Living a frugal lifestyle can take a lot of time.  If you’re baking your own bread, making your own biscuits, and slowly simmering homemade spaghetti sauce, you know how much time that all can consume.  Are there times when shortcuts are good, and can even still be frugal?  Click on the link here to read a very informativ e article that will get you thinking a little differently about some of those convenience foods we usually try to avoid, but maybe shouldn’t:
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/goodbuyconveniencefoods.htm

And, speaking of convenience foods, having a supply of black beans on hand can really get you out of the kitchen super fast.  They’re easy to use, are versatile, and good for you.  If you have never cooked with black beans, you’ll want to see just how many ways there are to serve these delicious, nutritious beans. If you’ve served black beans quite a bit and are running out of ideas, you’ll want to click on the link below also:
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/cheap-black-beans.htm

Dried herbs may be considered another “convenience food” since they take no cleaning or chopping to use.  But the price of herbs in the store can be shocking.  If you have your own little herb garden, you can turn those fresh herbs into dried herbs with a few easy techniques.  Why not preserve your very own herbs and save money.  Plus, you know they’re handled properly when you do the handling!  Click on below to see how you can easily create your own dried herbs:
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/affordable-herbs.htm

Let’s stay on the subject of convenience foods for just one more minute.  We seem to go through a lot of drinks during the summer months.  How expensive is it in your house to keep the refrigerator full of refreshing beverages?  There are a few tips I’d like to share with you here.  Just click on the link below:
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/beveragebargai ns.htm

How are the watermelons in your region?  Ours are splendid this year.  Besides just slicing and eating them, we’ve been making all sorts of recipes.  One of our favorites is this watermelon drink.  Click on the link below and enjoy this refreshing, and healthy beverage:
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/how-to-make-a-watermelon-smoothie.htm

Our friends at the HBHW Club have been enjoying lots of summertime fun recipes, like smoothies, salads, and grilling recipes.  We have built up an inventory of well over 400 recipes so far. Along with the recipes, they also provide Club members FREE resources on everything from making money at home to gardening ideas to getting out of debt. And there is a special offer: Join the HBHW CLUB today for only $10 and enjoy all the Club has to of fer. Click here and check out all their special offers.

Searching for good advice, I recently found this amazing ebook with the title Cheaper: Insiders’ Tips for Saving on Everything.

 This book is for the saver person in your household as it advices us to haggle when shopping for  brands.  The book advises not to purchase extended warranties and too many “bells and whistles”.

The author takes you by  the hand and shows you how to find best buys everywhere. He als provides some good energy and health care tips. But this is only the tip of the mountain. You need to check it out for yourself.

There is a wonderful spot on top of the Matterhon Valley, situated at one of the sunniest places with an extraordinatory view to some of the most featured Swiss Mountains. It’s called Grachen, the family friendly holiday spot for every season of the year.

Please get a glimpse at the promo video below:

Click here for English, German, Italian and French Version.

And why not rent my cosy and fully furnished 3 bed room holiday flat for up to 5-7 persons? Click this link to see the pictures and still available dates.

Please feel free to get in contact through this Link.

While some accouchement can be hyperactive, there may be others, who may assume to be lethargic. Depending upon the nature of your child, you will be required to adopt different methods to motivate your child to perform well in school as well as at home.

One of the most important aspects to know how to motivate children, in regard to designing the most appropriate motivational methodology for your child, is to know about their likes and dislikes. This is not actual difficult as an active ancestor will aces this up actual calmly through approved and allusive interaction. .

As it is, there are a number of things that you can do, to motivate your child in performing well at the school, including:

* Involving your kid in his/her academic plan can be a positive step.

* Know what subjects are interesting to him/her and further encourage
their love for those subjects. An after school trip to the local
museum would be a great idea if your kid is interested in history.

On the home front, the following can be very helpful

* Acknowledging baby successes would get them added motivated to
assignment harder.

* The acknowledgment should get reflected in your accomplishments
as well. Show your child that you are really happy with his or
her improvement.

* Celebrate your child’s improvement with the whole family around
the dinner table.

You should consistently amount your child’s individuality and additionally animate artistic cerebration Even go as far as allurement them for their advice in analytic problems. This would make them feel important and would further motivate them. How to motivate children at home and at school definitely becomes a lot easier if they can relate to the principles with real life situations.

Also buck in apperception that accouchement absorb best of their alive weekdays at school. It is for this reason that you may opt to consult your child’s teacher or the school counselor as to what else you can do, to motivate them. Motivated children at the end of the day, is one of the pillars of strength for our society as a whole.

Writing my next “Super Simple Money Saving Tip” was much fun today. I did some research for good recipes and on healthy living and eating. I found this article and I think it is well worth posting here as it also includes a sugar-free muffin recipe (HealthyLiving) – and yes, I like muffins!

Posted 6 May, 2004 by PAF-News
By Mona Blaber, writer for the FoodSyndicate

Take everything you hear about sugar with a grain of salt. It’s probably not as bad as a lot of people think, but it might be more damaging than most people realize.

Those of us who blithely munch on muffins at breakfast and Pop-Tarts at lunch don’t seem to pay much heed to refined sugar and its many vehicles, including non-sweets such as peanut butter and bread.

Those of us who have read William Dufty’s “Sugar Blues” – or any number of other anti-sugar rants – avoid it like the plague, which was caused by sugar, according to Dufty. If the mayonnaise in our cole slaw contains high-fructose corn syrup, we fear the imminent onset of gout, acne, dropsy, scurvy, depression and premature death. Which is silly, because sugar has only been linked to acne, dropsy, scurvy, depression and premature death.

If only it was that easy to indict, or acquit, sugar. According to most experts, it has only one direct negative effect that has been reliably documented: tooth decay. But even at its most benign, refined sugar is the only food that provides calories but no other nutrients. (Refined, or processed, sugar is added sugar, as opposed to those that occur naturally in, for example, fruit and milk; they come alongside folate, calcium, fiber, Vitamin A and other nutrients.)

According to Barry Popkin, nutrition professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, “Americans consume up to one-fourth of their energy from added sugar. Either this added sugar is in the form of empty calories and affects issues such as poor bone density, etc., or it increases total energy,” and therefore contributes to weight gain. “So my feeling is that this is bad but there is not a lot of evidence for a specific direct linkage of one calorie of sugar to anything.”

In other words, we often eat sugar calories in place of those that carry the good stuff that helps us fight osteoporosis, cancer, etc. Or we eat sugar calories in addition to the nutritional sort and start packing on pounds. But a brownie will not kill you, or even give you dropsy.

However, some doctors (including diet guru Robert Atkins) maintain that refined sugar can be seriously harmful. What to do? Who to believe? Well, even the most sugar-friendly experts recommend replacing many of those empty calories with more nutritious energy vehicles. Soft drinks and commercial cakes, cookies and muffins are the all-stars of the nutritional void, according to the United States Department of Agriculture and many health organizations. But if you bake at home, you can moderate what goes into your treats. It’s not very hard, once you try, to make everybody in your house happy and sneak in all kinds of vitamins and minerals while nobody’s looking.

This moist, tender and unique muffin won raves from my whole family. The peppers are fairly subtle, but they can be omitted if you have kids who don’t like spices.

Mona Blaber, a freelance journalist who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., with her husband and three stepchildren, puts extensive research, and trial-and-error, into her fantastic (refined) sugar-free baking recipes. Her mom never let her have the cereal with sugar in it when she was little. Contact her at mona@thefoodsyndicate.com

Spicy Blue-Corn Apple Muffins

Ingredients: (makes 12 muffins)

1 1/4 (one and one-fourth) cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 (three-fourths) cup whole-grain blue cornmeal
3/4 (three-fourths) teaspoon baking soda
1/4 (one-fourth) teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper
1/2 (one-half) teaspoon nutmeg
1 pepper, such as habanero or jalapeño, with pods removed and finely chopped in food processor
1 large egg
1/2 (one-half) cup nonfat plain yogurt
1/3 (one-third) cup 1 percent milk
1/3 (one-third) cup thawed apple-juice concentrate
1/2 (one-half) cup tart apples (Granny Smith and Golden Delicious are in season year-round
2 large, very ripe mashed bananas

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 12-muffin tin. Sift together flour, cornmeal, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and chipotle. In separate bowl, beat egg. Mix in milk, yogurt and concentrate. Add mashed bananas, apples and pepper. Mix egg mixture into flour mixture, using as few strokes as necessary. Immediately spoon batter into muffin tins. Bake for about 15 minutes. Cool for five minutes and remove muffins from tins while warm.

In each muffin, there are about 118 calories and 0.6 grams of fat, about 0.13 of which is saturated.

I hope you enjoyed this article and if you like to know still more about my “Super Simple Money Saving Tips”  you can sign up here for my 30 day lessons, one great and useful tip every 2nd day…

You can also read my earlier Blog Post here.

You get everything you need in  this comprehensive ebook 

- Over 90 Homemade Costume Ideas
- Supplies list for each costume
- Description on how to make each costume
- Fun accessories for most costumes
- Ideas for siblings 

Not only will you be making a great looking costume, but you will also be creating memories that will last a lifetime.  Here are some of the  over 90 costumes that will be covered in the ebook:

•  Alien (p. 9)
•  Astronaut (p. 14)
•  Bumble Bee (p. 25)
•  Cookie (p. 35)
•  Fire Fighter (p. 47)
•  Frumpy Housewives (p.50)
•  Knight (p. 62)
•  Mermaid (p. 70)
•  Race Car Driver (p. 87)
•  Soda Can (p. 96)
•  Zorro (p. 108)
 
Extra – Last Minute Costume Ideas

The Book offers an entire chapter dedicated to last minute costume ideas. These will come in really handy any time you have to come up with a costume really quick. Most of these costumes use items you already have laying around the house. Pull together a great costume in just about an hour.

Get your ebook today an have Fun!

It is important to have an understanding of where you spend your money and how you could improve your saving and master your spending habits. The best thing is to keep a journal where you can see your successes and expenses. This can be a bit challenging and takes time to learn, but it’s well worth it.

By keeping a list of the ways you have saved money in front of you, you will be more encouraged to keep going. These successes can be small or large. You can then also compare with the budget and plans you have made earlier.

If you are in line, congratulations!
If not, you may have to do an analyses where you got astray.

For example, if you normally buy your lunch, costing you from $5.00 to $7.00 per day and one week straight you packed your own lunch for $3.00 per day that is a success. If you wanted to buy a new pair of shoes, but held off until it went on sale, saving 50%, that is another success.

Saving money requires some investigative skills, desire, determination and creativity. Once you get into the habit of saving money, you will feel much better about yourself and enjoy life even more without debt hanging over your head!

OK, go and compare the figures, do some fine tuning and keep on track. In case you did not write down your bills and savings, just start as per today. Do not go back to do things again, but stick to it from now on. This is the way to success, also with little things and steps.

If you honestly want to get on track, organize your spendings and goals much better and even become a motivated and debt free person again, then I recommend you “Goals On Track” which offers:

- Organize and manage your goals
- Create action plans
- Manage your daily tasks
- Track your time, work less and achieve more
- Keep a journal for your goals
- Review and measure progress
- And much more, including a great eBook & Video collection

Twitter went on a virtual rampage about 3-4 weeks ago, shutting down account after account, sometimes for seemingly minor infractions. But how do you know if you are breaking one of those rules?

“Twitter Slapped!” is a short, but powerful ebook explaining how to stay under the radar and not get your account shut off, even if you intend to make brisk sales using Twitter. If you have a good followership and want to maintain your Twitter account for still a long time, then I urge you to make this part of your library right now!

Did you like what you see? Then Click Here and make sure you get not Slapped!

Hit the dollar store first and you can save a nice amount of change on everyday item like laundry detergent, deodorant and on a large selection of your favored brands and favorites. At a first glance you might think that most items at the dollar store are of low quality but this is definitively not so.

Take some time to look around your nearest local dollar store and you will find many very useful items of good quality. Off course, there are things which might not fit to your ideas. Just leave them out and concentrate to buy only your really needed goods. Chances are great that you have more than one dollar store in your area including 

   – Dollar Tree
   – Dollar General
   – Family Dollar Stores
   – Variety Stores
   – KoleImports (99 cent store)
   – The Dollar $tore

And Wal-Mart Discount Store is also a great option, even if not exactly fixed to the $ 1 price level. 

You might be surprised at some of the great deals and bargains you can find at each of them. Since these stores have different sources where they buy their goods from, there is for sure a difference in the selection and quality. The merchandise changes weekly and sometimes you can find better deals on certain days.

Also look for special announcements or liquidations which are often announced in the local newspaper or with flyers to your mail box. It will pay off and you can easily save 10 – 25 % extra. Just look at it as fun and a kind of competition, even drink a cup of coffee with the savings. If you want to sign up for the whole 30 days eCourse on Super Savint Tips then go to this earlier Blog Post.

My recommended links are…

The 99 Cent Only Stores Cookbook – Gourmet Recipes at Discount Prices

99 c Dollar Store – Your Online Dollar Retail Store

Enjoy this Video Ellen Shops at a 99 Cents Store and have fun!

Last evening I wrote one of my Super Simple Money Saving Tips. Walking through the shopping mall, I had realised that that many shops already have summer closing sales and that the competition is fierce due to the bad economic situation and consumers being resistant in their spendings.

So this is my today’s great money saving tip about…

 **  Clearance  **

When you enter into a store, always head straight for the clearance rack first. There you will for certain find amazing bargains on the items you are looking for before you pay the full price.  Sometimes you may have to dig a little to find the right item, but the savings will be well-worth your time. Prepare a list of all the items you really need like shoes, underwear, socks, shirts, blouses and more.

Then go for these articles and buy only if it fits and pleases you.

Most clearance racks offer variety, current trends, and great value. Just be careful not to fill your basket with unnecessary things just because they are a great deal. You could end up spending more than you originally planned. Better save still something for the next shopping. You will find out that different shops also offer clearance sales at regular promotions. So there is no hurry and if you can shop at different stores, you also get a better mix of great articles. 

I also found a great website with best offers, including specials and promotions, free trials, coupon codes, clearance items, great deals and more at Offers.com.