Growing My Own VEGETABLES

I talked to my brother this week who told me our cousin had a heart attack recently.  My dad's side of the family is very prone to heart disease so the fact that a relative on that side had a heart attack came as no surprise.  The surprising part, however, is that this particular cousin is my age--31 years young!  He's doing fine now but had 4 stints put in and a balloon procedure done.  Though I'm glad he is ok and recovering well, I can't help but think when my heart attack will come.  I've already had blood tests done that state heart disease is a reality for me and I have an irregular heart beat already as well.  I've still got a whole life ahead of me and my hubby's and children's lives that I need to be around for.  I can't let heart disease keep me from a beautiful future with my family!  So I need to rededicate myself to a life of healthy living.  One of the things I want to implement is eating more vegetables as a family.

Everyone knows veggies are kinda pricey.  Sucks to know that good health is expensive.  In reality, can you put a price on a long, happy life?  Wouldn't the fact that you're healthy enough to avoid hospital stays, surgeries, prescriptions and all that other expensive mess be a good motivator for spending a little extra on healthy foods?  SURE!  But take it a step further and you can minimize the amount you spend on food by growing your own.  And that's exactly what I'd like to do.  I want to plant a vegetable garden.

Now I live in an apt so having a large garden is just not an option for me.  However, growing a few veggies or fruits in large pots and herbs in smaller planters is doable.  Lucky for me, I've got a friend who recently started a gardening/couponing play group.  Because she has a masters degree in Plant Physiology and gardens herself, she makes a great source whose brain I'm excited to pick.  She has even grown her own foods while living in an apartment so she has the experience I need for gardening in small spaces.  I haven't started my garden yet, but I do have a few money $aving tips that you may not have thought of if you're contemplating gardening yourself.

1. Instead of buying seeds from the store, save those seeds from the fruits and veggies your family already eat.  We eat bell peppers, cucumbers, strawberries, tomatoes and the like.  You can also ask your friends to save theirs, or save a runner from some of the fruits/veggies they grow like strawberries.
2. More important than what you put your plants in, is the TIME you put into your plants.  You really don't need to BUY planters, pots and pretty or expensive containers to start your garden.  5 gallon buckets, storage bins and other things that are deep enough and wide enough work just as well.  Look around the house and see what you can use before purchasing something to start you off.  Checking craigslist or the Goodwill store for such items is a great idea if you don't already have such containers
3. If you're worried about the increase in your water bill, try collecting rain water.  If you live in a house you might be able to use a big barrel, empty garbage can, food cooler or something of the sort to collect rain water and use to nourish your plants.  For those in apartments, large bowls, buckets or any other type of mid size container are great for collecting rain you receive and continue using it long after the storm clouds have blown away.
4. Instead of spending money on pesticides which can be more costly and not as safe, look into types of foliage or flowers that keep certain bugs away from your fruits and veggies.  Not only are they safer, but they can make your garden look really pretty.  For example, planting Marigolds near tomato plants is very effective in repelling bugs that tend to feed off your growing tomatoes as well as other vegetable plants.
5. Rather than BUYING a book on starting a garden, check one out at your local library, go online to look up free information, or get together with a knowledgeable and experienced gardening friend to help you out.  Even my Plant Physiology degree holding friend says that her success comes mostly from "trial and error"--and yours will too!

If you have any other tips that may benefit those of us who would like to start their own gardens, please feel free to leave comments, links, videos and other suggestions at the end of this blog.  If you're like me, you can use all the help you can get!  Happy gardening!  

Crafty Baby Shower Gifts

A friend of mine threw a baby shower for me a few weeks ago.  Even though I've got 4 kids and a little baby girl on the way, there are a few things that you always need new when you're expecting.  And sometimes, the things that you have from the previous kids are clearly ready to be retired anyway.  I love to craft but I've been too lazy to do so while I've been pregnant.  Looking back at my baby shower, I realized how many crafty friends I've got.  If you're into crafting and want to save a little money in giving a baby gift or just making one for yourself, here are several ideas that were presented by my own circle of wonderful friends:

A cute bouquet of baby socks rolled to look like rosettes.
The friend that made this found the idea on Pinterest.
Everyone at the shower LOVED this!  She rolled each
baby sock and secured it to the stem with floral tape.
Then she added other silk flowers to add to the full-
ness of the bouquet and stuck them in styrofoam
inside the basket and hid the styrofoam with crinkled
gift paper.  Such a cute idea from PINTEREST!
http://pinterest.com/search/?q=baby+sock+bouquet

An outta site DIAPER CAKE.  Another friend used
3cake pan sizes; rolled each diaper individually,
secured with a rubber
band and filled the cake pan w/ diapers then
secured the whole layer w/a larger rubber band.
Each tier was done this way.  Then she wrapped the
outside of each layer w/ pink netting and finally
accented w/ the green ribbon w/ pink glitter flowers.
The top was decorated w/ silk flowers and a large flower
shaped pinwheel  was inserted to hold all the layers together.
She displayed it on a cake board that was wrapped
w/ pink wrapping paper.
Other ideas on how to make adiaper cake can be found on:
http://www.howtomakeadiapercake.com/

Another friend gave me a 6 piece set
of hair accessories.  I love the fact that
you can mix and match the flowers
w/ the bands.  She also put them
in this pink tin which is great cause
I'll always have a place to keep them.

Each band has a ribbon around it so
each flower can be clipped to the ribbon.
This is awesome because it allows you to
mix and match bands w/ flowers AND
the clip doesn't rub against your baby
girl's head.  PLUS, the flower can be
used w/o the band when your daughter
gets older and has a little more hair to clip
the flower on to.   If you notice, the stitches
on the back of the felt fabric flower were made
to add a folded look to the front of the flower
(kind of like a dart).  I really liked this idea
because it added to the overall look of the flower.

Eatza Pizza!

Well, its Friday.  I've got a couple of kids that are sick.  Even though they're sick, they're still in the mood to eat, which is a good sign, and since today is Friday I figured it would be a nice pick-me-up to have some pizza, enjoy a Redbox movie and spend some indoor family time together.  Its nice to order in from my favorite pizza delivery place but I've got coins in my pocket, not dollar bills, so looks like homemade pizza is on the menu tonight.

There are a few things that I always keep in the pantry/cupboards for homemade baking: flour, sugar, yeast and salt.  You can literally make hundreds of recipes with these 4 basic ingredients.  I have an easy and delicious pizza dough recipe that I always use when making homemade pizza.  Its also a great recipe for breadsticks, calzones, stombolis, and probably pizza pockets.
Here's the recipe I use & its good for 2 round 14" pizzas so I usually double or triple it to make enough for my family of 6 and have some leftovers for lunch the next day.

RECIPE:
http://www.food.com/recipe/pizza-dough-for-thin-crust-pizza-70165

I like to add a teaspoon of GARLIC SALT to the mix for a little extra flavor to the crust and I always add the OLIVE OIL last after the other ingredients have formed a ball cause it seems to work into the dough better that way and keeps it from being too sticky when you're ready to knead.  I throw everything in the kitchenaid and it cuts out a load of time and muscle power.

One thing that can be done is to pre-bake the pizza crust and add the sauce, cheese and toppings at a later time--which is what I'll do tonight.  I want to have the crust already pre-baked so that when I'm ready to use it around dinner time it doesn't take quite as long to get it into the oven, clean-up is faster and it saves counter space too.  You could probably even do this ahead of time and freeze the pre-baked crust for a quick and easy meal at a later date if you want.  The pre-made crusts at the store are almost as expensive as ordering a fully made pizza for delivery and probably not quite as good as a homemade one anyway!  I like to brush the crust with either OLIVE OIL or MARGARINE and sprinkle garlic powder or garlic salt on top w/ a little grated parmesan if I have it.  That's also a great thing to do if you decide to make breadsticks with this recipe.

Usually I'll break the kids off a fist-sized piece of dough and have them make their own pizza which is always fun for them.  I call the cornmeal "MAGIC PIZZA DUST" and the kids get a kick out of that.  They still wonder what that magic dust really is.  Magic pizza dust really IS MAGIC...it gives pizza that finishing touch to make it taste like a restaurant pizza--AND it allows more air to circulate under the crust so it cooks more evenly on the bottom while keep it from sticking to the pan for easy removal once you're ready to lift it from pan to plate.

For the sake of keeping everyone else in the house f/ getting sick, I'll be making the pizza myself today.  I've made homemade pizza enough times that I've actually got the "toss and spin in the air" thing down with the dough (I score BIG POINTS with the kids when I do that)!  This recipe has seriously saved our lives at times.  Its so cheap to make and the ingredients are so few (especially if your kids just like CHEESE pizza like mine do).

I love pineapple and ham pizza but I've already got plenty of toppings in the fridge to work with:  shredded mozzarella, onions, roma tomatoes, turkey pepperoni, real bacon pieces, sliced salami and 2 sausage links from dinner last night. My favorite pizza sauce to use is RAGU.  It comes in lots of different varieties and each one has always had just the right consistency for pizza sauce, not too thick or too thin--plus its reasonably priced.  So I'll be picking up a jar from the store along w/ a bell pepper and maybe some fresh mushrooms (I like them way better on pizza than the canned mushrooms).

I doubled the recipe to make 4 pizzas.
After letting the dough rise a bit, I cut
it into 4 equal sized pieces.

Next I begin rolling it out with a rolling
pin.  I try to keep it as round as possible.

After rolling it out a bit, I push around
the edges with my fingers to form the
outer crust which would be thicker.

Then I stretch it out a bit more with my
knuckles.  This is about the time I toss
it up in the air and make it spin.  The
spinning motion helps it stretch out
even more while keeping a round shape.

Finally, you should have a nice, big
round circle. 

Make sure it will fit the size pan you're
using.

An easy way to get it onto the pan w/o
tearing the dough is to fold it in fourths.

Then unfold it one section at a time.  

Make sure its centered on your pan.
I had to use foil cause I found I was out of
"Magic Pizza Dust" 

If you're pre-baking the crust, you'll
want to poke holes in it to keep the
crust from bubbling as it bakes.  I just
use a fork and poke randomly but evenly.
 If you don't pre-bake and you do it
all at once w/ the rest of your toppings
you won't need to worry about this step.

Here's our turkey pepperoni.

The kids' favorite: CHEESE!  I used
both mozzarella and colby jack.

This was a meat lovers w/ salami, turkey
pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms & onions.
I think it actually would've been better
in the form of a STROMBOLI since
there were so many toppings.

This is hubby & my favorite: I used
alfredo sauce instead of spaghetti sauce.
It has Roma tomatoes, mushrooms, bell
peppers, onions and bacon bits.  I think it
would've been PERFECT if there were either
MORE bacon bits or slicesof Canadian
bacon to give it that extra saltiness it needed.
Nevertheless, it was SUBLIME!

Breakdown of my savings tonight:


NIGHT IN:
Ragu Sauce (one tomato and one alfredo) 2 @ $1.80-$3.60
Mushrooms-$2.07
Bell Pepper-$0.78
Redbox DVD-$2.15
Microwave popcorn (3 bags from a 24 ct box)-$0.63
1 Large 64 oz bottle of Gatorade-$2.69
TOTAL: $11.92

VERSUS

NIGHT OUT:
4 Pizzas from Domino's @ 5.99 each-approx $28 after tax & delivery charges
Movie tickets for 6 ppl @ the Dollar theater-$12.00
Popcorn at concession stand-$6.00
2 Lrg Drinks to share among 6 of us (if we were all healthy) @ 3.25 each -$6.50
TOTAL:  $52.50


TOTAL SAVINGS=$40.58 
NOT BAD!!!  And don't forget we saved on gas by not going anywhere except the grocery store down the street but that was on the way back from hubby's work so it wasn't really a separate cost.

Patching & Re-purposing jeans

Our budget is so tight its about to snap like the elastic on your high school underwear.  I noticed last week that my kids have holes in their jeans and there is NO WAY we can afford to buy them new jeans.  PLUS, I think at this time of year, in Texas, its kinda stupid to buy jeans.  I mean its like 73 degrees today and its only going to get warmer until maybe September so why buy jeans that the kids will grow out of and hardly wear within the next 6 months?  That's when I thought, "there must be some cute or cool way to patch up the knees on their jeans and not have them embarrassed about it."

Have you ever had the experience where you hear about something for the first time and then you just keep hearing it over and over again during the next week?  Odd, huh?  Well, that's what happened to me last week with PINTEREST.  I saw an ad for it online last Monday or something, then a friend mentioned it at the beginning of my baby shower Friday (I'm due this month), then one of the gifts I got was a flower arrangement made from baby socks that were rolled to look like rose buds--SO CUTE!  So we all asked where this other friend got the idea for that cute arrangement and what do you think she says?  PINTEREST!  So I hop online to see what its all about and I find the solution to my "patch up holey jeans" problem. Well--I got a jump start from there anyway, then kept googling online to find something that matched my kids' personalities, my skills, and our family budget.  By the way, can you say you HAVE a budget without money to actually BUDGET??? Just wondering.

I have a daughter and son that both had holey jeans.  (My other son, I just found out, only HAS 1 pair of jeans that are long enough for him...still trying to find a free solution to that problem.)  So I set to work on patching and re-purposing.  I found the right course of action on a fellow blogger's site http://resweater.blogspot.com/2012/02/its-feature-friday-refashion-co-op.html  Turns out, this seemed to take more time than I had thought--I'll explain in a minute.

So I tell the kids I'm going to patch their pants and have them pick a cookie cutter shape that I can use as a template to cut out the patch.  The patch itself is not the shape. I just cut the hole in their jeans out in that shape and  put a rectangular piece of darker denim behind it.  The darker denim came from a pair of kid's jeans that still looked like they were in good shape except the two bleach spots on the back that ate a hole through the pocket.  So I figured those probably wouldn't get worn with a hole in the butt and I used the unblemished legs for my patches (RE-PURPOSE).  The next step is to secure the patch inside the jeans (which I did with pins) and sew around the shape to keep it in place, seal the hole, and prohibit further tearing.  The problem comes in when I realize that these little kid jean legs won't go over the arm of my sewing machine.  Thus I spend the next hour or so hand sewing the patch on and adding little touches with embroidery thread to make the shape look like what its supposed to be (adding laces to the football and antlers to the butterfly, etc).  Next time I will probably try seam ripping one side of the leg and sewing it by machine.  I'm sure even with the seam ripping, it wouldn't take as long as sewing it by hand.  So it DID take some time but I got the job done, the kids seemed excited about it and I saved at least $20 in buying them each a new pair of jeans.

Yesterday i took another pair of jeans from each child that needed more patching and did the same thing with different shapes.  This time it went a little bit faster.  For my son, I didn't have a cookie cutter shape big enough to fit around the hole that was already there.  So I had to get a little creative.  He's really into skulls and crossbones (probably from Pirates of the Caribbean movie) so I got online and found a skull shape that would work.  Problem was, I don't have any computer paper or ink in the printer to print it out.  So I used my noggin and found a piece of scrap paper lying around, put it up to the computer monitor and traced the image myself.  I cut that out and used it as my template for the jeans and it came out great.  This time though, I reinforced the patch behind the shape with some of that stitch witchery iron-on tape for hemming pants (you can get it at Wal-Mart for about .97 cents) just to keep it in place while I sewed it on by hand.  It worked REALLY WELL!  Then I cut out the eyes and nose for the skull and used the same iron-on tape to secure it to the patch in just the right place.  My son really liked that patch job and wore it to school today (which is why I didn't take a photo of it yet).

For my daughter I did a layer upon layer heart.   She seemed excited about it too.  The funny thing is, with her, she's purposely not worn either pair of patched up jeans to school yet.  I mean, I watched her face from the corner of my eye as she checked out her jeans and she genuinely seemed impressed with each patch job.  But her 5yr old self hasn't worn a pair yet.  IDK why.  Is she secretly embarrassed?  Does she not want to look different?  Maybe I'll run them all thru the wash and let the cool fringe look come thru and frame the shape before giving them back and see what she thinks of them then.  None the less, its another $20 saved.  Now, if only I could actually get paid for saving money...GEEZ!

BTW, the stitching I did by hand was a lot faster because of a technique I saw on HGTV's She's Crafty show.  It also got me thinking that the sewn by hand look isn't just homey looking but also cool!  The episode featured tees from Teresa Findlay http://www.hgtv.ca/articles/articledetails.aspx?ContentId=2955&cat=2&by=5.

Anyway, instead of doing the "up and down" motion with the needle thru the fabric w/ the little amount of space on the inside of the leg to pull the thread all the way down, I did a kinda "bunch and slide thru" which I just found out is actually called a RUNNING STITCH.  So instead of pulling the needle and thread all the way thru the fabric on each stitch, you just keep poking it back thru as you bunch the fabric and finally pull it all the way thru on the 3rd or so stitch.  I might have to post a video of this if it doesn't make sense.  If you don't get it, let me know.

Okay--so many of us are trying to save money on a daily basis.  So we clip coupons, we store old sour cream or cool whip tubs and we even have a list of things that we're going to sew, craft or build  to save that extra dollar or two.  The problem is--actually putting those things to use!  Sure, sometimes it takes a little more time than we have to invest at the moment.  But I can promise you this--it IS worth it.  It becomes a hobby, an art, and finally--a way of life.  In fact, I'm so cheap now that it has permanently affected the way I think.  I almost always go for the cheaper generic brand unless I've noticed (thru trial & error) that sometimes the name brand actually IS better.  I'm constantly looking up things on the internet to re-purpose what's been worn out around the house and I'll even spend a couple of weeks researching an item that I might spend BOOKOOs on to knowingly save me MOOLAH in the long run.  So, if you're on a mission to do some of the same stuff, have kinda the same purpose in mind, or at least need the motivation to WANT to s-s-s-$AVE, I hope you'll get something out of this blog and share your ideas, questions, comments, concerns, or struggles with me.  C'mon people, in this day and time we gotta be PROUD to be a CHEAPSKATE.  And if nothing else keeps you from being embarrassed about being cheap--just think of all the $$$$ you'll be SAVING!  That's a one-up on any of your squandering friends!!!