Remember when I made my own wall plaques with dollar store frames, dollar ribbon and fancy letters from the printer?

I’ve been happy with those wall plaques for the past year and a half, and though I have the ability to change it up quite easily, I’ve never really taken the initiative to do that. UNTIL NOW…

Check out my new FALL themed wall decor!!

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I don’t know about you — but I love it!!

Originally published November 9, 2008. Making your own yogurt is really so easy! And frugal, too.

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If you like yogurt, but you don’t like the price – have you ever considered making your own?

Stephanie at a Year’s Worth of CrockPotting has a recipe for making homemade yogurt in your crockpot – and it’s really easy!

REALLY. EASY.

As she said, it came out a little on the thin side – but the Dannon fat free plain yogurt I buy is also a little thin, and I don’t mind it. Next time I think I’ll let it sit a little longer than 8 hours and see if it makes a difference. It may or may not.

For me, the cost of a half gallon of milk was a little under 3 dollars, and I spend about $3.50 for a large tub of Dannon yogurt. Considering you make at least twice that amount, that’s a pretty good savings. I guess I should’ve done the exact math before posting this, huh?

The yogurt turned out well, and to flavor it, I just added some vanilla and sugar substitute – that way I can add fruit on an individual basis if I want, or leave it vanilla flavored.

End result?

The yogurt works and tastes good. We like that.

We save money. Big Daddy likes that.

Note: Since the writing of this post, I have made our own yogurt several more times, each successfully. For storebought, I have switched to Yoplait Fat Free Plain Yogurt, because it has more protein per serving than Dannon Plain Nonfat.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/notahipster/ / CC BY 2.0

If you ask me, home decor is an important part of making our house feel homey. If you ask my husband…wall color, fancy curtains, decorations, pictures and art are “frills” that nobody really needs. After thinking about it, he probably WOULD be just fine living in a house that looks like a white padded cell or a sterile surgical room.

Not me.

Obviously, I don’t want to be at odds with my husband over spending large amounts of money on “frills” and honestly, I don’t feel the need to spend large amounts of money on name brand items or valuable antiques. Besides, bringing an expensive decoration piece into MY home would be like, like.. like throwing an injured lamb in front of a hungry lion. It’s ASKING for trouble.

With the onset of Autumn and the recent spurts of cooler weather, my home decorating gene is kicking in. I FEEL URGES. I browse the home and linens aisles at the store and feel the soft, shiny, smooth, textured, vibrant fall colored items stacked in matching stacks in long rows of home decor goodness. I put things in my basket, and take them back out and in the end, I exercise huge amounts of self-control and walk away with our budget relatively unscathed.

Most of the time, anyway.

Last week, I eyed many many things but in the end settled on bringing home a 5$ floral bouquet and a 2$ faux-suede maple leaf placemat. Re-using a plain glass vase from a previous floral gift and a string of fall leaves purchased last year, I assembled our new fall centerpiece for this year:

It’s not much, but it makes me happy. I’ll probably buy a couple more things over the next couple of months and I’ll pack them away after Thanksgiving. Next Autumn, I’ll pull them back out and repeat – browsing the stores searching for a couple of new things to add, breathing in the air of possibility as I window shop through all the beautiful things that won’t be coming home with me.

Last night I told Hubs that I could go window shopping on a bad day, with no kids, and no money and not buy a single thing, and come home happy. He said, “I don’t get that.” I know, Honey, I know…we really are quite the opposites, aren’t we?

Sponsored link: Home Decorating Made Easy {Click here for my Disclosure Policy}

It’s no secret flour is a major staple in any kitchen. And yet for the first many years of our marriage I rarely had it on hand.

But that’s beside the point.

As if you needed any further proof that you ought to keep plenty of flour on hand (or in case you do) here’s a list of some things you can do with plain ole’ all purpose flour.

Thirteen Things You Can Make With Flour

Edibles:

1. Flour tortillas
2. Pie crust
   
3. Graham Crackers
4. Crackers
   
5. Pancake and waffle mix
6. Soft breadsticks
7. Pita bread
8. Sopapillas

Non-edibles

1. Play Dough
2. Glue & paste
3. Air dry or bake clay
4. Finger Paint
5. Paper Mache

Did I mention these are SUPER cheap and frugal? Yeah, they are. =)

Speaking of things to make and do:

{Photo Source}

I think decorating the home is some kind of primal urge built deep into my cell structure. Not that I want to over-decorate or spend tons of money on new furniture, but I do want to make the home a nice and inviting place for my friends and family. I just don’t have a lot of time, tools and resources at my disposal. Who does, right?

So lately I’ve been seeking inexpensive ways I can make little changes to make our house more homey. Last week’s project was to tackle some inexpensive wall decor that I’d been noodling around in my head for a while.

The first thing you need are some inexpensive picture frames – I got five at the Dollar General for a dollar each – and some pretty ribbon – I got a spool of 24 yards for around $3.50 (but I only used about 7 yds.) The second thing you need is something to frame – I printed 5 letters in a pretty font that I liked.

The next thing I did, COULD have worked, but it didn’t turn out as I planned. You can learn from my mistake and do it right the first time. I used the papers that came in the frames as a guide for cutting my papers. My mistake was that I didn’t account for how much of the paper insert was covered by the frame. I used one at it’s original size, one trimmed about 1/4 inch smaller and one trimmed about 1/2 inch smaller. As a result, you can’t even see the outer white trim you SHOULD see. Next time I will remove the glass from one of the frames and mark what is visible on the paper insert and go from there.

After using the papers as my guides, I had 5 stacks of letters, 5 stacks of slightly larger black paper and 5 stacks of slightly larger white paper. You know what I did next? I taped them. Yup – I’m real fancy like that. Using “loops” of scotch tape, I centered them each and taped them together for framing.

After framing them (and getting disappointed that I didn’t measure right but not wanting to RE-DO it… I measured and cut my ribbon into approximately 4 ft strips. I looped the ribbon through the hanger on the back of the picture frame and then alternated the way that I tied the bows.

When it was all said and done, I had this:

It’s not perfect, but who cares? It makes me happy. It makes me smile. And it was really cheap. Uh, I mean, frugal. =P Not only that, but I can change it out when the papers start to fade. I make it say different things or I can hang black and white baby pictures of each family member or I can make silhouettes – the possibilities are endless.

And HOW CUTE are these? I keep hoping to find something trendy and cute like this at the dollar store, but I may just need to break down and buy them from Amazon. I definitely see something like this on my walls in the near future.

Now all I need to do is change out the flower arrangement for something a little less… country.

Tackle it Tuesday is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom.

{P.S. – I apologize for the picture quality! Hubs had our camera so I used our daughter’s inexpensive one. The first two were overexposed and the white was TOO white – hence the sepia tones.}

This year has been a year of discovery: my inner baker. Or is it chef? Ah, whatever.

I’m discovering that I really like making things from scratch.

1. They taste better than boxed or frozen things.
2. It’s frugal.
3. It fulfills some inner homemaker need deep within.

This past year I’ve learned how to make:

• Chocolate Chip Granola Bars
• Homemade bread
• Pizza dough
• Buttermilk biscuits
• Soft pretzels
• Bagels
• Flour tortillas

They’re all so easy. (Especially if you have a bread machine to make the dough, but even if you don’t.) The pretzels and bagels are basically the same process, you just divide the dough into different sized pieces and shape them accordingly. The dough for those and the pizza are made in the bread machine. But for the biscuits and tortillas I’ve learned the art of kneading and rolling. And guess what – I got the hang of it!

I’ve learned to make other things, too.

• pico de gallo
• taco seasoning
• pancakes (from scratch- no boxed mix!)
• alfredo sauce
• gravy nah, still working on that one

Not only do I feel like I’m becoming a better cook, my family seems to prefer the homemade version for most of those.

My daughter told me the other day that my biscuits rock and she never wants me to make the others again.

Last time I made Alfredo sauce I used a Knorr package mix – and my hubby commented I must’ve purchased a cheap brand or something because it wasn’t quite right. (He doesn’t know I usually make a homemade lower fat version!)

The kids love it when I make granola bars, and everyone raved about the flour tortillas.

Oh, sure, it only took me 30 years of life, 10 years of married cooking, and several months of bad experiments to get here, but now that I’m starting to get the hang of this, well.. it’s nice to feel it finally working for me!

Works for Me Wednesday is hosted by Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer.

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