Homemade Cough Syrup

Since there has been so many illnesses going around, I thought I'd share a recipe for making your own cough syrup this week. The nice thing about this is that you can make the basic syrup using things from you own kitchen, definitely cheaper than buying the stuff from the stores! Plus, there's the added benefit of the ingredients providing healing properties.

Ingredients:
1 cup freshly chopped onion or garlic (or mixture of the two)
1/2 cup honey (raw is best, you can buy this at the Flour Mill in Hayden)

Optional ingredients (combine any of these, but no more than 2 tbsp total):
1 tbsp cloves (relieves pain)
1-2 tbsp. comfrey ( helps with healing)
1-2 tbsp. slippery elm (coats and soothes sore throat)
1-2 tbsp. fresh chopped ginger root or 1 tsp. Ginger powder (increases circulation and effectiveness of the syrup)

Directions:
Add all ingredients in small pot and simmer covered over low heat for 20 min., stirring occasionally. When finished, strain and store in the refrigerator.

Dosages:
Take as often as needed
Children under 10 - 1 tsp
Over 10 - 1 tbsp

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Frugal Friday

OAMC 101

Today I figured I'd share with you some basic steps in freezer cooking. I am by no means an expert, but I'm learning. So far, this is definitely saving us money. We spent about $175 on all our dinners for the month (including buying "supplies" like freezer bags) and the meals we made are large enough to have leftovers for lunch the next day. So basically that leaves breakfast left to buy! Maybe a few random items too. So, that puts our expected grocery total for the month somewhere between $200-225. That's quite a bit below our budget! We also bought about 95% of our groceries organic, so the cost could be even lower for those who don't. So, here we go:

1. Menu Planning: OAMC works best when you can incorporate one item into many meals. Meat is obviously the main ingredient in many dinners, so I started with that. For the month I planned on 2 chickens, a roast, and ground beef. I then planned 3-4 meals for each item of meat. As I mentioned before, RecipeZaar has a great recipe selection, which is where I got all my recipes. I then filled in the rest of the dinners with meals that don't require meat (but can be added if there's extra) like pizza and soups. The hardest part of all this for me was finding recipes that aren't filled with pasta and cream of chicken/mushroom/whatever soup. Also, try to find recipes that incorporate inexpensive items such as beans, rice or canned tomatoes.

2. Grocery Shopping: Make a list! Make sure you write down exactly how much of each item you need. You don't want to have to run to the grocery store in the middle of your cooking day!

3. Prep Day: The night before, I put one of the chickens and the roast in crock-pots to cook overnight so they'd be ready to go in the morning. Crock-pots are great...I highly recommend them. I plan on trying to find one or two more at thrift stores so that I can cook beans overnight too =) Soak any beans you'll need (this is worth the time, buying dried beans is so much cheaper than buying canned. Plus it really doesn't take that much work), chop any veggies you can, and shred all the cheese you'll need. Getting all this done the night before makes things a bit easier for your cooking day.

4. Organization: Make sure you have gallon sized freezer bags, plastic wrap, some casserole dishes (I used disposable foil ones), plastic storage containers, and a Sharpie. I've read of people who line their casserole dishes with plastic wrap, put in the casserole, freeze it, then once it's frozen pop it out of the dish and wrap it up all the way. This way the dish can be reused. Don't forget to label everything. Once frozen, things are kinda unrecognizable. Don't forget the date too! If you can, find some way of putting the cooking instructions on the meal, that way when it's time to cook it you know exactly what to do and don't have to rummage around for the recipe.

5. Cooking Day: Cook any rice, beans or pasta; if you've cooked anything in a crock-pot take it out and let it cool. Unfortunately, rice and beans take a while to cook, I'm still working on that one. Cook up any ground beef, and cut up any pre-cooked meat (chicken, roast). Assemble any meals that you can. When everything has finished cooking, assemble the rest. Wrap, label and freeze as you go! This is obviously just a starting point, individual menus will require other steps.

6. Clean up: This probably the worst part. My suggestion is to hire someone to come do it for you. Or bribe your husband.

When you're done, you freezer will look like this:

Spending to Save

My wonderful husband budgeted $100 this paycheck for me to buy stuff for the house. Yay! So I bought curtains. Let me tell you, it was rather hard for me to pay full price for something. I had decided though, that I'd get myself some of those fancy "energy saving" curtains. I did some looking around online and found some at Target for only $10 a panel! Not too bad. I read the reviews and the main problems were that they weren't long enough and that they were hard to iron. Well, I hardly iron anything, let alone curtains, and the couches are in front of the windows so you can't really tell if they're too short. So I bought 5. Seriously people, these things actually work. We only have 2 windows covered, and I it's already reducing our heat usage. Our little control panel for the heat has a fancy feature where it keeps track of how much power is used every day. We usually use over 2 hours each day (I'm not overly sure what this means, I'm assuming that it's keeping track of the total amount of time the heat is running), but the last couple of days we've been using closer to 1.5 hours. Pretty exciting, eh? It's pretty cool too because you can actually feel the temperature difference in the living room compared to other rooms in the house. Also, we turn the heat off at night, so in the morning when we get up it's pretty cold, but the last couple of mornings it's been about 5 degrees warmer than normal. So I'm pretty excited =) It could all just be coincidence, but we plan on buying more for other windows anyway!
So there you have it, sometimes it's good to spend money to save money in the long run. It should be fun to see our electricity bill next month!

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I Got Nothin'

Sorry, folks. I'm totally unprepared for this week. The kids and I have spent the last few days sick, so today totally snuck up on me. In fact, the only reason I remembered is that Taylor left me a message on Facebook. So, I guess I'll share with you one of our most frugal recipes. I found it here, but it originally came from the book The Tightwad Gazette. Here's how we've the recipe was originally written, and some variations that we've used to changed it up a bit:

Brown Rice and Lentil Casserole:

3 cups broth (chicken or veggie) or water
3/4 cup lentils
1/2 cup brown rice
3/4 cup chopped onion
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 cup grated cheese

Variations:

Italian - Substitute 1 can of diced tomatoes for 1 cup of broth, add chopped onions and garlic and Italian seasoning. Top with Parmesan cheese.

Greek - Substitute 1 can of diced tomatoes for 1 cup of broth, add chopped onions, garlic, broccoli and rosemary. Top with feta cheese.

Pizza - Substitute 1 can of tomato sauce for 1 cup of broth, add chopped pizza toppings (like pepperoni, ham, ,sausage, onion, green peppers, olives), Italian seasonings, and cheddar cheese.

Taco - Substitute 1 can of diced tomatoes for 1 cup of broth, add chopped onion, taco seasoning and ground beef (or leftover taco meat). Top with cheddar cheese.

Leftovers - Toss in any leftover meat and veggies. It always tastes good =)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 300
2. Mix all ingredients (except cheese) into baking dish
3. Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour 10 min
4. Remove foil, add cheese, and bake for 20 min more

The times I've tried making it in the oven, it always needed much more cooking time. I usually cook it in the crock-pot on low for 4 hour or high for 8, adding the cheese during the last 30 min or so.

This may sound like a strange meal, but trust me...it's good. The kids always enjoy eating it, even Kelsi! Well, as long as I chop the onions small enough ;)

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Secret Weapons

I know that I said I was going to give you all a run down of the thrift stores in Post Falls this week. But really, we spent most of our time at the Real Life Thrift Store! So, there's not much to report =) Instead, I'm going to tell you about my secret weapons. Yes, I know that sounds cheesy. When Matthias came around, I started double thinking the whole cleaning thing. I really didn't like having a cabinet full of toxic chemicals and having my child crawl around on a floor that had just been smothered with them. So, I started using "natural" cleaners and haven't gone back since. The great thing is, not only are they safer, but they are so much cheaper! So, here are my 4 secret weapons:

Castile Soap

This stuff is awesome. It's a soap that is made entirely out of vegetable oils and can be used for anything. Seriously, anything. At first glance this soap is kind of pricey, but keep in mind that it's highly concentrated. We buy it from the Flour Mill for $5.99/lb, but I dilute it at about a 5:1 ratio. So that's 6 pounds of cleaner for $5.99.


Baking Soda


Again, can be used for just about anything. We purchase this from Costco at about $8 for a 13.5 pound bag. That's a lot of baking soda. It lasts a long time!




White Vinegar

Let me tell ya, we look pretty odd coming out of Costco with a giant bag of baking soda and 2 gallons of vinegar. The door checker asked us once if we were making a volcano. Anyway, we get 2 gallons of white vinegar for about $3.69 which always gets diluted to about a 3:1 ratio.

Ok, so how do I use these? Well let me share =)

All-Purpose Cleaner:
1 part Castile soap
5 part water
Used for general cleaning of counters, sinks, tables, toilets, etc.

"Windex":
1 part white vinegar
3 part water
Used for windows, glass and other surfaces.

Scrub:
Sprinkle baking soda over area, spray with "windex" or all-purpose cleaner. Scrub until cleaned.
Used on stove tops, toilets and other yucky areas.

Carpet Freshener:
Sprinkle baking soda onto smelly carpet, let sit for about 10 min then vacuum area.

"Drain-o"
Sprinkle some baking soda over drain then pour some white vinegar onto it. Let work for 10-15 min. and rinse with hot water.

Laundry detergent:
1-2 tbs. undiluted castile soap
1/4-1/2 cup baking soda
Add while washing machine is filling.

Fabric Softener:
Fill a Bounty Fabric Softener ball with vinegar and toss in the washing machine. I promise your clothes will not smell like vinegar when you wear them! Soft and static free =)

Hand Soap:
1 part Castile soap
5 part water
Using this into a foaming soap pump works great!

Shampoo 1:
Tiny bit of Castile soap
Yes, I've actually done this many times. The great thing is you don't need conditioner! I wouldn't recommend this as a long term habit since the soap is made out of oil and can leave your hair kind of oily

Shampoo 2:
1-2 tbs baking soda
This is actually what I do. Don't get grossed out, it works great! Just sprinkle it onto your scalp and scrub away. It gets rid off all the grime and dead skin cells without stripping your hair of it's natural oils. If any of you decide to try this, just be forewarned that it can take up to a month for your hair to adapt. Since normal shampoo strips off all the natural oils, your scalp is constantly producing more to replace them. It will take a while for your body to realize that it doesn't have to produce as much oils.

Conditioner:
1/4 cup white vinegar diluted with water
This works great any time, but is pretty important if you're using baking soda as shampoo because it helps keep the ph balance. Just pour onto your hair and let sit for a minute or two and rinse. When your hair dries you won't be able to smell the vinegar!

There are many, many more recipes but these are the main ones I use. If you want to see more, a great website is Pioneer Thinking. Just ignore all the Ayurvedic stuff.

For my fourth, and final secret weapon...washcloths. I use washcloths or cut up t-shirts instead of sponges or paper towels. This is a huge money saver for us. I have even made reusable Swiffer covers to use!

So, there you have it. Some great ways to save bits of money here and there. These supplies last us for months and are used for just about every kind of cleaning we do. Except the dishwasher, but we usually wash by hand anyway...using Castile soap of course!

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Thrift Store Master List - CDA

Welcome to the first week of Frugal Friday! I think that was at the third time I've initially typed in Frugal Fruday on accident. If you want to hear a bit more and what Frugal Friday is and how to join, click here.
As you may recall, we went thrift store shopping earlier this week. So, I figured for our first Frugal Friday, I'd share with you what we learned about the thrift stores we went to since most of you live in the area.

The Thrift Store Master List - CDA

Women's Center Thrift Store: This thrift store is not large, but has a quite a bit of woman's clothing and shoes. Not a lot of children's, babies, or mens clothing though. All clothing is 50% off on Mondays, and shoes are 50% off Thursdays.

Idaho Youth Ranch Thrift Store: This place we were pretty impressed with. They are rather large and have a good selection of clothing in all sizes, which all seemed very clean and in good condition. The pricing is fair, not overly cheap but not too expensive. Except the furniture, that seemed rather expensive to me. All of their items are color-coded to help them move inventory out. Each week there is one color of tags that are 50% off and another color that is 25% off. The also have bargain bins that get refilled every 3 weeks or so (according to the girl working). The clothing pricing in the bargain bins is only $.50 and we managed to find a lot of good stuff.

Humane Society Thrift Store: Another pretty small store, again with a fairly large selection of woman's clothing. The childrens, babies and men's clothing selection was small. The did, however have a ton of dishes. If you need dishes, this is where you go. Or food dishes for your pets. I was unable to tell if they had any regular sales or discount days.

Thiftique (Lake City Church's thrift store): I'm not entirely sure I spelled that right. This store we did not spend a lot of time in. If you're claustrophobic, don't go here. If you have some time and no children, you could probably find some great stuff. This place is very large and very full. I didn't see much of the pricing or if they had any regular sales or discount days, I was to busy imagining being buried alive in the store.

Goodwill: We didn't actually go to Goodwill because we think their pricing is to high. But I figured it should be on the list anyway. I think we've all been there and know what kind of stuff is there. If I find out about any kind of sales or discount days, I'll add it here.

Hospice Thrift Store: We didn't go to this one simply because we ran out of time. We've been there before and I can tell you that they have a lot of women's and men's clothing, but not a lot of children's. They also have a lot of kitchen and home items as well as crafting stuff.

St. Vincent's Thrift Store: 50% off anything in the store every Wednesday (Thanks, Taylor!).

I think that's it. Next week we plan on going to Post Falls to thrift shop, so I'll probably make up a master list for there too. If I've left out a store or you have some more details or info for one I've listed, let me know!

Do you have a Frugal Friday post you want to share? Enter it below! Please make sure and leave the link to your post and not your homepage. As well, add your post title when you enter your name. Example: Jessy (Thrift Store Master List - CDA).

Frugal Friday Explained

Well, since I only got 2 votes (slackers!) on the title, we're going with Frugal Friday, and since a few of you said "tell me what to do and I'm in", I'm telling you what to do =) Also, for simplicity sake, I'll do the hosting for the time being. Now, to go into more detail about all the fun and excitement you can expect.
Who can join?
Anyone! If you don't have a blog, hop around and read all the participating blog posts. And comment...we like comments. If you do have a blog then feel free to join in, no purchase necessary. What do you blog about? I'm glad you asked!
What do I post about?
Anything and everything that has to do with saving money! Here are a few ideas:
Tips -
How to lower your heating bill
How to make the gas in your car last longer
Recipes -
You know you have them...we want them too!
Beans and rice, rice and beans
Bargain Hunting -
Do you know when Target marks down their clearance?
Find a great coupon, freebie or sale? Like free Polly Pockets. That was a great one.
Victories -
Did you have $10 left in the grocery budget at the end of the week?
Find some great deals at the thrift store? Share them!
The Rules
There aren't really rules, just a few things to help it all run smoother.
1. Link back: At the beginning or end of your post, link back to the hosting blog post. For example, if I'm hosting for that week you would do something like this:
"This post is part of Frugal Friday. To read more posts like this or to add your own, visit (enter the link for the current Frugal Friday post on the hosting blog)". Just make sure the link is the actual FF post for the week and not the homepage.
2. Mr. Linky: The hosting blog post will have a little widget at the end of the post (called Mr. Linky) where you can come and enter in your name and link to your blog post. This helps to keep all the participating blogs listed in one place. Again, make sure you're linking to your specific post and not your homepage.

Frugal Friday images are available here.

That's about it! I'm looking forward to what you all have to share! Oh, and feel free to "advertise" our little carnival on your own blog and link back here for all the details. The more the merrier!