My Little Helpers

This morning I was somewhat dreading the clean-up that needed to be done at home when I had two very willing little helpers pitch in. I had more fun cleaning house today than I think I have ever had. The boys (Seth, age 8 and Caleb, age 6) are at the age where helping Mommy is still fun and they thought getting to use the Wet Jet and the Swiffer duster was loads of fun. Now I am rewarding them with time at the library to play on the computer (we are not online at home) and a trip out to lunch to wherever they choose (they are still trying to decide between McDonald's and Grandy's). This afternoon we will play and scrapbook and do needle work. Both boys were excited to see me pull out my scrapbooing stuff for the first time in a year last night and Seth is learning to loom knit. This is such a fun age, when I can hang out with my boys (I'm not yet, totally uncool) and enjoy their company.

Multiple Streams of Income

When I first left full-time teaching 9 years ago to become an at-home mom, I looked for ways to bring in income without having to leave my children with sitters (at least not often). At first I continued working at the music store that I had already been teaching lessons at while also teaching full-time in a school. Teaching lessons two or three evenings a week and clerking the store one or two days a week was managable with one child (I was able to bring him to work with me, but proved very difficult with two children. When our second child, Caleb was one, I left the music store and begin seeking other means of work. This led to a few years of various part time jobs including: teaching flute classes at a middle school two mornings a week (5 years), greeting card merchandiser (7 months), youth center activity director (2 years), summer work at an amusement park (3 summers), substitute teaching 2-4 times per month (3 years), industrial cleaning (1 year), and teaching flute classes twice a week for my husband's middle school band (which I still do). For some of these jobs I could bring the boys with me, others were done at night or when my husband was home with them, and for some I had to leave them with a sitter twice a week for a few hours. There was even one awful year when Seth was in 1st grade and Caleb was not yet in school, when I worked 5 part time jobs simultaneously. After getting very tired and stressed and realizing that I was not doing anything very well, I dropped all the jobs except for the classes for my husband and very occasional substitute teaching. This made the year Caleb entered pre-school and Seth was in 2nd grade very challenging financially, but was much better for our family in that I was not running in so many directions and was better able to take care of things at home.
Now that both boys are in school (Caleb is now in all-day Kindergarten) I am continuing to teach two classes a week for my husband and am substitute teaching 2-4 times a week. This helps greatly with our finances. I can look back at the years at home (or mostly at home) and see several mistakes made financially (not maintaining an emergency fund, for example), but there were many sucesses and we were still able to reduce our debt by $6000 over the past 3 or 4 years while also taking care of some costly repairs, continuing education classes we needed to maintain our teaching licenses, and other things even without being what Dave Ramsey calls "gazelle intense" about getting out of debt. Now that there is a little more breathing room in the budget, I am once again seeking multiple streams of income to build savings, pay off the remaining $14000 in debt and begin to take care of needed home repairs that we have put off while also saving for a replacement for our van and my husband's masters degree classes.
This time, I need the extra income sources to be things I can do from home because I do not want to return to that crazy schedule I had two years ago. I am looking at the skills I have and seeking to turn them into income sources. I have known since I was very young that I should write, but haven't done much with it over the last few years.It's time to get serious about being a writer. I also love to do needlework and other crafts and am exploring ways to turn that into income by possibly making things to sell at craft fairs or online. I also am starting to do some product surveys both paper and online. The surveys generally do not pay much at all, but by doing them when I have a little extra time, I can bring in a little extra which can be thrown at debt or savings. I have seen the power of steadily putting small amounts in savings or to pay down debt.
There are other possibilities. I'll continue to add thoughts on this subject as I explore my options and learn to discipline myself to use the things I already have an ability for and enjoy doing for the benefit of my family.

Easy Apple Dumplings

Last night, on Facebook, a friend posted the following recipe. Since I was drinking a Mt. Dew at the time (one of the ingredients for the recipe), and had the rest of the stuff needed at home, I decided to use the rest of my "dew" to try this.

Apple Dumplings
2 apples cut into 8 pieces each
2 cans crescent rolls
2 sticks butter, melted
sugar
cinnamon
12oz Mt Dew

Wrap one crescent roll around each apple slice starting with the small end and working towards the large end of the roll. Place the rolls in a 9x13 pan. Mix some sugar and cinnamon with the melted butter and pour over the rolls. Pour the Mt. Dew over that. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until rolls are brown.

It turned out good. My husband tried these and said they could use either more apples, or maybe some peaches. I think he's right, peaches would probably be good. I will experiment with this later and see what I can come up with.

Free Stuff

I love getting free stuff in the mail. Just yesterday there was a coupon for a free bag of Alexia onion strips. Last week from Pop-Tart Sprinklings I got a coupon for free pop-tarts (in Seth's favorite flavor, blueberry muffin). Other recent freebies have included: Garnier Fructis shampoo and conditioner samples, sample-sized boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios, and Kashi Honey Sunshine, Fancy Feast cat food appetizer, Emergen-C samples, a Fiber One bar and cereal sample, coupon books, samples from ALways, Kotex, Tampax, and Playtex, a coupon for a free box of Always Infinity pads, a water bottle from Juicy Juice, Crest toothpaste sample, a devotional magazine, a free copy of Focus on the Family's newest magazine, and other stuff that I am not recalling right now. It's like Christmas in my mailbox! I find the freebies by reading other blogs, looking at ads in magazines, and sometimes by paying attention to the pop-up ads on my Yahoo! homepage. I think I'll start keeping track of what I am finding for free each month and make a monthly post about it.

Soup Weather

It's fall, and with cooler temperatures, it's time to keep the slow cooker busy making soup. I have found soup and crackers or breadto be just right on a chilly evening. I alos love the fact that I can prep a soul the night before, put it in the refrigerator, then pull it our the next morning and urn on the slow cooler and know that supper will be ready whenever we want to eat that evening. This is especially helpful on days that I substitute teach and need to get supper on quickly so that we can head to church on a Wed eve or so my husband (a band director) can get back to work for practice or a ball game. It also makes a convenient Sunday dinner that is ready when we get home and is easy to clean up.
Many of my favorite soup recipes are in the Fix It and Forget It Cookbook ( a wonderful resource for slow cooking). I also find great recipes in the Taste of Home magazines by Reiman publications. Sometimes I create my own soup by putting tomato or vegetable juice or boullion and water in my pot and addint leftover meat and vegetables for mthe refrigerator or freezer.
My boys like some soups better than others, but will usually eat soup pretty well, especially if they can crumble in crackers or cheese. They also like to eat grilled cheese sandwiches with their soup, so when I know the soup I have planned is not one of their favorites, I can still be sure they will get enough to eat.
This week I am planning to fix baked potato soup, taco soup, and possibly salsa soup. Stay tuned for recipes.

A Well Stocked Pantry and Change in Shopping

Over the past few weeks I have been stcoking our cabinets and freezer and am now well stocked with enough food that I will not need to go grocery shopping until time to get things for Thanksgiving dinner (with the exception of quick trips to the store for milk and bread). Lately I have tried coupon shopping more and realize that I actually do better when I stick to buying store brands at Save a Lot. More For Less, and Wal Mart and by using my price book so that I only use coupons when the price of the name brand after coupon really is lower than that of the store brand. I have also found that scouring the ads, coupons in hand, for deals whether I really need anything or not, actually causes me to spend more. So, once again, I return to the principles that work (that for some strange reason, I keep departing from).
1. Keep a price book so that I know what stores have the lowest regular prices on items I regularly buy,
2. Use coupons paired with sales only when the price after coupon (and before any register rewards) is lower than the lowest price in my price book.
3. Make things from scratch. (I have pretty much given up on making cleaners from scratch, I do better with convenience products, but I can make many other things such as snack foods, and breakfast items from scratch).
4. Use up what we have before running out to get more (unless I have coupons for free items, or find sales that paired with coupons, really do mean an unbeatable deal).
5. When I do find an unbeatable deal that meets the criteria of the things mentioned above and is something we use, stock up.
6. Plan meals so I use what I have and so I have a list of meal possibilities in front of me for those inevitable tired evenings when I just can't figure out what to fix.
7. An add on to #4, use samples that I get in the mail and hotel samples etc up before getting more full sized items instead of stockpiling the samples for ????
8. Spend less time in stores. This is especially true on days when I am stressed or depressed. I will almost always spend more than I need to if I am in stores on my worst days. Also, if I am not out shopping, I am not spending money and the best way to save money is to not spend it in the first place.

I'm not sure why I keep veering from what I know to be true, I will just be thankful for lessons learned and move on. So now, with my well stocked cabinets I can stay out of stores (which is good because the holiday rush seems to be starting already) and concentrate on other things that need doing. I can also keep an eye on the ads and go back to the stores to stock up on baking supplies and seasonal things like pumpkin and cranberries when the prices begin to drop well below the regular prices for the holiday cooking and baking season.

Fall Things to Smile About

1. Colored leaves
2. Pumpkins
3. All the great desserts that come from #2
4. Cooler weather
5. Marching band
6. Fall decorations
7. Fall scents (pumpkin, cinnamon, apple pie, etc)
8. Fresh orchard apples
9. (a new favorite) Apple Cobbler cappucino
10. Leaf piles, jsut right for jumping in!