Have you heard the one about the homeschooling family that lives on less than $22K a year in an area that costs above 100% (116%) of the National CoL Index?
I haven't quite figured out why so many people still persist in perpetuating the myth that living on a single income and homeschooling on a dime aren't possible. I can only suppose these are people who can't imagine life without a daily trip to Starbucks and dinner out several times a week. The people who actually shop at malls (*shudder*) and think "Brand Name = Best". The people who really live by the "Keeping up with the Joneses" mentality.
That? Would not be us!
Welcome to our world. We cook from scratch. Buy from thrift stores. Find 95% of our homeschool materials for free. This is my blog and this is how we do it.
Great FREE cookbooks and more.
First, just so y'all know: My computer lost its mind yesterday morning and decided my profile no longer existed. While I was able to pull up many of my files from back-up, I was not able to restore certain things that had been "customized" like my FTP information, my e-mail accounts (Though I was able to recall saved e-mails that had been backed-up. I only lost a few weeks worth.), and any and all program settings. I spent several hours fixing it, only to have the exact same thing happen to me today. My husband is laughingly calling it "Groundhog Day." He can say that. He's not the one re-installing everything again! Heh. Anyway, it is possible that if you e-mailed me at some point before about noon yesterday and didn't hear back, that your e-mail is gone, for which I truly apologize. Please feel free to write me again.
And to return to our regularly scheduled program - reader Hope pointed me in the direction of THE UNIVERSITY OF MAINE'S CO-OP EXTENSION SITE, which is definitely one of the best extension sites I've seen. In particular, you might be interested in the following free publications:
RECIPE IDEAS FOR THRIFTY FAMILIES
SAVING MONEY WITH HOMEMADE CONVENIENCE MIXES
SODIUM CONTENT OF YOUR FOOD
WINNING WAYS TO GROCERY SHOP WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
MAKING YOUR OWN BABY FOOD
And - erm - I'm including this one, but if you've read my "How I Shop" posts, one thing you'll know, I do NOT plan my meals before shopping because it would actually cost me *more* money. Still, FYI: CUTTING FOOD COSTS
Also, though I'm not sure anyone who doesn't have kids would actually bother much with coming here to Life. On a Budget., just in case there are any readers who are single or living with a roommate/spouse/significant other - there's a short series of books just for cooking for two. (And I suppose anyone who was interested could double or triple these recipes.)
THRIFTY RECIPES: MAIN DISHES
THRIFTY RECIPES: SALADS AND SOUPS, BREADS AND DESSERTS
BUYING FOOD FOR SMALL THRIFTY FAMILIES
IDEAS FOR PLANNING THRIFTY MEALS
I encourage you to explore the site further. In the "Eating Well" category under "Food & Health" you'll find an entire section of PDFs on specific fruits and vegetables that include nutritional information and recipes. There's also a "personal finance" section, which includes: MANAGING YOUR MONEY: PLANNED AND UNPLANNED SPENDING. Not all of the files are available as free PDFs or HTML, but the majority are. Definitely worth the look.
Hope doesn't have a blog I can point you to, so if you find any of this info useful, please take a second to post a comment here to thank her for her help!
PS - Hope, thanks again from me! :)Labels: budgeting chatter, recipe chatter
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Random Recipe 2 - Crock Pot Lasagna
This is recipe I frequently serve when we have guests. It's always well-received and it makes a complete meal just by serving a salad and breadsticks along with it. Since I do try to also offer dessert when we have visitors, I will generally serve a chocolate cake or ice cream as well. If you make your breadsticks (and dessert, if serving) ahead of time, it's a simple matter to toss the salad just before serving dinner and have everything to the table with minimal effort, allowing you to actually enjoy your company, rather than leaving you stuck in the kitchen right up until meal time.
Lasagna
1 container ground beef starter mix* OR
1 lb. ground beef
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
29 0z. can tomato sauce
1 cup water
6 oz. can tomato paste
1/2 tsp. salt**
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. basil
8 oz. uncooked lasagna noodles
4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 cups cottage cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1. Thaw beef starter mix overnight or in microwave and place in large saucepan, OR: brown beef, onion, and garlic in saucepan, drain well, return to pan.
2. Stir in tomato sauce, paste, salt, oregano, and basil; heat just until bubbly.
3. Combine cheeses in a separate bowl or container.
4. Spread 1/4 of the meat sauce in bottom of slow cooker. Top with 1/3 of uncooked noodles. (May have to be broken to fit.)
5. Spoon 1/3 of cheese over noodles.
6. Repeat layers twice, then top with remaining meat sauce.
7. Cover and cook on low for 4 - 5 hours.
* I make a master mix of ground beef when I buy it in bulk - EXPLAINED HERE. Also, when I find ground turkey on sale for cheaper than the beef, I will use it in my master mix instead and no one has ever noticed the difference.
** original recipe called for a full teaspoon of salt, so use at your own discretion.Labels: recipe chatter
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Friday Five for Free (6)
This one's a little different. These free websites I'm about to list may not be free or even exist much longer.
First, you should read: THIS ARTICLE ABOUT THE STATE OF INTERNET RADIO.
Just today it was ANNOUNCED THERE'S BEEN A SMALL REPRIEVE but nothing is settled for sure. If this interests you, you can keep up-to-date by visiting: SAVENETRADIO.ORG In particular, READ THESE RESPONSES TO THE SITUATION from musicians who explain exactly why this is a horrible turn of events.
Finally, here are 5 free internet radio sites. I imagine the big guys - aol, yahoo, vh1 - will hang around, though it wouldn't surprise me terribly if they started charging subscription fees. And the "little" guys? They'll probably go out of business, which is a huge shame, as you can see from the musicians' pleas for help.
YAHOO RADIO
AOL RADIO
LIVE 365
VH-1 RADIO
RADIO TOWER
Just to note - I listen to free internet radio frequently, as does my daughter. We very often will let contemporary Christian stations play while we work, including one we really like called LifeTalkKids, which has Christian and Inspirational music and dramatic Bible readings. LifeTalkKids is definitely one on the endangered list.
I do understand that people in the music industry have a right to compensation; however, IMHO, this attempt to jack up royalties is nothing short of base greed and will in the end only hurt the majority of people involved in music/audio production while fattening the wallets of a few folks at the top. If you agree with this sentiment, please consider following the links at savenetradio.org to contact your congressmen and ask for help.
Thanks!Labels: general chatter
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101 Books college-bound students should read.
The College Board offers THIS LIST of recommended reading for the college-bound student. Interesting choices; many of them the same books I read & listed in my High School Lit posts. I would be curious to see if any one student could read *all* of them, though. I'm sure it's entirely doable for a voracious reader, but I think it could potentially burn-out your average student.
I also firmly believe the Bible should be on this list. It's not about me "shoving my religion" on people or whatever it is that secularists are constantly crying foul over. The Bible has had a marked, direct influence on our culture, history, society, and literature. All students should be aware of this.
In addition to that list, they offer this follow-up: POETRY AND CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL TEXTS
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Well, phooey!
I just realized that if you search under a label - like "recipe chatter" - you don't get all the posts, only the more recent ones. *grumble* I guess I'll go ahead and try to fix that, but as of right now, that still leaves me where I was a month ago when I was considering building a links page. There's nothing *wrong* with that per se, except that it would mean I'd need to manually update it and the whole point to blogging is supposed to be the ease of "push-button publishing." Still, I guess it couldn't hurt to organize everything better here, since my posts are generally as random as they could get.Labels: general chatter
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Just FYI - Binders on Sale
We went to the bread thrift store yesterday, because Wednesday is their big sale day. We usually go on the first Wednesday of the month when we go, but last week we were in the middle of Science Camp, so we put it off. On the way home, we stopped in at Staples because we knew they were having a school supply sale.
If you happen to live near one, you may want to check it out. They have binders marked down. They are the flexible kind - not the hard ones - but they're only 33 cents each. If you use notebooking as part of your homeschooling, you might want to consider it. There's a limit of 6 per household, but don't be afraid to ask if homeschoolers are allowed to buy more. While standing in line yesterday, I noticed a woman ahead of me holding many items that were supposed to be limited. When she got to the counter, she showed a teacher ID and they let her buy everything at the sale price. So, when I got up there, I showed my teacher ID - I have one because we homeschool under an umbrella school - and explained that I'm a homeschooling mom working through a private school. That was good enough for the clerk, so I was able to buy 10 binders at the sale price. I also got several 8 packs of pencils for a penny per pack, four bottles of 9 cent glue, and 20 brad/pocket folders for a penny each.
Unfortunately, from what I can tell on-line, the penny sales are already over as of yesterday. The binders, though, ACCORDING TO THIS will be on sale until the 14th.Labels: budgeting chatter
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Random Recipe 1 - Crock Pot Potato Soup
I thought I'd go ahead and start posting some of my family's favorite recipes, beginning specifically with Crock Pot ones, as was mentioned in a comment.
Potato Soup
(I cook this one in my 6 qt cooker. The left-overs do fine in the fridge for a few days. When you reheat it, you might need to add a little milk - reconstituted powdered milk works fine.)
6 cups peeled, diced potatoes
5 cups water
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup diced carrots
1/4 cup margarine (or butter)
4 teaspoons low-salt chicken bouillon granules
1/4 teaspoon pepper
12 oz can evaporated milk
8 oz. shredded cheese (cheddar, Colby, Colby-Jack, whatever you might have on hand)
1. Combine all the ingredients except the milk and cheese in slow cooker.
2. Cover and cook on High until vegetables are tender. Older Crock Pots might take as much as 7 - 8 hours. Mine takes about 5.
3. Turn to low, stir in milk and cheese, until cheese is melted.
If you prefer a creamier rather than chunkier soup, you can easily mash it down with a potato masher before serving.
My children like this served with more grated cheese on top and crumbled bacon. We eat it with a side of cornbread. You may want to add salt to this recipe. Originally it called for 2 teaspoons (to be added with the other ingredients in the beginning) and did not specify low-salt bouillon.
This is a good recipe to make with left-over bits of carrots and celery - the amounts, obviously, don't have to be exact. When I find bags of potatoes on sale, this is one of the recipes I'll frequently make.Labels: recipe chatter
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High School Lit, part 4 - Senior Guide
High School Lit, part 3 - Junior Guide
Wednesday Quick Tip (4)
Are you an OPEN OFFICE (a lot like MicroSoft Works) user? My computer came with "pre-installed" software from MS, but it turned out to be some sort of trial-only version and if I really wanted to use it, I was supposed to go to the website and pay for a download.
Er. Well. Thanks anyway. I'll take the free open source version. :)
If you use Open Office, you might be interested in the following links. They have templates for everything from CD covers to labels to resumes and so on.
From the Open Office site itself:
TEMPLATES 1
TEMPLATES 2
From off site, user created templates:
LABELS
VARIOUS TEMPLATES
ANOTHER VARIETY SOURCELabels: general chatter
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High School Lit, part 2 - Sophomore Guide
Saving up for a new "Wants" purchase.
So, this weekend, I bought something I've wanted for a long while. It was definitely not a need, but it was something I know I'm going to use, and in fact already did, yesterday.
What I wanted was a 4 quart Crock Pot. Now, I do believe every frugal home should have at least one Crock Pot, and I already had a 6 quart one. I also, until very recently, had a small 2 1/2 quart one, but I accidentally knocked it off the top of the fridge (where I kept it) while trying to wipe down those totally useless cabinets above the fridge. It hit the floor and dented so badly the sides partially separated from the bottom, and I figured that made it potentially not safe, so I ditched it. It was over twelve years old and I didn't use it that often anyway. It had been great when my husband and I were still sans children because I could cook a few chicken thighs and some veggies in it, and I did occasionally use it to melt some cheese for dip, and make smaller batches of apple butter, but, really, the death of the 2 quart slow cooker wasn't too great of a tragedy.
The problem with my 6 quart cooker is that I *have* to cook a large batch of whatever I'm cooking, or I run the risk of scorching or overcooking something. It's great for soups and whole chickens and such, but not so great for other things, so I wanted a smaller one.
I've seen Crock Pots for sale at Goodwill for as little as $3. But this was one of those very, very few places where I felt going new would be better. In recent years slow cookers have been "upgraded" for safety concerns and there's no telling how old the used ones really are. On those times when I'm going to purposely purchase something new, I have a special way of saving up for it.
I found a 4 quart Crock Pot at Wal-Mart for a little over $15 with tax. Making note of it, I began saving for it. What I did was keep my change, as long as it was from a shopping day where we hadn't gone over budget. Every Saturday, after shopping, I put whatever coins I had left in a jar on my bathroom counter. This never amounted to more than $1 or so, but it slowly and steadily added up. I also tossed in a few pennies and dimes I'd found in parking lots. (Yes, I really do pick up coins off the ground!) Finally, this past weekend, I had enough to buy my Crock Pot. Woo!
There are two really great things about saving up for a purchase this way. First, If you've budgeted $45 for the shopping week, but you only spent $44.20, then that .80 cents won't really be missed in the grand scheme of things. But more important, by making yourself save up this way, which can take weeks or months, you will give yourself time to *really* consider if you want to even make that purchase after all. This takes all the danger of "impulse buy" right out of it.
There are some downsides, admittedly, such as possibly missing a sale on the item because you haven't saved enough yet, having the item sell out or go up in price, or simply wanting the item by a specific time. However, as I am specifically talking about "wants" here, not "needs," I have found this to be the most effective way for me to squeeze that want out of our budget without digging too much into money that should be spent elsewhere, and this far out-weighs the downsides.
And as everybody loved the BBQ beef and beans we had yesterday, I guess my family is happy enough with my latest acquisition. :)
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High School Lit, part 1 - Freshman Guide
This post, to be followed up with posts for sophomore, junior, and senior years, is a list based on the oh-so-scientific-method of "This is what I read in high school." so I by no means am trying to say all students should read all these books by each of these grades. I'm posting the list here, along with all the study guides, as a suggestion, to give parents more ideas as they look toward homeschooling in the high school years.
Many of these books are public domain and can be found at WOWIO or PROJECT GUTENBERG. Others could be found at used book stores or the library.
FYI - The Spark Notes, Cliff Notes, and Grade Saver sites are all very similar, offering analysis and summary by chapter, author notes, essay questions, and quizzes. The majority of the books I'm listing here have a guide from all three sites, but a few did not. You can read all three of these sites free on-line.
(More in full post.)
Each year includes one play by Shakespeare. THIS PDF FILE offers some general tips for teaching Shakespeare to high school students.
Freshman:
1) The Red Badge of Courage:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
2) A Tale of Two Cities:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
3) To Kill a Mockingbird:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
4) Romeo and Juliet:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
5) The Grapes of Wrath:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
6) The Time Machine:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
GRADE SAVER
Labels: curriculum chatter
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There IS something wrong with Snow White!
Okay, so I don't know exactly what kind of mental psychosis poor Snow White was suffering from, but any woman who happily cleaned up after 7 sloppy men - and whistled while she did it? Now there's someone just not right in the head! ;)
For those of us who aren't so cheerful about the chores, there are other things we can do to help keep our homes clean. First and foremost, decluttering is essential. The more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to clean. And a lot of it - you probably don't use enough to miss it if you got rid of it. I'm not saying you need to live a Spartan existence, but if you own anything that serves its main purpose as "Dust Collector", then it's probably time to ditch it. When you've gotten rid of a lot of the extra junk, cleaning what's left becomes all the more easier. And that's the important thing, because while if you really push yourself and your family, you can get your house sparkling clean from top to bottom, the problem becomes maintaining that cleanliness on a day to day basis.
THIS EBOOK has some hints and tips at getting and keeping your home clean and organized. It was written for people who need real help getting their homes in order, and the author maintains a non-judgmental tone through-out, but it can also help get anyone motivated when needed, even those Snow Whites among us.Labels: household chatter
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Making tortillas.
I mentioned in a previous post that I'd come across a 5 lb. bag of tortilla mix for 50 cents and decided to buy it, figuring if it turned out to be a disaster, at least it wouldn't be an expensive disaster. (I also figured we could always use the mix to dust the counter for kneading purposes when making biscuits, if nothing else.)
Turns out, it really is incredibly easy. I don't have a tortilla press or an electric griddle, either. The instructions said to heat the griddle to 400 degrees. We cooked the tortillas in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat and they came out perfect. Also, I tried to roll out the tortillas with a rolling pin, but it ended up being quicker and easier to just pat them out by hand.
Yesterday, while shopping, I cruised by that same shelf and found the mix had been marked down again - to only ten cents a bag! So, I bought 2 more. I'm already thinking I should've picked up three or four.
We do our baking on Sunday afternoons. Today we've already made our waffles, pancakes, and tortillas, and right now the muffins are in the oven. (I'll be making some dinner rolls in a little bit, as well.) I found I could add making tortillas to the schedule quite easily. My children already love being the pancake turners, so now one gets to monitor the pancakes and the other takes the tortillas. We made 16 of them today. This week we'll be having enchiladas, sandwich wraps, and I'm going to take a stab at turning 4 of the torillas into taco salad bowls by basically FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS I FOUND HERE.
Since eventually I will run out of mix, and I sure can't count on stumbling across ten cent bags of the stuff, I went looking and found a WHOLE WHEAT TORTILLA RECIPE. It will be interesting to try this someday. :)Labels: recipe chatter
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Some more money talk in the media.
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