45 minute Yeast Rolls

Goodmorning,

Finally, here is the recipe for the rolls I made the other day.  They are easy and cheap to make. I must admit, they were completely different from what I was expecting. I saw the recipe and thought that they would be your typical light & fluffy rolls. They were heavy & dense looking , so I thought I had cooked them wrong, but they were delicious!!! Perfect as a snack on their own with some butter, or would go perfect with a soup, stew or slow cooked meal. Below is the recipe that I found at http://www.gracefullittlehoneybee.com/45-minute-yeast-rolls/

45 Minute Yeast Rolls

1 Cup + 2 Tbsp warm water

1/3 Cup oil

2 Tbsp active dry yeast

1/4 Cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

3 1/2 Cup bread flour 

 Preheat oven to 205 degrees

 In bowl, mix water, oil, yeast and sugar.

 Let rest for 15 minutes.  

Mix in salt, egg and flour. Knead until soft and smooth. 

Form into 12 balls and place onto 9×13 greased baking dish.

Allow to rise for 10 minutes.

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Enjoy!

Kylie

How I keep my shopping budget to a minimum

I have had a few people ask me (from my 1^st blog post)how I keep my grocery bill so low. So today I’m writing about a few of the tips that help me.

Firstly, something that you need remember when looking at your shopping budget, is that every family is different. I have often read articles on how little a family spends on their shopping and think, why can’t I get mine down that low. Families come in all different shapes & sizes. Some are large families, some are small. Some families eat a lot, some don’t. Some families have foods that they need to avoid, others don’t. Whatever your situation, don’t compare yourself to other families; instead consider where you could cut down in your budget.  At the moment, we have a shopping budget of $5200 a year ($100 a week). This is very achievable for our family. When our 3^rd bubba starts eating, that budget might raise a little. For my sister, she has a bigger family, with some food allergies, which means they have to avoid some foods. Not to mention the fact that they also have 2 in nappies. With all of this, they still manage to stick to a budget of $150 a week.  Although she spends more $$, I think that shows that she is actually doing a lot better than me at getting the most out of her shopping budget. 

So here are some tips as to how I keep our shopping budget down low.

1) I make a meal plan – I create a fortnightly meal plan and then repeat it for the 2^nd fortnight in the month. I will often try to plan foods that have overlapping ingredients. By doing this I minimise waste (and yes trust me, I can still manage to waste food even on a small budget).

2) I shop monthly – I try to do the majority of my shopping monthly and then keep some money in the budget to get top ups of fresh food during each week. 

3) I don’t stick to a $100 a week! – Although my budget allocates $100 a week, I do my budget over the month. That way I can buy in bulk or if I find an extra great sale, I have money to stock up on it.

4) I shop at Aldi – I do most of my shopping at Aldi and only go to Woolworths if I need to buy a particular brand name item.  I know Aldi is more work and you have to pack your own bags, but the savings far outweigh the work. I love Aldi and am very thankful to be able to save so much money by shopping there.

5) I shop at my local fresh fruit market for fruit & vegies – We have this fantastic fruit market close by that does fruit & veggie boxes. You tell them how much you want to spend and they get a box, walk you around filling it up and tell you when you get close to your budget. They don’t weigh anything which means you get a great bargain, great fresh food and a chance to support local even on a limited budget. Not to mention the fact that they even walk it to your car for you....fantastic service!

6) I have stopped buying soft drink and limit our junk food – When you are addicted to something, it’s easy to spend money without thinking anything of it. I now drink mainly water which is much better for my health and have limited the processed junk food that I buy. This of course doesn't mean we don’t eat junk (you will know this if you saw my post on the 100+ cookies recipe) but I found that our family struggles with temptation and we are trying to loose weight, so not having much  processed junk  in our house is the best option  for us and heaps cheaper.

7) I’m trying not to buy take out – It is easy to forget that take out still falls into your budget when you don’t buy it at the supermarket. I once read an article where a lady said that they don’t buy takeout because if she is going to spend money on it then she would rather take her family out for a lovely dinner outing and not have to do the dishes after woods. This makes so much sense!!! So with this in mind I have decided to make freezer meals that we can grab out and eat when we are exhausted or having a really lazy night. This is something that I haven’t done yet, but is my plan for this month.

So there you have it, my top tips to keep my grocery budget down. I hope that you find them helpful. 

I'm off to bed now. Remember to turn back your clocks and enjoy your extra hour sleep!:)

Kylie

Southwest Chicken Casserole

Last night I baked a massive steggles chicken (which btw I got on sale for $2.67). I had a fair bit of chicken left over, so I went searching for a new recipe to cook for tonight. Settled on this Southwest chicken casserole, used the leftover chicken, which meant our meat for 2 nights was.... that’s right $2.67!!! Actually, we still have enough leftover for homemade pizzas. Loved this recipe and even miss fussy 7 year old ate it.

Southwest Chicken Casserole

230g pasta, cooked and drained

300g chicken, cooked and shredded

230g sour cream

1 onion, diced

1 Red capsicum, diced

2 tsp minced garlic

1 packet taco seasoning

100g grated cheese

Step 1:  Pre heat oven to 180 degrees

Step 2: Sauté onions, capsicum and garlic until soft.

Step 3: Mix all ingredients except grated cheese.

Step 4: Pour mixture into greased casserole dish.

Step 5: Sprinkle cheese on top.

Step 6: Bake for 20 minutes.

Enjoy!!

Stop by tomorrow as I’m planning to make homemade bread rolls. I have never done this before, so wish me luck! If all goes well, I will post the recipe tomorrowJ

Frugal Sugar Scrub

Hello friends.

I love Pinterest!!! I find all my ideas from there for cooking, parties, gifts, house reno's and the list goes on. Last year I thought I would finally try out one of the gift ideas that I had pinned (it's too easy to pin ideas & never try them). I decided to make some body scrubs to go along with some Christmas gifts that i was giving. There are tons of recipes on Pinterest but this is just the one that I decided to use...it was super easy & super cheap. In fact the most expensive part was the jar to store it in but even that was cheap! 

I love cinnamon, so originally i made a cinnamon scented scrub. Here is the recipe 

http://www.savynaturalista.com/2013/11/15/cinnamon-sugar-body-scrub/

After making it, i decided that the cinnamon smell didn't quite feel right, so i purchased a green tea essential oil. I made a batch of the same recipe, but swapped the cinnamon & cinnamon essential oils for 10 drops of the green tea essential oil and loved it!

As for the jar, i purchased a pack of 12 half pint mason jars off ebay, which cost $30 and was delivered to my door (the best kind of shopping when you have kids)! That means each jar cost $2.50 & i haven't come across them cheaper as yet. You can decorate the jars however you want & they make a cute gift.

That's all for now:)

100+ Cookies Recipe

Afternoon All,
I thought that it might be time to start sharing some good old frugal recipes. So I thought I would start with a well known one, but one that is definitely a favorite in our family. It's the 100+ Cookie recipe and here it is...............

 Ingredients

• 500g butter
• ½ cup white sugar
• 5 cups Self Raising flour
• 1 can condensed milk

Instructions

1. Preheat oven at 180C and prepare baking trays
2. Cream sugar, butter and condensed milk
3. Add flour, slowly mix to combine
4. Divide mixture into 4 portions
5. Add desired ingredients (to flavour) each portion. Such as 100&1000's choc chips, nuts and my all time favorite sultanas & cornflakes.
6. Roll rounded teaspoon of mixture into balls, flatten slightly
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden

They are yummy and stay fresh in an airtight container for over a week.

Seeing as you wont need 100 cookies at once, the other great thing about this recipe is that you can freeze them. You can either make up the batter & freeze the portions that your not using straight away, and then bake them when you want them. Or you can bake them all and then freeze them in zip lock bags until you want them. I do the 2nd option as its easy to pull them out of the freezer when you need them and they only take 5-10 minutes to fully defrost.

It costs under $5 to make the batter for the whole 100+ cookies and then you just add whatever you like to it. You definitely wont regret adding these delicious treat to your household! :) 

Princess Mia's Nursery

My gorgeous bubba is now 4 months old and we have just finally finished her room!  Our 4^th bedroom is really tiny, so at first she was going in that room, so we painted it. Then we changed our mind & she was going in with her sister, so we painted that room. Then we changed our mind again and decided to put her in with the study, so we painted it. Then we decided to convert the garage into a man cave & study and give the 2 older kids the bigger bedrooms. Clearly we are not great at making decisions! And now she is back in the original room that she was going in.  The great thing is that 3 of our bedrooms are now painted yay:)!

So our gorgeous little Mia now has the little room again. She still sleeps in a bassinet in our room, so I haven’t been too concerned about getting her room together, but she is getting older now so I thought I better get my butt into action as it won’t be long till she is in there.

So here it is......

I love making bunting and it is cheap as chips. I already had this fabric lying around. I am a very basic sewer and am not great at sewing straight lines, so this design is really easy. I just cut my fabric into flags, placed them back to back and sewed together using a zig zag stitch. Then I got pinking shears and cut along both sides. After that, all that is left to do is sew the binding on top. I used lace. You can either pin the flags to the lace or if you like doing things quickly like me, just place the flags in a pile in the order that you want to use and just pick up and place inside the binding as you go. Remember to leave room at each end of the binding so you can hang your bunting. The lace was $1.99 a metre & I used 2 metres, so this cost me less that $4 to make:)

My beautiful mother in law bought this lamp for our 1^st bubba but the cute lampshade that came with it got destroyed.

 I couldn't part with it so I bought a $10 lampshade from Bunning’s and painted it with some turquoise paint that I bought as a sample pot and decided it was too dark for our wall. Then just attached some pink lace. Decorating cost $0:)

I made her name out of paper mache letters bought from Spotlight for $3.99 each.

I used paint on the sides, scrapbooking paper on the front and then decorated with ribbons, felt and kindy glitz that I already had. When doing a project I often just use things that I already have around the house. It’s amazing the amount of stuff you probably have stashed around the house that you forget about. Total cost $12.

I bought a set of 3 bird frames from Kmart for $5. They were all hanging in a line with ribbon from smallest to largest. I cut them loose and put some coloured scrap booking paper in the photo spaces. The other 2 are hanging elsewhere in the room.

The curtains are block out and the perfect colour for the room. They were from Kmart and were a bargain $29. Sorry they arn't ironed!

There are some gorgeous gifts that we received that hang proudly in Mia’s room.

When she was first born, a friend made this gorgeous frame with all her birth details on it. It also happens to fit with the colour of her room perfectly.

One day I got a package delivered to the door. I was so excited when I opened it. My beautiful friend had ordered a personalised “Mia” baby package and one of the items was this gorgeous blanket. Love that she has a special blanket with her name on it!

My gorgeous sister loves making pretty things, so I asked her if she could make Mia a mobile that i had seen on pinterest. It’s so adorable and I’m not the only one that like it...it is Mia’s favourite thing!:)

So here it is the best view that i can get of most of the room, given that it is so small & i can't get a good angle. But it's the perfect size for a little person.

That's it for now.
Kylie xx

New Sinks

Hello:)

When we purchased our house in August, it had been on the market for over 6 months. It was on the market for a good price and they had an open house almost every 2nd weekend. No one seemed to be interested and let's face it, it was not exactly appealing to the eye. If you were someone who wanted to buy a house that had no work to do, then this was not the house for you. But for us, our goal was a little different. We wanted a house that had 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a double garage, in walking distance to school and church and in a culd-a-sac (i grew up in one & loved it).  This house fitted all that we had wanted in a house. Did it have some work to do? Yes, but we love a good makeover, so it wasn't something that scared us. Having done a major renovation on our last house, we were able to look at this house and straight away know the sort of money that we would need to put into it and if that's something we were willing to do. We knew that even if we replaced the kitchen, both bathrooms & all of the flooring, that we would still spend less than a house that was finished. Plus it would be exactly to our taste. Now all that doesn't need to be done in our house but that shows me that its a good buy. Plus I HATE debt, so a good bargain excites me.

  Although major renovations don't need to be done, there are a few gross things that i have never seen in another house and couldn't believe that they didn't change before they put it on the market. The bathroom vanity sinks were the worst of these. Disgusting doesn't even come close to describing what they were like. They were plastic sinks that had obviously had something abrasive used on them, which had removed all the coating on the sink. Therefore the sink wasn't shiny anymore, they were powdery. Being powdery meant that everything stained them. Every time we looked in the sink, we were greeted with foundation, hair dye who knows what other stains, all over it. Even grosser, if by accident your finger ever touched the sink, you would get a chunk of powdered sink under your nail (that would explain the gouges out of the sink)!  Yuk Yuk Yuk!!!!!

                                    Before...Ewww...this was as clean as you get it!

We ended up finding porcelain sinks that were a similar size as the current ones at bunnings for $29! The taps needed to be replaced too. We got them for $60 a set. Hubby had to saw back each bench a little to fit the new sinks in. So happy with our new ones and what an amazing change for $89 each!


                                                                            After:)

Thats it for today. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon, 
Kylie xo