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Yummy Fruit Salad
My husband loves Chinese food, but I can’t stand it. I have tried going to different restaurants several times over the years to please him. On one of these trips, there was very little that I would eat, but there was a simple fruit salad. That is pretty much what I ate that night. It was sweet but very lightly sweet and I wanted to recreate that taste. I came up with a very simple recipe that has been a huge hit at every event I have ever taken it to. It is great for summer barbecues, Christmas parties, baby showers, weddings, or any other type of get together. The…
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Meal Planning for Vacation
I have several packing lists including meal planning for different types of traveling. We like staying in resorts when we travel because they give more room for our family. When we stay in a hotel room we feel like we are all on top of each other. The other advantage to resorts is that they have a full kitchen. This saves a lot of money when we travel. We still eat out sometimes but we don’t have to eat out every meal. When you are feeding 5 at adult prices, it adds up very quickly. I have a food travel list that makes purchasing and packing the items we need…
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Macaroni with Tomato Juice
I was home today by myself, everyone else was out of town. With no one coming home for supper, I decided to make one of my favorite dishes from my childhood. Macaroni with tomato juice is a major comfort food for me. When I was a kid, my mom did a lot of canning from the garden. Tomato juice is one thing that she never had to buy, she always had it canned and ready to go. She used it in a lot of recipes like chili, vegetable soup, goulash, and macaroni with tomato juice. I know a lot of people use tomatoes, but Mom always made macaroni with tomato…
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Should Kids Do Chores?
I think that everyone in the house should do chores or help to maintain the household. We have tried all kinds of systems over the last 20+ years. Our oldest is 24 and I am not sure exactly when he started helping out around the house, but do remember that our first formal chore chart with allowance tied to completion and behavior was at 5 years old. We gave him a quarter for each activity he completed up to $5 per week ($1 per year of age), but we also withheld a quarter if he misbehaved. I made a chore chart with simple tasks such as brushing his teeth, helping…
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How to Plan a Tween Birthday Party
My daughter just turned 12 on Saturday. It was hard for her to decide how she wanted to celebrate her birthday this year. She is too old for the traditional kiddie birthday party, but still young enough to want to make it a big deal. She thought about going to the trampoline park or skating rink, but she also wanted all the family to be there. Since she is one of the youngest of her cousins most of them would not participate for jumping or skating. She thought about having a family party at a restaurant, but couldn’t decide on a restaurant and wanted to be able to invite friends…
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Creative Organizing in the Kitchen
I have never been lucky enough to live in a house with a pantry. It didn’t matter much when we were first married because we didn’t have much to put in the cabinets. But as our family has grown and we acquired more possessions, this became more of a problem. I have had to be creative in organizing our stuff. The house we live in now has a very small kitchen. It was built in the 60’s and like most houses built in that era, the kitchen was not given much space or thought. I have very little counter space, even less that is usable. There are not many cabinets,…
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Meal Planning – My Way
I have said it before. I am not good about meal planning. Our life is crazy most of the time. I rarely know if we are going to be home for supper or at least how many are going to be home. I have tried to plan out meals, but it usually doesn’t work out. I like to have easy meals that I can throw together quickly, that is just what works for our family, but I still like to cook fairly wholesome meals out of real food when possible. I have a few tricks that help me with this. I buy ground meat in the larger amounts and prepare…
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How I Save Money at Kroger
Kroger is one of my go to places to save money on groceries right now. I love that there are so many ways to save money there. There are free items, digital coupons, paper coupons, weekly sales, and fuel points. There may be more, but right now these are the main ways I save money at Kroger. We have one of the largest Kroger Marketplaces, when it was built, they said it was the largest Kroger in the world. There have been larger ones built since then. A Kroger Marketplace is unlike any other store we had around here. Not only is it a grocery store, but it has a…
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What’s the Deal at Aldi?
We didn’t have an Aldi locally until a couple of years ago. There was one an hour away and I had heard that people made special trips up there to buy groceries. I even went and looked around once when I was in that town for work. I wasn’t impressed because I didn’t recognize anything, I remember thinking it is just a lot of ‘off-brand’ stuff and I didn’t get a basket because I didn’t know they were outside. So I wasn’t excited when I heard we were getting one. I didn’t go to the grand opening or even visit there the first month or so. I am really not…
Organizing, Crafts, Cooking, Saving Money, and Traveling
