotation, but I'm back at it full time again. I realized as my turn approached that I have never calculated the actual cost going into my crowd desserts before. Baking often uses expensive ingredients such as butter, peanut butter, chocolate, nuts, fruit, or molasses, so it can be challenging finding a recipe for something sweet that doesn't make your budgeting attempts turn sour. Not knowing where to start, I figured a $5 budget sounded like a great goal. I had barely began running figures before I realized what kind of challenge I was up for. Both Aaron and my tastebuds agreed on cookies, and for you blog readers I wanted to stay in the realm of more traditional desserts, so you're not left feeling like you have to turn to something exotic in order to bake within your budget. 

Well what's more traditional than a chocolate chip cookie? I looked up a bunch of different recipes, but none of them were quite what I was looking for. I did find some great ideas though, and finally made my own recipe by comparing notes and adding some of my own touch.

Technically for a pan this size, I needed to use a 3 sticks of butter, which would've meant a cost of $2.25 for one ingredient! That would take up half of my budget. I needed to cut costs somewhere, so I decided to substitute half the butter for oil. But wait -- before you raise your eyebrows at the thought of oil in cookies, let me remind you of every other mouth-watering baked good that calls for oil. Cakes, muffins, brownies.... I hesitated at the idea at first (mainly because I knew I'd have to tell you all what I did), but recalling that most baked goods use oil instead of butter eased my mind enough to go ahead with it. By substituting 1.5 sticks of butter, I saved 64 cents. That may not seem like very much, but it's equal to the cost of a stick of butter. Plus, when you're working on a recipe with a final cost estimated between $5-$7, that's a 10% savings, which is pretty significant.

Another area I saved money was with the eggs. I found lots of recipes that had you divide them and only use the yolks, which I think is a waste of a perfectly good whole egg. If you're like me, whenever you have to divide an egg, you stick the other half in the refrigerator to use somewhere else only to end up forgetting about it. So in this recipe I only used whole eggs, which saved me another 18c. 

And finally, the other area where I cut my expenses was in chocolate chips. This might be a huge no-no for some of you chocolate lovers out there, but for those who are truly trying to reduce their grocery spending, you could save yourself quite a bit of cash by using less chocolate.

I bought the chocolate chips at our local bulk food store the day I did my baking, so I didn't have time to search for the best deal in town. They had regular-sized chips for $2.91/lb or mini chips for $2.62/lb. I chose the mini chocolate chips for two reasons: first, because they were obviously cheaper per pound than the regular size, but also because they would spread better throughout the pan, making it look like there are more chocolate chips than there really are. 

Comparing recipes again, I was "supposed to" use 4 cups of regular sized chocolate chips. The bag of mini chips that I had bought cost me $3 for 1.15 pounds, or 2 1/2 cups. There again, if I used the whole bag it would've been a huge cost for just one ingredient, so I decided to only use half, putting my chocolate chip expense at $1.50 for this recipe. Looking back, I feel like that was a good amount, but I would be hesitant to go any less than that. By using 1 1/4 cups of mini chocolate chips, there was just enough in each bite, but it didn't give you that extra gooey, loaded chocolatey center. So in my recipe below, I upped the amount to 2 cups to keep everybody happy. In being frugal, you don't want people to feel like you're ultra stingy or that they're being gypped. 

For serving, I cut them into 2" squares, making 48 pieces total. The one sheet pan was enough dessert for everybody (I was serving 40 people, for those of you who didn't catch that). They're such a great grab-and-go snack that we didn't bring home any leftovers. This amount would be perfect for a potluck, but if you're planning on serving them individually on plates, like as the main dessert for an event, I might recommend cutting them a little bit bigger. You'll have to decide what fits your needs best.

My total cost into the dessert was about $5.24. My original total would've been $9.36 if I hadn't cut expenses in butter, eggs, and chocolate chips. By looking for ways to reduce cost, I ended up saving a total of $4.12. That's 44% saved! What an exciting amount! 

For cost per serving, the total equaled 11c per square (and would have been 19c before savings). 

The Garden is IN!

These past couple weeks the weather has given us the go-ahead to put some seeds in the dirt! Aaron tilled up part of the garden and we direct-sowed lettuce, spinach, beets, corn, and wildflower seeds. I know I started my seedlings extra early this year, but I feel like I haven't really been on top of anything else in the garden. Maybe after a few years of successful gardening our "wing-it" nature is coming out. I don't know. Yesterday I realized that planting zucchini never crossed my mind when we were sowing seeds! We only want one hill to have some to eat fresh since I still have a lot of shredded zucchini in the freezer, but since zucchini boats are one of our favorite summertime meals, I had better not forget! I still have cucumbers to plant as well, and maybe okra if I decide I want some of those too. I'll have to check my lists from previous years to make sure I'm not forgetting anything else!

Last year this time, Adam was crawling all over the place (and fast!), and it was so hard to keep him from crawling all over our mini plants. This year he's a little helper and has to do whatever daddy does, but we still have to keep an eye out for where he's walking until the plants are tall enough to see. Here he's helping plant the corn!

I'd been waiting for spinach, and it's finally coming up! I hope to freeze quite a bit.

One thing we did different this year is plant our pumpkins in pits instead of hills. They need lots of water for optimal growth when the fruit starts forming, and we though this might be a good way to keep them from drying out too quickly in the summer heat. We will be running our sprinkler again this year, but this way it should be more efficient with them being below ground level, instead of on hills above ground. I'm excited to see if it helps! The pumpkins are doing really well and are off to a great start having been planted early. We stuck them in the little greenhouse for awhile because they craved direct light even more so than other seeds I've tried growing in a kitchen window. One of the first nights out there got a little cold, so Aaron put a heater out there for the night. Problem is, we forgot to turn it off during the day until we got home later in the afternoon. We scorched a couple of plants, but the majority of them were saved.

I transplanted the tomatoes and peppers this week, and they aren't doing so swell. I'm not sure what they are needing, but the plants just look sickly. We were gone over memorial day weekend and returned to some super dry pepper plants. I lost one of four jalapeños, but the rest perked up fine with a drink. Now that they're in the garden they aren't looking very good again and I'll be lucky if any of them make it. The bell peppers all look great, thankfully. 

The tomatoes are another sad story, but I'll leave that for another day. Hopefully by then they will look better and there will be something worth capturing on camera! I need to douse them in water tonight.