The holidays are a time of entertaining family and friends. Your kitchen can be the heart of those festivities. If it needs a little help before the holidays hit in full force, you might want to get started now with the following frugal ideas for sprucing up your kitchen. Start with a Clean Sweep Start at one end of your kitchen and do a through cleaning, including the windows. More light will be let in from outside and bounce off of all of the clean surfaces. Remove extra appliances and anything that you don’t use daily from the countertops. Not … Continue reading →

When entertaining, it is often the presentation that lends an air of elegance, of expense of sophistication, not the actual ingredients. Take in point, one famous New York City Restaurant that offers $25 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Not, it isn’t some rare form of exotic jelly that is used, nor are the peanuts crushed by hand. It is simply the presentation of the sandwich that creates the sense that it is worth more than the cost of its separate ingredients. I have another example for you. Take your normal vegetable platter. You cut up celery and carrots into sticks, … Continue reading →

This year, Black Friday ads indicate that it won’t be so much about getting up early to head to the stores for the Black Friday deals as rushing out the door as you are still chewing the last bit of turkey. Consider this year “dine and dash,” as many are calling it. Black Friday deals are starting as early as 8 pm on Thanksgiving. I’m not a big Black Friday shopper. I prefer to get most, if not all, of my shopping done before Thanksgiving. This way I can enjoy more time spent with the family, baking cookies, playing games, … Continue reading →

I’m a day late with this one, but I hope you will forgive me anyway, especially since I think the topic is not only important, but participating is actually fun. Maybe you have even heard of it before and have been practicing it yourself. If you haven’t, give it a try. For the last couple of years, my friends and I have made November a month in which we really concentrate on all of the blessings in our lives. Using Facebook, and sometimes email, we post something new each day, something that we are truly grateful for in our lives. … Continue reading →

Why should kids get all of the fun? Accodring to a recent survey by Nextdoor, a social networking site, about one-third of adults dress in costume on Halloween. According to the National Retail Federation, consumers are expected to spend $80 each on costumes, decorations and candy–each, not per family. Interesting. So, since the adults are presumably doing most of the spending, they should also be the ones who save. Here are some frugal living tips for adults, who can reap the Halloween savings just as easily as the kids. Costume Savings Adults can really save a lot on costumes, since … Continue reading →

Yesterday I talked a little bit about how Christmas creep, the practice of retail stores displaying and selling Christmas and holiday items months in advance, is not only annoying but dangerous to your budget. Christmas creep can cost you, and I shared two of the main ways that it does. There are more than two ways that Christmas creep can affect your budget, and knowing how it does can help you avid the pitfalls. Wanting the Latest and Greatest If you rush out and purchase your Christmas items right away, you may be proud to have everything done so soon. … Continue reading →

If you haven’t seen Christmas decorations and other items in your local stores yet, then my guess is that you’re living outside of the United States, or maybe even the planet. As soon as the back to school items went away (the first week in September!) the Christmas stuff came out. Forget Halloween, those items started being displayed in August. While all of my friends are hunting for those Candy Corn Oreos that have already sold out, I’m avoiding the stores as much as possible, so I can ignore the Christmas creep. There are a few ways that thinking about … Continue reading →

Yes, the summer is still here, and temperatures may still be in the 90s or higher, but it is a perfect time to start making some preparations for Christmas right now. From gifts and decorations to food and entertainment, making the right moves now will be big savings during one of the toughest seasons for the budget. Stock up on the following items during the summer and fall, while you still can. Fresh Produce You’ll get the best prices on fresh produce right now, thanks to the bounty of late summer. Blueberries, strawberries, cherries, corn and other fruit and vegetables … Continue reading →

My husband told me a story yesterday about some unconventional places to stay that were cropping up as a result of the 2012 Olympics in London. For example one creative cabbie is renting out his cab as a sort of makeshift hotel for desperate tourists who waited too long to get regular lodgings for the games. For $75 a night, his guests can sleep somewhat comfortably in his cab, with access to the bathroom in his home. Considering that hotel rates for the games are in the hundreds if not the thousands of dollars per night, that is a pretty … Continue reading →