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Shared Sep 9, 2011 comment

We Paid Cash: A booster car seat

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We Paid Cash: A booster car seat

Published: by on   |  This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.

We paid cash!

A testimony from Holly

Six months ago we started looking at booster car seats since we knew our daughter was soon going to be needing one. I found the one I wanted based on safety factors, length of time she could use it, and personal reviews from other people who had also purchased the same seat. It wasn’t an immediate need so we decided to start putting $20 from each paycheck into an envelope.

Every two weeks when we got out our cash, we added that amount to the envelope and it quickly added up. Before we knew it, we had enough money.

I was actually looking online one evening and realized that the seat we had picked out was on sale at Amazon. I went ahead and ordered the seat that night and I ran by the bank the next morning and deposited my cash back into the bank!

It was such an amazing feeling to know that we had worked to save up the money. We didn’t have to worry if we were going to have enough money to pay for at the end of the month! Every time I put my daughter into her seat, I know that it’s paid for–free and clear of any credit card debt!

Holly Bennett is a curriculum writer in Texas. She and her husband of 8 years, Ed, have two girls (4 1/2 and 2). They love to spend time together as a family!

Have you saved up and paid cash for something — large or small? Submit your story for possible publication here.

Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 9, 2011 comment

Finally! CVS releases a corporate coupon policy!

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Finally! CVS releases a corporate coupon policy!

Published: by on   |  This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.

At long last, CVS released a corporate coupon policy today that is available to print from their website. You’ll want to print this and bring it with you when you shop in case there is confusion as to the CVS corporate coupon policy.

Here are a few points of note from Couponing to Disney:

  • In the event that any item’s price is less than the value of the coupon, CVS/pharmacy will accept the coupon only to the price of the item. CVS/pharmacy does not provide cash back in exchange for any coupons.
  • The coupon amount will be reduced if it exceeds the value of the item after other discounts or coupons are applied. (For example, a $5.00 coupon for a $4.99 item will result in a $4.99 coupon value).
  • CVS/pharmacy accepts one third-party manufacturer coupon and applicable CVS/pharmacy coupon(s) for the purchase of a single item, unless prohibited by either coupon offer.
  • CVS/pharmacy accepts valid internet/print at home coupons containing a barcode.
Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 8, 2011 comment

What Do You Do When You Live Outside the Reach of Sales?

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What Do You Do When You Live Outside the Reach of Sales?

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Guest post by Lisa from PanaMom

If you live in a city with a great drugstore or a grocery store that doubles coupons, saving money on your household budget is fairly straightforward. But everything changed when we moved. Goodbye, Publix and CVS. Hello, Panama! I had to get creative! (And if you live somewhere without access to all the deals, you’ll need to get creative, too!)

Here’s what has worked for me:

1. Find out what’s local.

Local is almost always less expensive. Seedless grapes here are $5/lb, but pineapples are $0.75/each. Nathan’s hotdogs–my absolute favorite hot dog–are $7/pkg, but fresh fish is only $3/lb. Although there are no “loss leaders,” there are still deals to be found.

2. Eat like a local.

Especially in developing countries, people are living and eating on low salaries as a way of life. You can, too.

I cut out almost all the processed foods. It saved us hundreds of dollars. I stopped buying boneless, skinless chicken and started processing chicken quarters. Rice, beans, and lentils have become staples of our meals.

3. Shop like a local.

It’s natural to seek out something familiar. For me, that was the big American-style grocery store. $6 packages of Oreos made it all feel better. I couldn’t spend all my money on overpriced food. I decided to hit the local open-air markets and found $0.10 limes, $0.25 mangoes, 40 pounds of oranges for $6!

4. Waste not. Want not.

Your grandma was right. If you don’t waste what you have, you don’t find yourself in a place of need.

Aluminum foil is $10/roll here. We rarely throw it away after the first use. Packaged tortillas are cheap and come with wax paper circles between them. Those circles have proved invaluable. We use them as “plates” at snack time and they also hold paint for the day’s craft.

5. Make it yourself.

Flour, yeast, turbinado, and the like are inexpensive. In bulk, they are cheaper.

All the recipes for your favorite foods are easily accessed online. My kids love Pillsbury crescent rolls. They are $4 a can here. So, I found Crystal’s Butterhorn recipe, and we all love them.

Another favorite is homemade goldfish crackers. I know what is in them, and the kids love them.

The more I make from home, the less often I have to go to the grocery store which means less opportunity to spend money. And it’s fun. We are currently working on perfecting our homemade Chick-Fil-A lemonade!

6. Be honest.

You might have to explain to your kids that you cannot afford to buy something. And that’s okay.

My girls love strawberries, but they are $10/pound. I can’t justify that amount of money out of my budget when there are plenty of other fresh fruit options. I had to sit them down, tell them no, and explain why. They were not happy about it, but now they are learning at an early age how to manage their money.

Lisa has been married to her awesome husband for 12 years. She is a stay-at-home mom to their three great girls and one terrific son. Follow her Panamanian adventures at her blog, PanaMom.

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Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 7, 2011 comment

How to Significantly Increase Your Income Without Working Harder (Part 2)

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How to Significantly Increase Your Income Without Working Harder (Part 2)

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Last week, we talked about the importance of setting goals and breaking them down into bite-sized pieces (if you missed it, you can read it here). This is foundational for success in business and in life, so if you’ve not set specific written goals, I encourage you to make that a priority in your life in the next few weeks.

Once you’ve set goals and are ready to move forward toward them with focused intensity, it’s time to move onto step two:

2. Change Your Mindset About Your Income

When Jesse and I were going through our lean law school years, I did extensive research online looking into any and every possible way I could earn income from home. The more I researched, the more convinced I became that I needed to change my mindset about earning an income.

You see, for years I’d always worked multiple side jobs. I made decent money, but the income was dependent upon how much I worked. If I didn’t work, I didn’t earn money.

The more hours I invested in work, the more money I earned. So my pay was equal to the effort expended.

I started realizing that, with my current mode of operation, the only way to get ahead financially would be to work more and longer hours–provided I could find work to do. What I really needed to focus on was setting up residual income.

What is Residual Income?

Residual income is a cashflow that is not dependent upon the number of hours you work. In most cases, it requires an upfront investment of time and resources and it requires some maintenance and upkeep, but it continues to bring in a stream of income even if you invest little into it.

My first foray into the world of residual income was my experiment in selling ebooks and printed booklets through my website. Printed booklets took more time to produce than ebooks and produced a much lower profit margin since I had to invest in physical materials. Ebooks, on the other hand, could be an automated source of income.

In the beginning, I rarely made more than $5 per day selling ebooks. But $5 per day was a start. And considering that it only required a one-time upfront investment of time, I quickly realized that making an automated $30 to $50 per week every week for almost zero work (except for the occasional customer service email) was nothing to sneeze at–especially considering that the initial ebook usually only took me 10 hours to put together.

Over time, as my customer base grew and I improved my products and marketing, I was making a guaranteed $400 to $500 per month off of ebooks and ecourses. On the months when I produced a new ebook or put together some sort of package special, I’d sometimes make twice that amount!

Needless to say, I was definitely sold on the idea of residual income. However, as my customer base grew, so did the customer service load. And by the time MoneySavingMom.com had really started to take off, I decided to quit selling ebooks in order to focus on providing high-quality, free content at no charge. We no longer needed the extra income from ebooks and I decided that a business model of offering all downloads for free (resulting in a lot less customer service issues!) was better suited to the season of life and the business direction and goals I have now.

Currently, we’re saving towards investing in real estate as we’d like to take residual income to a higher level. Our dream is to one day earn more from residual income than we do from our business incomes–not only so we can give more generously, but so it frees us up to possibly take new directions with our businesses.

Turn Your Knowledge Into Residual Income

Joy from Preschool-In-A-Box is a great example of someone who turned her knowledge into residual income. She’s a mom of three who started her own in-home preschool a few years ago. In the process of starting her in-home preschool, she found that there weren’t resources out there offering tips on how to do it.

After she figured it out on her own—and made a lot of costly mistakes along the way!—she determined to make it easier for others who wanted to do the same. After months of testing, tweaking, and refining her preschool, she put together Preschool-In-A-Box–a kit that packages up all of her knowledge and everything she’s learned over the past few years to save someone hoping to set up an in-home preschool an enormous amount of time and effort.

This is brilliant! If she were trying to increase her income teaching preschool, she’d have to take on more students or teach for longer hours. Instead, she took her knowledge and created a product. This one-time investment of time to put together the Preschool-In-A-Box kit has likely made her far more than she could ever make in years of teaching preschool–and it doesn’t require her to put in incredibly long hours over a long period of time.

Do you see the beauty of residual income? After the initial investment, it can actually free you up to work a lot fewer hours and make more money.

Since your time is valuable, you might as well make the most of it by looking for ways to set up residual income streams. Best of all, if you lose your primary source of income, these residual streams provide you with something to fall back on!

…to be continued next Wednesday

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Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 7, 2011 comment

Busy Bag Idea: Alphabet Tracing Sheets

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Busy Bag Idea: Alphabet Tracing Sheets

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The Alphabet Tracing Sheets Busy Bag from our Busy Bag Swap has been one of the children’s favorites. It’s perfect for Kaitlynn (4) as she loves to practice drawing her letters. Silas has also enjoyed trying to write the letters, too.

Secretly, though, I think one reason it’s their favorite is because it involves markers–something usually off-limits at our house. 🙂

This Busy Bag just involves a laminated page or two of some type of numbers or letters (you could also do shapes or cursive) and a dry erase marker or crayon. You could also include some sort of eraser. Ours didn’t have an eraser, so we just use a cloth or baby wipe.

The beauty of this is that you can use it again and again and again! If you don’t have a laminator or don’t want to mess with laminating the sheets, you could just put them in page protectors and it would work almost as well. If you wanted to do more than a few pages, you could stick them in a three-ring binder for hours of tracing practice!

Download the Alphabet Tracing Sheets here. There are also free alphabet and number tracing pages here and here. If you want tracing pages for individual letters, you can find some of those here. Find more Busy Bag ideas here.

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Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 7, 2011 comment

Ask the Readers: Practical wedding registry suggestions?

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Ask the Readers: Practical wedding registry suggestions?

Published: by on   |  This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.

Today’s question is from Ann Marie:

My wedding is in January and we are beginning to make a list of items for our registry. While traditional items like china and vases would be nice, I am more interested in registering for items that will help us save money and make running a household easier. For example, a chest freezer, but that is pretty much the extent of my brainstorming. To those who have so much more experience than I do, what household items would you recommend for a registry aimed at reducing future household costs?

Do you have a question you’d like to ask Money Saving Mom® readers? Read the submission guidelines and submit it here.

Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 7, 2011 comment

Reader Tip: We save $120 per year by scaling back our garbage service

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Reader Tip: We save $120 per year by scaling back our garbage service

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We’ve saved quite a bit of money by scaling back our garbage service. We opted to only have a trash pickup every other week, and we forgo the yard waste bin. We rarely have trouble fitting our trash for two weeks in our bin, even when our family of five has included two in diapers. We only generate a small amount of yard waste, and we either compost it or put it in our trash bin. In our area, those two changes save us $120 a year! -Ashley

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Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 6, 2011 comment

Q&A Tuesday: How do you keep your kitchen countertops cleaned off?

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Q&A Tuesday: How do you keep your kitchen countertops cleaned off?

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I am decluttering our house like a crazy woman because I believe, like you, that less is more. But I still struggle in the kitchen. I see your kitchen photo when you do your freezer cooking and I can’t believe you have only crock pot on your counter. How do you do it? -Nami

Growing up, my mom never liked to have anything on the kitchen countertops, so I’m pretty sure that’s where my love of clean countertops originated. I try to have mine completely clean and cleared off as much as possible. Sometimes, when we’re in the middle of homeschooling around the kitchen table, things will pile up. That’s life–and I’m okay with it.

However, I try to make sure the countertops are clutter-free every night before dinner and then again before bed. At least in our home, I’ve found that if I purposefully clean everything off the countertops and put it away at least twice per day, they never pile up beyond control.

To give you a little peek into my kitchen, here’s how I try to have it look every afternoon and evening (try being the key word there, believe me, it doesn’t always happen!)

And here’s a view from the other direction (don’t ask me why the lighting is so bad; I still have a hundred thousand things to learn about photography–as is very apparent from all the pictures I post!):

I keep our weekly menu on the side of the refrigerator. Having it there has been working so well for us to stay organized and to remind me of what I had planned to fix! I just print off the menu I format for my blog post each week and then cross things off as we make the meals:

I don’t keep a lot of cookbooks, since many of the recipes I make are online (thank you, Pinterest!). However, I do have a few favorites that stay on the shelf. And then I have a few others that are kept in one of the cupboards.

This house is the first we’ve lived in that has an actual pantry! It’s taken some shuffling and re-shuffling for me to determine what works best to keep in the pantry. Here’s how it looks now:

Our Busy Bags are on the top shelf in separate tubs. Jesse’s protein stuff and vitamins are on the second shelf. The third shelf holds the crock pot and lunch bags that we use when we take a field trip or have a picnic. The fourth shelf has my bread machine and a canister of oatmeal on it. The floor has the juicer, food processor, and some bulk items.

Since we do much of our homeschooling around the kitchen table, I wanted to have some place handy to keep all our current school books and notebooks, but I didn’t want it to take over our kitchen/dining room. I finally decided upon these storage tubs:

They don’t match our kitchen, but I got them free and they are fun and functional. We store the rest of our homeschooling items on the shelves in our school room/exercise room down in the basement and I just bring up what we need each week. I’ll probably need to revisit and revamp this system as our children grow and our schoolwork/books multiply, but this is working well for us right now.

We do keep a tea kettle out on the stove at all times since I use it often. But other than that (and the knife set you see in another picture above), all other appliances are stowed away when not in use. The built-in Lazy Susan serves as a perfect place for the Vita-Mix, toaster, grain mill, popcorn popper, and a few other items

It might seem like a lot of work to put appliances away when you aren’t using them, but I honestly have found that the extra seconds it takes are worth the clutter-free look it brings to our kitchen. This system might not work for others, but it works well for us. An added benefit is that I have a lot more countertop space to use when working in the kitchen!

Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 6, 2011 comment

This Week’s Menu

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This Week’s Menu

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Making Homemade Uncrustables for the freezer last week

I can’t even begin to express how excited I am that it finally is starting to feel like autumn around here. We’ve had our windows open in the morning and evenings (and sometimes in the afternoons!) for the past few days and it just feels amazing–especially after weeks of triple-digit temperatures.

I’ve been itching to bake more, so even though we have a fairly busy week ahead, I’m going to fit in at least a little bit of baking to celebrate cooler temperatures and the coming of Fall.

Here’s our menu plan:

Breakfasts

Pick-Me-Up Smoothies, toasted bagels
Pumpkin Pancakes, scrambled eggs
Oatmeal, fruit
Blueberry Muffins, fried eggs, fruit
Orange Cream Smoothies, cinnamon raisin toast, scrambled eggs
Breakfast at hotel x 2

Lunches

Salad with baked chicken and Homemade Croutons
Homemade Uncrustables, carrots, peaches
Egg Salad Sandwiches, nectarines
Alphabet Soup, Honey Rolls
Cheese Ravioli, frozen peas, peaches
Snack-y lunch
Lunch out

Snacks

Granola bars
Fruit/Veggies
Homemade Pumpkin Spice Lattes
Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

Dinners

Dinner with extended family
Hamburgers, Au Gratin Potatoes, salad, cantaloupe
Macaroni and Beef with Cheese, frozen vegetables, fruit salad, Honey Rolls
Grilled Gyros (I’m substituting lamb instead of the beef), fruit
Lasagna Casserole, Bread Machine Buttery Rolls, frozen veggies, fruit salad
Rehearsal dinner
Dinner at wedding

Freezer Cooking in an Hour

Pumpkin Pancakes
Honey Rolls
Oven-Baked Chicken

What’s on your menu this week? Share details and/or your link to your menu plan in the comments.

Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 6, 2011 comment

8 Goals for This Week

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8 Goals for This Week

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I took yesterday mostly off from blogging, so today I’m a bit behind and didn’t get these posted this morning like I’d hoped. At any rate, I was really encouraged because I felt like I’d had a really unproductive week. You know, one of those where you just seem to go around and around in circles and accomplish next to nothing?

However, when I sat down to assess last week’s goals and make a list for this week, I was encouraged: maybe I didn’t get everything crossed off, but I really did have a pretty productive week! That was encouraging, as well as an extra motivation for continuing to set weekly goals.

Since Monday was a holiday and we’re going to be out of town the end of this week, I’m only setting eight goals this week, instead of my usual 10. And in an effort to give myself grace and not be unrealistic, I tried to keep the goals pretty simple this week. That way, I’m not starting out already feeling defeated. I’m all about aiming high, but it’s also important to know your own limitations.

Here are last week’s goals:

Mothering Goals

1. Finish reading Homer Price aloud to the children.

2. Continue teaching children table chores.

Personal Goals

3. Run 13 miles (total). {I had an “off-my-game” week in running and only ended up running 9 miles.}

4. Finish reading Quitter and Friendship for Grownups. {Still working on All The Money in the World.}

Home Management Goals

5. Keep the master bathroom clean. (This seems to be the one area in the house that has been sorely neglected recently. I want to implement the ideas from Totally Together to see if I can keep it looking great with just 3-5 minutes of maintenance every day.)

6. Make Homemade Scrubbing Bubbles (third time’s a charm, eh?)

7. Wash, dry, fold, & put away one load of laundry every day.

Business Goals

8. Re-shoot videos and send to publicist.

9. Start working on my presentation for an upcoming speaking engagement.

Ministry Goals

10. Meet an acquaintance who asked for counsel regarding her business.

And here’s this week’s short list:

Mothering Goals

1. Finish reading All of a Kind Family and Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims aloud to the children.

2. Make a Wigwam and Teepee.

Personal Goals

3. Run 9 miles (total).

4. Go to bed by 10:30 p.m. or before every night. 🙂

5. Finish reading What Women Fear, Chasing Daylight, and All the Money in the World.

Home Management Goals

6. Make Homemade Oxy-Clean.

Business Goals

7. Continue working on my presentation for an upcoming speaking engagement.

Ministry Goals

8. Write and send letters to our Compassion children.

How did you do on last week’s goals? What are your goals for this week? If you feel comfortable doing so, I’d love to have you share your progress on last week’s goals and your goals for this coming week in the comments. Let’s cheer each other on to live purposeful and productive lives!

You can download a free customizable weekly goal-planning sheet here.

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Shared Sep 6, 2011 comment

Training Requires Repetition

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Training Requires Repetition

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If you’re a mom of young children who is feeling discouraged in your mothering today, I wrote a post over on MomLife that I hope might be an encouragement to you. At least I know that I need to hear this message often. 🙂

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Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 6, 2011 comment

Reader Tip: Recycle thrift store sweaters to get high-quality yarn inexpensively

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Reader Tip: Recycle thrift store sweaters to get high-quality yarn inexpensively

Published: by on   |  This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.

Diannalynn at Dielle Designs emailed in the following tip:

I love making things by sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc. Yarn and fabric can be very expensive though, especially if you want nice quality, natural fibers.

I like to shop at thrift stores for wool sweaters or skirts of nice fabric. Then, I take apart the clothing for fabric and I unravel the sweaters for the yarn. I’m often able to get probably eight skeins of yarn (that would cost me $10 each at the yarn shop) out of a sweater that was $6 at Goodwill. And if I’m lucky and catch a sale, I get it for about $3.

I did that last week, and for less than $15, I got five sweaters of gorgeous 100% lamb’s wool, which would easily have cost me well over a couple hundred dollars if I’d bought the yarn new in a yarn shop. -Diannalynn

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Money Saving Mom
Shared Sep 5, 2011 comment

How to Use Bruised and Shriveled Apples

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How to Use Bruised and Shriveled Apples

Published: by on   |  This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.

Guest post by Jackie at Mom on a Mission

Several years ago, I would have thrown away these mushy looking, bruised, shriveled apples, thinking they were unedible. Today, I’m always thinking creatively in the kitchen. What can I do with this unappetizing food to make it more appealing? In this economy, this is beneficial to my pocketbook.

I have a handy dandy slicer/corer, peeler for apples. I can’t live without this kitchen tool. I use it everyday during apple season. I can’t tell you the number of hours it has saved me in the kitchen. They suction to your counter, they peel, core and slice at the same time. I love it.

You can usually find these for less than twenty dollars at Bed Bath and Beyond with a coupon. I found this one at an outlet store for ten dollars, no coupon. I snatched two and gave one away as a gift.

I started with this tool on my poor apples. Most made it through the process, but the mushier ones I had to hand peel to get the rest of the skin off. Then I diced these into cubes.

I brought the apples to a boil with a lid on my stove. I didn’t want to overcook them so I kept a close eye on them while they cooked. I reduced the heat once they boiled. I cooked them until they were fork tender (about five minutes). I didn’t want them to be mushy so I kept them somewhat firm.

I then shocked them with cold water and rinsed in the colander.

After they were fully cooled, I spooned (with a 1/2-cup measuring cup) into a pint-size labeled freezer bag and laid them flat in the freezer.

Ways to Use Frozen and Cubed Apples:

* Add cinnamon, sugar or honey, and mash for chunky applesauce.
* Toss frozen apples in a smoothie.
* Drain well and sandwich between crescent dough and bake for homemade apple pies.
* Pile a bunch in a pie crust or make a mini-apple pie.
* Toss some in hot oatmeal.
* Make apple cinnamon muffins.
* Make apple cake.
* Puree and use as a substitute for oil in your next recipe.

Jackie Brown, is a Mom on a Mission, freezer cooking meals for her family while opening her arms to the poor and needy. She daily blogs how to save money, time and energy through freezer cooking.