Recueil du Jour

My Valentine's roses continue to be pretty, although it is a considerably shorter bouquet than one week ago. To get the most out of my bouquet, I trim the roses and refresh the water every other day, I re-vased them in a smaller container, and I plucked any browning petals and dry leaves off of the blooms and stems. Just adding fresh water makes the entire bouquet look brighter. I am saving the fallen petals in a baggie in the fridge, with the plan to try making some rose water when my flowers are completely spent.

In the comments on the creative savv facebook page, Sarah Nosworthy gave info on treating drooping roses, saying that "trimming the stems and doing a five minute boiling water blanch will remove air bubbles. Then [plunge] into cold [water]. Works for sunflowers too." When I asked for more detail, she replied, "only the stems and only needs to be a few centimetres or an inch or so." Sarah once worked in a florist's shop. So, the next time around with grocery store rose bouquets, my game plan is to try dunking the stem ends of drooping roses into boiling water for a couple of minutes, then plunge into cold water. And if any of the roses are still drooping, then I'll try the straight pin. Anyway, thank you, Sarah for the professional!

Here's one of this week's desserts, in honor of President Washington, cherry cupcakes. I made a half of a recipe of yellow cake, substituting almond extract for the vanilla, adding chopped candied fruitcake cherries, and baking in red and white cupcake liners. The frosting was donated to the household by my daughter, who grabbed it from the free table at work in December. It was a white, fluffy frosting, to which I added cherry Kool-aid powder and some cherry pie filling. The frosted cupcakes were topped with a spoonful of cherry pie filling. A couple of things about the cherry pie filling. This came from Dollar Tree ($1/can) and the brand is Mother's Maid. We originally tried this brand on Christmas to top cheesecake. We all think this is pretty good for a dollar store pie filling. Just sayin' as some dollar store brands are just so-so. The other thing to tell you about is our encounter with a mouse in the house, prompting the creative use of food that we have on hand.

A Mouse in the House

Sometime, in the past several months, it appears that we had a little guest. I went to get a package of cookies out of the spare pantry (a closet in the hall where I sometimes stash packaged foods), and the package had been torn into. On a shelf beneath this package, there was another package that had not only been chewed, but the plastic packaging bits remained on the shelf. The four of us spent about an hour that evening going through every food item in our house and moved it all to the fridge or freezer. Fortunately, it looks like our “friend” only got to those two items. We have no idea how he got in, or where he went after his little nighttime nosh, but have now set up traps in strategic places in the house. We decided that absolutely every food item not already in hard packaging should be stored in the fridge or freezer. The up side to this is that we also decided not to grocery shop until we actually have room in the fridges or freezers to store anything. Our recent bout with snow conditions helped greatly with this goal, as we were trapped for several days and unable to navigate the ice-packed roads for over a week.

On the food front — we are searching the freezers for lingering leftovers, breakfasting on crock-pot oatmeal, and basically using what we have. Before the mouse discovery and superfluous snow, I had made one quick stop at a grocery store to pick up produce and a couple of other essentials in anticipation of really bad roads for a few days. Otherwise, I haven’t done any major grocery shopping in the month of February. After the snow, I bought some marked down avocados and mushrooms, whole wheat flour for baking bread, frozen blueberries, and a couple of loaves of marked-down bread (50 cents/loaf, too good to pass up). It’s the third week of February and I’ve spent about $90 on groceries for the month. Surprisingly, we’re doing okay with making meals and snacks from what we have on hand. If we had to have a mouse in the house, this is probably a good time for it, as there are few grocery bargains in the early months of the year, and our freezers are somewhat well-stocked from holiday sales. So, the cherry cupcakes were more inspired by needing to use up some of what is on hand than a past president's birthday, but we can claim patriotism, right?

This was our Valentine's Day dessert, a cheesecake that only called for 1 8-ounce bar of cream cheese. When we originally planned for cheesecake, I thought we had a lot of cream cheese still in the freezer. However, I only found 1 bar. The recipe that we found is from this blog -- Watts Cooking, by Aimee. 

Our Review

The cheesecake was delicious. It was not as dense as those made with New York-style recipes, which often call for as many as 4 bars of cream cheese. Yet we enjoyed this very much. Our only objection was how thin the cheesecake turned out. If we make this recipe again, we’ll use a smaller pan. For this one, we used a 9-inch springform. Otherwise, if you're making cheesecake and only have 1 bar of cream cheese, this recipe is very good.

I made another batch of garlic cheesy bread, using canned biscuits. This time I added chopped salami, lots of mozzarella cheese, and lots of dried oregano and frozen rosemary. It was really delicious and would make a great bread item to go with grocery store fried chicken for springtime picnics. Can you tell that I'm ready for winter to end? I'm planning picnics by the lake already.

One last thought for today, I'm planning a couple of inexpensive Easter crafts, based on items that I've seen in stores. I'm excited to try one of them this next week. I'll let you know how it goes afterward. Have a lovely evening!

My Take on the Knitted Cosmetic Cloths

Live and learn asked if I would knit some of these for myself. The answer is -- I miscounted as I was knitting, and I had one leftover. So, I tried it out for myself to see what I thought. I love these! I was one of those women who either went to bed with a full face of make-up or used disposable, pre-moistened cloths on days that I wore foundation/tinted moisturizer or eye make-up. My two complaints against the commercial make-up wipes is that the ingredients are not compatible with my skin type so I needed to wash and moisturize afterward, taking time and energy that I’m not happy to spend late at night. And secondly, the cost and single-use aspect of a purchased, disposable product bother me. With the knitted cloths, I use a little of my moisturizer (which also happens to be the product that I use to I cleanse my face) and wipe off the foundation and eye products. I liked the way the knitted cloth worked so well that I began knitting more for myself. So, my answer is, yes, I am sold on the effectiveness and ease of these cloths. I will finish knitting a total of 4 of these cloths, my estimate for how many days per week I have anything on my face that needs removing.

With my daughters, one has tried them and likes them, and the other daughter has yet to try them out. So, we'll see what the verdict is with the younger generation, later.

Salvaging Droopy Roses in a Bouquet Using Straight Pins

Hi, there. I've been taking some time to recharge since Valentine's Day. But this morning, I wanted to share with you how I salvage drooping roses in a bouquet.

Can you see the angle of the stem just below the bud on this rose? (It's actually to the upper left of the blossom.) This stem was the first to droop (on Friday), and the first that I repaired. (In a later photo, you can see this rose, repaired with a pearl-headed pin.)

Grocery store roses can be a real bargain, compared to those from the florist. However, I've had an issue with some grocery store roses. I sometimes get a batch whose buds begin to droop about a day after receiving or buying them. 

This latest batch, bought from a grocery store on Valentine's Day, began to develop a couple of droopers on Friday, despite trimming the ends, keeping them in adequate water, and using the floral preservative. My solution for this batch came from a dozen florist's roses that I received once. Those roses had a short length of wire in each stem below the bud. So, for this past week’s roses that were drooping just below the bud, I thought I would substitute a straight pin for the florist wire in the stems.

a different stem beginning to droop

About a half-inch below the place on the stem where the rose was drooping, I pushed an ordinary straight pin up through the stem (toward the blossom), being careful to keep the pin inside the stem and not poking through the other side. 

if you look closely, you can see the pin head on the right side
 of the stem, an inch below the blossom

Above, I’ve used a dark blue pin. But in the photo below, the large pearl-headed pin is more visible. (This rose had the greatest degree of drooping, by the way, and was the first rose that I salvaged with a pin.)

Below are the roses on Friday, after I’d “fixed” the ones whose buds were flopping at the top of the stem. 

I repaired 5 of the stems between Friday and Saturday.

Here they are this morning (Tuesday). You can see the pearl-headed pin in a rose at the front of the bunch. The rose has maintained the integrity of its appearance, as have the others in the bunch.

And here’s a shot of the dozen from above so that you can see that the repaired rose (the furtherest to the left) is opening similarly to several of the other roses.

Obviously, floral wire would be easier to conceal, as there would be no head protruding from the stem. However, I am fine with the small, dark blue and green heads of the smaller pins, as they are barely noticeable and readily available to me. I'll leave the pins in until I take my bouquet apart, then return them to my sewing supplies.

It's too early to tell if the bouquet will continue to look uniformly good. So far, though, it looks like this little “fix” has salvaged my Valentine's roses.

Making Heart-Shaped Candy Boxes

This is the last of the homemade Valentine's gift items that I'll share with you this week -- a handmade, heart-shaped box for the chocolates that I made. BTW, I made dark chocolate almond clusters to go with the heart-shaped chocolates. Nut clusters are a type of candy that are super simple to make, and I wanted just a little more candy for my family members.

Back to the heart-shaped boxes. These definitely took some patience. But I think that they turned out nicely for a homemade box. I used a cracker box for the fronts and backs of the boxes, a thin sheet of poster board for the sides, glue, white paper, gold spray paint, silk roses/leaves and satin ribbon from the free box of craft supplies that I got last summer, scissors, and box cutter.

After opening up the cracker box to lay it flat, I cut a heart out of white paper, then traced around this heart onto the cracker box sheet. This became my template for the remaining heart tops and bottoms. I traced around the first cardboard heart on the rest of the cracker box, 6 times, then cut out all of the hearts. I also cut 6 hearts from a sheet of plain white paper, trimming them down about 1/4-inch all around. I used the box cutter to cut long strips of the poster board. After cutting the strips, I scored each along the long side about 1/3-inch from one edge. I cut tabs all along the narrow side of the scoring. Using tacky glue, I formed the poster board strip as well as I could into a heart on the underside of the cracker box hearts. I worked in pairs, making the sides slightly larger on one heart, and slightly smaller on the other. Before setting each pair aside to fully dry, I checked to making sure the two pieces would fit together, and adjusted the sides as needed. I separated the pairs, and allowed to dry overnight. I also glued a white paper heart into each cardboard heart to conceal the rough work of the tabs glued to the base.

The next day I spray painted the outsides of each box half with gold spray paint.

Once the paint was dry, I matched each heart pair up again.

Using some of the materials that I received in the box of crafting supplies, I glued leaves, roses, and bows to the lid of each box.

What I liked about this project is that many of my imperfections were concealed in one way or another. The gold spray paint wasn't completely smooth, but the roses and leaves obscured that fact. The poster board sides weren't perfectly shaped, but the overhang on the box, combined with the gold spray paint makes that less noticeable. I am pleased with how they turned out and super pleased that they were virtually free. I'll let them dry completely tonight, then fill them with candy in the morning.

Using Flat Soda Pop

My family is not big on drinking soda pop. However, I do keep a 2-litre of lemon-lime in the pantry, for tummy troubles. A problem arises when we don't finish off the entire bottle before it goes flat. Then we're left with a bottled beverage that no one wants to drink. The same thing happens during the holidays when we open a 2-litre of cola. My family will drink the first half of the bottle, but leave the rest untouched. I have found a couple of ways to use flat soda that appeal to my family members.

The first of these concoctions uses lemon-lime soda, gelatin powder, and unsweetened Kool-aid powder. I simply substitute the flat soda pop for juice or water/sugar in making the gelatin, adding a bit of Kool-aid powder (just a small amount, not the whole packet) for flavoring. The above photo is a gelatin salad that I made this week, using cherry Kool-aid, lemon-lime soda, gelatin, chopped fruit, and mini-marshmallows. 

The second concoction was modified from a recipe that I found online for slow-cooker barbecue beef. The online recipe called for ketchup, cola, and Worcestershire sauce poured over a beef roast and cooked in the crockpot. My modification uses browned ground beef (drained), with some ketchup, some canned tomatoes (drained of liquid), soy sauce, and garlic powder, then cooked in the crockpot for a couple of hours. I serve this over hamburger buns, like Sloppy Joes. It has been popular enough in my family that I was requested to make it again for tonight's dinner.

The "Packaging" for the Hand-Knit Cosmetic Cloths

Last week, when talking about the washable make-up removal cloths that I was knitting, I mentioned that I had an idea in mind for the packaging.  Well, here it is. I used glass peanut butter jars and lids, a couple of knobs leftover from a furniture refinishing project, some brushed silver spray paint, and apothecary labels made with free vintage images from Graphic's Fairy. My thought is the cloths could be stored in a stack in a drawer, and the jars can be used to store the damp cloths after they have been used before my daughters add them to their laundry.

Here's how I revamped the jars:

 

After scrubbing the labels off the jars, I began working on the lids. I think the hardest part of the jar makeover was attaching the knobs to the lids. I used a nail and hammer to punch a hole in the center of each lid, then found screws which would be short enough to work with this application. The screws that generally come with cabinet knobs are long enough to pass through a thick panel on a drawer or door front. That long of a screw would be too long for the thin metal of the lid. So I scrounged screws from a box of nails, screws, bolts, etc.

Once the knobs were attached to the lids, I gave them a couple of coats of spray paint. I didn't have a lot of choices with the spray paint. My first choice had been white, but apparently I used all of my white on my last white project. So, my choices were limited to brushed silver, black, brushed gold, glitter purple, and glitter black. I went with the silver, but I also think the black might have looked nice.

I sprayed the lids in the very cold garage, so the paint took extra long to dry. Meanwhile, I began working on the jar fronts. I searched Graphic's Fairy for vintage apothecary labels. They have a pretty decent selection from which to choose. I settled on this Cold Cream label. I printed the label onto ordinary copy paper, cut out, "laminated" with mailing tape, and adhered to the jars with contact cement.

I had planned on dyeing the natural-colored cloths a peachy pink. However, I had a difficult time with the dye. I was using some of the remaining pink and orange dye powders that I also used on the set of bath towels, but the dye job turned out splotchy at best. It was frustrating. After a couple of hours of adjusting the dye, I gave up and removed the dye and lightened the natural to a creamy white. I think they look better, now, as a shade of cream, than they looked as ecru. I mixed the lavender cloths with the cream cloths in each jar. I had thought I would give one color to one daughter and the other color to the other daughter. Changed my mind on that when I couldn't achieve a good dye job on the natural ones.

To go with the cloths, I have two bottles of make-up remover. I went with commercial facial cleanser, but I did check into recipes for DIY solutions. Maybe another time I'll try one of those recipes.

By the way, I am planning on using this idea with the lids to make a couple of canisters for the kitchen counter. I keep instant coffee and cocoa mix on the counter, but the jars could use a little decorative improvement. I'll post photos when that little project is completed.

I also wanted to share a photo of some woven squares that YHF has made. YHF is a textile artist, and I think her work has considerable aesthetic appeal. In the comments last week, YHF mentioned the loom that her husband made for her, and the possibility of weaving make-up removal squares. Here's a sample of her work. Beautiful, don't you think?

The Mess-Free Way to Recycle Spent Jar Candles into New Candles

Again, one of those thoughts, "how can I do this with what I have?"

The other day, I cleaned out an armoire for one of my daughters to use in her room. I found 4 spent candles that had some sort of evergreen scent, some fir, cedar, and pine. There was between 1/4 inch and 1 inch of wax at the bottom of each jar. My goal was to combine the wax from all 4 of the jars into one evergreen-scented candle, and not have a pot to scrub out afterward.

This was so simple. I can't believe I haven't tried this before. I placed the jar candles into my crock-pot and added about 3 cups of water to the pot, enough so that the water level was as high as the wax remaining in the fullest candle jar. I set it on LOW, and left it for an hour.

An hour later, the wax was melted. I removed the jars from the crock-pot and set on a towel.

I poured the melted wax into one of the larger jars and put that jar back in the crockpot to keep the wax liquid and left the other jars on an old towel. I chose another of the larger jars for my candle and wiped it out with a paper towel. I have some candle wicks leftover from making candles many years ago.

I took one of the wicks and dipped the metal end into the melted candle wax then placed it in the center of my cleaned-out jar. Once that wax hardened, I poured the melted wax into the jar, screening out the largest of the burnt wick bits/ash with a plastic fork.

After the wax had set, I trimmed the wick. I now have a candle with about 4 or more burn hours left on it.

One of the bonuses is the cleaned-out candle jars that I have saved for future candles. This particular one, above, was from a Thymes Frasier Fir votive candle. Thymes sells the votive refill candles at a fraction of the price of the votive candle in the container. Next Christmas, I'll buy the refill candles for this container and have a "brand new" holiday candle.

Just to let you know how simple all of this was, I spent way more time writing this post and taking the photos than I spent in hands-on time melting and pouring the spent candles into one container. Using a crock-pot with the candle jars set inside saved me from having to scrape out and wash a wax-coated pot.

Making Heart-Shaped Chocolate Candies Without a Mold

You know, this is just how my mind works. I think about the great products out there, then try to think of a way around buying them. Owning a heart-shaped silicone candy mold would be a nice thing to have, but in truth, I would only use it one day per year. The other night I was thinking, "how could I make my own heart-shaped candies for Valentine's Day?"

Here's how it went:
At first, I thought that maybe I could freehand some melted chocolate with a piping bag. I tried one, and then realized that I did need some sort of guide, a template.

To make heart-shape chocolate candies, I used semi-sweet chocolate chips, red candy melts, white chocolate chips, Crisco shortening, 3 snack-size ziploc baggies, 1 sheet of waxed paper, 1 sheet of white paper, scissors, pen, small bit of scrap paper.

To make a template, I cut a paper heart out of the scrap paper and traced its outline onto the sheet of white paper.

On the kitchen counter, I laid a sheet of waxed paper over my template. 
I used the baggies as piping bags, one for each color of chocolate, snipping a tiny corner off of each before filling with melted chocolate. In a glass measuring cup, I melted 3/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips with about 1/2 teaspoon of Crisco. I used my microwave and melted in short 10-15 second bursts, stirring with a table knife in between bursts. When the chocolate was melted I scooped it into one of the prepared baggies.

I piped the outline of the heart onto the waxed paper which was over the template, following the lines of the heart.

I filled the outline in with more piped chocolate. (This is the single larger heart that I made. After my first heart, I decided to make a smaller template in order to make hearts the size of a Dove chocolate piece. So I made a smaller template.)

To make multiple hearts, I slid the template around under the sheet of waxed paper. Whenever the chocolate became too thick to pipe smoothly I put the baggie of chocolate into a custard cup and microwaved for about 6 to 9 seconds.

The hearts were thin, so I decided to build up the hearts with a second layer of chocolate. I added the second layer inside the outline of the hearts by about 1/8-inch. You can see the difference between a single layer heart and the built up heart in the photo below.

I didn't worry about how neat the hearts looked as I had a plan for concealing the messiness -- add some deliberate messiness in contrasting colors!

I let the hearts firm up while taking care of other tasks. 

Next, I melted some red Wilton Candy Melts. I have these leftover from last summer when I planned on making red, white, and blue dipped pretzel rods. I had a coupon for JoAnn Fabrics and the candy melts were on sale. However, the chocolate hearts could also be drizzled with just white chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, or a combo of both of those. Just so that the color contrasts with the semi-sweet chocolate hearts. Here are the hearts ready to be dressed up.

I only used about a dozen of the red wafers. It melted into about a 2 tablespoon pool. I scooped this into the 2nd prepared baggie. Before drizzling, I zapped the filled baggie in the microwave for about 6 seconds, to insure that it would flow easily. 

I drizzled in one directions, then turned the sheet of hearts around and drizzled in the other direction.

Following the red drizzle, I added a bit of white drizzle, using about 2 tablespoons of white chocolate chips and 1/4 teaspoon of Crisco melted in short 10 second bursts in the microwave. Again, just before drizzling, I zapped the filled baggie for about 6 seconds for a smooth flow. Whenever the tip became clogged, I either microwaved for additional few seconds, or cleared the clog by squeezing any hard lumps out of the bag on onto a bare spot on the waxed paper with my fingertip. 

As you can see, the imperfections of the semi-sweet hearts are concealed with the contrasting drizzle. After the hearts had set up, I used a paring knife to trim the edges a bit. For a first time go at these, I think they turned out nice. I am still working on how I'll package them, although I can tell you this much, I'll be just using what I have on hand for the packaging, which may include recycled cracker boxes, ribbon, and spray paint.

FYI, because of the white bloom that develops on candies made from packaged baking chips, they have a shelf-life based on best appearance (not taste or safety) of about 10 days. The white and red candy coating should maintain a good appearance for a longer period.

For this project, I used 3/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips (68 cents), about 10 cents each of red and white chocolate candy, and about 1 cent of Crisco, for a total of 89 cents for 30 Dove-size small hearts and 1 larger heart, about 4.5 ounces of candies. I've made these as gifts for 3 people, so each gift cost under 30 cents. 

Making Valentine's Cards Using Clip Art

Valentine's Day truly is a "homemade" holiday in our house. Not only am I making some gifts, but I'm also making Valentine's cards, using free clip art. Clip art really makes card-making easy. As with other projects, I am using clip art from Graphic's Fairy. My Mac came preloaded with the apple word-processing program Pages. I also have MSWord on my laptop. However, I find pages is easier to manipulate images and transpose type over images. So, whenever I am using clip art, I choose Pages for my creating.

Things that Pages can do with which I have difficulty when using Word:

• duplicate images rapidly to create all-over patterns
• flip images vertically and horizontally, then adjust the angle of the image (for placing images on a diagonal)
• provide guidelines for placement of images
• overlay text on images without using a photo editor
• easily move images around without the text or other images jumping out of placement

Here are two Valentine's Day cards that I made using Pages. I used a combination of clip art, simple frames available on Pages, and text available on Pages. 

On the left, the filigree heart is a frame from Graphic's Fairy, and the roses are from Graphic's Fairy as well. I overlaid a text box to include the greeting. The shadow frame around the composition is an option on Pages. The floral bouquets are from 2 images. I duplicated and flipped each to obtain a mirror image effect. I also adjusted the angle on the floral images to suit my composition.

On the right, The retro heart and smaller heart pairs are images from Graphic's Fairy. I added the greeting banner using a text box with white fill, overlaying the message on the heart image. I adjusted the angle of the greeting with a simple Pages feature. The pair of hearts were plain, so I overlaid a text box with the message "You + Me" in white text. The large heart is surrounded with a simple frame available on Pages.

At the top of the full sheet is a custom "made by" emblem. I used images from the cards and text to create this. Pages allowed me to flip the text and small image upside down, so that once the card was folded, the "made by" emblem would be right-side-up.

The nitty-gritty. I was able to print 2 cards on 1 sheet of paper, using landscape orientation and cutting the sheet in half after printing. I only have black ink, so my cards are black and white. I had 1 print out that I thought needed adjustments before a final copy, meaning I printed 2 sheets. So, my copies were 3 cents each (paper and ink), or 6 cents total. That's 3 cents per Valentine's Day card. If I decide to make more of the same cards, then those Valentine cards drops to 1 and 1/2 cents per card.

A little project that I really enjoyed making, and it saved me some money.

Saving Money on Meals on Traveling Days

This is nothing new, but I am grateful that I was able to make some advance preparations before a very long day this past Saturday. This was the day of the burial service for my FIL, which was held out-of-state. I knew that the day would be long, and therefore, I spent a good part of Friday preparing all of our meals for Saturday. We brought our breakfast and lunch with us in the car, and had a dinner ready to be heated when we walked back in our own door, late in the evening. It all worked out well. With the exception of a package of English muffins, I made all of our meals with what we had on hand.

For breakfast, I made breakfast sandwiches, using eggs, the last 2 patties of sausage, turkey bacon, cheese, and English muffins. I chopped the cooked sausage and turkey bacon and added both to the eggs, cooked omelet style (not scrambled in the pan), so as to divvy up the breakfast meat between 4 sandwiches. I wrapped the sandwiches individually; then, in the morning we heated them just before leaving, to eat on the drive down. With the breakfast sandwiches, we had tangerines, coffee, and juice.

For a midday meal, one of my daughters helped me put together a substantial lunch for all of us, which included sandwiches, apples, celery sticks, crackers, raisins, peanuts, and cookies. And finally, for dinner, I had made pizza from scratch on Friday. So I simply doubled the recipe and made 2 pizzas. It was just after 8 PM when we walked back in the door after a grueling drive, so I sliced and heated the pizza and served with juice for a quick dinner.

Preparing all of our meals in advance saved time (no stopping at restaurants along the way*, or once back in town) and money (I figure we saved about $35 by packing all of our own food).

I add the * as we did make one stop just before getting back on the highway to come home. The cemetery did not have bathroom facilities available, and we wanted to use clean restrooms before getting on the road and eating our lunches in the car. So, we stopped at McDonalds. Using the app on my daughter's phone, we bought a medium-sized order of fries for $1 (no tax, as this was in Oregon) after using their restrooms. We also received free cups of water to drink in the car along with our packed-lunch.

My usual immediate thought, when planning for such a long day, is to plan to eat lunch out and pick up a quick dinner as we drive back into town. On this blog, we have talked a lot about bringing our own food and beverages with us for long days in the car. I am often inspired by all of you and your efforts to save some money by preparing in advance. For this occasion, I used you all as my inspiration to make these meal preparations z day ahead, so our family could save both time and money. My sincere thanks to all of you for inspiring me to do better!

Using a Snow Day to Make Gifts for Valentine's Day

This is what we woke up to today. Beautiful! And it made me slow down for a day and cancel errands. What to do on a snow day? How about making a couple of Valentine's gifts.

I've always given my family members a small gift for Valentine's Day. It's usually a handmade gift. The budget for gifts just after Christmas is often very small, so handmade certainly fits the bill. The two gifts that I am making today are for my daughters. In thinking what I could possibly make from the supplies that I have at home, I thought about these -- knitted, reusable make-up remover pads. My thinking was that these would be a perfect use for the odds and ends of the all-cotton yarn that I have leftover from making dish and spa cloths two years ago. Each of those cloths used 2/3 of a 2.5 oz skein of cotton yarn, leaving me with a few 1/3 skeins in different colors. I thought that surely I could get 3 or more make-up remover pads out of those 1/3-skein remnants of yarn.

I didn't know if anyone else ever made these before, but I checked online just in case. And sure enough, lots of people have made them -- lucky for me, as I could follow someone else's pattern and not have to figure it out myself. The pattern that I chose is this very easy pattern. I will say this much though, if I could crochet, I would crochet round pads, as I think they would look prettier. But as I only knit, these had to be squares.

So, I've put in a couple of hours of knitting this morning and have made 4 lavender and 1 ecru, so far. My plan is to make about 7 of each color and give each daughter a full set to get through a week. In my knitting today, I discovered that 1/3 of a skein will make 4 of these 4-inch square pads. The small ball of yarn in the photo is a 1/3-skein remnant, just to give you an idea of how little yarn one needs to made a single square. (I had two of the lavender yarn remnants before beginning today.)

As I was knitting, I thought of several aspects of this gift that makes me happy. These will be totally free to make, as I am using the leftover bits from other knitting projects. Using up the odds bits of yarn that I have means that I am not generating any new waste in the from of packaging or manufacturing. They are reusable, to be washed after each use. They can be tossed into the laundry with towels, sheets, pjs, etc. Judging by how well my knitted dishcloths have held up, I expect these make-up remover pads will last several years. As a reusable product, they replace a disposable item that would end up in the garbage (cotton balls or squares). In addition, as a reusable item, they will save my daughters a few dollars as they will not need to buy the disposable, commercially-made product. And they are made by me. A handmade item from me adds an extra measure of love to my gifts.

After I finish knitting both colors, I will finish the ends then package up. Stay tuned, you know how much I like packaging and presentation. I have an idea that I think will be really nice, and also won't cost a thing by using some odds and ends from home.

So, this is how I spent my freebie snow day.

Fast Food Hack with a Bonus

This is a fast food burger bun that has been kept in our freezer after an outing to McDonalds -- that's frost, not mold.

When it comes to Sunday lunches out two of our family members have a penchant for McDonalds. So we do choose that establishment once or twice per month. It doesn't hurt that it can be very affordable. However, I'm not a huge fan of all of the bready stuff -- burger/sandwich buns. What I do love are salads. When we choose McDonalds, I order a side salad ($1.99), and a McChicken sandwich ($1.00). I open the salad and sandwich and scrape the lettuce and mayo from the McChicken onto the salad, then I slice the chicken patty into strips to add to the greens -- my own chicken and greens salad. If the McDonalds has Caesar dressing, then I get a Chicken Caesar salad for $2.99. And yes, it is tasty -- so much so that one of my daughters now follows me in her fast food lunch choice.

bread crumbs from the above, salvaged burger bun

Here's the bonus. You know that I don't like to waste food. McDonalds packages the salad dressing with a fork and knife in a plastic bag. I use this bag to hold the burger bun that is leftover from my McChicken after removing the lettuce, mayo, and chicken patty. Once home, I pop the bun into the freezer. When I make meatloaf, I pull one of these saved buns from the freezer and pulse into crumbs in the food processor to add to the ground meat. Nothing wasted, and I got just the lunch that I wanted at a reasonable price.

To give you a price comparison, the same McDonalds has a Chicken Southwest Salad that sells for $4.79 and a Chicken Bacon Ranch Salad that sells for $4.59. Both of these salads contain a comparable amount of food to my chicken salad concoction. Yet, my salad is 1/3 cheaper.

How about you? Do you ever take the various components of fast food items and concoct something more to your liking? Would you save a burger bun to use as bread crumbs for another meal?