Birthday Freebies

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my birthday but you get the gifts.

Here is a whole list of birthday freebies that I've received this year. Follow the links and sign up for them yourself.

http://www.redrobin.com/ - free burger for your birthday (click on join eclub) Kids can also sign up for a free burger for their birthday under the Kids Club

http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/ - free icecream - sign everyone up!

http://www.houlihans.com/EmailClub.aspx - free entree

http://www.lonestarsteakhouse.com/ - sign up for their e club receive a $15 gift card for your birthday!

http://www.macaronigrill.com/ - sign up for their Mac Pack, get a free dessert for your birthday & anniversary

http://www.sonicdrivein.com/ - sign up for their cruisers club (you don't have to have a My Sonic Card to register) get a free meal for your birthday. Also - sign your kids up for their kids club, they get a free wacky pack for their birthday.

Here are some more goodies that are just for the kids:

Spaghetti Factory - http://www.osf.com/ - free meal on their birthday

Applebees - free meal, get card to fill out from Applebees

Sonic - http://wackypack.kidsbirthdayclub.com/about_the_club.cfm - free wacky pack for their birthday

Target - free birthday goodies - https://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/page.jsp;jsessionid=OIQ1MJIZIHAJNLARAAV5X5Y?title=birthdaycentral_signup&_requestid=2058311

http://www.chuckecheese.com/ - free tokens for their birthday

Have a great day....I know I will.

Creative Birthday Gifts

Summer is always a hard time for us financially, but this one was particularily rough. July was a tough month on it's own and then we had two birthdays to celebrate on top of it all. We had to get creative in order to give the kids some great gifts without spending a fortune.

It has been well documented on this blog how much our kids love costumes. Cainan especially changes costumes 4 or 5 times a day. They play with them outside, inside, in bed, in the car and in the pool. So....we have piles of costumes laying around all of the time. We've got big tubs to keep the costumes in but somehow they never seem to end up back in there at the end of the day.

Brian came up with a great solution to the overflowing costumes and a fun, inexpensive birthday present too. He made Cainan a costume rack. It is basically just a board with a series of hooks on it. Then he got online and downloaded the logos of all of their favorite costumes. I used Mod Podge to decoupage the logos onto the board, labeling the hooks for the appropriate costumes.

Isn't it cute? Cainan loved it and he loves hanging his costumes up on their hooks. Believe it or not we didn't have space for all of them. I guess there is always Ryker's birthday.

Save on Air Conditioning

Electric bills can be especially high during the summer months when we are all trying to keep cool with our air conditioners. We try to keep ours turned off as much as possible and set on 78 or so when we do have it on. One of the things that keeps us cool and keeps our electric bills down is our attic fan.

An attic fan, or whole house fan, is simply a giant fan that can be installed in the ceiling of your home. It pulls air in from the outside and blows it up into your attic, creating a constant breeze through your home. They work really well when the temperatures are moderate. Of course they don't do anything to combat humidity, but if you get a good enough breeze going it feels pretty good.

Anytime it gets below 80 degrees we turn the air off and turn on the attic fan. We only open the windows in the rooms where we will be so that the breeze is all coming in through those rooms. When we go to bed we only open the windows in our bedrooms to concentrate the cool air there.

Our attic fan has definitely helped us keep our electric bills down.

Save on Milk

In my never ending journey to try and spend less on groceries one of the biggest obstacles is milk.

My family could consume a gallon a day if I let them. Let them? Yep. I'm the milk nazi. I ration the stuff like its liquid gold.

This drives Brian absolutely crazy. He "makes the money to buy the milk....he should be able to drink the milk whenever he wants."

True. But I think children need milk much worse than adult men do and people who eat cereal for breakfast (i.e. all of us but Brian) deserve to have some milk each morning and not have it guzzled by someone else as a midnight snack the night before.

He isn't the only one that has had to cut back. I've basically eliminated milk from my diet all together. I know, I know...the calcium. But I just can't justify drinking it when it is soooooo expensive and the kids need it.

But I have found a nice alternative. Yogurt.

I mix my cereal with yogurt, and sometimes berries. It's really good! I like the creamy and crunchy and sweet and tart all mixed together. And there is calcium in yogurt too! Not to mention the fact that I always have coupons for yogurt.

Just one more creative way to save a little at the grocery store.

For lots of other good ideas head over to Frugal Friday at Biblical Womanhood.

Coupon Club

A couple of friends and I just started our own coupon club. (We even have our own blog).

Or idea is to swap coupons with each other and share tips about saving money at the stores in our area. We also plan to share CVS extras and collect our expired coupons to send to service men and women overseas.

We had our first meeting this week and it went pretty well. I think everyone had a good time and gleaned a little information. We hope to implement some games and challenges to add to the fun of bargain hunting.

Does anybody have a similar group that they belong to? What types of things do you do? Any suggestions on how to make our group a success?

For lots of Frugal Tips check of Frugal Friday here.

Free Movies

If you live in Illinois, Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin or Minnesota you can take you kids to see free movies this summer.

Kerasotes Theatres are showing children's movies free every Wednesday and Thursday morning at 10 am June 18th through July 31st. Admission is first come first served.

Click here for more details and to see a complete list of the movies showing at your theatre.

Head on over to Biblical Womanhood for more Frugal Friday tips.

Dusting Cloths

Dusting is one chore that I hate. It is just a pain to move everything and dust under it. But here is one tip I got from one of my favorite books, "Talking Dirty with The Queen of Clean", that makes it a little easier...and cheaper.

You can make your own pre-treated dusting cloths. They are great to just grab and run over the furniture quickly...or hand to your kids and let them do the honors. There are no messy sprays to worry about.

All you have to do is mix together 2 cups of hot water and 1 cup of lemon oil. Dip some lint-less cloths into the solution. Squeeze thoroughly and air-dry.

That's it. Now they are ready to go. Just store them in a covered container, like tupperware.

Click on the picture above for more great Frugal Friday tips.

Easy Frugal Dessert

For my first ever Frugal Friday entry I’m going to share with you one of my favorite recipes, Bread Pudding. It is the epitome of frugality. My Grandma taught me how to make this as a little girl and she told me that it originated during the depression and was called “poor man’s dessert” because it was a dessert you could make even if you didn’t have flour or other fancy ingredients. All you need is stale bread, eggs, milk and sugar and you’ve got one of the most moist and delicious desserts (more like a cake, don't let the name fool you) you’ll ever taste. Add the butter sauce and it is really decadent.

This is a great way to use up stale bread, hot dog or hamburger buns. I personally save the heels from all of my loaves of bread (my kids won’t eat them) and freeze them until have I an entire loaf of bread made from heels. When the bread sack is full I make Bread Pudding.

Grandma’s Bread Pudding with Butter Sauce

2/3 cup sugar

2 cups milk
2 t. vanilla

3 eggs, beaten

Fill a 9 X 9 square pan to heaping with stale bread torn into bite sized pieces. Mix all ingredients and dump over bread. Mix well. (It works best to use your hands to really squish the liquid into all of the bread.) Bake at 325 for one hour.

Butter Sauce

¼ cup butter

2 T. sugar
2 T. flour

½ t. vanilla
1 cup boiling water

Melt butter in a small saucepan. Mix in flour and sugar. Add liquids, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil over low heat and stir until thickened. Let cool and refrigerate.

The Bread Pudding and the Sauce are delicious warm, but even two days later the Bread Pudding will be soft and moist. The sauce will congeal in the refrigerator so you will need to heat it each time you use it.

For more great Frugal Friday tips click on the graphic above.