Decorating a Cash Box

Photo Credit

This cash box above doesn't look very pretty does it? I think the only thing I find attractive about it is the money inside. Well recently I picked up one of these old boring cash boxes at a thrift store for $3.00. I wish I would have taken a before picture, because the thing was not only boring to look at but mine seemed like it was uglier than the average cash box. 

After a few moments of thought the solution came to me, I decided I was going to spay paint a stencil pattern on it. I've never spray painted anything in my life and thought it would be easy enough. I didn't sand the box down before hand, which wasn't a terrible mistake, but would have made things a lot easier had I done so. Patches of gray kept creeping through and every time the paint dried I had to do touch up after touch up, I'm pretty sure this box has about five coats of paint on it. 

While going through the whole spray painting process I had pretty much thought that I had ruined the box, and couldn't wait for it to dry so I could assess the damage. However, after all was said and done, it just so happens that I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not prefect, but I think it's pretty funky. I might just do this again if I ever come across another boring gray cash box. 

Recipe: Ooey Gooey Cheesy Garlic Bread

*WARNING* These are delicious, ooey, gooey and very bad for you. You may be tempted to eat the whole tray and I have no doubt you will, these are highly addictive.

Dough Ingredients:

1 cup warm water (110 degrees)

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons olive 

3 cups all purpose flour

Topping Ingredients:

-garlic butter

- lots of mozzarella and cheddar cheese

Directions:

In a cup or small bowl, stir yeast and sugar into warm water. Let sit for 10 minutes (until bubbles form and mixture starts to foam). In a large bowl add in salt, oil and half the flour and then add the yeast mixture.

Once that first half of the flour is incorporated, start adding flour in bit by bit until you get the pizza dough to the consistency you want. The dough should be smooth and easy to work with, but still a little bit tacky. Lightly grease the bowl & the dough so it doesn't dry out, cover with a clean damp cloth and let it rise for 1-2 hours. 

Once the dough has risen preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Grease pan with butter and spread pizza dough out evenly onto the pan.

Spread the garlic butter over the dough and top with lots of mozzarella and cheddar cheese. 

Bake 15-20 minutes or until bubbly and golden. Remove from oven and cool 1-2 minutes before cutting.

Enjoy!!!

How We Save and Spend

My husband and I use to be poor, so poor that we couldn't afford to buy cheese for the first two years of our marriage and had to be really creative when planning a date. I remember a time when I was the only one working, sometimes I'd come home from work sobbing my eyes out because I was only given 20 hours to work that week. Those were hard times, and I honestly think we suffered way more financially then we really had to. There are however more ways to save money now, than ever before. I could talk all day about how to save money and live a better life, but for the sake of putting my thoughts into one entry I'll just list off a few things.

1) Use Coupons! - These things are everywhere (especially for you Americans). You can find coupons in newspapers, order them online and have them mailed to your door, print them out from your computer, call up your favourite company rave about their products and see if they will send you coupons....etc. Coupons are no longer just for food and deodorant, you can get coupons for museums, attractions, oil changes and the list goes on. Using coupons was our first step in saving money, over time it really makes a difference.

2) Getting Cheap Clothing - For our children there are a few different things we do to save money on clothing. We go to thrift stores, kids swap meets (which for us seem to give us more for a lot less than the thrift store) and go to the many garage sales in the summer. If we need something that we weren't able to find second hand or just want to buy a few new items for the kids we go to Gymboree when they are having one of their many sales (their quality is amazing, almost guaranteeing it will be passed down from oldest to youngest), Old Navy and GAP clearance sections and every other store on boxing day. My husband and I don't go through clothes nearly as fast as two toddlers, but we have the same shopping habits when it comes to buying clothes (generally), we just do it less frequently.

3) Saving Money at the Grocery Store - Besides using coupons there are other ways to get a deal at the grocery store. Many times food that is about to expire either that day or the next has a 30-50% off sticker on it. If you have a freezer (which I highly recommend and many times can be obtained free from craigslist) you can throw so many things in it. Milk freezes well, so does cheese, butter, bread.....etc, there is no reason to pay full price for these things all the time. Ask the manager or supervisor when your grocery store does their markdowns so you can be there to catch the good stuff (assuming you're like me and don't have a paying job).

4) Vacations - I love vacations, although who doesn't?! Since we are not rolling in cash we have to be very careful with what we do on our vacations. As it stands now, if we want to go on a vacation every year it means no flying. Plane tickets, airport tax and little things like taxis and buses from spot to spot is just beyond our budget right now, so we do road trips. We save for each vacation starting a year in advance, we may not know where we will be going or for how long, but getting away from it all is incentive enough. All of our coins, well I should be saying my coins since my husband only uses his credit card go in a "vacation" jar, so does the money from bottle returns, any mail in rebates or things we sell on craigslist or at a swap meet. When our kids get a  little older I'd like to take them to Disney Land, I don't know if our financial situation will improve or God forbid get worse so I'm saving now, not in the way of money, but in airmiles. Airmiles is a great rewards program, it's free to join and lately more and more stores are apart of the airmiles program including Toys r Us and Michaels.

I think because I still have so much more to write, I will be doing a "how we save and spend" part two and possibly even part three and four. Nonetheless, these are some of the things we do to save so we are able to spend.

Recipe: Healthy Kale Pizza

Dough:

Ingredients:
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/5 cup ground chia
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons white sugar

Directions:
In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, combine both types of flour, ground chia, flax seeds, olive oil, salt, white sugar and the yeast mixture; stir well to combine until a stiff dough has formed. Cover and rise until doubled in volume, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Toppings:
Pizza sauce or something similar, I used Hunt's tomato paste.
Kale, washed and and dried as much as possible, if you have a salad spinner use it.
2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese.

Turn dough out onto a well floured surface. Form dough into a round and roll out into a pizza crust shape. Cover with sauce and toppings and bake in preheated oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Enjoy!!

Decorating Light Switch/ Electrical Outlet Coverings

The standard light switch and electrical plate covers that come with every rental suite are always a boring and drab beige. I've been wanting to liven up our bedroom for a while, but didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on doing so. This idea came to me from Pinspire, it's easy to do and I'm very happy with the results, little touches sometimes make the biggest impact. 

I chose a lovely damask purple, that goes well with our solid purple bedding.

For this project you will need:
- Light switch / electrical plates
- Scissors
- Box cutter
- Acid free adhesive
- A sponge brush
- Mod Podge
- Scrapbook paper

- Take your electrical cover place it on the scrapbook paper, trace the area and cut it out. It's OK it you've cut more than you need, you can cut any excess off later.
- Use the sponge brush and paint the acid free glue onto the electrical cover as well as the paper. Place the paper over the cover and gently smooth out with your fingers. Now let it dry.
- Once everything is set cut any excess paper and cover decorated plate with mod podge, add as any coats as you want, I recommend 4-6. Let dry.
- Now that the mod podge is dried, take your box cutter and cut out all the holes.
- There you have it, some beautiful covers to replace those boring ones!

Today's Great Deal: London Drugs

London Drugs is a Canadian drugstore (and more) that is found only in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. London Drugs is the only store in Canada that allows coupon stacking, as far as I know and has it in their written policy. Although, the coupon stacking rules use to be a lot more relaxed last year, you can still get some great deals if you have the right coupons.

Most of these coupons came from different issues of Smart Source coupons that are found in the Saturday paper once a month or so, while others came from Websaver and promotional offers. 

Everything you see in the first picture cost me $2.93 including tax and gave me a coupon savings of $24.97, I'm smiling ear to ear. 

Recipe: Cookie Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars

This recipe is incredible and when I say incredible I mean I've already made it three times in the past two weeks, it's really just that good. I even made these once without eggs and they are still delicious, it you decide to skip the eggs as well make sure to replace them with a tablespoon of corn starch and a couple teaspoons of flour, just to thicken it up.

Ingredients: 

Cookie Part: 
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup softened butter

Cream Cheese Filling:
12 oz (1.5 bars) of cream cheese softened
1/2 cup pf white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

Apple Filling:
2 large apples
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbs white sugar

Crumb Top:
1/2 cup quick oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup all purpose flour

Top it Off:
Caramel drizzle (as much or as little as you want)

Directions:


Preheat the oven to 350 °F.

In a bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar snd butter until the mixture is somewhat crumbly.
Press the dough evenly into a 13 × 9-inch baking pan or a cookie sheet with edges. Bake 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

In a larger bowl, beat the cream cheese with 1/2 cup sugar until smooth. Add the eggs, 1 at a time (beat after each addition). Next add the vanilla and mix until combined. Pour the cream cheese batter over the warm crust.

Peel the apples and chop them into 3/4-inch chunks. Mix the apple chunks with the cinnamon and white sugar. Spoon the apple chunks evenly over the cream cheese mixture.

In a smaller bowl, combine the flour, oats, butter and brown sugar for crumb topping. Sprinkle over the cream cheese mixture.

Bake 30 minutes, or until the filling is set. Reduce the temperature to 300°F for the last 5 minutes.

Last but not least drizzle with the caramel topping.

Enjoy!!!

Store Bought Recipe: Vanilla Oreos Wrapped in Chocolate Chip Cookies

I first saw this on pinspire (a complete copy of pinterest) and thought how incredibly easy and yummy these cookies looked. I didn't have a lot of time to make the cookie dough from scratch, so I used the store bought kind that was sitting in my fridge.

This recipe is so easy all you do is take your store bought cookie dough out of the package, place it in a bowl and add about a 1/4 cup of flour to it. The reason why you need to add the flour is so that the dough becomes a little stiffer and doesn't run off the oreo cookie. Next you take the dough and lovingly wrap it around the entire oreo cookie and place it in an ungreased pan. Once your pan is full place it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10-12 minutes.

These taste the best when the chocolate chip cookie part is still slightly "raw". Once you try this recipe you will want to make them over and over again, if you are on a diet or thinking of going on a diet you might want to skip this recipe.

Enjoy!!!

Today's Great Deal: Thrift Store Finds

I love thrift store shopping, it's fun searching for treasures and finding things you haven't seen since childhood. The only thing I don't like about thrift stores is how incredibly expensive some places like Goodwill and Value Village have become, looks like both these stores have become a giant corporate affair. 

Early today my family and I went out to have our children participate in a university study. I love going to these things, the university is about a 30-40 minute drive away but the kids get a free book and we all get to spend part of the day in an area where we don't usually head out to too often. We made it a plan to check out all the thrift stores, or at least as much of them as we could while we were out. Somehow... and I know this is my fault, (I may have not written down the exact address) we couldn't find the address to the first thrift store, but it was no big deal and instead of really searching it out we got out of the car and went for breakfast. After breakfast we spent sometime walking around looking at some shops, there were some really great boutique stores, but no thrift stores to be found. We had given up on our plan and after enjoying the morning we headed off to another thrift store, only this time I actually knew the location of it. We must have only been driving for three minutes when you wouldn't believe it, a whole row of thrift and consignment stores. Ack! Well they had to wait, we had passed them at high speed and we had other things to do with our day, yes we had to make our way over to that other thrift store.

Heading over to the thrift store I had in mind was the best decision, it's a good thing we didn't stop off at those other stores we drove by (although maybe if I had gone in I wouldn't be saying this now...). This thrift store was having a renovation sale and everything was 30-75% off. It was the last day of the sale so everything was really picked over and the store was quite busy. Still, I managed to pick up ten children's books, a pair of jeans and a funky shirt for myself, the shirt reminds me of something a farm girl might wear and I think it will look cute with those jeans I picked up. I wasn't really keeping count of the price of these things, I was thinking everything would be about $10, but no it was less. I paid $3.50 for everything, I think this is the best deal I've ever gotten on second hand items and as we left the store I told my husband I felt like I just robbed the place. Ha, these kind of prices for second hand items should be the norm, not the exception. 

Recipe: Caramel Chocolate Cupcakes

I found this recipe in an issue of  "Today's Parent", I made these cupcakes for my daughter's second birthday a while back and she loved it, it was literally all over her face. 

Ingredients:

Cupcakes

1/2 Cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2/3 Cup boiling water

1 1/2 Cup all purpose flour 

1 Cup white sugar

2 tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 Cup vegetable oil

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

1/2 Large bag of "Rolo" chocolate or something similar

Icing

3 tbsp Butter at room temperature

1 3/4 Cup icing sugar

1/4 Unsweetened cocoa powder

3 tbsp milk

1 tbsp Vanilla

Directions:

Preheat Oven to 350 F.

In a large bowl, whisk cocoa with boiling water until no lumps remain.

In a medium bowl, whisk flour with sugar, baking powder with salt.

Whisk oil into slightly cooled cocoa mixture, then whisk in eggs and vanilla. 

Stir in flour mixture until combined. The mixture will be very thick.

Spoon batter into paper lined muffin cups. 

Bake until batter is barely set, approx 8-10 minutes.

Remove partially baked cupcakes and push pieces of  chocolate into the center. 

Bake for another 8-10 minutes, then set on cooling rack. 

For the icing beat butter in a large bowl.

Whisk icing sugar with cocoa to remove lumps. 

Beat into butter, alternating with milk. 

Beat in vanilla until icing is smooth. 

Enjoy!!!

Health/Diet Food Review #1 ~ Gardein Santa Fe Good Stuff

This was my first time trying any Gardein product, and as soon as I pulled the food out of the package my expectations went from being hopeful to thinking it was going to be terrible. Nevertheless, I pushed on and gave it a try. There are three ways you can prepare this food, you can bake it, boil it or microwave it. The packaging suggests microwaving it as the best method, and that's exactly what I did. I popped a few holes into both the meat alternative and into the sauce and threw it in. The packaging suggests 2-2.5 minutes in the microwave, but I only needed 1.5 minutes in the microwave, and then waited another 2 minutes to let the food cool.

The cooked veggie "meat" looks nothing like the picture on the box, but that's to be expected since no heat and eat food I've ever tried has ever come out resembling anything like the picture on the box. The Santa Fe Good Stuff meat alternative is filled with, but not stuffed with black beans, corn, onions and hints of jalapeno pepper. The meat alternative is a little spicy on it's own, but also comes with a packet of spicy tomato sauce that adds an extra kick for those who are a fan of spicy food. 

Looks aside this product tasted pretty good and the company did a good job of trying to make it taste like chicken. The texture was nice, not rubbery and again in this aspect as well you can tell the company was trying to get it as chicken like as possible. The spice factor was a bit too much for me though, I am normally not a fan of spicy food and only used about a 1/4 of the tomato sauce. 

This product works as both a diet food and a health food. Overall I think vegetarians would love this and it might cause meat eaters to develop an interest in vegetarian food.  

Ingredients:

water, soy protein isolate, vital wheat gluten, expeller pressed/canola oil, organic ancient grain flour (kamut®, amaranth, millet, quinoa), onions, natural flavors (from plant sources), yeast extract, sea salt, potato starch, organic cane sugar, pea protein, carrot fiber, organic beetroot fiber, garlic powder, onion powder, extractives of paprika and tumeric. rub: red bell pepper flakes.stuffing: black bean, corn kernels, jalapeno peppers, expeller pressed canola oil, onion powder, garlic powder, white pepper, parsley flakes, sea salt.sauce:  water, tomato paste, onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes, organic evaporated cane juice, expeller pressed canola oil, corn starch, sea salt, vinegar, spices, xanthan gum, chili flakes, ground chipotle pepper.

Recipe: Kale Chips

Kale chips are a great snack food especially for those of you who are thinking about eating a little bit healthier.When it comes to having healthy snacks it's sometimes hard to jump into snacking on carrot sticks right away, so I think this is a great alternative, besides that it tastes great and is easy to make!

Photo Credit

Ingredients:

1 bunch of kale

1 tblsp olive oil 

1 tsp salt

Directions:

-Preheat oven to 350 f

- Remove leaves from stems, wash and dry kale, either with a salad spinner or by shaking the water off really well 

-Place into baking dish, mix in olive oil and sprinkle on salt

-Bake for 10-15 minutes or until edges turn brown, if you have a small pan and a lot of kale leaves turn them half way through baking.

Enjoy

Organizing The Fridge

One of my goals for this year was to be more organized with everything. Time management, my closet, old kids clothes, my fridge....you name it, it needs/needed organization. Now while I'd love to attack my husband's desk with about a dozen black garbage bags, I won't, at least for now. His desk as he believes, is an organized mess and paperwork and receipts from 2006 might be needed one day (I doubt it though).

Ahhhh! See what I mean!

I've starting working on organizing a few things since January already, overall I'm pretty satisfied with what I've accomplished. I really wasn't planning on doing much today, it's cold and raining outside and all I had on my list of things to do was relax, then I went to make lunch. When something remains disorganized for so long you usually become accustomed to it, at least I did, that is until today. I opened the fridge door took one look and decided that I wasn't going to be putting this off anymore, today was cleaning and organizing day for Mr. Fridge.

Before

After

I feel so much better, being disorganized is stressful.

Recipe: Cranberry Cheesecake Bars

After many recent experiments I have come to the conclusion that desserts are much better with cream cheese. It's funny to think that I use to despise cheesecake and thought cream cheese only belonged on bagels. Since this is my first post, I would like to present the recipe that made me fall in love with cream cheese desserts. I enthusiastically give you these cranberry cheesecake bars. 

Ingredients:

2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour

1-1/2 cups instant rolled oats

3/4 cup plus 1 Tablespoon firmly packed brown sugar (divided use)

1 cup (2 sticks or 16 Tablespoons) butter, at room temperature

8 ounces (1 large block) cream cheese, at room temperature

1 can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (1 to 2 lemons)

1 can whole berry cranberry sauce

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13-inch baking pan with non-stick foil.

Combine flour, rolled oats, 3/4 cup brown sugar, and butter with a pastry blender, mixing until crumbly. Remove 1-1/2 cups of mixture and set aside for later use. Press remaining mixture into bottom of the prepared baking pan. Bake until lightly browned, about 15 minutes. 

In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add sweetened condensed milk and lemon juice, whipping until completely combined. Pour evenly over warm bottom layer crust.

Scoop whole berry cranberry sauce into a bowl, stirring gently with a fork to break up the jelly. Add 1 tablespoon brown sugar and cornstarch. Mix until combined. Drop cranberry mixture by spoonful over the cream cheese layer. Gently smooth with the back of a spoon to cover. Sprinkle top with reserved crumb mixture.

Bake 45 minutes, until top is golden brown. Cool bar cookies completely before cutting. Refrigerate before serving. Makes about 24 bars, depending on how you cut them.

Enjoy!!!