Frugal In Florida

Confession ... we aren't frying a turkey, or six, this year. Our friend is roasting a 21 pound bird and we will eat it at our house ... WHAT!? I remember last year our usual partners in crime spent the holiday back at their home states, Princess was in California visiting her fiance's (now her husband) father who has been there for a year receiving chemo treatments (who passed away that December), my dad had the flu and the boy and his girlfriend were vegetarian (still are) and doing something Veggie Like. And then I got the text message from my best friend in Bethany Beach that her mom was admitted to Hospice End Stage (which has just broken my heart for both her and her mom) ... which left me and Hubby ... WHO, by the way, was wearing a boot and waiting on x ray results on his foot ... this year, thankfully doesn't have all that drama ... a few things, but nothing like that! This year's only excitement will be the pregnant lady (Princess), only one partner in ...

AND ... entering Week 39 of Hubby's Unemployment Adventures ... can I tell you how much FUN this is?? I had such high hopes to do a lot of batch cooking today, Sunday. Unfortunately, I had one too many glasses of red wine and Fireball Whiskey ::shudder:: That and the time change really had me a hot mess for most of the day. Finally got moving around 3pm and that was just to do some laundry so I'd have some clean clothes for the workweek! Notice how LATE my menu plan is coming up?? We had a big italian dinner Saturday night with 4 other couples ... and had a blast. What was suppose to be an early night lasted til the early hours of the morning, time change be damned. Luckily theres leftovers! Sunday - leftover pasta and Olive Garden Salad and Dressing (I need to update that link...) . Hubby made the awesome sauce with what we had on hand, I had picked up the parmesean reggiano and one of my girlfriends brought me NEW pasta since I discovered about an hour before everyone ...

... so here I was, again, making these Salisbury Steaks in the crock pot, only instead of 7:30am on a Wednesday, it was 8pm on a Tuesday ... don't ask, things sometimes just don't go according to plan, and well, the beef just was not going to wait for much longer!  So I figured, heck, I'll make them overnight, and then just reheat them gently for dinner on Wednesday ... sounds like a pretty good plan, don't you think? Eh ... where's that envelope of onion soup mix I bought a few weeks ago ... HONEY? HONEY-POO? YO, MARK!!!!!   Really.  Really?   Sometimes I hate sharing space with Hubby in the kitchen ... he uses things and then doesn't tell me that it was the L A S T one ... powdered onion soup mix THIS week ... just like the LAST time!   Uggg.   Thankfully, we have Google ... or rather, in MY case, Swagbucks ...   Stayed with the all time, simple site and recipe , and of course, mixed it up MY way:   2 1/2 tbs dried minced onio...

I myself have never purchased Febreeze for personal use, but when Princess was in boot camp, she begged me to send some for her boots and such. Apparently everyone used it during boot camp. So of course, being the good mom, I packed some up and sent it to her. Between the actual cost of the bottles (I bought 4) and the cost of shipping (the weight) it was probably the most expensive freshening stuff around! Too bad I didn't have THIS recipe back then... 2 tbs fabric softener 1 tbs baking soda (gosh, have I said how much I LOVE baking soda??) 2 cups warm water Squirt bottle (16 oz size or larger) Ready? Ready. Dump all in bottle. Put on the top. Shake, shake, shake, shake shake shake, shake your bootie bottle till all mixed up. And well, here's where I learned that the lid needs to be a cap as a little bit of pressure will build up and the nozzle will spray all over the laundry room (thankfully the wall and not my face!) ... so keep that in mind :-) Go a...

Ok, first off, I love fabric softener and feel it's a necessity 90% of the time. I get extreme static electricity, to the point where I hate touching anything metal in my office (yikes, sparks fly!) But in my Year of Zero ... it's not really on my necessity list at the current prices I see, even my Kirkland brand, (very compatible to Downy, by the way) 220 Loads! Wow, that's a lot!! so when I saw this , I though, heh, what the heck, lets give it a try with some of the stuff I have left. Oh, and don't come back and yell at me if you spend 3 hours browsing that site! Anyways ... this is super easy. I'm on my 2nd round (and the 2nd time, I made it even easier!) Pour a little bit of liquid fabric softener into a container such as a bowl or other large, round open dish. I used a tall deli type container. Dummy me, should have used a shorter dish to make it easier to get the whole cloth in! Take an old washcloth, or even a torn up towel, I'm thinkin...

You know that I'm doing a Year of Zero , right? And it has NOT been going as well as hoped, nor anywhere near as planned. But I keep plugging away, and every morning is the start of a new day, so I keep chugging along. Because I've been feeling slightly deprived (which really, I don't understand WHY, it's not like I shop just to shop) .... I've been CLEANING ... yikes. You know, decluttering sort of. But not quite. Just seeing what I have that I've forgotten about. Is that cryptic or what? I came across 2 silver flatware sets this morning, under the guest bed. Ummm, isn't that where YOU keep spare dishes and stuff? I opened them up and admired them yet again. These were Hubby's grandmothers and we opted to keep them after she passed, thinking we will give a set to each kid when THEY get married. I still have those intentions, I think. :) So I pulled the cases out and washed every last piece. Ummm, they are 8 and 16 piece settings. That's al...

Yes. That is my new motto. At least, I keep telling myself that! So. What am I making do with and doing myself, you ask? Facial cloths ... makeup remover pads, just plain ole face wash. I don't wear a lot of makeup. Mascara, eye liner, eye shadow once every few weeks. You know, basic stuff. No foundation, blush, primer, all that other stuff. That would just consume too much of my morning routine and heck, I dont' know how to use that stuff anyways. But I do wash my face. Every morning. And every night. And sometimes at lunch. Not that I have oily or dirty skin, just like the feeling of a nice clean face. Makes me feel refreshed. Anyways. I do NOT buy those make up remover pads, or the face wash cloths. I DO buy baby wipes and will use them on my face and neck immediately AFTER working out (just because, I can't stand sweat and hair on my face ::shudder::).  But when I saw this and this , I thought, hey, this would be a good experiment to try for the morning w...

This is just to show you how, if you leave a 19 year old boy alone, he gets creative with his food ... and declares that perhaps, he should become a chef (NO, DON'T DO IT!) ... It all started with the Juicy Lucy failure (cheese explosions do not bode well on a gas grill, lets just leave it at that). So then I had to remake new burgers (pulling out the cheese on the remaining raw burgers and re-patting out). The kids (mini adults?), well, they were just very unhappy about that. I promised Juicy Lucys and they were now going to get plain ole 80/20 burgers? There was quite a bit of grumbling going on, trust me. Luckily, Hubby was also frying up some frys (frie frie, frie frie, I'm gonna get me some frie fries!) and onion rings ... and well, look what happens? We all had a pretty big laugh and lasting joke about the disproportionate size of the bun to the burger (Where's The Beef??) I don't suppose I need to worry too much about him making food to eat at colleg...

I remember staying home with the kids when they were younger (I've only been working full time since 2002) and the days where I could not wait for Hubby to come home and give me a break. Now days, I can't wait for SATURDAY to come around.  I work HARD during the week, most times, and yeah, it's a law firm and it's a small law firm (meaning no pressure to meet billable hour quotas and such) but the days can be long and mentally exhausting. Plus talking to people on the phone all day long is draining in itself :) So I try to be sure to make time for Myself! Where no ONE will bother me and I'm perfectly content. Enter the pool. Yes. The Pool. If I get my raft out of the garage, and grab my book, towel and sunscreen, the whole household knows that Mom has a 1 hour break ... doesn't take a whole lot of effort, and it's only ONE hour, SIXTY MINUTES ... the world will not come to a screeching halt, trust me! And of course, I need to make sure I'm safe so I u...

I came across this description of a sandwich: Herb Roast Chicken Breast sandwich, with fresh mozzarella, portabella mushrooms, fresh tomatoes and a pesto sauce. The picture showed it as a pressed sandwich. Yummm....I so see this in my very near future! Now, to just find an acceptable pesto sauce. Oh wait, I do have a small mini jar in the pantry that I could use. I probably WILL use that as I have almost everything else to make something like this, except for the yummy bread ... BUT that's not gonna stop me! I will find something acceptable to replace it ... such as one of these lingering potato rolls (hot dog x 2 and sandwich x 5) ... which is actually sounding pretty darn good right now! I don't have portabella shrooms, but do have plain white ones and then the canned ones that would fit in. I also don't have the herb roasted chicken breast. But I have lots and lots of chicken and well, I'm sure I can come up with a suitable replacement to the herb roas...

Hubby has put a temporary ban on me shopping for a few weeks. Woohoo...what a nice guy! It all started when he was trying to find breakfast sausage in the freezers ... and stuff was falling all over him as he *dug* around. Geesh. Should of just asked me and I would have told you there wasn't any :) So he went to the grocery store to pick up something he wanted to go with the Saturday dinner he was making (spinach stuffed chicken breast and he LOVES his tuna or bleu cheese stuffed olives as an appetizer). So I just *assummed* that he knew there wasn't any beer in the fridge. Doh. He didn't. Which of course, we still have no beer in the fridge. Which put me in a pickle. :) Because I didn't know what I wanted for adult beverages that evening. Ummm....hmmm... HEY. Hold them lemon halves honey! In a large mason jar, I put the 2 Costco size lemons (after being juiced for the chicken) in the jar, and topped with vodka (Titos, of course). Put the lid on and shook it u...

Ok, I'm sure you've all heard about this offer today, right? Me. No way. Not going anywhere NEAR a Denny's today. The lines. The wait. The unhappy staff. And so on. Sonny Boy was really wanting to do this today on his way to school. Dude. You would have had to leave the house at 5:30am to get there, get served, eat, tip & get to school on time. Sorry kid. So instead. Being the WONDERFUL mom that I am (hint, someone please tell me this!) I made him a grand slam breakfast that he was able to eat and enjoy in the comfort of his own home. Pancakes. Check. Scrambled eggs. Check. Bacon (2 pieces just like they give you!). Check. Small juice. Check. Glass of chocolate (carnation breakfast) milk. Check. Hash browns. Oops. No. Too many carbs for you this early in the morning. You will fall asleep. Toast. Oops. No. See the note above with hash browns. Do you think I got a Thank you Mom, you are the best? No. He's really not that much of an early morning kid.