Monday, August 29, 2011

Freezer Jam

Woohoo is's that time of the year again!

This past year I researched how to make freezer jam and after I tasted how delicious my a relatives Strawberry freezer jam was I was hooked. I waited until the strawberries went on sale for 99 cents a container and then I bought a bunch!!!

I followed this Freezer Jam Recipe with the exception of using less sugar.











I love freezer jam over canned jam because:
1. It uses a ton less sugar then canned jam
2. It can be frozen up to 1 year
3. Tastes delicious

Here is my strawberry jam - the first batch I blended a little too much

I even bought the cute freezer jam containers
What we eat it on:
1. Toast
2. Bagel with cream cheese
3. Pancakes
4. Angel Food Cake

I'm sure you could think of tons more things to eat it on! My husband loves this stuff and loves sneaking a spoonful when he can!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Happy 4th of July!

The best fireworks show I ever saw was the one that was put on 150 feet away, we could feel the ash raining down on us, but it was so worth it!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Foot-Five Deals 6-29-11

Caution: The deals and samples I am about to expose are shockingly frugal, the author of this post cannot be held responsible for shortness of breath, light-headedness or the syncope that will follow!

Today was a great day for deals! My #1 blog for authentic samples and deals has been MoneySavingMom! I  check the site almost daily for free samples and weekly deals.  Crystal, the author, is a young mom/wife who lives on a budget and whose values are closely aligned to my own. If you love saving money and haven’t checked her blog out yet, you should!

Staples was having a sale on Charmin (16 double rolls) for $4.99 (regular price 8.99). I used a 15% off coupon which brought the price down to $4.25! I was careful to print the ad along with the coupon in case the Staples didn’t have the Charmin marked $4.99 on the shelf!

Staples-stickies (post it notes) for $1 with coupon (regular price $5). I am so happy to found these at such a good price since my new job (I start on Friday) will require tedious amounts of paperwork and I’ll need several thousand sticky-notes to stay organized!

My final purchase at Staples was a container of 40 small binder clips for $1 with coupon (regular price $4.29).  I am excited to also put these to good use upon starting my new job. I even picked up the colored lot (blue, pink, green, and purple) instead of the boring plan ones (little things make me happy)!

I saved a total of $17 on these 3 items! Woohoo for savings!

Here are some of the samples/free items I recently acquired. 

All 3 suave products I got free with 3 free product coupons that suave sent me for playing a guessing game (salon or suave) about their products online! The Cottonelle wipes were also purchased with a free product coupon Cottonelle gave away to promote their new product.

Within the last week these are some of the items that were slipped into my mailbox.

The Osteo-bi-flex was a free 1 week sample (I love vitamins). Just yesterday I sat down and enjoyed looking through this Better Homes and Gardens magazine, bet you can’t guess why I enjoyed it so much. Ok maybe you can . . . yes, I got a free one year subscription! Oh’ and just to clarify I don’t get every magazine subscription that is free (like TV there are a lot of crap filled magazines) but I am a 
sucker for good home or fashion magazines!

Finally, you see that small coupon lying on top of the pile? It is something I was surprised yet excited to receive! One day about a month ago, when I had a day off, I waited nearly 2 hours for the release of Bounty’s $5 of coupons via Facebook! Since the coupon was said to release between a 2 hour time span I should not have been as shocked as I was to find out they waited until they had a bazillion more Facebook fans before they released the coupon (insert Bounty laughing at us saying. . . suckers)! Anyhow, when the coupon finally released I had trouble filling out the address form and submitting it due to the overwhelming traffic on their page! After several error messages I gave up and thought “I wouldn’t have minded the wait if I would have gotten a coupon!”  Alas my effort was not in vain for as I proudly hold this $5 off coupon I cannot help but think I have won this Facebook war against Bounty!

Can I get a Foot-Five for this weeks deals!!!!????

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Frank Roop DIY floating Shelves/Boxes

I was searching for a good bookshelf option for our office and I knew I had to build something like it when I found this picture of Frank Roop's shelves.

Aren’t they gorgeous? I loved the illusion they gave of not having any support!

Time to start the DIY!
Jon taught me how to use the table saw and after cutting, gluing, screwing and nailing the 6 boxes were ready to paint!
I set up a little workshop in our unfurnished/un-finished guest bedroom and primed with some drywall paint then put 3 coats of Behr Ultra Pure White Premium Plus, Hi-gloss enamel interior/exterior paint.

 I was a little disappointed with the Behr paint because after 3 coats and drying for over 5 weeks they still felt sticky.  I had to touch up once after setting the shelves on a stack of papers and have ink from a brochure come off on the shelf that had been drying for weeks!! I contacted Behr and they told me they would refund my money but that I should try and wipe them down with soap and water. I did what they suggested but it didn’t decrease the stickiness (sad face). I thought I would have to recoat them with something else like a polyacrylic but Jon suggested we test to see if simply putting objects on the shelves caused any damage. So far no ink has come off on the shelves so we decided that as long as the books were not lying down in huge stacks we should be okay!

In order to hide they way the boxes are supported on the wall we purchased some luan and painted it the same color as the office walls (when I say we here I mean my husband Jon).

We even added some laquer to each one to give is more of a shine but really, you can’t even tell we did that. I wanted to have the acrylic glossy look like Frank Roop but with acrylic costing close to $100 bucks a sheet it was defiantly out of the running. O’ well we got as close to Frank Roop’s look as we could!

Here are some pictures of the hanging process. Sorry for the messy desk and window sill!
After measuring and leveling each box was hung by the 1x2’s into 2 studs each.



We then took the painted luan and attached it to the 1x2’s with brad nails (now you can't see how they are mounted)! Here is the finished product!


 So the luan didn’t fit as perfectly into the boxes as I had hoped but the boxes weren’t perfect either. I loved how they looked regardless of the flaws so away Jon and I flew to pull out our box of books and start shelving! 

Jon and I love books and we are so happy to finally have shelves to put them on!

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Didn't have a birthday card on hand so I made this one with some help from the ladies over at www.eighteen25.blogspot.com.


                       Front                                                           Inside

Look at this fabulous print they put together http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2010/11/gift-for-grandma.html. Instead of framing it I used it to make a birthday card. Best part is the colors are some of my grandma's favorites. Not sure if the colors were suppose to be brown and green from the download but it turned out perfect! 

2011 St. Patrick's Day Party on a Budget!

On March 19th Jon and I had our friends over for a St. Patty’s celebration! I wanted to put together games and decorations that didn’t cost a lot of money so I decided I’d show you just how affordable a party can be.

The Décor and Games
First things first: Don’t get intimidated or convince yourself you need expensive decorations! Decoration should be simple and some of the best things can be found around the house. Since I wanted my St. Patty’s decorations to be classic and to give an essence of Ireland this is what I came up with for my table decoration.

1.       I bought two packs of moss covered stones at the Dollar Store - $2
2.       The beautiful candle holders were given to me by Jon’s sister awhile ago – FREE
3.       The Cider scented candles I had bought for Jon’s Birthday Party last year so I guess maybe you could count that I spent 25¢/ each last year – $0.75
      Total spent on table decorations: $2.75

Keep it simple, if you don’t have free candle holders from your sister-in-law look for something you do have!  For instance a vase or bowl could be used for Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, 4th of July . . . by simply filling it with celebration colors! For Christmas I filled a vase with silver kisses but you could also put some colored stones (which you can get at the Dollar Store), or you could place the moss covered stones I bought for my St. Patty’s table decorations and place them in a vase or bowl.

My favorite part of the decoration of the party was the napkins with these name tags! I loved bringing the stripes alongside the green nature of St. Patrick’s Day!!!

My mantel was decorated with this simple green/blue paper garland.

I forgot to take a picture before the party because I incorporated the words/phrases from our Fast Irish Charades into this decoration. I rolled up each word/phrase and sandwiched it in between the two circles.

Here is what one of them looked like (I didn’t feel like re-rolling all them after the party just to take a picture)!


It was a fun twist to charades! For our Irish charades we battled boys versus girls and had the teams compete for the best time, the BOYS won! However, the prize was given to the person who guessed the most correctly and the winner . . . was not on the boy’s team, go girls!

The best thing about this decoration was I had everything on hand so no money was spent!

Around the fireplace I set up this Blarney Stone decoration . . . it was even was kissed once!

Guess Me Lucky Beans
Here was my living room table décor/game!

Pretty self explanatory: taste a Jelly Belly and match it to its flavor name! This served as my h’orderves and the entertaining game to kick off the fun!  This game had mixed participation as some were overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices (I should have cut the number from 34 to 15 flavors) while other were very determined and seemed to enjoy the challenge. Overall those who participated had a great time and those who didn’t get into it as much enjoyed conversing and taunting others! One flavor everyone seemed to get was licorice and one funny flavor name was Tutti-fruity!  The winner ended with 25 of the 34 flavors correct, guess that’s what happens when you’re an awesome female with a knack for Jelly-Beans!!

Cost for this game/décor was:  $6.50
1.       Two bags of Jelly Belly beans - $6.50
2.       Minimal cost for paper/ink to make:
·          7 Game sheets  and game title
·          Fabulous Irish sayings printout (I used a frame I owned)
·         34 Paper boxes from 9 sheets of paper (Jon and I spent about 1 ½ hours folding these. . . Jon was such a good sport)

The Irish Stealing Sticker Game
The 3rd game that actually began as soon as everyone was in the door! Each person placed or had someone else place 7 stickers on their back. Everyone tried to steal stickers without being caught and the person with the most stickers stolen plus the number remaining on their back WON!  The game was so funny! Some people were attacked while others were preyed upon by the stealthy. Most of the time, however, people were caught red handed!  Some were heard yelling “Give me my sticker back, NOW” and “I can’t get up I’ll expose myself”.  The cooks yelled “I’ll burn you” and “I will cut the next person who touches my back.”   No one was injured but many laughs were had! The winner once again was a female and a very stealthy one at that! Looking over the party video footage I couldn’t believe how many times she went for those stickers, she sure earned them! Congrats to another talented female! Maybe next party will be the boys turn to win!

Speaking of winning I put together a simple little prize packs of two different ciders (Woodchuck and Magners) and a Guinness. I taped all 3 together and tied a paper shamrock with the story surrounding how the shamrock represented the Trinity. Since it was a set of three drinks I called it the Trinity Party Pack or the Shamrock Party Pack! Of ‘course I forgot to take a picture of these cute party packs sitting in my fridge.

Cost for drinks (including the drink prizes): This was the most expensive part of the party but I choose to include the following as more of a food expense.  One frugal idea is to inform your guests to BYOB then you don’t have to worry about this expense!
1 six pack of Magners Cider - $11
1 six pack of Woodchuck Cider - $8
2 – 8 packs of Guinness in cans - $22
Drink Total: $ 41

In my opinion I did not go overboard on trying to provide a myriad of choices but just bought the staples. In fact I restrained myself from purchasing Irish whiskey and to my surprise one of the couples brought a bottle! Another couple also brought a six pack of Magners so we were stocked for the night! We even had some left over! Here is a picture of a name tag being used as a Magners drink tag. Jon decided to use his as a rock tag.

Dinner Time
No St. Patty’s Day party would be complete without some classic corned beef and cabbage along with potatoes and carrots. Jon was the cook for the evening and everything turned out so very good, great job cutie! Our guests brought delicious cheesy garlic bread from Great Harvest, homemade Irish Cream Bunt Cake and Ice cream! Yummy!

The party was a great success and we had fun planning it!

Grand Total Cost
The cost for everything excluding food (including the jelly beans): $9.25. Who said you can’t entertain on a budget!

It is true that what I saved in cost I made up for in time, especially the jelly bean game.
 It took 3 hours to sort the jelly beans, 1 ½ hours to make 34 jelly bean boxes, and at least 2 hours to make the garland on the mantle, not to mention all the time I spent creatively birthing these projects into existence (whew I’m tired). I figure, though, at this point in my life I defiantly have more time than money! Plus creating something is just plain fun!

Crafting in January

This past January I had the entire month off! As most of you know I’m finishing my last year of podiatry school and I had the option to have one month off before February! I opted to have January off so I could study for interviews and enjoy a break from driving in the snow! I was able to catch up on my sleep, do a lot of running and be creative! I’ve always loved creating things especially with fabric (surprise, surprise I love Project Runway) but it has sadly been over a year since I’ve had time to make anything. This past month I was able to create several things! First a tutu outfit for my only niece who turned one in January! She is such an adorable girl and since I know she loves prancing around in tutus I decided to make her one!



Here is the onesie portion of the outfit. I bought a plain white onesie from Walmart and then added the appliquéd number one and a felt owl. The owl took some time to put together but it was worth it!


Here is the tutu. . . I just love how it turned out! I had never made a tutu before but it was super easy! Angie Neil on her blog http://treasuresfortots.blogspot.com/ had the best tutorials on how to cut and put together your tutu.

How to cut tutu so you don’t end up with all different lengths:
How to put the tutu together:
For my tutus I decided to use elastic since it seemed more durable and higher quality, but you can also use ribbon as your waistband.
I bought crocheted ribbon headbands from walmart and attached a rose made of the same fabric as the number 1 on the onesie. Here is where I found how to make the rose: http://littlebirdiesecrets.blogspot.com/2009/08/make-fabric-flower-and-flower-tutorial.html. I just love the name of the blog: “Little Birdie Secrets” how cute is that!

Finished Project #1:


My second project was also a tutu, but a tutu for a newborn! It is so tiny and adorable! I made it for Jon’s cousin’s baby shower! 
Finished Project #2
This onesie was similar but simpler with only an owl on the front.

This tutu was constructed the same way but I satin wrapped the waist band to make it less scratchy for baby! This tutorial was also found on Treasures for Tots at:
See:


The headband has felt brown and pink pedals formed into a flower and attached to the headband (sorry, blurry).


To top it all off I had been thinking how I could wrap this gift for the shower and being frugal and not wanting to buy anything I creatively reused a Victoria Secret bag by covering up the “Victoria’s Secret” with “Baby’s secret” and gluing scrunched up pink tissue paper around the boarder.



 I love reusing these quality bags, just remember to save the tissue paper too! I think I got more compliments on the bag than the tutu, pregnant mom even had to pause to have a picture taken (it wasn’t me, seriously)! Hooray for creativity! Jon’s cousin loved it; she said she couldn’t wait to doll up her baby girl!


The last couple projects I worked on were baby blankets! I made one for a good friend from school whose wife just had a little boy and one for a baby girl (Jon’s cousin’s baby). I have yet to finish the one for Jon’s cousin's baby since I need to monograph it with her name and birth date once she is  born. I recently heard that this baby girl was born but didn’t hear an official name so I guess I’ll wait a little longer J

One of my favorite parts of making a baby blanket is picking out the fabric! Since I fell in love with this blanket by Joel Dewberry (http://joeldewberry.blogspot.com/2010/07/project-idea-and-giveaway.html) I went in search of some fabric like it at Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft store. Disappointment, nothing was as handsome and modern as Joel Dewberry’s fabric so I found it for a good price from fabric.com! This is my favorite fabric right now! For the back I like to use dotted minky which is always so soft perfect for baby blankets.

Finished Project #3







On the minky side I appliquéd an “L” for Lucas and down the long side of the “L” I monogrammed with embroidery thread baby’s name using this technique: http://www.needlenthread.com/2006/10/embroidery-stitch-video-tutorial-stem.html.

 Along the bottom I put baby’s birth date!


With all my blankets I try to create a not-so-baby blanket with fabric that doesn’t have animals, blocks or other baby type patterns so if the blanket lasts till they are grown it doesn’t look dated! I still have a blanket with my name on it but the pattern screams “I was born in the 80’s.” Maybe my blankets will seem that way in 20 years but here’s to trying!

Our First Trip To Ikea


In light of the fact that Jon and I had the entire week off in between Christmas and New Year's day we decided to take a day trip, something I had always wanted to do. The night before our day trip I browsed over the Ikea website so I would know some of the things to look for when I got there! We really didn't have a long list of things we wanted to get, but we were looking forward to seeing the quality of the furniture we commonly see on craigslist and spending time together! The only things I decided I wanted to buy prior to the trip were this drying rack http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10177178 and this magnetic knife holder for our kitchen http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00136621 .



The closest Ikea to us was a little over a 2 hour drive so we arrived anxiously around noon and after a quick lunch at Chipotle we were ready to shop, shop, shop!


Let's just say I was Excited!

Some of the things we fell in love with included:


This white double bathroom cabinet/sinks, including the faucets and the drawer knobs!


And this large mirror! I guess I have a fetish for mirrors or maybe just large ones because I found three that I loved! This one was my favorite!
After a cinnamon roll and Mr. Pibb break we tackled the kitchen section and the rest of the store!


The cinnamon roll was delicious!


Here is one of the heart throb kitchens, I love the backsplash and hope to find some tile like that in a different color for my kitchen, someday!
Some of the things we purchased included two different types of hooks. One type was neat because when not in use they snapped up against the wall (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60152590). These other ones are simple but I thought they would be perfect to mount on the inside of my closet to hang necklaces on (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30061247)! The sadness was that somehow these ones didn't make it home with us! We paid for them but couldn’t find them when we got home, guess we left them in the cart (sad face)!

We had been looking for some matching small whiskey glasses and we loved these plus they were only $4 for 6! We’ll take'em!

Amongst the many other lovely things, we didn’t buy, like bins of soft lamb’s skin, beautiful curtains, and tons of colorful pillows we found the drying rack and magnetic knife holder that I was hoping to find and tossed them into our cart! We also happened to find the perfect shade for the lonely kitchen nook that now only needs some leather chairs and a table!
After spending about 7 hours looking around we were tired and hungry! With a Christmas gift card in hand we headed over Olive Garden to enjoy a nice meal before we started our 2 hour drive home! We decided we didn’t want to take the tollway home so our trip home ended up taking about 3 hours since it was mostly obscure roads. Probably not the best idea we ever had but we made it home safely before midnight!

This is a picture of our finds, notice the lovely napkins Jon said I could buy and the wok Jon just had to have!


Here is the lovely nook shade, I can’t wait to get some chairs to go under it!

Jon and I had a lovely time and we can't wait for our next day trip together!

2010 Christie Christmas Party



As mentioned Jon and I hosted our annual friends Christmas Party this year and boy did we have a great time! We both felt rewarded by having accomplished many of the things on our “List of thing to do before the Christmas Party.”
My List:
#1. Paint and decorate the dining room. See my previous post about how that all worked out!
#2 Plan and Prepare the main meal:

Jon had mentioned he would like some kind of meat that wasn’t turkey or ham (since ya know everyone has had plenty of that between Thanksgiving and Christmas), and after some thought I decided to make a brisket. Along with the brisket I decided to have mashed potatoes, salad, bread and of course brisket gravy, yummy! Everything went according to plan except maybe I should have bought the brisket a week in advance instead of the two days before the party since when I went to the store to buy it they didn’t have the big ones but only little ones for double the price, GREAT! So, when Jon called me after getting out of work I told him the situation and he suggested that we get his sister to go with us to Sam’s Club (since we don’t have a membership) and pick one up there. Unfortunately, his sister was not home but within moments Jon’s dad drove up in his truck to save the day!! You see Jon’s dad was on his way to Sam’s Club and he had a truck which meant Jon could check “Pick up firewood from Jon’s sister’s house” off his list. Check, Check! I cooked the brisket the way my mother had always done by cooking it overnight at a low temperature, it was so delicious!
#3 Clean, Clean, Clean – a very necessary part of party preparation
#4 Prepare h’ordeuvres

I prepared a simple cheese and cracker platter along with a bowl of white chocolate covered pretzels and a bowl of Hershey’s kisses. Since I had always wanted to serve wine and cheese we bought one white and one red wine to enjoy with the h’ordeuvres.
#5 Entertainment: I was hesitant to plan games at first but I’m glad I did as all 3 were a hit!
First game was something along the lines of the newlywed game (I think) where you have one spouse write down answers to questions about themselves and then you ask these same questions to their spouse to see how well they know each other. Here are Jon and my papers typed out, the yellow highlighted answers means the opposite spouse guessed the answer that was written down. Jon and I came in 2nd place loosing 1st place by one point! There were some funny and intense moments when easy questions were missed but as far as we know no one went home crying!

Second game of the night came at the dining room table. While I was getting the food set up for buffet style serving the guest sat down and well, you can guess from the picture!

Winner took home the Kisses!
Third game involved two themes: A Christmas Story (the movie) and Christmas Carols. I found a quiz with questions about A Christmas Story movie and then another with carol lyrics with missing words! Jon was on his own playing this one since I had looked up all the answers but Jon did so well on his own I’m sure I wouldn’t have contributed much!

Each couple with the most points at the end of each game got to choose one of the lovely wines under the Christmas tree to take home! Each couple ended up taking something home, how perfect!

Jon’s List
#1 Install outlets and light switch in dining room. Done!
#2 Get the fireplace/chimney ready for a fire!

This was an idea that we were not sure would be able to come to fruition since Jon had to see what all it involved! Of course my husband is amazing so you know a fire was part of our party! First, Jon had to put a chimney cap on top, however, at the time we thought the flue liner was busted so Jon fabricated steel mesh to set over top the chimney outlet. Next, he had to open the damper (which was stuck) and clean out the chimney. This was a gross project because we had had birds (chimney swifts) in the chimney in the past.

To our surprise though, there was only one measly nest! With all the noise those birds made I thought for sure there would be a dozen or more nests up there. Jon even found a “zombie bird” as he called it. . . nasty! Last thing that needed to be tackled was filling in some of the mortar that was missing in between the fire bricks. After finding some fire approved mortar Jon quickly patched it all up! Yippy, now to steal some firewood from his sister’s house!
#3 Pickup firewood from Jon’s sister’s house. Check, two birds with one stone remember.
#4 Salt the steps and walkway – a must if you want happy, unbroken friends!
#5 Miscellaneous stuff like installing air vent covers and a bedroom door: Jon installed air vent covers so our guest would not cut their feet on our potholes and needless to say heat was distributed better throughout the house. Installing a bedroom door was something we had wanted to do but hey with just us two living in the house all we needed was a bathroom door! The door wasn’t the easiest to install since neither the door nor the old house door jamb was perfect but I was so pleased to have a warmer bedroom and some privacy.

The party was a success! Between the games and food we conversed, laughed, enjoyed the fire, and even danced to the Christmas music playing in the background! It was a blast and we hope our friends had as much fun as we did!