Living On A Dime

Tag: Homemade

  • Money Saving Drink Tips

    Money Saving Drink Tips

    Money Saving Drink Tips

    Money Saving Drink Tips

      • First don’t forget to drag out the thermoses. What a nice surprise for your family to open up their lunches and find a thermos full of cocoa or hot tea. I know they can get milk at school and a teabag from the break room but how would you feel if someone made you a hot drink like that? It would be nice wouldn’t it? It’s like liquid love.
      • Instead of throwing out that extra coffee in the morning, pour it into a thermos to use later (whether at work or at home). You could even make extra coffee in the morning and put it in a thermos to take to work. This will save you money over buying coffee there. Even if you stay at home it saves you from having to make it when you need a break.
      • Experiment with regular tea bags and make your own flavored tea. Add apple juice, brown sugar and cinnamon stick to a regular cup of tea or instead, add a slice of lemon, honey and a cinnamon stick. Another good combination would be cranberry juice, cloves, and a cinnamon stick.
      • Save money on expensive coffees buy making your own. Add a drop or two of vanilla extract and vanilla non dairy creamer to your coffee for an expensive coffee taste. If you really want to “walk on the wild side” experiment with different flavors of extracts like hazelnut. Use a light hand and only a small amount because pure extracts can be strong.
      • If you like flavored coffees, add a little pinch of cinnamon to your coffee grounds before brewing or use a cinnamon stick to stir it. You might try a tiny bit of vanilla with vanilla flavored creamer.
      • For a delicious variation on cocoa, try stirring it with one of those peppermint sticks you got on clearance after Christmas.
      • Don’t have a peppermint stick? Then steep a mint tea bag in your cocoa.
      • If you love peanut butter cups, add a small spoon of creamy peanut butter to your cocoa.
      • Add a teaspoon or two of coffee creamer to your hot chocolate for a much creamier texture.
      • Having trouble communicating in your family? A hot drink may seem like something small but try sitting and having a cup of cocoa one day with your kids after school. You will be amazed at how they will open up and visit with you. Or try sharing a hot drink with your spouse at the end of the day. These things help to create warm fuzzy memories for our families. Then, when times of stress come, they have those good memories to pull out, cling to and help them through the harder times in life.
      • Make up some lemonade and stir into a little kool aid to color it – red (raspberry, strawberry, cherry flavor) for Valentine’s Day, green (lime) for St. Patty’s Day or blue for the 4th of July.
    • Having trouble getting your children to eat their food at dinner time? Try serving just water for a beverage. A lot of times children fill up on juice, milk or pop before they even get their food on their plate. They are not as likely to tank up on liquid if that liquid is water.
    • Don’t forget to keep a few frozen bottles of water in the freezer now that we are heading into summer. Fill plastic bottles of water half full and freeze. When you are ready to run out the door grab one and top it off with more water. These are also great for picnics or for on a trip. Place them in with your food cooler to help keep it cool.
    • I really love the small bottles that chocolate milk comes in at Burger King for kids’ drinks. They are smaller and narrower which makes them easier for small hands to hold on to. This especially helps reduce spills in the car. We don’t get these bottles often but when we do I just take them home, peel off the labels and wash them. I then freeze them with water or fill with lemonade.
    • Do you often go to a large activity where everyone one has a bottle of water or pop that all look alike? Do you have a drawer of scrunches or cloth pony tail holders that seem to keep multiplying? Then kill two birds with one stone and slip a scrunchy or pony tail holder on to the bottle or can so you can easily identify yours. Give every member of the family his or her own color. The guys probably would prefer a black or brown one instead of hot pink and if they really aren’t in touch with their feminine sides, use a large colored rubber band instead.
    • Save money on expensive coffees buy making your own. Add a drop or two of vanilla extract and vanilla non dairy creamer to your coffee for an expensive coffee taste. If you really want to “walk on the wild side” experiment with different flavors of extracts like hazelnut. Use a light hand and only a small amount because pure extracts can be strong.

     

    photo by: alykat

  • Flavored Butters

    Flavored Butters

    Flavored Butters

    Mix one of the following in 1/4 cup softened butter or margarine to flavor your plain vegetables.

    • 1 tsp. basil, fresh chopped or 1/2 tsp. dried
    • 2 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese, grated
    • 1 Tbsp. chives, chopped and 1 Tbsp. parsley, chopped
    • 1/2 clove garlic, crushed, or 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
    • 1 Tbsp. prepared horseradish
    • 1 Tbsp. lemon peel, grated and 2 Tbsp. lemon juice
    • 1/4 tsp. dry mustard and 1 tsp. fresh dill or 1/4 tsp. dried dill

    From Dining on a Dime

     Photo By:  foodiesathome.com

  • How to make toast in a skillet

    How to make toast in a skillet

    Want to make toast while camping? Or maybe you are like me, I am without a toaster for a week or so. Here is an old girl scout trick for making toast that really works great, even if it sounds crazy.

    Sprinkle some salt into a frying pan, heat it up over medium to medium high heat and lay a slice of bread on top of the salt. When it is brown flip it to the other side. Voila! You end up with toast just like it came out of the toaster. And no there is no salt taste to it.

    Jill

    photo by: MarshalAstor

  • Easy Homemade Face Paint Recipe – How To Make Face Paint

    Easy Homemade Face Paint Recipe – How To Make Face Paint

    Kids love painting their faces! Here is an easy homemade face paint recipe to make homemade face paint with ingredients you already have at home! It’s a great way to keep kids busy and off the computers in the summer! (more…)

  • Muffin Tips – Tips for Making Great Muffins

    Muffin Tips – Tips for Making Great Muffins

    Tips for Making Great Muffins

    Muffins are great to make during these cold winter months. They are so simple to mix that they make a great “first time cooking” food for kids to learn to cook.

    • When you are teaching an older child how to cook, look for facts or tips about the things you will be making. Even if you are a seasoned cook, this can really help. When cooking, we do some things automatically and don’t think to mention them to our children. Reading about it helps them to understand but can also remind us to tell them certain basic things.

      It can be helpful to have kids start a cooking scrapbook. When you cook homemade biscuits have them make a page with the do’s and don’ts for biscuits. Do the same for cakes, cookies, muffins, etc. By the time they are ready to leave home, they will have their own “personal” cookbooks to refer to. You could even add things to it like grandma’s biscuit recipe or some short funny stories and bloopers about your experiences cooking together.

     

    • Here’s how to mix muffins to produce an even texture:

      1. Place all dry ingredients in a bowl and gently whisk with a fork to aerate.
      2. Mix liquids together, beating eggs. I measure the milk and all the liquids into a measuring cup, then add the eggs and beat with a fork.
      3. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the liquids into that. (A well is a large indentation you make in the flour mixture with your fist or a spoon.)
      4. Stir the mixture just enough to moisten it. Don’t over mix or try to get all the lumps out. If you over mix the batter, it will produce holes or peaked tops or cause the muffins to have a tough texture.
    • Muffins are great to make and freeze. Then you can grab a couple of the muffins with a steaming cup of coffee in the morning for a quick breakfast or for a snack during the day.
    • You can make the basic recipe like Mom’s Sweet Muffins and add fruit, raisins, or nuts. When you do this, toss the fruit, raisins or nuts into a little flour first. This helps to distribute them evenly in the batter.
  • Make Your Own Custom Lunch Box

    Make Your Own Custom Lunch Box

     

    Have you ever looked for a lunch box that your child would like only to settle for something that you knew wouldn’t quite do the job? I have more than once found myself frustrated because all the lunch boxes I could find were either too expensive, too cheaply made or featured characters my kids didn’t like on the front.

    One year, after keeping my eye out for a lunch box for BJ for some time, I ended up buying a plain soft sided lunch box from Wal-Mart. I wasn’t too excited about the quality of the lunch box, (It was one of those cheap soft sided vinyl ones.) but since I had to settle for one that wasn’t what I wanted, I bought one of the less expensive ones.

    After a few months use, the lunch box just shredded. I wasn’t surprised, but I was back to square one. BJ still used the rapidly deteriorating lunch box for a few weeks while I looked for a replacement, but in that time I couldn’t find anything. Finally, it kicked the bucket and I needed to find something that weekend.

    We had an old Pokemon lunchbox that was just a spare. I think we bought it at a garage sale for a quarter. It was one of the hard plastic ones that is usually a little more durable. No one really likes Pokemon in our family, but we went ahead and got that lunch box to keep as a cheap emergency replacement.

    Even though he never liked Pokemon, BJ does have one great love in life. He is just wild over Furbies. The kid is Furby crazy!! If you don’t remember Furbies, they were one of those toys that people would stand in long lines overnight to buy for their kids back in the early 90’s.

     

    Of course, it’s great when your child loves a craze after the mania is all over because you can find the things to collect at garage sales and thrift stores for cheap! :-) Most of BJ’s Furbies cost a quarter or less.

    I decided since I couldn’t find a good quality lunch box he would like, I would make him a Furby lunch box. I found some Furby clip art on the Internet and printed some of the ones I thought he would like. (I didn’t think of it at the time, but I could have taken pictures of his Furbies with a digital camera and printed them instead.) Then I cut them out and glued them on a piece of white paper that I had already cut to the size of the lunch box face to make sure the entire Pokemon logo was covered.

    Once I had the Furbies glued to the paper the way I wanted it, I glued the paper with Elmer’s glue to the lunchbox. Then I covered it with contact paper. I trimmed the contact paper to size with a razor blade and put a bead of glue around the edge to "seal" it. After letting it sit all night, it hadn’t dried, so I set it in the sun to dry that day. Unfortunately, the glue never dried and then the clip art faded.

    Sometimes it takes more than one try to get it right. I started all over again and this time I did everything the same except I used glue made specifically for plastic. It worked perfectly! The lunch box was a huge hit with BJ and right away, Elly wanted her own "special" lunch box.

    I made a lunch box for her the same way, using My Little Pony art. It only cost me a few minutes worth of work, even considering that I had to re-do it the first time. This "custom lunch box" has worked well for BJ for more than a year. 

    Tawra

     

    photo by: paul_lowry