Cheaper Than Public School.

If you've read my "about me" page, you'll know I homeschool for less than it cost me to send my kids to public school. Since I just invited someone to visit my blog for that very reason, I thought I'd go into more detail.

My kids went to public school for one year. They had to bring everything on their supply lists - including wet wipes and Kleenex (things I never buy), and of course they each had to have a box of crayons, map pencils, folders, rulers and so on. Now, our public school doesn't let you actually keep these supplies. They go into the community bin to be doled out - as needed. This means at the end of the year you get nothing back and have to provide new supplies again at the beginning of the following year. Plus, all through the year we were told this or that ran out and we needed to contribute more.

We didn't just have to pay for field trips themselves,(including one to Build-a-Bear!), we also had to contribute an extra "fee" for transportation costs because the district couldn't afford to just send the buses. These fees were always $10, much more than it costs us in gas to go to the exact same locations ourselves.

Our room moms were constantly sending letters home telling us we needed to contribute $2 - $5 for teacher gifts. As near as I could tell, we apparently needed to shower our teachers with appreciation at least once a month.

Then there were PE uniforms, fundraisers, and extra fees for various clubs, snack contributions, party contributions - because we had to have a huge party for every single holiday, of course - and more.

If you take a look at my "Totally Free Curriculum" links, you'll see how I build my lesson plans from free sources. The only subject not there is math. I happened to luck out and find used Saxon math books and teacher manuals for less than $4 each. I purchased them and have math covered for several years.

We have the same box of crayons I bought three years ago, and my children share. I haven't bought wet-wipes since that one wasted year. I don't have to buy a rainbow assortment of folders, or expensive foam board. No one keeps our scissors or tells us we need to keep buying new markers to replace ones that dried out. I buy notebook paper and spirals in July when Wal-Mart has them for 10 cents a piece, and that's all I've had to buy for a couple of years now. It's not like pencils have a shelf life!

Our food costs are down - it's easier to serve a nutritious, hot meal straight from my kitchen at lunch than to try to provide a boxed/bag one.

We don't have PE uniforms.

We don't have fundraisers that either force us to contribute lots of baked goods or demand we buy terrible-smelling candles or World's Most Gosh Awful Chocolate.

Thanks to the internet - which we'd have regardless of whether we homeschooled or not, so I'm not counting that cost - yes, for us, homeschooling really is cheaper than public school and it can be for any family willing to put in the time and work of building their curriculum themselves.

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Learn French.

If you're looking to satisfy a foreign language credit for your high schooler, THIS SITE offers lessons, audio files, vocabulary, grammar, activities and videos.

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Free Custom Chore Charts.

THIS SITE allows you to create and print customized chore charts for your children. (Don't worry about the SpongeBob picture on the front page - you aren't stuck with him; you get to choose from many themes.)

Hint - if you have a program like CUTE PDF WRITER you can save your document as a pdf file before printing it.

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Yes. It really is free.

I received an e-mail this morning that I have already answered, but I thought perhaps I'd better address it here, as well, to clarify a few things.

Every website I point you to is free. Whatever it is offering - be it downloadable ebooks, worksheets, information (like craft patterns or recipes), or advice - it is available to you at no cost. If I should ever happen across something I genuinely believe is worth paying for, I will make that very clear in my post that there is a fee involved. (Though that hasn't happened yet, so... draw your own conclusions there.)

So, yes, my curriculum plans I'm posting - they're all free. Some things require printing - so there's a paper and ink consideration - but that's the only cost. And I don't think we print as many things as some other people might. For instance, stories and books, we simply read online, as we only read a chapter a day and that's not too hard on our eyes.

No, I'm not trying to "undermine" the homeschool community by advocating that everyone do things my way and not pay for their curriculum. I am merely showing people on very restricted budgets how it *can* be done. And if someone not on a tight budget, but frugal-minded anyway, also wants to follow my methods of doing things, great! It never hurts to start saving as much as you can for emergencies, retirement, college, and so on. But those of us who spend mere pennies on our supplies are few and far between and we won't even make a dent in the homeschool market's income. I assure you I'm no threat whatsoever!

No, I will never bundle all this information up into some sort of book, CD, or ebook for sale. First, I find that rather unethical - the selling of free information. Yes, I suppose I could argue I'm selling my "time and experience" but that's a weak argument IMHO and besides, it would defeat the entire point. I'm trying to show anyone interested how to get/acquire/make things for free if possible or for very little money if necessary. Starting off with *charging* for the information would be contradictory to the whole point!

In any case, I may not say it with every post: "Check out this FREE link..." because it starts feeling redundant, but yes, wherever I'm sending you, it really is free and I hope you'll find it useful.

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5th Grade LA Week 2.

The lesson plan for week 2 for 5th grade language arts has been posted, along with the first Secret Garden copywork/handwriting page.

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How I shop, Part 2.

That meat thing:

Quick sidebar before I get started on my meat shopping - I wanted to point you in this direction: FEEDING A FAMILY OF FOUR FOR UNDER $200 A MONTH The lady who authored this book gives a brief history of her own situation and goes on to describe how she keeps her costs low. She doesn't do all the same things I do (or vice versa) so I perhaps you will find things both on my blog and in her ebook that can help you reduce your own bills. In particular, we differ greatly on our meat purchases, so - pardon the horrible pun - I think her book is great "food for thought."

Before we go shopping in the morning, we get out our cooler and fill it with ice. (I make ice during the week and put it in plastic grocery bags in the freezer to save specifically for this purpose.) We first do our "other" shopping - such as thrift stores or garage sales. Then we get to the actual grocery shopping. We start at the farthest store we go to. I go straight to the meat section to see if anything is marked down. I do sometimes find great unadvertised sales, but mostly what I'm looking for is the things that are reduced for "quick sales." And - and this is important because I suppose it involves being a bit, *ahem*, brazen, something I know few people like being! - I will also pick out meat a day or two from it's sell-buy date and take it to the front/service counter and ask for a discount. You'd be surprised how often the manager is willing to do a quick mark-down. I guess some people might think this is akin to begging or something, but I consider it shrewd bargaining. After all, if no one else comes along to buy it within the next 48 hours, the store will have to throw it away. It's a good situation for us; we get the discount, and for them; they get the sale, even if it is at a reduction. Once I have one or two different meats - perhaps some ground beef and a whole chicken or some smoked sausage and a pack of chicken thighs, I'll start planning meals beyond my loss-leader meals.

I know this is tricky. You might be thinking - how can I plan the meals, standing in the grocery store? How will I know the other ingredients that I need? The answer to that requires its own post, the explanation is so long, but in a nutshell, this is where cooking everything from scratch using basic homemade mixes and staple ingredients come in. Once I finish all my shopping posts - I'll go into much more detail there.

After I've decided on some meals, I'll quickly cruise the rest of the store, to pick up any of their loss-leader items and to purchase anything else I stumble across that's a very good deal, also checking prices on any necessary items I might need to complete the meals I'm planning. If the prices are good, I'll purchase them there. If not, I'll wait for the next store.

We leave store number one, put our meat in the cooler, and head over to store number 2, where I repeat the process, though sometimes I won't find anything we want at this one.

Then we continue on to store number 3. Here I will finish out our shopping. If, on occasion, it turns out I passed something up at a previous store that I should have purchased because it was a better price, I come up with a substitution or different meal plan. This really doesn't happen much at all to me anymore, just because I'm so familiar with these stores' prices in general, but, if this isn't something you're used to doing, keeping a price book like I MENTIONED IN MY FIRST SHOPPING POST can help you here.

Meat is our single biggest price item, but we still don't spend more than around $15 a week on it. If you read my $3.50 CHICKEN POST, you'll already have a good idea of how I use meat in our meals. One whole chicken is four meals for us, not one. Have you ever read a diet/nutritionist's description of how much meat is one serving? I've seen it described as anything from "the size of a small fist" to "the size of a deck of cards". We Americans and our huge portions! We've become so accustomed to eating much more than that. And that can contribute to both budget woes and weight problems!

For us, one $2 pound of sausage is two meals. Ground beef is stretched with bread crumbs, milk, onions, and seasoning, then browned in batches or made into meatballs. I get 5 meals from 2 pounds of ground beef.

We rarely eat pork chops because I can't typically get enough meals out of them. We do eat fish when it is on sale. I will every-so-often buy a beef roast, if I can get it drastically reduced, and the same for ham.

Turkey deserves a special mention. When turkeys drop in price to under twenty cents a pound, right before Thanksgiving, I buy three of the largest turkeys I can find. I freeze two for spring & summer time and cook the other that week, and I get a dozen or more meals out of each. (FYI - Turkeys can be frozen for a LONG time; however, most people say after a year the quality suffers. I've never had a turkey frozen for more than about 8 months, so I can't give any personal testimony to that.)

So, when I get home with my "almost expired" meat, I do one of two things. I will either freeze it for use later or I will cook it on the spot, as in the case of the ground beef. I brown it and/or make the meatballs and keep it in either the freezer or refrigerator, to be added to whatever recipes I've planned.

Also, and this is an important note, too, we do not eat meat with every lunch and dinner. We have some "vegetarian" dishes we eat as well.

My next shopping post, I'll talk more about the other ingredients I purchase and then talk about shopping in one store, as we had to do for about a year when we were living in an outlying area with only one grocery store nearby.

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Oh, those garage sales.

I have seen some wacky things on "sale" at garage sales - things that make me wonder not just what the original purchaser was thinking when he/she bought them, but what on earth the creators or manufactures of said items had going on in their heads as well. :)

Shopping at a garage sale is pretty much a treasure hunt. You can go to seventeen different sales and come up empty handed, but then, on the 18th, you find something that truly makes your efforts worthwhile.

This morning we only went to 2 garage sales, before doing our grocery shopping, because my daughter had a party to attend this afternoon and we needed to get home with enough time for her to change clothes and get to her friend's house.

At the first garage sale we found nothing we needed, though the family was selling some very nice baby items that I'm sure were snapped up quickly. At the second, we hit a mini-bonanza in that we were able to buy a brown bag full of summer clothes for my son - t-shirts and shorts - all for $3. I've already got them in the wash.

My daughter went upstairs to change for the party and when she returned, she was dressed in white denim capri pants which have a small floral design on one leg, embroidered in gold tones; a white spaghetti-strap top, and a gold lace over-shirt. (Hard to explain, exactly - but it looks like a short sleeve jacket that ties with a single bow in front; made from a lace material.) She'd pulled her hair back with a tan and gold crocheted head-scarf I made her some time ago and added two bracelets and a necklace we made together from small wooden beads and tiny shells. She finished the outfit with a pair of white flip-flops and white sunglasses.

She looked adorable.

I do have a point. I think people might believe children who are dressed exclusively in garage sale and occasional thrift store finds must look "poor" and "deprived." This is simply not the case. If you are willing to hunt and hunt and hunt, you will come up with nice things for your children. (And yourself.) It just takes longer than making one stop at the local Limited Too or Old Navy.

My daughter's outfit cost:

$1.00 for the pants. More than I wanted to spend, but they are spotless and of good quality. I didn't pay for the white shirt. I got it for free from a woman in our homeschool support group who has a daughter older than mine. The lacy blouse was .50 cents at the same garage sale as the pants. The materials to make her head bandanna and jewelry are a little hard to estimate, but I would say around $3. Her flip-flops I did buy new - out of the Dollar Spot at Target. Her sunglasses were a gift last summer.

For less than $6, my daughter walked out of here looking like a movie star on her way to the beach.

So brave the garage sales if you don't already. Yes, people really do sell velvet Elvis paintings and avocado green floor lamps. It's the nature of the beast. But the more sales you hit (and, naturally, the earlier in the day the better), the more fabulous "treasures" you will find.

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Atlantis takes flight.

One of the neat things about living where we are? We get to see the shuttle launches from our backyard. And this evening's was a beauty - perfect blue sky, clear view. We watched until the boosters separated from the ship and the shuttle faded from site.

In honor of Atlantis, here's a site to explore: SPACE SHUTTLE HISTORY.

And here is NASA's video and image gallery: SEARCHABLE GALLERY.

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Friday Five for Free.

Five free websites you might not know about:

1) Music Appreciation Lesson Plan for High School credit: MUSIC APPRECIATION

2) Downloadable & printable state-standardized exams (from Texas) PLUS interactive online versions: STANDARDIZED TESTS - You can use these at home if you want to mark your child's progress.

3) Complete Elementary Algebra (basic high school algebra) course with book, instructor's manual, student answer key, quizzes and tests: TOTALLY FREE MATH

4) Bible and Christian study guides and information ranging in topics from in-depth studies of individual Bible books to virtual tours of the Holy Land to Bible puzzles: PADFIELD BOOKS

5) The NRRF Reading Competency Test: READING COMPETENCY - a short, easy to administer test to determine on what grade level your child is reading. *Please note this information, regarding the test: "Part 2 consists of six paragraphs taken from the middle part of school readers, grades 1-6, that were in wide use 100 years ago - a time when children were taught to read with intensive, systematic instruction in phonics. Each paragraph represents material that anyone who has been properly taught should be able to read and comprehend within their grade level. Keep in mind that grade-level 6 is equivalent to high-school level reading today."

(While I firmly believe that children should not be pushed into reading before they are ready - no matter what the folks behind NCLB think - it is helpful to have an idea of what your child's reading level is when you are looking for appropriate books and materials for him.)

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Who ya gonna call?

I am very ambivalent about cell phones. Are they a necessity? Well, no. Obviously the human race lived a long time without them. On the flip side, there are plenty of good reasons to own one, not the least of which is the fact that because "everyone" has cell phones, it's becoming less and less common to locate a pay phone if you find yourself in need of one.

Awhile back, we finally decided to add a cell phone to our monthly expenses. We explored a lot of options with minute plans and free weekends and contracts and on and on. In the end, we went with NET 10 - a prepaid phone. We bought the least expensive phone they had, for $20. We "recharge" it monthly for $15. The minutes do carry over. In fact, they keep carrying over to the point that now we have close to 1500 minutes on our phone! Even though there are phone plans (contracts) where the per-minute charge works out to less than 10 cents a minute, no one in our area offered a contract for less than $20 a month, so this is the absolute cheapest way we can maintain a phone.

If you currently have a cell phone and are paying for a more expensive contract, or want to get a cell phone, I do encourage you to check out Net 10 as a possibility. It might not be the best for you, especially if you use your phone for more than "emergency" purposes, but it could save you money over what the "other guys" offer.

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Learn to speak "WebSite".

Okay, learning HTML isn't like learning Spanish, but it can be a useful skill. And learning things beyond HTML, like CSS, and PHP can prove to be valuable skills as well. Some people/companies pay very good money to webpage developers.

If you have a budding techie in your brood, the W3SCHOOLS ONLINE SITE provides extensive, all-you-need-to-know, free lessons with interactive features and quizzes to test proficiency.

For my own part, my skills are fairly limited, but they've paid off in their own way. For Mother's Day this year, I built two webpages - one for my mother and one for my MIL. They were essentially slide shows with fading images, set to music, with family pictures and quotes, going with the theme, "Why we love *name*!"

Last fall, I surprised my children one morning with an online treasure hunt. I built several pages that linked to games and other fun sites and they had to work their way through them by solving puzzles and finding the links.

My children also have their own homepages - not for others, but for themselves. They say, "Hello, *name*! Where would you like to go today?" and have links to sites I have pre-approved. They start from these pages whenever they go online.

In any case, check out the W3School - it's a remarkable site and could easily be used as a credited computer course for high schoolers.

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Free Twain Lit Unit.

This month's featured book at Wowio is:
The Notorius Jumping Frog of Calaveres County, by Mark Twain. WOWIO MAIN PAGE (scroll to bottom).

You can download this for free without even creating an account, though I actually recommend you sign-up with them. It's all free and they have some really great books. Look for all the Great Projects You Can Build Yourself books - really cool! And yes, even the iPod thing is totally above-board. My daughter received a pink one in the mail - sent straight from Apple - within a week of getting the 10 referals. We didn't even pay shipping.

If you'd like to turn the Jumping Frog into a full unit study, here are some links to free lesson plans:
SHORT STORY LESSON PLAN - for younger students
STUDY GUIDE - for older students (Check out the "Jumping Frog Series, Newspaper Interactive" link in the left-hand column to create a newspaper you can print!)

Just to note - edsitement.net has many literature guides. You can find the main list HERE.

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World Geography Week 2.

Fixed a link error in the Geography Sources and reposted it, along with Week 2 lesson plans.

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How I shop, Part 1.

About Loss-Leaders:

Since I don't really use coupons, I thought I'd better explain how I do save money on groceries.

First, I (happily!) receive the local grocery store flyers in the mail. If you don't, you can try a few things. Visit the website of your local stores. For instance, if you go to WINN-DIXIE'S PAGE, you'll see they have the flyer posted right on the main page. If that doesn't work, you might give PENNY PINCHER GAZETTE a try. Once upon a time there was a great site, cairo.com, that uploaded all the grocery store flyers in one place, but they, sadly, folded last August. You might also simply ask next time you're in the store if there's a mailing list you can sign-up for. I live by the philosophy that it never hurts to ask!

Another option is to visit the store directly to pick one up each week, but only do this if you're already passing it by on another necessary errand or trip! Don't waste your gas driving around collecting flyers!

There are generally 3 stores I shop at for food groceries. Winn Dixie, Save-Rite, and the Neighborhood Wal-Mart. There is a "real" Wal-Mart not too far from here, and I will sometimes stop in there, as well. And for non-food items, I go to the Dollar Tree for a few things and Dollar General for the rest. (Dollar General is the only place I've found toilet tissue 6 for $1.00 and that usually lasts us for 2 weeks.) I will occasionally go to Publix or Albertson's, if they have a really great deal, but not often because generally they are more expensive and they are out of the way for me.

Save-Rite and Dollar General are next to one another. We pass Winn-Dixie to get there, and the Wal-Mart is right outside my neighborhood so we pass it every time we leave the house. This is important because I don't want to blow the savings I get from hitting several stores in the cost of driving to them!

If you're already shaking your head and thinking, "Well, that's out. I'm not close enough to that many stores.", or if you perhaps don't have a vehicle and must rely on a bus, please keep reading anyway. This is a lot of info, and I think it will take several posts to cover everything, but I will eventually explain what I do at each store, and hopefully that can help you, and I'll also address shopping in only one location when limitations force you to.

When I get my flyers in the mail, I sit down and start listing out all the loss-leader items. These are the things that are substantially discounted in order to get you in the door. They are called loss-leaders because the store is actually taking a hit on the sale. You have to be careful here, though. Not only do the flyers list loss-leaders, and then items that have a small discount, but they also sometimes list items that are just regular price.

Sidebar: If up until now you haven't paid very close attention to the price of individual items, or you're just new to shopping, you should probably give serious consideration to making a Price Book, as recommended by Amy Dacyczyn in her TIGHTWAD GAZETTE. (Not an affiliate link - just put it there for you to see the book. If you haven't read it, get your library to get you a copy. There's this one - a compilation, or you might find books 1, 2, and 3 individually.) To make a Price Book, you simply take a notebook with you to your local store and start writing down the prices of the things you buy - making a note of the date, too. Keep this book up for 1/2 a year or more, and you will not only get an idea of which things are cheapest where, but also what things tend to go on sale when. Once you start getting a real handle on prices, you'll be able to instantly recognize a loss-leader when you see it. For instance, the 10 lbs. of apples I bought - they were a loss-leader. I knew this as soon as I saw them because I know apples are regularly over $1 a pound and sometimes marked down on sale as low as .88 cents a pound. Being able to by them at .55 cents a pound was a good deal for me. I kept a price book for several years. I haven't for awhile, but only because I've been shopping on a budget for 18 years now and I actually keep all my receipts, so I can check on prices if I need.

Once I've listed out all the loss-leaders for my local stores, I then start thinking in terms of recipes. How many of these ingredients can I use to make how many meals? What other ingredients would I need? I happen to have a bookshelf FULL of cookbooks. I've never actually counted, but I must have over two hundred of them. I inherited them from a grandmother, great-aunt, and stepmother. If I can't think of any recipes to make with the loss-leader items, I head to the shelf first. I like these cookbooks because many of them are so old, they don't rely on convenience foods to make.

Thanks to the internet, though, you don't need a floor-to-ceiling shelf of cookbooks like mine. There are free recipes to be found all over the place. If you go here to ALL RECIPES' INGREDIENT SEARCH PAGE, you can type in the ingredients, and see what comes up. You can also simply google it, like "free ham recipes".

I don't plan my entire week this way, though. Usually, my loss-leader recipes only account for 5 or 6 of the 14 meals I'm planning, depending on what's available. Sometimes, it's not even that much; sometimes, it's even more. (This is not counting breakfasts, which I mentioned in my Making Mixes post.)

I don't buy all the loss-leaders at every store, only the ones I can really use. Ten cans of black olives are not going to help my family because we don't like them, even if they are marked down to 10 cents a can. On the other hand, if it's 10 cents a can for tomato sauce, I will buy 10 cans to keep for use beyond just the week I'm shopping for.

Using loss-leaders is a great way to keep your pantry & freezer stocked with ingredients. Part of keeping my grocery bills so low involves having a steady supply of staples, bought or replenished when on loss-leader sale, whenever possible. Yes, I really will buy 10 cans of tomato sauce at once. Or I might buy three bags of rice, or 5 pounds of cheddar cheese. (I grate it and freeze it.)

If you are just starting at trying to seriously lower your grocery bills, this is where I recommend you begin. This week, determine one or two loss-leader items and purchase more than you need for the week. Purchase enough for several weeks or months. I think sometimes we avoid doing this, because of the fear of either having to eat the same thing several nights in a row, or worries that it will go bad. As long as it is something that can either sit on a shelf or be frozen, go ahead and buy it. Eventually, you will reach a point where you are dedicating maybe as much as a 1/4 of your expenses each week just to loss-leader items you won't be using up right away, but because of things bought in previous weeks, you won't have as many individual items to purchase for that week's meals. This is essentially the concept behind bulk-buying, but a way to build up to it, for those of us who can't simply drop $200 in one trip to get everything in the huge, economy packages.

Are you still with me? LOL! I think I've droned on enough here. In my next shopping post, I'll cover the big ticket item - meat purchases.

If you have any questions, or I'm not going into enough detail/explaining things well enough here or in any of my posts, please don't hesitate to post a comment or e-mail me directly. Having been married for 18 years, a mom for almost 13 years, a homeschooler for 6 years, and been on a budget my entire life, sometimes I think things are "common knowledge" when in fact, they may not be at all and I don't want to gloss over something that's brand new for someone else.

Also - please feel free to share any tips and tricks you have! I'm still learning every day and I'm always looking for new ways to save.

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Science Week 2 Lessons.

The Integrated Science Week 2 lesson plan has been uploaded.

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Coupons? No, not so much.

Several weeks ago there was an article in the Orlando Sentinel detailing how a woman saved "lots" of money just by using coupons when she shopped. (I don't actually subscribe to the paper; I just read this article at a friend's house after she called my attention to it. It is possible it was part of a series. I'm not sure.)

This woman was a member of some group with a paid subscription service that somehow helped her find all her coupons and she swore it was well worth the price.

Before couponing, she'd been spending $120 a week for her family of four. (Yikes!) After she began her clipping adventure, she was able to reduce that to $80. Now, yes, a $40 deduction is great and $80 is certainly far better than $120, but really, it's not that impressive for a final amount and I don't think it warranted a feature news story!

When I tell people that we only spend $40 - $50 dollars a week for groceries, they usually make the same few assumptions; that we're eating junk, that I live on a farm and grow my own produce, and/or that I'm some sort of "Coupon Queen."

So, for the record:

No, we don't eat a lot of junk. Yes, we had grilled hamburgers for lunch today because we had a cook-out with friends, but you aren't going to find canned soup and boxed "Meal Helpers" on my shelf.

I live behind a farm, but not on one. The only things growing in my yard are some rather sorry looking sunflowers we planted before we were hit by a drought. Not even the grass is growing at this point. I do have some fresh herbs in the kitchen window, but that's it. Could I save more if I gardened? Probably so. But we have very poor soil - in fact, it isn't soil at all, but red clay - so I'd need to spend a good deal of money up front to either combat that fact or build up a container-style garden. And then I'd be paying a significantly higher water bill to keep my veggies growing. I may in the future decide to try growing some of my own produce, but for now, we don't.

And I don't use coupons except on very rare occasions.

I am aware that people can clip coupons and use them to purchase name-brand products for less than the store-brand. But that's immaterial to me. It doesn't matter if the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is .15 cents less with a coupon than the Wal-Mart version. I don't buy boxed macaroni and cheese at all. Often coupons are for just that - convenience foods. Yes, sometimes they actually are for staple items and they sometimes even work to make a national brand the cheapest buy, but more often than not, coupons aren't of much help for me.

I don't subscribe to the newspaper, either. There's no point. Thanks to the internet, I have my news before the paper would even be delivered every morning. I do sometimes scope out sites online to see if any coupons I can use are available, since I'm not getting the pages of them that come with the Sunday paper, but overall, I just don't bother.

If you're a couponer and it's working out for you, great. If it's working out so well for you, you can even beat me at my own game and you spend less than I do for your weekly purchases, even better! I'd love to hear from you.

In any case, the real issue is to wean yourself/family off the convenience foods, which can be, well, inconvenient, I know. But you'll find your most significant reduction in food expenses right here and, most importantly, no coupons are required!

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Typing Lessons On-line.

Remember those old Brother typewriters and the clack-clack-clack of the typebars striking the paper? No? I must be getting old. :)

While typewriters have gone the way of rotary phones, typing is still a skill we all need. Okay, so maybe someday we'll be working strictly off voice-recognition software, a thought I find rather depressing, but for now, it's not a bad idea at all to start teaching your child proper typing.

THIS WEBSITE offers free typing lessons that even older elementary children can follow. My nine-year-old daughter has been working her way through the lessons and her speed has improved dramatically.

If you follow a traditional school-year calendar, perhaps you might even want to consider working through the typing lessons over the summer, in preparation of the new school year.

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Today in History Link.

This is kinda cool - a little something you and your kids could read each day for a mini-history lesson. It's the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - TODAY IN HISTORY PAGE. Not only does it give details of various events, but it also includes links so you can read further through other LOC documents and pictures. You never know what might grab your child's interest and spark a whole new history exploration!

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Claiming Technorati.

The web-universe is a vast and very strange place.
Technorati Profile

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Look, Ma. FireFox!

Okay, so my template works. In Explorer and in FireFox. (Though there's something wonky with the spacing in the sidebar when viewed with FireFox. Figures!)

And now that I have a template that doesn't scream, "Hey! I was designed by a man!", I'm happy. :)

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American History Week 2.

Week 2 for the American History plan is posted. I'd actually wanted to get Science and Geography done as well today, but I got side-tracked by this template issue. Hopefully I will have time tomorrow.

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Template Blues.

All right. I could not figure out what FireFox's problem was with my previous template. There was no reason I could see for it to not work. But I switched to a blogger "official" template to take care of the problem. Do I like it? No, not terribly much, but I'll live. :P

Wish the columns weren't locked in to being so narrow!

Now I have to decide if I care enough to make a new banner graphic.

ETA - Hee. Never mind. Obviously. :)

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More apple talk.

If you've ever got just a couple of apples on hand - and not 10 lbs. like I mentioned a few posts ago! - and you'd like a quick side dish - here's a fast way to make applesauce. (I prefer crock pot applesauce, but this is still much, much better than the canned kind you can purchase in the store.)

2 large apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1/4 - 1/2 cup water, depending on how thick/thin you like your sauce
1/8 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Combine all the ingredients in a small sauce pan. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 15 - 20 minutes, until apples are soft. Allow to cool and mash with a potato masher for chunky sauce, or pulse through the blender for a smoother sauce.

If your apples are already sweet - like Fuji, rather than tart, you might want to reduce the amount of sugar used.

I make this recipe when I'm roasting a chicken and vegetables, to be served as a side, if I've been able to find some apples at .88 cents a pound (or less). At that price, I can make this dish for around .25 cents a serving.

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Free things.

I have never actually been "Dumpster Diving" in the sense of literally climbing into a dumpster. My husband did once, but that was to rescue a litter of puppies someone had cruelly tossed in.

That said, I have "harvested" some great items from the trash, either because it was beside a dumpster or it was left out for trash pick-up.

I once found 2 bulletin boards with wood frames. They're big - 3 feet by 5 feet. I brought them home, cleaned them up, painted the frames, and covered the surface with contact paper. Now the kids use them to display awards and pictures.

I also found a dresser that just happened to match a dresser we already had. I brought it home and cleaned it up and now my husband and I both have our own dressers, instead of trying to keep all our clothes in one.

Then I found a color printer and a fax machine on a curbside while I was out for a walk. As I stared at them, rather dumbfounded, I thought, they had to be broken beyond repair. But, just in case, I went up to the house and knocked. The gentleman who answered informed me that, no, they both worked fine; he simply had no need for them because he now had an all-in-one office machine. Because I was many blocks from home, I very forwardly asked if he wouldn't mind if I moved both items to his porch so no one else would take them as I ran home as fast as I could for my wagon to come fetch them. He seemed very amused by all this, so he carried them himself back into his house and told me to just ring the bell when I got back. Thanks to that find, my husband is able to do a lot of work here from the house, saving us gas money, if nothing else!

I found a lovely turkey platter on top of a few bags of curbside trash. The previous owner was watering her yard so I asked if she minded if I took it and after giving me a strange look, she shrugged and said I was welcome to it. We use it every Thanksgiving now.

Okay, before you run screaming from my insanity and apparent lack of class, stop and think for a moment. Where does all this stuff go? To our landfills. Have you ever actually visited a landfill before? We have. The people there were very friendly and took us on a tour. We went as a field trip with some other homeschool families. As we drove around looking at these massive hills, our guide explained to us what each "hill" really was. One was at least 4 stories tall and while it *looked* like a grassy hill, it was, in fact, a gigantic mound of nothing but old kitchen appliances.

We have become such a "disposable" society; people throw away perfectly good, usable items for no other reason than, "I got something new.". And because we do this, we're creating landfills that stretch on literally for miles. That's the real insanity here - not my trash-picking.

I have "harvested" many other items - a beautiful wooden doll house; a rocking horse I didn't need because my kids were long past that age, but I cleaned it up, repainted it and donated it to a shelter for homeless mothers; a large Rubbermaid container full of yards of fabric; an end table, a sewing machine (It simply needed a new bobbin and it works great.); many books; a wooden jewelery box I cleaned up and gave to my daughter, and several rolls of shelf paper. All right, the shelf paper is a pretty horrendous pattern - a floral disaster in some wretched colors, but I was able to line all my kitchen cabinets and drawers with it and frankly I don't care what it looks like. It's not like my guests ever see it and it gets the job done.

Our biggest free item was a car. Yes, a car. No, sadly, I didn't find this one by a dumpster. :) But I want to tell you this story anyway. Several years ago, we were living in an apartment complex on the edge of town. Out of the blue one day, a neighbor knocked on our door and informed me that she hated living here and she was going back to New York. (After only 3 months.) Then she stunned me by handing me her car keys and telling me I could have her car. She was fed-up and leaving and didn't even want to drive back. She'd bought plane tickets for herself and her daughters.

Her exact words were, "I'm giving it to you because you were the only one who was nice to me." What was "nice"? I kept an eye on her youngest daughter as she and my own daughter played outside. I took her daughter to the pool with my kids. I made her family dinner one night. Nothing remarkable at all, but, as it turns out, apparently we were the only ones to welcome this family to the complex and the only ones to extend friendship.

At this time we really needed a new car. Our previous vehicle was on its last legs and it was a huge concern for us. We'd never mentioned this to our neighbor at all, so she was literally a God-send.

I'm a big believer in the idea that you are rewarded big and small for your good deeds and I think this is a perfect example of it. We drove that car for three years, until we'd saved enough money to buy the van (used!) we drive now. Then we gave the car away to a young man with a wife and new baby on the way.

I probably have a strange reputation in our neighborhood - "Oh, look! There's the woman who picks over your trash!" - but that's fine with me. Everything I've rescued has gone to MUCH better use than becoming another mound in our landfill, so my neighbors can think what they will. And I encourage you to adopt the same "trash to treasure" attitude if you don't have it already. You really never know what amazing item you might find!

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Apple Recipes.

One of my purchases this week was 10 lbs. of apples for $5.50. I don't know about your area, but for us, this was a steal. Normally the best I can hope for is about $.88 a pound, and typically they would run me $1.10 or more. Now, of course, even spending $5.50 on apples when we have such a small budget probably seems crazy, but when I find sales like this, here's how I use my apples.

I pull 4 of the "best" ones from the bags. These will be sliced and eaten raw.

Next, I take out 4 apples to make APPLE BUTTER. I follow this recipe, except I cut it in half to make 16 servings and I use half the recommended sugar. Because ground cloves cost too much, I use allspice instead. Also, I puree it in a blender once it's cooked down. I make this in my smaller crockpot (1.5 quarts). Apple butter is served with muffins at breakfast or on toast as a snack in the afternoon.

All the rest of the apples go into my larger crock pot to become applesauce. I peel the apples, chop them and put a layer in the crock pot. I sprinkle the layer with a bit of brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon sugar. I keep building layers until I've used up the apples. I then add about 1/2 cup water. I cook these on low until they're nice and mushy, but still with some chunks as my kids prefer. We serve applesauce as a side dish with chicken or ham.

I also use some of the applesauce to make APPLESAUCE MUFFINS, one of my daughter's favorite muffins.

In this way, I use up all 10 lbs. before running the risk of the apples going bad and I get 1 snack - the raw apples; 3 breakfasts - the muffins; and 3 sides - the applesauce, per person. Plus there's the apple butter, too. I keep my apple butter and applesauce in the fridge and it lasts a couple of weeks. It would probably last longer than that - but we've eaten it all by then, so I've never tested how long it would last before spoiling!

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More Home Economics.

Aside from cooking, there are other things I believe we should teach our children, including money management, good housekeeping skills, and BASIC SEWING SKILLS. Yes, even for boys! My son can't do anything complicated with a needle - but I did make sure he knows how to fix a button or a tear in a seam. If he ever lives on his own for any length of time, he'll probably need to know!

And for anyone interested in embroidery, here's a nice little site. It's a blog, but if you scroll down, you'll see links in the right-hand column for something called STITCH SCHOOL.

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High Speed Internet.

Being who I am, I'm sure most people would assume we have dial-up internet service, since you can get that for as low as about $10 a month.

We don't. We actually pay $30 for a high-speed connection and here's why. It started when we first moved here. We signed up for our phone service with the only telephone company in our neighborhood. We got internet through PeoplePC. When we got our first phone bill, it was $180. We'd made two out-of-state calls, neither more than 45 minutes. But we were also billed for other calls we made, under the highly questionable title of "local long distance." If I called my husband at work? Local long distane. The library 7 miles from my house? Local long distance. It was totally ridiculous, and there's more. Our dial-up internet, even though it dialed numbers in the same area code, was also billed as "local long distance." Basically, if our phone dialed a number - no matter where it was - we got billed an extra charge.

Now we pay the $30 for cable internet and another $15 for our phone service - the basic residential rate with VONAGE. For $45, we have internet and phone service, and no long distance fees. Even if we called no one at all, just to *have* a land line is $26 for no-frill service, plus random taxes and fees, bringing it up to almost $35. Three or four phone calls and one hour on-line and we'd be paying more for the slower service than what we pay now with high-speed.

If you're still using dial-up, I encourage you to look into cable internet. I realize it's still not available *everywhere*, but you may find that using it and Vonage (or another VoIP service) could actually save you money, too, if your local phone service is as big a rip-off as ours is!

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Kids in the kitchen.

Although I do not include any "home-ec" classes per se in my curriculum, I have been teaching my kids many of the things I wish I'd learned as I was growing up. Because seriously, I've used trigonometry how many times since college? Uh....

But I cook every day. And I want to make sure my kids know how to cook as well. For the most part, I just have them help me with the recipes we already use, but if you're interested in teaching cooking more like a class, I have a few sources you might be find useful.

EATING WELL MADE EASY - these are pdf publications from the University of Utah's county extension office.

COOKING WITH KIDS - scroll past the google ads.

KIDS COOKING LESSONS - probably the best of the 3 I've listed, as far as organization, details, and explanations. This also includes some dinner etiquette lessons and kitchen safety rules. Broken down by age groups. As these are presented as "lessons", you could implement this into a full home-economics program/elective.

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Gift giving all year.

One of the ways I'm able to keep the costs of gifts down is I shop all year long. No, not at the mall! My gifts come from garage sales, used bookstores, thrift stores and dollar stores. Yep. I really do give "used" gifts.

Saturday mornings are shopping mornings. We get up extra early, have breakfast, and head out. We start with a few garage sales, weather permitting. We don't always buy anything - but sometimes we get fantastic deals. Next we'll go to a local thrift store or dollar store. (Or we go to these first if there are no garage sales to hit.) We might not buy anything there either. And once a month we drop in at a used bookstore. After that, we'll do our grocery shopping and come home.

Last fall at a community garage sale, I found a woman selling very pretty, expensive teacups and saucers. Each one was a different pattern. She'd apparently thought to start collecting them, buying them one at a time, then changed her mind. I was surprised they'd been passed up by other buyers, as nice as they were, and I bought the lot - 5 cups and 5 saucers - for $2.50 total. I have seen cups like these for sale in "boutique" shops* for as much as $40.

I brought my cups home, washed them, and put them away in my closet. A few months ago, while at a grocery store, I found boxes of flavored teas marked all the way down to $1. They don't expire until mid-2008, but the store had decided to quit carrying the brand - Twinings. Nice tea, by the way! I guess we Americans are too accustomed to our Lipton or something. I bought 5 boxes.

Using THIS FREE PATTERN, I made 5 bookmarks. (All five only took one weekend.)

Finally, I bought 5 plain, white gift bags at fifty cents a piece, and I always keep green tissue paper "in stock." (Green because it works year-round, including Christmas.)

So far, I've given away 2 of my gift bags and have 3 more to give. They have been birthday presents for woman friends & family.

The final product is this: I take a bag and paint a floral design in colors to match the teacup & saucer, using the "one stroke" method - a very easy painting style to master. I also paint the recipient's name. In the bag, I put the teacup and saucer, box of tea, crocheted bookmark, plus one or two paperback books I purchased at the used book store. (Books that I know the recipient will enjoy, based on their reading tastes and favorite authors.). Finally, I add a bag of CINNAMON SPICED ALMONDS, and a homemade birthday card, encouraging my friend to take an evening off for herself. I top this with some crumpled green tissue paper and I'm done.

Even with the cost of the almonds' ingredients - the most expensive part of the gifts! - each of these bags has cost me only around $5. This is actually on the high end of gift giving for me, but still I'm able to assemble a lovely little gift for less than half the cost of many things people frequently give out as gifts - like music CDs, and for WAY less than those fancy gift baskets you see everywhere.

But all this only works because I'm *constantly* on the look-out. I really do shop & create year-round. By utilizing this method, I'm not stuck at the last minute with rushing out to buy some over-priced gadget or knick-knack, and my gifts show a lot of love, time, and care - something you can't really demonstrate with a plain box of chocolates!


*"boutique shops" - No, I never buy anything from these little gift & clothing stores. But my MIL loves to poke around in them, so I have had occasion to be in some. I just wander around and marvel at the prices and make note of any ideas the items spark for me. :)

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Attitude is Everything.

My husband sent me the link to a news article that was a few weeks old. It involved the divorce of a celebrity couple and how the husband is demanding $33,000 A MONTH in support for himself and their one child. Good grief!

As my husband says, could you imagine this guy's horror at trying to live on two-thirds of that for an entire year? LOL!

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