Turn Shabby Into Chic

Everyone has heard the saying, "You either have time or money." In the summer, I have more time and way less money due to the fact that one of my big contracts is tied to the school year. But, because I am home more, I get the itch to fix up around the house at a time when I have less money to do so.

I don't let my lack of money stop me though, I just use it as fodder for exercising my creativity. We have a couch that was given to us around seven years ago and though still comfy, it is showing signs of its age. I don't tend to buy furniture as people are always giving me furniture, so when my current acquisitions start to look shabby, I make them last a little longer until something better comes along.

 It seems that the arms of
furniture wear out faster
than other parts, though
I blame my dogs for this
as they stand here to get
a better look out the living
room windows at passers-by. 

The damage to the back of
the sofa is also due to the
silly dogs who used to stand
on the back of it to look out
when the couch was in front
of the living room windows.

Obviously these damaged parts of the sofa need to be addressed and without any cash outlay. I realized that I had purchased some forest green napkins at my thrift store for 50 cents that could work to cover the arms of the sofa.

I also realized that I had a throw in the cranberry color that I could use to cover the torn center back cushion of the couch.

Prior to covering the problem areas, the whole couch just looked sad and made the whole living room look run-down.

The dog doesn't mind the shabby couch but I sure do!

And now the after-

Not perfect but a whole lot more appealing until something better comes along! How do you manage when you are short on money but need to do some fixing up around the house?

Meal Planning for Busy People Update

Gluten-free zucchini muffins and banana muffins cooling so I can store them for the week's grab and go breakfasts.

Okay, so after my trip to Little Caesar's, I was more determined than ever to master my meal planning issues. Check out this link to see why I am whining about my meal planning http://thewhollyholly.blogspot.com/2013/10/menu-planning-ideas-for-frugal-busy.html. Right now I am feeding three adult men (hubby, a 21-year-old son, a 19-year-old son), myself, and my 27-year-old daughter and her 1-year-old son who live with us on a semi-permanent basis.

My husband brought home the following items from his shopping trip on Thursday (Oct. 3), all of which were marked down items: veggie kabobs (peppers, onions, mushrooms, yellow squash, and zucchini), two bags of broccoli and carrot mix, a package of sliced zucchini and yellow squash (this will be shredded and put into gluten-free zucchini muffins), a bag of sliced mushrooms, a five pound package of ground beef, a large container of medium salsa, and a large bag of tortilla chips. Then, on Saturday (Oct. 5) as he was leaving a market days event where he was selling craft and jewelry items, he purchased sausages, barbecue beef, and smoked pork loin that the concession stand was selling really cheap. There were two large (32 oz. size cups) of barbecue beef, a dozen sausages, and a package of pork loin sliced into about twelve good slices. He spent $9.00 for everything!

The vegetables in this package were on skewers as they were intended for veggie kabobs. I turned them into ratatouille and Slow Cooker Mediterranean vegetable stew. I put the mushrooms aside to use in pasta primavera, so this package of vegetables became ingredients in three meals.

Slow cooker Mediterranean vegetable stew is spicy with red pepper flakes in it and delicious over rice. 

I had on hand some frozen chicken, some cooked pork chops, rice, potatoes, refried beans, tostada shells, flour tortillas, some canned vegetables, spaghetti sauce, dried pinto beans, okra, and peppers from our garden and other staple items such as spices, eggs, and the like.

Here is the dinner menu I created from the items listed above:

Saturday, October 5- We ate the barbecue beef and had potato salad with it that hubby had picked up to make dinner easy on me. Because I am gluten-free, I ate my barbecue beef on tostada shells.

Sunday, October 6-Ratatouille, pasta, smoked pork loin.

Doesn't the ratatouille look pretty?

Monday, October 7-Smoked sausages on buns and tater tots. We have a very long Monday each week so I keep this meal simple.

Tuesday, October 8-Meatball sandwiches, oven fries, baby carrots.

Wednesday, October 9-Tostada casserole (I will use the dried pinto beans in this and cook them overnight in my crockpot the night before, making extra for Saturday's chili). This can be made ahead a day or two before and just popped into the oven for 20-25 minutes to reheat.

Thursday, October 10-Pasta primavera (will use the mushrooms, broccoli, and carrots in this), topped with sauce and meatballs from Tuesday's dinner.

Friday, October 11-Clean Out the Fridge Day. We will eat the leftovers that have piled up during the week today.

Saturday, October 12-Chili . We eat our chili over rice so I will make a big batch of rice to use with this meal and in the coming week. This is the third of four meals that I will have made with five pounds of ground beef.

I got three cups of shredded zucchini from the package of zucchini and squash. I used one cup in the gluten-free zucchini muffins and used the squash in ratatouille and Mediterranean vegetable stew.

I love my salad shooter for shredding
small quantities of foods quickly with
easy clean up.

What a deal! Isn't my hubby a savvy shopper?

I am feeling better about my menu and meal planning for this week. ; )

Menu Planning Ideas for Frugal Busy People

Over the years I have had many challenges in my life. Who hasn't? One of my biggest current challenges involves menu and meal planning. I used to be really good at it but lately, not so much, due to a jam-packed schedule and the unpredictable way we do our grocery shopping.

This not a typical meal served at my house these days!

My husband does some of our grocery shopping and buys whatever he can find that is marked down or on clearance. This stretches our funds and is a huge help, but it also makes meal planning have to occur once shopping is completed rather than before. Most every article I see about meal planning encourages a person to get the sale ads, make a menu based on what is on sale, and then go shopping. We end up seeing what we can get for the funds available and then I have to gather my cookbooks together to compile recipes and a menu that make the best use of the raw materials I have available.

Frozen chicken tenders, a can of black beans, a can of corn, and a can of tomatoes and green chiles are the main components of Santa Fe Chicken. The canned items were all purchased on markdown by my hubby and cost 50 cents each!

The completed dish of Santa Fe Chicken. We serve ours over rice and with either tortilla chips and a salad or with flour tortillas. Some of us like to sprinkle a little Monterey Jack or Cheddar cheese over this. The total cost to feed four of us was around $5.00!

In addition to the challenge of creating a menu based on available ingredients, four out of the seven nights of the week, I do not arrive home until between 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. This makes cooking a meal a little dicey unless we want to eat around midnight. So, I am currently reformulating my cooking routine.

On Sundays now, I am making two meals. One to eat on Sunday and one for Monday. Reheating an already prepared meal is much easier than preparing a meal from scratch. I am now avidly searching online and in women's magazines for recipes that are cook once, eat twice type of recipes. A recent issue of Family Circle was a big help in this area. Some ideas they featured were: roast a chicken one day and the second day make a pot pie, serve spaghetti and meatballs one day and the second day serve meatball sub sandwiches. This type of meal preparation will go a long way to make serving meals in my home much easier. Here are a couple URLs that look promising to me: http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20333807,00.html and http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus/recipe_slideshows/cook_once_eat_twice_recipes.


I used to do freeze ahead meals years ago and I think I will incorporate that into my meal planning as well. I really enjoyed looking at the nicely stacked packages filling the freezer shelves and knowing that we had meals at the ready. I used Once-a-Month Cooking by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg as my guide to cooking up to a month's worth of meals in one day or over a weekend (check out cookbooks in my Amazon store link http://astore.amazon.com/thewhollyholl-20/detail/B0072O02AA to get their books). Most likely I won't have enough groceries at the ready to do a month of meals in advance but perhaps I can start with a week and utilize a freezer meal once or twice a week for those days when I am extremely pressed for time.

I am also employing the power of crock pot cooking at least once a week to help me over the meal planning and eating later in the evening hump. I am enjoying perusing the recipes at Stephanie O'Dea's website devoted to crock pot cooking. A big bonus for me in following her blog, A Year of Slow Cooking, (http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/) is that she is also gluten-free. I have eaten gluten-free since 2007 and I really appreciate being able to grab a recipe and not have to take the time to convert it to a gluten-free concoction.

Stay tuned as I share favorite recipes from my frugal busy cooking journey and please share how you handle menu planning and meal prep in your household. I need all the help I can get right now because last night I had to make a stop at Little Caesar's!

Ten Ways to Earn Money by Not Spending

So many times I read an article that tells me how to "save" money by doing this activity or that activity. Unless I actually save that money somewhere, what I did was to earn it back by not spending. When my budget is tight, every dollar I don't spend in one area is freed up for me to spend in another.

Here are my top ten ways to "earn" money to spend elsewhere-

1. Plan meals from what I have on hand instead of going to the store. Most of us have plenty of food in our homes that we can use to create meals but we get too tired or lazy to make an effort to use what is on hand and we run to the store for something easy to feed our families. Need help with meal planning? There are lots of places online where you can put in the ingredients you have and get meal suggestions. I like this one quite a bit from Kraft Foods http://www.kraftrecipes.com/home.aspx.

2. Check out movies from the library instead of renting from Netflix, Blockbuster, or Redbox. I recently terminated my Netflix account that was costing me $12.00 a month. Instead of renting movies for a monthly fee, I take advantage of the large collection of DVDs my library stocks for FREE. I now have $60.00 per year more in my budget to use elsewhere.

3. Trade no longer needed items with a friend. I have a wonderful friend who wears the same size clothing as I do. We often pass on our no longer needed items to each other. I have quite a few articles of clothing in my closet that she gave to me. The money I didn't have to spend on clothes was able to be used in other areas of my budget, like utility bills.

4. Go to sleep earlier. There are many studies that show the later we stay up, the more likely we are to overeat and have a myriad of health problems. Being overweight can lead to expensive doctor visits. Money not spent overeating and/or visiting the doctor is money that can be used more enjoyably and profitably.

5. Learn hobbies that can generate or save money. Some people have hobbies that take money out of the family budget like going for manicures or collecting expensive trinkets. My family cannot afford those kind of hobbies. My husband likes to garden, a hobby that has fed us with healthful, tasty food. This past spring, he got paid to install raised bed gardens for other people so his hobby has now generated money for our family. I enjoy writing and have sold articles to various publications; another example of a hobby that generates money.

6. Learn to launder and iron your clothing. One of the first skills I taught my children (daughters and sons alike!) was how to wash, dry, and iron their clothing. Folks who take their clothes to the dry cleaners just for simple washing and ironing amaze me! I also avoid purchasing or acquiring clothing that requires dry cleaning. I just don't have money in my budget to expend in this way. Most washing machines tell you how to sort clothing and wash it so even if your mom didn't teach you this skill, you have no excuse for not learning.

7. Take proper care of your possessions. Everything we own lasts longer if we take good care of it. Clothes last longer if stains and sweat are not allowed to linger on the fabric. Furniture lasts longer if not misused. Cars last longer if we maintain them regularly. We can often get extra months and years out of our possessions just by being good stewards over them.

8. Terminate your gym membership and work out at home. I found several exercise programs on one of my local PBS stations and began doing them instead of going to the gym. Not only do I save (earn!) money by not having to pay a gym membership, I also save money by not having an additional driving trip. My favorite workouts are Classical Stretch (http://www.classicalstretch.com/) and Wai Lana Yoga (http://www.wailana.com/), and Functional Fitness (http://healthwiseexercise.com/). I have worked out consistently for a year with these shows and I feel great!

9. Use your library regularly. Being a regular library patron has improved my financial life in many ways. My library offers free wi-fi, which gives me all the advantages of going to Starbucks without the expense. Our library even allows us to consume food and drink in the lobby area. There are lots of tables and chairs where we can sit with our laptop computers and work. My library offers many classes for free: fitness classes, computer classes, foreign language classes, and more. The library has a summer reading program for children and adults that allows participants to enter to win prizes for turning in reading logs. One year, my youngest son won a 4 pack of tickets to a local water park! I have already mentioned borrowing DVDs from the library which is a savings, but how about reading the latest books, borrowing music CDs, and getting free downloads?

10. Scrap your magazine subscriptions and read blogs! Especially mine and my friend Melody's blog. Melody's blog is called Quirky Cottage and it is informative, delightful, and inspiring. Check her out at http://myquirkycottage.blogspot.com/.

I hope you find these ideas useful and helpful in making your money stretch in these challenging economic times. What do you do to "earn" money back from your budget?

Stop Learning, Stop Growing

I am wrapping up a very busy weekend. I took on a new challenge in the midst of an already overbooked life. If I waited until the timing was perfect to add anything to my life, I would never have had my children, or ever tried much of anything.

I LOVE learning new skills and information. I seriously do. When things change-roads, hairstyles, technology, I am usually intrigued by the change instead of bothered.

About four years ago, I was showing a picture of a car driven by a joystick to my youngest daughter, who was about 17 or 18 at the time. She had a very visceral reaction to seeing this photo and was not at all interested in even attempting to think how she could drive a car with a joystick. I, on the other hand, started thinking about how it would be done as soon as I saw the picture.

This is a short post today because I still have to go to the grocery store to get provisions for tomorrow and it is nearly 10 p.m. here.

I just want to encourage you to keep learning, look forward to change, and embrace the possibilities that change brings.