A Year of Savings - bulbs

Bulbs are a great way to have seasonal flowers. We got all our bulbs from my mother-in-law. I am not an expert but I understand than bulbs reproduce after they are planted and have to be split up and replanted every so often. So once you have a few bulbs, they will grow in to lots of plants to spread around your yard and to share.

Irises are one of my favorite flowers.

I grew up in a little town in East Texas. Most of our neighbors had nice yards and gardens. The prettiest yard belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Wright. They lived across the street from our church and just a couple of blocks from our home. Their front yard was planted with dozens of rows of irises.

Mr. and Mrs. Wright were never cranky when little girls needed to get a close-up look of their flowers either.

The story of my KA mixer

First, I will apologize for this tiny picture but I am sure my children would prefer it was even smaller.

Nina has been talking about her new KitchenAid mixer on her blog, she thinks hers is better than my old one but I disagree.

I have been baking since my early teens and a good mixer is so important to have. I got a nice Sunbeam mixer at a bridal shower in 1980. I used it lots but it lasted about 10 years.

In 1990, we were living aboard Camp Pendleton. Jeff was on Okinawa for a 6 month unaccompained tour. I stayed busy with my own children and babysitting neighbors children. When my neighbor Cheryl Trahan, wanted to go see her Marine husband while his MEU was in Hong Kong, I agreed to babysit her daughters, Beth and Vanessa, for the 10 days she would be gone. She paid me $600 as well as taking us to Costco for all the groceries and paper plates we would use those 10 days and she brought us some great gifts from Hong Kong.

I used $300 of that money to buy a Kitchen Aid mixer at K-Mart in San Clemente, California. If you look real close, you can see the mixer in the cart behind Vanessa.

I have no idea why I took this dorky picture in the K-mart parking lot, back then people did not do scrapbooking or blog, I guess it was just for proof that these 5 children could all have a good time and behave on a shopping trip.

I am still using this very Kitchen Aid mixer. I have used it almost everyday since then for cookies or cake or mashed potatoes or bread dough. If only everything lasted as long as this Kitchen Aid!

A year of Savings -Container gardening

We have never been too successful growing things to eat but we are giving it a go this year. I collected an assortment of pots and filled them with tomato, pepper and eggplant plants.

I bought the plants at Lowes and used a $10 off $25 purchase.

I hope they all grow!

1950s Sponge Cake

I have made this recipe twice recently, once we had it for the cake in Strawberry Shortcake and the second time we had it topped with lemon glaze. Both times it was delicious.

This recipe calls for just 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 eggs. It is similar, but better, than the sponge cake dessert cups sold with strawberries at the grocery store.

from the 1950 edition of Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book

Inexpensive Sponge Cake

Generously grease and flour 8 inch square pan or 12 muffin cups

Preheat oven to 350.

2 eggs

Beat with a mixer or rotary beater until very light.

1 Cup sugar

1/4 t salt

1 tsp flavoring, I used vanilla but lemon or butter extract would be good too

Beat in

1 T butter melted in 1/2 Cup very hot milk I heated them in the microwave

carefully beat in to sugar and egg mixture.

1 Cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

add to wet ingredients, stir together quickly and immediately pour into prepared pan. Bake until cake tests done.

28-35 minutes for cake

18-20 minutes for cupcakes.

Betty suggest to serve it fresh with fruit like berries, bananas and peaches, top with whipped cream.

A Year of Savings - store rewards

None of the grocery stores in my town have reward or membership cards but I do use a reward card at Famous Footwear and Staples.

Famous Footwear sends me a $5 coupon on any purchase at least 4 times a year and they send bigger coupons if I buy more shoes there.

Today I used 2 $5 coupons at Famous Footwear and got 12 pairs of socks for just $2.18.

My office uses a lot of ink cartridges in our printers and I take the empty ones to Staples for recycling. They used to give a $3 gift certificate on the spot for each cartridge turned in. They have recently changed their policy and now they allow 3 cartridges a day and the $3 for each one gets rolled to your quarterly reward. This is still a good deal but the reward is not as quick.