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.

Yard Sale Season Begins

It's officially yard sale season! Memorial Day week marks it for me, since that's when the sale that I look forward to every year is held. There's a certain one I've been going to for 7 years now that I mark on my calendar as soon as the new year begins.

These past few weeks I have had so much stuff coming and going from my house! Not only bags of nice, heavily discounted yard sale items, but also bags of children's clothing that friends have been giving me to sort through! I have been extra blessed to be the recipient of such goods, as not only does it save us money, but I have been running out of clothing that fits my kids since they keep growing. I was hoping to hold out until yard sale season to have to go shopping for them (since that's when I can get good stuff cheap), and now that said season has arrived, my stock of clothing is growing again! I just need to buy more storage totes now. I have piles of clothing in several rooms that are waiting to be tucked away for future use. I'm sure my poor husband is as ready to have his studio back as I am my dining and living rooms. 

I pictured a few of my more exciting bargains in the photo above:

A 50c watering can. I have had one on my wish list for two years now! It sure makes watering my seedlings more convenient. I had been using a drinking glass, but by only being able to dump water over top of the plants I felt like I was harming them with the extra weight on their fragile leaves. Now I can water at the base of the plant with the nice, long spout. 

A nice salad dressing jar for 50c. This one has recipes along the side of the jar for 8 different salad dressings. Instead of measuring ingredients of bigger quantity, like oil or vinegar, it has fill lines. So you measure your spices/herbs, and add oil until you reach the fill line for that particular dressing. I'm excited about this one because we eat a lot of salads in the summertime and this way I won't have to resort to Pinterest every time I want to try making a new dressing. 

A new, unopened package of herbal tea bags for 50c. I like to have several varieties of tea around for company and cool evenings, and what's better than finding a brand new box for 50 cents!? 

An office organizer @ 50c. We've been working on reducing clutter around our place, and one area that seems to collect stuff is a dresser we have in our dining room. I dedicated the top drawer to office supplies, and purchased a drawer organizer awhile back to hold miscellaneous items like scissors, tape, sticky notes, and pens. Only I happened to use the pen compartment for Sharpies and dry erase markers, leaving our pencil and pen collection... still on top of the dresser. So I got this handy, dandy organizer to give those pens a place to call home, all tucked away out of sight.  

A 50c light timer. Not sure what its official name is, but I have been wanting one of these, too. Especially since we killed a couple pumpkin plants because we forgot to turn the heater off in our greenhouse during the day a couple weeks ago. All you do is plug the timer into your outlet and plug your appliance, lights, or whatever desired device into the side of the timer. It has a 24-hour clock on it that you can set when you want it to go on or off, and you can even set it to have several on/off cycles in a day! It was brand new too, so that's an extra bonus!

Several packs of stickers @ 25c each. Aaron and I are starting a choir with all the young kids in our church group, and we want to make it fun by having a reward chart where they can earn stickers by doing good deeds such as perfect attendance, bringing their book every week, helping set up/clean up at practice, etc., and bigger prizes will be awarded when we reach so many stickers on the chart. I was able to get 5 baggies full of sticker books and sheets that will be perfect for that. This was a huge savings, and probably about my best deal at this yard sale. 

A muslin swaddle blanket for $1. Now that it's summertime and the weather is warmer, I have been needing lightweight blankets so I don't have to resort to my flannel receiving blankets and baby quilt. I still swaddle Jewel at night, so this will be nice to keep her cool while feeling secure and safe. Plus it will double as a nursing cover!

A bundle of skirt/pant hangers for 50c. I seem to break several of them a year, and since I don't do a whole lot of retail shopping, I don't get a whole lot of purchases that come with hangers. These ones are made of harder plastic, so they aren't the super cheap ones that don't last! 

Winter clothing. Now that I have a girl to dress, I need to be thinking ahead and plan for her. This warm, fluffy coat was $3 and looks practically brand new. Three dollars might sound like a lot to spend on one piece of clothing, but I find people tend to mark their winter stuff up quite a bit when it comes to kids boots and coats. Probably because they cost so much new and they only get one seasons' use out of it per kid. This was an excellent deal for a coat, especially with as good of condition it was in. The boots were $2, which is also an amazing price considering what it is and the fact that they barely show signs of wear! They won't fit Jewel for another year and a half or two, but one must act when good deals are found. A lot of the baby/kids stuff was priced pretty high for yard sales (yes, $1 is high. And yes, I did purchase some anyway), but these two items were exceptions. 

So there's a peek into some of my yard sale finds! Have you come across any good deals this summer yet?

More Seed Starting

Well a lot has happened in the gardening area these last two weeks. The weather has been warming up, sun has been shining, and the last frost date is approaching. Our garden plot is borderline dry but enough where Aaron could take the tractor and discs out to turn up some dirt this week. The area is big enough we get to prepare it like real farmers! We'll use the walk-behind tiller right before planting. I'm itching to get my spinach and lettuce in. It's kind of annoying that our garden stays wet so long with it being as low as it is (but somehow is bone dry in the summer), because technically early seeds could've been planted already. But I do have my little seedlings to watch, so I guess they will have to hold me over until next week when I can plant seeds in the actual garden. 

This week I did something new that I had been wanting to try. I started pumpkins indoors! Since they need warm soil in order to germinate, we can't plant them outside until the beginning of June. We've had a rough time starting some of our squashes in the past and I think it may be because of trying to get them in too early, even though it was always after the last spring frost date. By starting them in pots, they have an extra month growing time before the garden and weather is ready for them. Plus, most growers in our area don't have pumpkins ready until early-mid October, but the demand for them begins in September. I'm hoping that by starting them early I can have an earlier harvest and make sales before our area has an influx of them.

We've been trying to look for ways I can make extra income while also caring for our children. Options seem kind of limited unless I build a fence or cage for the toddler, but one thing I can do is expand our garden some and try putting a stand out by our decently-busy road. That's another thing I've wanted to do for awhile, but the past two summers we have been super busy, we've needed lots of produce for our own canning and eating, and I was pregnant both years, so we never got around to selling any "extra". This year however, we decided to cut way back on our garden size since we have a nice amount of canned goods left from previous years, and also because Aaron decided it was more profitable for him to spend the time he would've been helping me weed and use that time to work one of his various money-making jobs instead, since that would put more money in the bank than trying to save a few dollars by growing our own produce (as much as it sounds like trying to get out of weeding). We prefer not buying grocery-store produce if we don't have to, and still hope to have enough home-grown vegetables to feed us through this next year, but this year our goal is to save money to put toward buying a house, so it seemed like a good idea to cut back and spend more time on money-making stuff. By having a smaller garden area, I'll be able to weed it myself during the day while the kids get some fresh air. But if you know us, we don't really know how to downsize. You'll have to watch and see if we're able to leave some of the garden area unplanted! 

After moving my tomato seedlings to larger pots, I was having a rough time figuring out the right amount to water the plants. I ended up killing one of our paste/sauce tomatoes, and this poor plant was all wilted. I was expecting it to wither up and die as well, but looking closer, I saw it was all still green and healthy looking aside from the fact that it looked blown over. I gave this one a little extra water than the rest and the picture below is how it looks just a few days later! I'm still trying to get the hang of water in the different soil, but at least it's standing upright again!

When I started my seeds in the little starter pellets I put two seeds in each, so if one never came up I wouldn't have to worry about replanting and losing a week or so of growing time. My seeds were a few years old, and a large percentage of the pellets only grew one seedling. I've never had so few seeds not come up, but I was going to weed the extra one out anyway, so it worked out fine. I had seeds come up in all (maybe all but one? I can't remember) the little pellets. When I transplanted them a couple weeks ago, I weeded out the weakest from the ones that grew more than seed. I gave the extras to Adam so he could feel like he was planting too, but then decided to try putting some in a pot with soil anyway just to see what would happen. I salvaged two of those extras and put them in the same pot, marking it so I could watch and see how it did. One of them withered and died, but I still have this one growing just as strong as some of my other tomato plants! I wasn't expecting it to do much since I had disturbed its little roots, but seeing it thriving now makes me glad I rescued it. I just wished I would've thought to do it with the other ones I pulled. If nothing else I could've put the extra fruit out at a little garden stand!

Sad Season for Poinsettia

It was doing so good.

But then something happened, and I have no idea what.

My poinsettia is losing its leaves.

It looks so sad! Looking back in my archives, I see it dropped the green leaves last spring too, so this must be normal, unless I'm consistently doing something wrong. I wish there was a way to prevent it because the plant had been looking really nice! The red leaves are all still intact and there has been quite a few more new ones growing since I last updated you all. You can see in the picture above that there are three groups of red leaves. I hope they keep on growing to become full flowers and don't end up falling off like the rest of them. I was getting rather excited to see the new growth! I wish I was able to take a picture right before it started shedding to show you how full it was looking. Oh well. It happened. We'll see what this summer brings. Do you think it will keep growing or fall apart completely?

This is what it looked like last April (2016).