January 2, 2011
Back in October of 2009 I posted te Muffin Master Mix and add ins recipe I use. This recipe can be viewed at: http://cjpattersonontheranch.blogspot.com/2009/10/productively-distracted.html. Since then I have found other variations at other locations, plus dreamed up a few more myself. So here are some suggestions to stretch your muffin variety even further:
Surprise centers. A great way to use up that little bit of jelly or jam that is leftover in the bottom of the jar is to fill your muffin cup 1/2 way with batter, add a teaspoon of the jelly or jam and then finish filling the muffin tin with batter.
Or add a bit of leftover cooked bacon and egg, scrambled sausage and egg or any other leftovers for a surprise.
OR add a bit of canned pie filling, nutella, or other similar foods. The variety for surprise fillings is endless.
Carrot with currants or raisins. Shred 1 cup of carrots and them along with 1/2 cup dried currants or raisins after you add the egg. Want to go 1 step further for even more carrot flavor and value? Substitute half the milk in the recipe for carrot juice. Want more of a carrot cake recipe? Add 1 tsp of cinnamon and perhaps throw in some chopped pecans. Warning the more ingredients you add the more muffin tins you will need.
Seasame Muffins: Add 2 tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds with the dry ingredients. Use oil when making and replace approximately 2 tablespoons of the vegetable oil with sesame oil.
Toasted Coconut and Chocolate Muffins: Toast 1 1/2 cups of shredded coconut. Grind 1/2 cup of the coconut in a food processor until the consistency of flour. Reduce flour to 1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons. Fold both the shredded and ground coconut into the flour mixture. Add 1/8 teaspoon almond extract when adding vanilla. Fold in 1-cup mini chocolate chips at the end. before baking.
Vegan Apple-Walnut Muffins: Combine 1 tablespoon ground flaxseeds with 3 tablespoons of water and whip until well combined and gelatinous. Use this mix to replace the egg. Use walnut oil instead of melted butter. Fold one peeled and grated Granny Smith apple (about 8 ounces) into the wet mix. Fold 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts into the dry mix and bake.
Varieties for the Apple-Walnut Muffins substitute just about just about any fresh fruit and nut combo that suits your fancy for the apples and nuts. adjust your oil accordingly too.
Chocolate-Cherry Chunk Muffins: Soak 1 cup dried cherries in milk until tender; drain reserving milk. Fold cherries, 3/4 cup chopped chocolate and 1/2 cup chopped cashews into mix at end.
change up the Chocolate-Cherry Chunk Muffins by using any dried fruit, nut and "chocolate" combo. By "chocolate" I mean, white chocolate, butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, cinnamon chips again the variety you can achieve here is endless.
Peanut Butter Muffins: Replace butter with 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter and 2 tablespoons peanut oil, whisking to combine. Increase sugar to 1/2 cup. Fold 3/4 cup of coarsely chopped lightly salted peanuts into the batter at the end.
Triple Berry Muffins: Prepare batter and fold in 1/2 cup dried cranberries and 3/4 cup each fresh raspberries and blueberries. Sprinkle tops with granulated sugar before baking.
Farmer's breakfast on the go: Add 3/4-1 c of any combo of breakfast meats and cheese you like to the dry batter. If the meat is a little greasy cut your oil/butter slightly. You can also saute onions, bell pepper or any other veggie to fold in as well. Remember to cut the oil/butter if you are using oil/butter when you sautee.
Leftover hot cereals? Add that cold oatmeal or mush with the dry ingredients and cut the liquid just slightly.
Spicy cheese muffins: fold in a cup of shredded cheddar or jack cheese and your favorite chili powder/chipotle to taste (usually about 1/8 teaspoon to 1/4 tsp) with the dry ingredients.
As you can see the way you use the muffin mix is entirely up to you!
Jan who is off to make a big batch of muffin mix in OK
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
AND OUR NEW BUSINESS IS…
1/1/11
About four years ago I became addicted to scrapbooking. Actually I’ve been doing some form of scrapbooking all my life. Whether it was just a few souvenirs glued in an old photo album or intricate pages with hidden journaling, I’ve scrapped, long before we worried about acid free items. We of course should have, but who knew?
As the spoiled, pampered princess my husband had made me I was given just about anything I wanted for my new “hobby” including a Cricut cutting machine, a Xyron adhesive machine and all the papers, stickers and tools I wanted. I played and had a great time.
I was just really getting into using all this equipment, learning the ins and out of it, along with learning Sure Cuts a Lot, and Inkscape. I had BIG scrapbooking plans. Then as you well know life changed drastically.
Oh I packed up my scrapbooking stuff and it traveled all over with us for 18 months, but I never seemed to have the time to scrap. We were either busy working or enjoying all the free sites we could visit. I just never seemed to drag that heavy black bag out of the camper closet.
Well the first week in October I drug that black bag out of the camper and back into the house where my son moved it back upstairs to what had previously been my scrapbooking room.
The reason I say previously a scrapbooking room is because now it has evolved back into an office, as it was when we first moved in. The business has changed, and so has the room. All the scrapbooking stuff is being set back up because it is now part of the business.
On the various lists I have mentioned repeatedly how we were working hard on a business plan, figuring out concepts, domain names, logos and everything else. I’ve kept to myself what the business is. Basically because I wanted to research to see if there was even a niche market for it. I like building small businesses to fill in the areas that some how have been overlooked by others. Especially when it works around something I like to do.
So what is the business you ask? The name of our new business is WEBFOOT TUB DESIGNS. Huh? You might say. A little background here. Many of you from the lists over the years have read many of my animal stories. I have been often encouraged to turn them into children’s books. So we are. Buddy the Bathroom Duck has evolved into Buddy the Bathtub Duck. Thus the Webfoot Tub (see logo photo at the left—designed and scrapped by my son). As time goes on our website will have Buddy and friends in a series of cartoons, drawn by Sean. We plan on self publishing the Buddy and other animal stories as well. But the children’s stories are only a tiny fraction of the business.
The main component will be greeting cards and specialty scrapbooking pages for sale. I know, I know there are hundreds of hobbyists out there selling greeting cards and such and they are not big money makers. We’ve researched the numbers, but we’ve also researched those webpages and that is where the niche comes in.
While we will, of course, make and hopefully sell all the normal greeting cards, birthday, Christmas, etc we are also going to try and provide a great variety of those hard to find cards that we all look for at one time or another.
One of our first “niche” cards will be adoption related cards. It has been brought to our attention (thanks Chrissey) that there is a shortage of cards not only to announce adoptions, but to celebrate Gotcha (the day the adoption became final) cards. We will also include cards for those who want to thank the birth parents for loving the child enough to give it up.
We plan on this and numerous other niche areas being highlighted as time goes on. So if you have a special card or scrapbook page you would love to see made available for sale please speak up.
We plan on covering ALL holidays for all religions and groups, not just the main few, as well as cards for hobbyists, sports enthusiasts and much more.
We will also be having a group of Buddy cards and merchandise as time goes on.
While some of our cards will be your basic folded cards we will also have shaped, pop-up, slider and other unique cards.
While all three of us love to scrapbook and create we realize not everyone has the time or the inclination to make their own. So we’ll create them for you. Our scrapbook pages will be made where all you’ll need to do is add your photos for those special moments in your life, as well as just day to day events.
This will be a family business, my husband Gary is the main IT person, plus he’ll help with design aspects. Sean is our artist. He can take even my roughest design sketches and turn them into gorgeous items. Me well I’m the budget keeper, one of the three designers, Buddy author, public relations and all other niche filler.
We are aware that a family business can be tough, we’ve had a few before. We are also aware that Dave Ramsey says stay away from partnerships. So we are working hard to make sure everything is, as recommended down in black and white, and no one person is making all the decisions. As for the last two years everything is done by family vote here. Please wish us luck,
The first few photo cards are now up on the website: webfoottubdesigns.com
One more thing: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Jan whose family is working together once again to move forward in life in OK
About four years ago I became addicted to scrapbooking. Actually I’ve been doing some form of scrapbooking all my life. Whether it was just a few souvenirs glued in an old photo album or intricate pages with hidden journaling, I’ve scrapped, long before we worried about acid free items. We of course should have, but who knew?
As the spoiled, pampered princess my husband had made me I was given just about anything I wanted for my new “hobby” including a Cricut cutting machine, a Xyron adhesive machine and all the papers, stickers and tools I wanted. I played and had a great time.
I was just really getting into using all this equipment, learning the ins and out of it, along with learning Sure Cuts a Lot, and Inkscape. I had BIG scrapbooking plans. Then as you well know life changed drastically.
Oh I packed up my scrapbooking stuff and it traveled all over with us for 18 months, but I never seemed to have the time to scrap. We were either busy working or enjoying all the free sites we could visit. I just never seemed to drag that heavy black bag out of the camper closet.
Well the first week in October I drug that black bag out of the camper and back into the house where my son moved it back upstairs to what had previously been my scrapbooking room.
The reason I say previously a scrapbooking room is because now it has evolved back into an office, as it was when we first moved in. The business has changed, and so has the room. All the scrapbooking stuff is being set back up because it is now part of the business.
On the various lists I have mentioned repeatedly how we were working hard on a business plan, figuring out concepts, domain names, logos and everything else. I’ve kept to myself what the business is. Basically because I wanted to research to see if there was even a niche market for it. I like building small businesses to fill in the areas that some how have been overlooked by others. Especially when it works around something I like to do.
So what is the business you ask? The name of our new business is WEBFOOT TUB DESIGNS. Huh? You might say. A little background here. Many of you from the lists over the years have read many of my animal stories. I have been often encouraged to turn them into children’s books. So we are. Buddy the Bathroom Duck has evolved into Buddy the Bathtub Duck. Thus the Webfoot Tub (see logo photo at the left—designed and scrapped by my son). As time goes on our website will have Buddy and friends in a series of cartoons, drawn by Sean. We plan on self publishing the Buddy and other animal stories as well. But the children’s stories are only a tiny fraction of the business.
The main component will be greeting cards and specialty scrapbooking pages for sale. I know, I know there are hundreds of hobbyists out there selling greeting cards and such and they are not big money makers. We’ve researched the numbers, but we’ve also researched those webpages and that is where the niche comes in.
While we will, of course, make and hopefully sell all the normal greeting cards, birthday, Christmas, etc we are also going to try and provide a great variety of those hard to find cards that we all look for at one time or another.
One of our first “niche” cards will be adoption related cards. It has been brought to our attention (thanks Chrissey) that there is a shortage of cards not only to announce adoptions, but to celebrate Gotcha (the day the adoption became final) cards. We will also include cards for those who want to thank the birth parents for loving the child enough to give it up.
We plan on this and numerous other niche areas being highlighted as time goes on. So if you have a special card or scrapbook page you would love to see made available for sale please speak up.
We plan on covering ALL holidays for all religions and groups, not just the main few, as well as cards for hobbyists, sports enthusiasts and much more.
We will also be having a group of Buddy cards and merchandise as time goes on.
While some of our cards will be your basic folded cards we will also have shaped, pop-up, slider and other unique cards.
While all three of us love to scrapbook and create we realize not everyone has the time or the inclination to make their own. So we’ll create them for you. Our scrapbook pages will be made where all you’ll need to do is add your photos for those special moments in your life, as well as just day to day events.
This will be a family business, my husband Gary is the main IT person, plus he’ll help with design aspects. Sean is our artist. He can take even my roughest design sketches and turn them into gorgeous items. Me well I’m the budget keeper, one of the three designers, Buddy author, public relations and all other niche filler.
We are aware that a family business can be tough, we’ve had a few before. We are also aware that Dave Ramsey says stay away from partnerships. So we are working hard to make sure everything is, as recommended down in black and white, and no one person is making all the decisions. As for the last two years everything is done by family vote here. Please wish us luck,
The first few photo cards are now up on the website: webfoottubdesigns.com
One more thing: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Jan whose family is working together once again to move forward in life in OK
Sunday, December 26, 2010
BRINGING THE COST OF GROCERIES DOWN
December 26, 2010
As a roast simmers on the stove and the air fills with the delightful smell of bread in the bread machine my thoughts turn to what I consider “the cooking season”. The weather outside is below freezing, so what better way to warm up the house than to cook?
Only cooking can be the biggest part of any household budget, beyond your house payment. It is also the easiest one to go over budget on, therefore special attention needs to be paid here.
There are numerous ways to cut grocery costs and there is absolutely no way I could even begin to list all the ways to cut those costs, but I can list several. It is my hope that you will add more cost cutting measures to what I’m listing.
So let’s get started:
LOSS LEADERS, as I explained in the previous post on the blog loss leaders are an incentive to get you into the store. It is also one of the best ways to cut your grocery costs.
The best way to use them is to first learn what day your local grocery puts out there weekly sales ads. In some cities it’s Sunday’s others it’s Wednesday, your town may be entirely different. It is important to know how long a sale will last, it could be very frustrating to go to a store on a Sunday and find out the ad you planned your shopping around ended at midnight the night before.
I personally do not subscribe to a newspaper, and I live rurally so I seldom if ever get sales flyers in my mail, especially since I have registered our address on the no junk mail website. So I must be a little more creative about getting my ads. It’s a simple tool called “the internet”. Yep, just about every store known to man has a website with their weekly sales flyer on it.
Once I’ve located where these ads will be for the stores I’m doing cost comparison at I bookmark the site and/or subscribe to their email ads. I do this not only for grocery ads, but for hobby stores, and my husband gets notices and fuel coupons from Murphy fuel stations in his email on a regular basis.
Once you get the sales ads take time to sit down and really look at them. Just because it’s in a sales flyer does not mean it is on sale. Read the ads closely. Even better get out your PRICE BOOK (more on this in a moment) and do some serious comparison of not just price, but sizes.
Now make a list of the things that your family will truly eat that is truly on sale. Store by store, it’s always better to compare various stores loss leaders. Here’s one trick you may not know. Many major stores like Wal-Mart, Target and others (not just grocery stores) will do price match for IDENTICAL items. So if your local grocery has say a name brand frozen food on sale that you want, but it’s not worth the drive to pick up just that one item, take the ad to one of the price matching stores and get it for the same price there. Not only do you get the item for a lower price, but you don’t burn extra fuel or time to pick up the item.
Once you get the list made, you can possibly plan a menu for the week around these loss leaders. You can also consider stocking up to help cut your food costs for future meals. Ideally this is what you want to do if you are trying to meet the $1 a day challenge. Some stores will limit you on how many of what item per person per purchase you can get.
There are, of course, ways around this limit. Shop more than one time, more than one store, or take a shopping buddy with you. If the store is out of an item request a RAIN CHECK. This can be a true help in cutting costs. Because it allows you to spread out the cost of those more popular items. It is simply a coupon to purchase X amount of that item at the loss leader price when the store once again has it in stock.
Now about that PRICE BOOK. What you put in a price book is entirely up to you. My personal one is a spread sheet. The rows are the items ie: Chicken, leg quarters per pound; chicken, boneless skinless breasts per pound; Green Giant green beans 14 oz can. Being who I am it’s alphabetized for speed in locating an item.
The columns are the stores ie: Wal-Mart; Target, Dollar General, Aldis etc.
Then I start filling in the columns with the non-sale (every day) prices for each store. This can be quite time consuming at first. I recommend using grocery receipts you have at home to start out doing this, you can gather a lot of information and fill in the spreadsheet as you watch tv. Then each time you go to a grocery gather a little information while you are there. Just spend five minutes or so on a single aisle making notes and after a while you will have all the stores done with little effort.
Another way to save money is couponing. I am a former coupon/rebate queen. In the 80’s I was like those ladies you read about. I did not pay for groceries, in fact a grocery store once paid me because they doubled the free food coupons I had. Back then I ate only name brands, worked hard at rebating and our stores doubled and sometimes even tripled.
Those days are gone for me. I use very few ready made mixes or convenience foods. I clean with basic cleaners and like I said I do not purchase newspapers or magazines any longer. What I do have is a large box of non-expiring coupons from those days on basic items. So as the loss leaders pop up I will use those coupons until they are gone.
You can also download coupons from the internet, but be aware many stores will not take internet coupons, so before you waste the time, ink and paper check with the stores you will be shopping at.
There are also several individuals who will, for a fee, send you sets of coupons via the mail. I personally have not used any of these services, so I have no idea if they are cost affective or not.
Remember, a coupon is only good if it is an item you will truly use normally and it brings the price down below similar items that are equally as good. Ideally you want to match your coupons to the loss leader sale ad for the best deal. Also if you shop at places like CVS they have special store credits they hand out for certain purchases that can be used to bring your prices even lower.
If you are blessed enough to live in an area that still doubles coupons, by all means read their rules closely and then take advantage of it.
STORE BRANDS. Quite often a store brand is produced at the exact same factory as a name brand. It is in fact the same item, just a different label. But not always. Know what your family will and won’t eat. It’s not a good deal if your family won’t eat it.
Example: My family will eat the store brand instant oatmeal just as well as they will eat the Quaker of the same flavor. The store brand is of course much cheaper (but not as cheap as making your own instant oatmeal—a recipe to post at another time). However, we find the store brand raisin bran cereal tough and unpalatable, so we stick with our favorite name brand.
BULK COOKING. I’ve already wrote volumes on this in the past, simply do a search in my blog using the search feature at the left using key words/phrases like bulk cooking, Once a Month Cooking, OAMC , OMC and you should be able to pull up the posts on it.
GARDENING. I’ve done a few posts on this in the past and as spring approaches I will be doing more. Anyone can garden, no matter where they live. Many a garden is grown in window boxes and flower pots. Remember even one tomato plant gives you garden fresh tomatoes year round (yes they are a perennial) even in the coldest climates if you bring the plant inside when the weather turns nippy.
PORTION CONTROL. My last post had a lot on this, but it needs to be pointed out again. Control the portions, control the cost.
PLANNED LEFTOVERS. Instead of trying to figure out what to do with a leftover after the fact, plan for it before you even cook. Then once the cooking is finished set that leftover aside before serving up the meal. I’ll do a post in the future on the numerous ways you can use leftovers you may never even have thought of.
This has ran on too long, so I’ll close for now.
Jan who is looking forward to your suggestions on cutting grocery costs in OK
As a roast simmers on the stove and the air fills with the delightful smell of bread in the bread machine my thoughts turn to what I consider “the cooking season”. The weather outside is below freezing, so what better way to warm up the house than to cook?
Only cooking can be the biggest part of any household budget, beyond your house payment. It is also the easiest one to go over budget on, therefore special attention needs to be paid here.
There are numerous ways to cut grocery costs and there is absolutely no way I could even begin to list all the ways to cut those costs, but I can list several. It is my hope that you will add more cost cutting measures to what I’m listing.
So let’s get started:
LOSS LEADERS, as I explained in the previous post on the blog loss leaders are an incentive to get you into the store. It is also one of the best ways to cut your grocery costs.
The best way to use them is to first learn what day your local grocery puts out there weekly sales ads. In some cities it’s Sunday’s others it’s Wednesday, your town may be entirely different. It is important to know how long a sale will last, it could be very frustrating to go to a store on a Sunday and find out the ad you planned your shopping around ended at midnight the night before.
I personally do not subscribe to a newspaper, and I live rurally so I seldom if ever get sales flyers in my mail, especially since I have registered our address on the no junk mail website. So I must be a little more creative about getting my ads. It’s a simple tool called “the internet”. Yep, just about every store known to man has a website with their weekly sales flyer on it.
Once I’ve located where these ads will be for the stores I’m doing cost comparison at I bookmark the site and/or subscribe to their email ads. I do this not only for grocery ads, but for hobby stores, and my husband gets notices and fuel coupons from Murphy fuel stations in his email on a regular basis.
Once you get the sales ads take time to sit down and really look at them. Just because it’s in a sales flyer does not mean it is on sale. Read the ads closely. Even better get out your PRICE BOOK (more on this in a moment) and do some serious comparison of not just price, but sizes.
Now make a list of the things that your family will truly eat that is truly on sale. Store by store, it’s always better to compare various stores loss leaders. Here’s one trick you may not know. Many major stores like Wal-Mart, Target and others (not just grocery stores) will do price match for IDENTICAL items. So if your local grocery has say a name brand frozen food on sale that you want, but it’s not worth the drive to pick up just that one item, take the ad to one of the price matching stores and get it for the same price there. Not only do you get the item for a lower price, but you don’t burn extra fuel or time to pick up the item.
Once you get the list made, you can possibly plan a menu for the week around these loss leaders. You can also consider stocking up to help cut your food costs for future meals. Ideally this is what you want to do if you are trying to meet the $1 a day challenge. Some stores will limit you on how many of what item per person per purchase you can get.
There are, of course, ways around this limit. Shop more than one time, more than one store, or take a shopping buddy with you. If the store is out of an item request a RAIN CHECK. This can be a true help in cutting costs. Because it allows you to spread out the cost of those more popular items. It is simply a coupon to purchase X amount of that item at the loss leader price when the store once again has it in stock.
Now about that PRICE BOOK. What you put in a price book is entirely up to you. My personal one is a spread sheet. The rows are the items ie: Chicken, leg quarters per pound; chicken, boneless skinless breasts per pound; Green Giant green beans 14 oz can. Being who I am it’s alphabetized for speed in locating an item.
The columns are the stores ie: Wal-Mart; Target, Dollar General, Aldis etc.
Then I start filling in the columns with the non-sale (every day) prices for each store. This can be quite time consuming at first. I recommend using grocery receipts you have at home to start out doing this, you can gather a lot of information and fill in the spreadsheet as you watch tv. Then each time you go to a grocery gather a little information while you are there. Just spend five minutes or so on a single aisle making notes and after a while you will have all the stores done with little effort.
Another way to save money is couponing. I am a former coupon/rebate queen. In the 80’s I was like those ladies you read about. I did not pay for groceries, in fact a grocery store once paid me because they doubled the free food coupons I had. Back then I ate only name brands, worked hard at rebating and our stores doubled and sometimes even tripled.
Those days are gone for me. I use very few ready made mixes or convenience foods. I clean with basic cleaners and like I said I do not purchase newspapers or magazines any longer. What I do have is a large box of non-expiring coupons from those days on basic items. So as the loss leaders pop up I will use those coupons until they are gone.
You can also download coupons from the internet, but be aware many stores will not take internet coupons, so before you waste the time, ink and paper check with the stores you will be shopping at.
There are also several individuals who will, for a fee, send you sets of coupons via the mail. I personally have not used any of these services, so I have no idea if they are cost affective or not.
Remember, a coupon is only good if it is an item you will truly use normally and it brings the price down below similar items that are equally as good. Ideally you want to match your coupons to the loss leader sale ad for the best deal. Also if you shop at places like CVS they have special store credits they hand out for certain purchases that can be used to bring your prices even lower.
If you are blessed enough to live in an area that still doubles coupons, by all means read their rules closely and then take advantage of it.
STORE BRANDS. Quite often a store brand is produced at the exact same factory as a name brand. It is in fact the same item, just a different label. But not always. Know what your family will and won’t eat. It’s not a good deal if your family won’t eat it.
Example: My family will eat the store brand instant oatmeal just as well as they will eat the Quaker of the same flavor. The store brand is of course much cheaper (but not as cheap as making your own instant oatmeal—a recipe to post at another time). However, we find the store brand raisin bran cereal tough and unpalatable, so we stick with our favorite name brand.
BULK COOKING. I’ve already wrote volumes on this in the past, simply do a search in my blog using the search feature at the left using key words/phrases like bulk cooking, Once a Month Cooking, OAMC , OMC and you should be able to pull up the posts on it.
GARDENING. I’ve done a few posts on this in the past and as spring approaches I will be doing more. Anyone can garden, no matter where they live. Many a garden is grown in window boxes and flower pots. Remember even one tomato plant gives you garden fresh tomatoes year round (yes they are a perennial) even in the coldest climates if you bring the plant inside when the weather turns nippy.
PORTION CONTROL. My last post had a lot on this, but it needs to be pointed out again. Control the portions, control the cost.
PLANNED LEFTOVERS. Instead of trying to figure out what to do with a leftover after the fact, plan for it before you even cook. Then once the cooking is finished set that leftover aside before serving up the meal. I’ll do a post in the future on the numerous ways you can use leftovers you may never even have thought of.
This has ran on too long, so I’ll close for now.
Jan who is looking forward to your suggestions on cutting grocery costs in OK
Friday, December 24, 2010
$1 PER PERSON PER DAY FOOD CHALLENGE Q & A
When Ashley first mentioned her challenge to herself I never dreamed how it would snowball. Why I don’t know, I mean everyone is wanting and needing to save money these days so I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was.
Of course a lot of people had a lot of questions, which is a good thing. It helps us sort through our planning process as well. So in this addition to my ongoing blogging I’ll try to answer a few of those questions.
The number one question asked was
Q: Is that $1 per day period, $1 per meal or $1 per person.
A: Ideally it would be $1 per day per person in your family. I say ideally because costs on various items differ in different parts of the country. Plus each of us has different likes and dislikes, AND allergies or sensitivities so you may have to go slightly higher.
Q: What is a “loss leader?”
A: A loss leader is a sales ad item the grocery store will run to entice you into their store in hopes that while you will pick up that on sale item you will also pick up several more things that are more expensive. It is ran at below their actual cost for a limited time only. Often there will be limitations on how many you can purchase as a result. It’s a sales gimmick, but you can make it work to your advantage if you resist that urge.
Q: Besides loss leaders how can you get food items down to a more manageable cost?
A. There are numerous ways, including coupons, price matching, rebates, gardening, raising your own animals and bartering. I’ll expound on this more on another post.
Q: If you raise animals either for their meat or their eggs, or you garden are you going to include those expenses in your $1 per day?
A. There are currently four of us doing the blogs and many more who have accepted the challenge and we are each answering this one in our own way. I myself am not including those, nor am I including the cost of food storage or cooking because I’d be doing those things anyway. I have a budget for animal feed for my birds, they are our pets plus they are great organic pest control and supply fertilizer for the garden. I also have a gardening budget because we garden normally as well. Others consider the animals are being raised for food and therefore must be included in the overall cost. So you will have to make that decision for yourself. I personally would never eat Magellan and the gang, but I will eat Mama Sarah’s eggs, they are a bonus of having some great characters to write about. The cost of those eggs will be listed as $0 in my cost portion of menus as a result.
Q: How do you calculate the cost of per serving/meal?
A. That is going to be a blog all unto itself, because it will require a long explanation. I will post it soon I promise.
Q: How about nutrition and eating healthy?
A. Some people think you cannot eat healthily while eating cheaply, but actually you can. It has to do with proper portioning and good choices. I’ll go into more detail on that now.
Eating healthy while eating cheaply can be a challenge, but it can be done. The first step is to realize what eating healthy truly means. Let’s start with the Food Pyramid. http://www.lifeclinic.com/focus/nutrition/food-pyramid.asp
When you really look at this it seems surprising that it actually suggests you eat more breads and grains daily than other things. Breads and grains are generally some of your cheapest groceries. Ideally you would want those to be whole grain items.
Moving on up the pyramid you have fruits and vegetables, followed by proteins, dairy and lastly fats and sweets. Unfortunately we as a nation tend to have those fats and sweets down with the breads and grains proportionally.
But say you do follow the pyramid to some extent and do eat the foods in that order, what size are your portions? Ahh therein lies the rub. When you go out to eat if your plate at the restaurant is not full you feel cheated. After all you are paying for a full meal right? Who doesn’t love an all you can eat buffet?
I know when we visit Walt Disney World on vacation Gary and I usually will split the meals and still have excess on our plates.
At home you are told to “fill your plate”. Plus we tend to comfort food eat.
However, if you look at the food pyramid you will see the portions are far smaller than you think. Heavens there are even commercials that tell you that you can’t eat as many fruits and vegetables in a day as needed so it’s better to “take a pill”, but they are wrong.
For a vegetable it is suggested you eat 3-5 servings per day. Wow! That sounds like a lot doesn’t it. Until you realize that a serving is:
1 cup of raw LEAFY vegetables (seriously who eats just a cup of salad?)
½ cup of all other raw vegetables. Which all cooks will tell you will cook down to about ¼ cup in size
Or ¾ c vegetable juice.
Spread that over 3 meals and 2 snacks (as recommended for your daily food consumption) and it’s not a lot. That’s ¼ of hash browns for breakfast, a SMALL salad for lunch and a small V-8 to drink during the day.
On to fruits now.
1 medium apple, banana or orange
½ cup of chopped, canned or cooked fruit
¾ fruit juice.
Again over the day that’s a fruit juice for breakfast, an banana with our lunch or for a snack and ½ cup of applesauce with dinner.
If you study the pyramid you will see that the portions in each section are actually pretty small. You spread those portions out over your day and you can eat healthily at a reasonable price. Again it’s all in the way you go about it.
If you don’t hit the food pyramid perfectly each and every day you will not die. We are all living proof of that already, but if you do try and get reasonably close you will be better off for it.
I know my family for one would lose weight (remember we like our sweets and fat). So in my section of the challenge I am going to try to find a balance between following the food pyramid faithfully and keeping my family happy with the down home cooking they so dearly love.
BTW, as of this morning there are now four of us blogging on this challenge. Angela has joined, Ashley, Alyeen and me in the challenge and will be blogging from another part of the country.
Here’s the location of the other three blogs:
Ashley’s http://dateam365.blogspot.com/
Alyeen’s www.athomewithally.com
Angela’s www.frugalcookingcorner.blogspot.com
Please join us as we work on this challenge during the next year.
Jan who is off to make Pecan Pie Bars (w protein servings—nuts and egg, too much sweets and fats, one grain--or more) for tonight’s dessert in OK
Of course a lot of people had a lot of questions, which is a good thing. It helps us sort through our planning process as well. So in this addition to my ongoing blogging I’ll try to answer a few of those questions.
The number one question asked was
Q: Is that $1 per day period, $1 per meal or $1 per person.
A: Ideally it would be $1 per day per person in your family. I say ideally because costs on various items differ in different parts of the country. Plus each of us has different likes and dislikes, AND allergies or sensitivities so you may have to go slightly higher.
Q: What is a “loss leader?”
A: A loss leader is a sales ad item the grocery store will run to entice you into their store in hopes that while you will pick up that on sale item you will also pick up several more things that are more expensive. It is ran at below their actual cost for a limited time only. Often there will be limitations on how many you can purchase as a result. It’s a sales gimmick, but you can make it work to your advantage if you resist that urge.
Q: Besides loss leaders how can you get food items down to a more manageable cost?
A. There are numerous ways, including coupons, price matching, rebates, gardening, raising your own animals and bartering. I’ll expound on this more on another post.
Q: If you raise animals either for their meat or their eggs, or you garden are you going to include those expenses in your $1 per day?
A. There are currently four of us doing the blogs and many more who have accepted the challenge and we are each answering this one in our own way. I myself am not including those, nor am I including the cost of food storage or cooking because I’d be doing those things anyway. I have a budget for animal feed for my birds, they are our pets plus they are great organic pest control and supply fertilizer for the garden. I also have a gardening budget because we garden normally as well. Others consider the animals are being raised for food and therefore must be included in the overall cost. So you will have to make that decision for yourself. I personally would never eat Magellan and the gang, but I will eat Mama Sarah’s eggs, they are a bonus of having some great characters to write about. The cost of those eggs will be listed as $0 in my cost portion of menus as a result.
Q: How do you calculate the cost of per serving/meal?
A. That is going to be a blog all unto itself, because it will require a long explanation. I will post it soon I promise.
Q: How about nutrition and eating healthy?
A. Some people think you cannot eat healthily while eating cheaply, but actually you can. It has to do with proper portioning and good choices. I’ll go into more detail on that now.
Eating healthy while eating cheaply can be a challenge, but it can be done. The first step is to realize what eating healthy truly means. Let’s start with the Food Pyramid. http://www.lifeclinic.com/focus/nutrition/food-pyramid.asp
When you really look at this it seems surprising that it actually suggests you eat more breads and grains daily than other things. Breads and grains are generally some of your cheapest groceries. Ideally you would want those to be whole grain items.
Moving on up the pyramid you have fruits and vegetables, followed by proteins, dairy and lastly fats and sweets. Unfortunately we as a nation tend to have those fats and sweets down with the breads and grains proportionally.
But say you do follow the pyramid to some extent and do eat the foods in that order, what size are your portions? Ahh therein lies the rub. When you go out to eat if your plate at the restaurant is not full you feel cheated. After all you are paying for a full meal right? Who doesn’t love an all you can eat buffet?
I know when we visit Walt Disney World on vacation Gary and I usually will split the meals and still have excess on our plates.
At home you are told to “fill your plate”. Plus we tend to comfort food eat.
However, if you look at the food pyramid you will see the portions are far smaller than you think. Heavens there are even commercials that tell you that you can’t eat as many fruits and vegetables in a day as needed so it’s better to “take a pill”, but they are wrong.
For a vegetable it is suggested you eat 3-5 servings per day. Wow! That sounds like a lot doesn’t it. Until you realize that a serving is:
1 cup of raw LEAFY vegetables (seriously who eats just a cup of salad?)
½ cup of all other raw vegetables. Which all cooks will tell you will cook down to about ¼ cup in size
Or ¾ c vegetable juice.
Spread that over 3 meals and 2 snacks (as recommended for your daily food consumption) and it’s not a lot. That’s ¼ of hash browns for breakfast, a SMALL salad for lunch and a small V-8 to drink during the day.
On to fruits now.
1 medium apple, banana or orange
½ cup of chopped, canned or cooked fruit
¾ fruit juice.
Again over the day that’s a fruit juice for breakfast, an banana with our lunch or for a snack and ½ cup of applesauce with dinner.
If you study the pyramid you will see that the portions in each section are actually pretty small. You spread those portions out over your day and you can eat healthily at a reasonable price. Again it’s all in the way you go about it.
If you don’t hit the food pyramid perfectly each and every day you will not die. We are all living proof of that already, but if you do try and get reasonably close you will be better off for it.
I know my family for one would lose weight (remember we like our sweets and fat). So in my section of the challenge I am going to try to find a balance between following the food pyramid faithfully and keeping my family happy with the down home cooking they so dearly love.
BTW, as of this morning there are now four of us blogging on this challenge. Angela has joined, Ashley, Alyeen and me in the challenge and will be blogging from another part of the country.
Here’s the location of the other three blogs:
Ashley’s http://dateam365.blogspot.com/
Alyeen’s www.athomewithally.com
Angela’s www.frugalcookingcorner.blogspot.com
Please join us as we work on this challenge during the next year.
Jan who is off to make Pecan Pie Bars (w protein servings—nuts and egg, too much sweets and fats, one grain--or more) for tonight’s dessert in OK
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
WORKING ON THE FOOD BUDGET
December 22, 2010
I’ve previously posted about how I am on the Dave_Ramsey_Debt_Beaters@yahoogroups.com email list. Recently a discussion was brought up by Ashley that she would like to try working her food budget and meals for the year, while laying in a year’s supply of non-perishables based entirely on loss leaders.
I asked if she would like a partner in this challenge. She thought it a great idea not only because things go better if you have a partner, but because we live on the opposite sides of the US and each has a family of 3 to feed. While living in two different areas with different stores to deal with and different economic basis to work with in our areas.
We have agreed to write about our journey through 2011 in building our one year’s worth of food storage by purchasing loss leaders as they become available, while maintaining a very, very strict budget.
Ashley posted her first blog entry this morning, with her challenges to herself at: http://dateam365.blogspot.com/
This, of course, is my first entry on this challenge. With the cost of groceries going up the $1 a day may be a mite stringent for us, but I am definitely going to do all I can to try and meet her challenge.
The first thing to do, as Ashley pointed out, is to educate yourself. I too am reading various blogs by people who have done this. I’m also checking online information for all types of good basic information to aid me in the challenge.
My first stop on the information train was: http://frugalliving.about.com/od/bargainshopping/tp/Best_Time_To_Buy_Everything.htm
This website lists month by month what items are normally on sale, not just food, but various things. Of course for the task at hand the food items are what I am most interested in. Knowing ahead of time what “loss leaders” will be coming can be a real help in planning the menu.
Meeting the challenge at $1 a day with two meat and potato men in my household is going to be a HUGE challenge. I can get them to eat meatless occasionally, but not all the time. My husband, is NOT a huge fan of vegetables.
Doing so healthily is another challenge, especially when you include my son’s allergies to deal with and our true love of food.
So the first menu planning basic step for me was figuring out the entrées and dealing with them while also maintaining my busy schedule as a merchandiser and mystery shopper. All too often it is too tempting to eat out.
This means not only do I need to plan my meals on the $1 a day budget, but I need to plan on refilling my freezer with homemade “convenience” meals. Knowing we have foods in the freezer we could quickly thaw and eat will eliminate the temptation to stop and grab a calorie laden fast food item or six.
So following Ashley’s theme here is what I want to accomplish this next year:
1. Bring our food budget down to as low as it can possibly go.
2. Lay in one year’s supply of non-perishable food
3. Make up ALL of my Master Mixes, this in itself is a HUGE challenge.
4. Fill the freezer with homemade “convenience” foods
5. Raise a large organic garden and go to year round gardening.
Going back to the entrées listings. I started out trying to figure out an exact order of what types of entrees I’d serve and in what order for a month alternating meatless meals and leftovers in as often as I thought I could get away with it. That became hugely complicated and failed miserably.
So then I tried to do it for every two weeks, same results, I wasn’t getting the rotation I wanted. Plus when you do a very set in stone menu plan it does not allow for spontaneity and this family doesn’t do well with that. We want the foods we want when we want them.
So I finally decided on the following seven categories:
1. Beef
2. Chicken
3. Pork
4. Variety meats (hot dogs, smoked sausage etc)
5. Meatless
6. Leftovers
7. Fish
Gee look at that seven days worth of entrées with one meatless and one leftovers day built in simple, simple.
So I now can plan a week’s worth of meals with those items as the main ingredients, prepare what I can ahead of time and we can eat them in the order we want each week. One week must be completed BEFORE we start the rotation for the next week. That way if we score a free meal out with the mystery shopping (read free meals—great for the budget) then I still have a meal in the roatation to eat before moving on to the next rotation.
So then I started making a list of the various family favorites for each of those seven. An example of this is below.
Meatless:
1. Biscuits and gravy
2. Vegetable soups (I have a bunch of recipes for these)
3. Pancake suppers
4. Salad suppers
5. Macaroni and cheese
6. Cheese and/or veggie pizzas
7. Bean meals
My list included a lot more than this, but you get the idea. I did this for each of the seven categories. Guess what I came up with a year’s worth of meals without duplication quite simply.
Using the same example of the meatless meals I can also prepare a lot of this ahead of time.
1. Biscuits and gravy
a. Make up biscuit Master Mix (recipe is listed in my search engine on the left) while flour is on sale this month. Then for a quick dinner I only need to add oil and water and bake.
b. Make up gravy butter balls ahead of time and freeze. I’ll post this recipe when I do this.
2. If we do well in the garden the fresh produce will be used for this as it grows and the dried produce will be used when it is out of season.
3. Pancake suppers
a. Pancake Master Mix (recipe is listed in the search engine at the left as well), add oil, our home grown eggs and water as needed.
4. Salad suppers can be the green leafy type, or made with homemade pasta, or a combination of the two.
a. Make up pastas ahead of time
b. Homemade salad dressing Master Mixes (which will be added to the blog as time goes on)
5. Macaroni and Cheese
a. Homemade pasta
b. Freezer cheese sauce mix, recipe will be added at a later date
6. Cheese and/or veggie pizzas
a. Pizza dough Master Mix (recipe to be added later)
b. In season veggies from the garden, frozen or dried veggies from the garden off season
c. Loss leader cheese (April purchase according to link listed above) purchased and frozen.
7. Bean Meals
a. I have a bean cookbook, and there are numerous recipes for beans of all sorts on the web. Beans freeze tremendously well. So this is an item that will be cooked in bulk and frozen for quick meals as time goes on.
Add to these entrées loss leader fruits and vegetables, and keeping portions at a reasonable size should enable us to eat cheaply and healthy. Homemade breads will also add to the meals.
I’m now in the process of listing those various meal ideas on color coded 3X5 cards. Ie: pink for beef, white for chicken, green for meatless etc. This will allow me to mix and match menus each week without having to figure it out each week.
The 3 x 5 cards will also list the ingredients for that entrée so I can watch closely for the loss leaders for it. As I lay in a supply of the loss leaders I will then mark each one as I have it in inventory.
Having the menus all figured out in this manner will also let me see how much of what I need to lay in a supply of.
Can I do it on $1 a day like Ashley, in truth it seems pretty hard, but I’m going to do it as closely as I possibly can. Even if I spend slightly over that, I am definitely going to come out the financial winner on the grocery budget.
So will you join us to eat our way to a better state of health both physically and financially?
Jan who thinks the plan will work in OK
I’ve previously posted about how I am on the Dave_Ramsey_Debt_Beaters@yahoogroups.com email list. Recently a discussion was brought up by Ashley that she would like to try working her food budget and meals for the year, while laying in a year’s supply of non-perishables based entirely on loss leaders.
I asked if she would like a partner in this challenge. She thought it a great idea not only because things go better if you have a partner, but because we live on the opposite sides of the US and each has a family of 3 to feed. While living in two different areas with different stores to deal with and different economic basis to work with in our areas.
We have agreed to write about our journey through 2011 in building our one year’s worth of food storage by purchasing loss leaders as they become available, while maintaining a very, very strict budget.
Ashley posted her first blog entry this morning, with her challenges to herself at: http://dateam365.blogspot.com/
This, of course, is my first entry on this challenge. With the cost of groceries going up the $1 a day may be a mite stringent for us, but I am definitely going to do all I can to try and meet her challenge.
The first thing to do, as Ashley pointed out, is to educate yourself. I too am reading various blogs by people who have done this. I’m also checking online information for all types of good basic information to aid me in the challenge.
My first stop on the information train was: http://frugalliving.about.com/od/bargainshopping/tp/Best_Time_To_Buy_Everything.htm
This website lists month by month what items are normally on sale, not just food, but various things. Of course for the task at hand the food items are what I am most interested in. Knowing ahead of time what “loss leaders” will be coming can be a real help in planning the menu.
Meeting the challenge at $1 a day with two meat and potato men in my household is going to be a HUGE challenge. I can get them to eat meatless occasionally, but not all the time. My husband, is NOT a huge fan of vegetables.
Doing so healthily is another challenge, especially when you include my son’s allergies to deal with and our true love of food.
So the first menu planning basic step for me was figuring out the entrées and dealing with them while also maintaining my busy schedule as a merchandiser and mystery shopper. All too often it is too tempting to eat out.
This means not only do I need to plan my meals on the $1 a day budget, but I need to plan on refilling my freezer with homemade “convenience” meals. Knowing we have foods in the freezer we could quickly thaw and eat will eliminate the temptation to stop and grab a calorie laden fast food item or six.
So following Ashley’s theme here is what I want to accomplish this next year:
1. Bring our food budget down to as low as it can possibly go.
2. Lay in one year’s supply of non-perishable food
3. Make up ALL of my Master Mixes, this in itself is a HUGE challenge.
4. Fill the freezer with homemade “convenience” foods
5. Raise a large organic garden and go to year round gardening.
Going back to the entrées listings. I started out trying to figure out an exact order of what types of entrees I’d serve and in what order for a month alternating meatless meals and leftovers in as often as I thought I could get away with it. That became hugely complicated and failed miserably.
So then I tried to do it for every two weeks, same results, I wasn’t getting the rotation I wanted. Plus when you do a very set in stone menu plan it does not allow for spontaneity and this family doesn’t do well with that. We want the foods we want when we want them.
So I finally decided on the following seven categories:
1. Beef
2. Chicken
3. Pork
4. Variety meats (hot dogs, smoked sausage etc)
5. Meatless
6. Leftovers
7. Fish
Gee look at that seven days worth of entrées with one meatless and one leftovers day built in simple, simple.
So I now can plan a week’s worth of meals with those items as the main ingredients, prepare what I can ahead of time and we can eat them in the order we want each week. One week must be completed BEFORE we start the rotation for the next week. That way if we score a free meal out with the mystery shopping (read free meals—great for the budget) then I still have a meal in the roatation to eat before moving on to the next rotation.
So then I started making a list of the various family favorites for each of those seven. An example of this is below.
Meatless:
1. Biscuits and gravy
2. Vegetable soups (I have a bunch of recipes for these)
3. Pancake suppers
4. Salad suppers
5. Macaroni and cheese
6. Cheese and/or veggie pizzas
7. Bean meals
My list included a lot more than this, but you get the idea. I did this for each of the seven categories. Guess what I came up with a year’s worth of meals without duplication quite simply.
Using the same example of the meatless meals I can also prepare a lot of this ahead of time.
1. Biscuits and gravy
a. Make up biscuit Master Mix (recipe is listed in my search engine on the left) while flour is on sale this month. Then for a quick dinner I only need to add oil and water and bake.
b. Make up gravy butter balls ahead of time and freeze. I’ll post this recipe when I do this.
2. If we do well in the garden the fresh produce will be used for this as it grows and the dried produce will be used when it is out of season.
3. Pancake suppers
a. Pancake Master Mix (recipe is listed in the search engine at the left as well), add oil, our home grown eggs and water as needed.
4. Salad suppers can be the green leafy type, or made with homemade pasta, or a combination of the two.
a. Make up pastas ahead of time
b. Homemade salad dressing Master Mixes (which will be added to the blog as time goes on)
5. Macaroni and Cheese
a. Homemade pasta
b. Freezer cheese sauce mix, recipe will be added at a later date
6. Cheese and/or veggie pizzas
a. Pizza dough Master Mix (recipe to be added later)
b. In season veggies from the garden, frozen or dried veggies from the garden off season
c. Loss leader cheese (April purchase according to link listed above) purchased and frozen.
7. Bean Meals
a. I have a bean cookbook, and there are numerous recipes for beans of all sorts on the web. Beans freeze tremendously well. So this is an item that will be cooked in bulk and frozen for quick meals as time goes on.
Add to these entrées loss leader fruits and vegetables, and keeping portions at a reasonable size should enable us to eat cheaply and healthy. Homemade breads will also add to the meals.
I’m now in the process of listing those various meal ideas on color coded 3X5 cards. Ie: pink for beef, white for chicken, green for meatless etc. This will allow me to mix and match menus each week without having to figure it out each week.
The 3 x 5 cards will also list the ingredients for that entrée so I can watch closely for the loss leaders for it. As I lay in a supply of the loss leaders I will then mark each one as I have it in inventory.
Having the menus all figured out in this manner will also let me see how much of what I need to lay in a supply of.
Can I do it on $1 a day like Ashley, in truth it seems pretty hard, but I’m going to do it as closely as I possibly can. Even if I spend slightly over that, I am definitely going to come out the financial winner on the grocery budget.
So will you join us to eat our way to a better state of health both physically and financially?
Jan who thinks the plan will work in OK
Saturday, November 27, 2010
LONG RANGE PLANNING AND A CHALLENGE
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Anyone that has ever been me around very long knows I am a planner and a list maker. I’m big on planning things out. I’m not always great at following the plan, but generally I’m within the neighborhood of it by the time a project is finished.
For the last month or so I’ve been drifting. Simply mystery shopping and merchandising, letting others steer my path in this sea of life. As a result Thanksgiving was okay, but not the meal I wanted and my timing was way off on it. Let’s just say not everything finished at once like it normally does and cold mashed potatoes are not a big hit.
I could give the excuse I had a horrible head cold, but that would simply be an excuse. Granted I spent all of Friday in bed trying to kick the worst part of it and still managed to sleep almost until noon today. But it’s still just an excuse. It was lack of on organization on my part.
Well, I didn’t really sleep that late, the last hour or so I laid there thinking rather than getting up. What I was thinking was I needed a plan, a goal, something to get me back in gear on everything.
While I’ve been working hard at working I’ve let other areas slide. Areas we can’t afford to slide. I had fallen slack on cooking, keeping the budget up to date, cleaning the house and have not been carrying my share of opening the new business.
So as I laid there mulling it all over I decided it was time to get back to a plan, but what plan would spur me on the most. After all a plan has to be a goal you really want to achieve. Everyone plans on doing chores, but because they really don’t want to do them they often don’t get done if something better comes along.
I’ve got the Princess Plan and it’s good, but I needed more. I needed to have a carrot dangling in front of me, something I REALLY wanted. Then I realized that one year from today we want to be in Walt Disney World for a 2-3 week vacation. Only there were several barriers (mainly bills) in our way for this. So that is when my plan started forming. How to make that goal become a reality. So…
This next year you will be receiving reports on the goal and how we as a family are going to achieve it.
First I need a title, hmmm something catchy, but not to silly. Since the Princess Plan is included in this goal I think I will call it. “The Royal Getaway” or RG for short.
Now I need to decide what I want in the plan, what must be achieved to make this vacation not only possible, but relaxed and enjoyable. So sticking with the format of the Princess Plan I broke it down to 12 categories.
I. Finances, after all this is to be a cash basis only trip, that’s the number one rule.
II. Incorporate the Princess Plan
III. Actual Vacation Planning
IV. Menus, for the year and the trip (also part of the Princess Plan), but it needs its own category for this plan.
V. Sticking with the budget (I know this falls under finances too, but you’ll see why it gets its own Roman Numeral as time goes on.
VI. Mystery Shopping and Merchandising
VII. Getting our business up and running, as well as keeping it going while we are gone.
VIII. Gardening, a day to day plan. You’ll see why this is important for the coming year.
IX. Weight loss. If you have EVER been to Walt Disney World you will know why being in good physical shape is a major plus going there. That place is HUGE!
X. Wardrobe, ours is starting to look pretty ratty and a new one requires cash only. Plus if we lose weight…
XI. Animals, we have a lot of plans for them for the coming year. Plus there are two to go with us and the rest will remain home and all sorts of plans and actions have to be made for this.
XII. Miscellaneous needs prior to the trip. In other words, everything else I forgot to list.
This all sounds pretty general I know, but that is the way a good plan starts. You start with the general categories and then develop the sub-categories right down to the daily plan as you go.
Take #VI. Mystery shopping and merchandising. After doing it for around five years what planning should I need for that right? Actually a lot of planning needs done.
Sean and I have been taking it on a day to day basis and as a result we have ended up working weird hours, rushing to finish jobs, overbooking ourselves, wasting gas and then having days where we have no work. Trust me the reason Sean and I were both so sick for Thanksgiving was because we let ourselves get run down because we didn’t plan.
Plus now we have this business we are opening up and we need to allow time for it or it will never get off the ground. The problem is mystery shopping and merchandising are guaranteed money, the business is a maybe. So MS/M must be the priority of the two at this time. This could easily change in the near future, but for now we must get in as much of the first two as we can and squeeze opening the business in around the edges. That takes planning.
So on the overall plan it would look like this:
VI. Mystery shopping and merchandising.
A. Locate jobs to do
a. Check daily on the self assign websites for mystery shopping
b. Try to contract for as many weekly/monthly/quarterly merchandising jobs as possible.
c. Always take the higher dollar jobs first
B. Print the week’s paperwork as much as possible on Sunday
a. Print additional paperwork as soon as available
C. Try to stack jobs when scheduling as close as possible on locations, preferably in the same building.
a. Limit out of town trips
i. Only do out of town trips when there are numerous jobs for both parties to do and make a full day of it.
ii. Incorporate household and business errands into the daily ms/m schedule to save time and fuel.
D. Study all paperwork the night before so there are no surprises (this has been a big problem for us lately—too many surprises)
a. Gather any necessary tools or supplies the night before
i. Make a ditty bag of tools used often and leave it in the truck.
E. File paperwork immediately upon arriving home, no late nights allowed.
F. Store documentation immediately.
a. Assign a set place each set of paperwork must go as soon as it is filed.
G. Cull old documentation when the need to keep it has expired.
H. Keep a calendar up to date as to any long range jobs to avoid double booking.
I. Arrange for merchandising jobs to be done while we are gone on the trip ahead of time.
J. Set as many accounts up as possible for direct deposit or paypal.(This one is pretty much done)
K. Wash our work wardrobe as soon as we have worn it for the week in preparation for the next time it is needed. (Too many late nights of doing a hurry up load for the next day’s job).
So you can see that by the time I do this full list of 12 this is going to be a very long plan. Then I will take that list and turn it into a monthly, weekly and daily list like I did the Princess Plan.
Making a plan is pretty simple. AND once you have a plan it’s easy to follow.
So I challenge each and every one of you to make a plan and let’s work on our plans together. Why wait until New Year’s Day, why not start now? I’ve got my plan started, what’s yours?
Jan who says if we work together we can accomplish anything in OK
Anyone that has ever been me around very long knows I am a planner and a list maker. I’m big on planning things out. I’m not always great at following the plan, but generally I’m within the neighborhood of it by the time a project is finished.
For the last month or so I’ve been drifting. Simply mystery shopping and merchandising, letting others steer my path in this sea of life. As a result Thanksgiving was okay, but not the meal I wanted and my timing was way off on it. Let’s just say not everything finished at once like it normally does and cold mashed potatoes are not a big hit.
I could give the excuse I had a horrible head cold, but that would simply be an excuse. Granted I spent all of Friday in bed trying to kick the worst part of it and still managed to sleep almost until noon today. But it’s still just an excuse. It was lack of on organization on my part.
Well, I didn’t really sleep that late, the last hour or so I laid there thinking rather than getting up. What I was thinking was I needed a plan, a goal, something to get me back in gear on everything.
While I’ve been working hard at working I’ve let other areas slide. Areas we can’t afford to slide. I had fallen slack on cooking, keeping the budget up to date, cleaning the house and have not been carrying my share of opening the new business.
So as I laid there mulling it all over I decided it was time to get back to a plan, but what plan would spur me on the most. After all a plan has to be a goal you really want to achieve. Everyone plans on doing chores, but because they really don’t want to do them they often don’t get done if something better comes along.
I’ve got the Princess Plan and it’s good, but I needed more. I needed to have a carrot dangling in front of me, something I REALLY wanted. Then I realized that one year from today we want to be in Walt Disney World for a 2-3 week vacation. Only there were several barriers (mainly bills) in our way for this. So that is when my plan started forming. How to make that goal become a reality. So…
This next year you will be receiving reports on the goal and how we as a family are going to achieve it.
First I need a title, hmmm something catchy, but not to silly. Since the Princess Plan is included in this goal I think I will call it. “The Royal Getaway” or RG for short.
Now I need to decide what I want in the plan, what must be achieved to make this vacation not only possible, but relaxed and enjoyable. So sticking with the format of the Princess Plan I broke it down to 12 categories.
I. Finances, after all this is to be a cash basis only trip, that’s the number one rule.
II. Incorporate the Princess Plan
III. Actual Vacation Planning
IV. Menus, for the year and the trip (also part of the Princess Plan), but it needs its own category for this plan.
V. Sticking with the budget (I know this falls under finances too, but you’ll see why it gets its own Roman Numeral as time goes on.
VI. Mystery Shopping and Merchandising
VII. Getting our business up and running, as well as keeping it going while we are gone.
VIII. Gardening, a day to day plan. You’ll see why this is important for the coming year.
IX. Weight loss. If you have EVER been to Walt Disney World you will know why being in good physical shape is a major plus going there. That place is HUGE!
X. Wardrobe, ours is starting to look pretty ratty and a new one requires cash only. Plus if we lose weight…
XI. Animals, we have a lot of plans for them for the coming year. Plus there are two to go with us and the rest will remain home and all sorts of plans and actions have to be made for this.
XII. Miscellaneous needs prior to the trip. In other words, everything else I forgot to list.
This all sounds pretty general I know, but that is the way a good plan starts. You start with the general categories and then develop the sub-categories right down to the daily plan as you go.
Take #VI. Mystery shopping and merchandising. After doing it for around five years what planning should I need for that right? Actually a lot of planning needs done.
Sean and I have been taking it on a day to day basis and as a result we have ended up working weird hours, rushing to finish jobs, overbooking ourselves, wasting gas and then having days where we have no work. Trust me the reason Sean and I were both so sick for Thanksgiving was because we let ourselves get run down because we didn’t plan.
Plus now we have this business we are opening up and we need to allow time for it or it will never get off the ground. The problem is mystery shopping and merchandising are guaranteed money, the business is a maybe. So MS/M must be the priority of the two at this time. This could easily change in the near future, but for now we must get in as much of the first two as we can and squeeze opening the business in around the edges. That takes planning.
So on the overall plan it would look like this:
VI. Mystery shopping and merchandising.
A. Locate jobs to do
a. Check daily on the self assign websites for mystery shopping
b. Try to contract for as many weekly/monthly/quarterly merchandising jobs as possible.
c. Always take the higher dollar jobs first
B. Print the week’s paperwork as much as possible on Sunday
a. Print additional paperwork as soon as available
C. Try to stack jobs when scheduling as close as possible on locations, preferably in the same building.
a. Limit out of town trips
i. Only do out of town trips when there are numerous jobs for both parties to do and make a full day of it.
ii. Incorporate household and business errands into the daily ms/m schedule to save time and fuel.
D. Study all paperwork the night before so there are no surprises (this has been a big problem for us lately—too many surprises)
a. Gather any necessary tools or supplies the night before
i. Make a ditty bag of tools used often and leave it in the truck.
E. File paperwork immediately upon arriving home, no late nights allowed.
F. Store documentation immediately.
a. Assign a set place each set of paperwork must go as soon as it is filed.
G. Cull old documentation when the need to keep it has expired.
H. Keep a calendar up to date as to any long range jobs to avoid double booking.
I. Arrange for merchandising jobs to be done while we are gone on the trip ahead of time.
J. Set as many accounts up as possible for direct deposit or paypal.(This one is pretty much done)
K. Wash our work wardrobe as soon as we have worn it for the week in preparation for the next time it is needed. (Too many late nights of doing a hurry up load for the next day’s job).
So you can see that by the time I do this full list of 12 this is going to be a very long plan. Then I will take that list and turn it into a monthly, weekly and daily list like I did the Princess Plan.
Making a plan is pretty simple. AND once you have a plan it’s easy to follow.
So I challenge each and every one of you to make a plan and let’s work on our plans together. Why wait until New Year’s Day, why not start now? I’ve got my plan started, what’s yours?
Jan who says if we work together we can accomplish anything in OK
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
LONG TIME NO TYPE—WORK AT HOME JOBS
November 10, 2010
I haven’t forgot you all, we’ve just been super busy. Life is good right now, but then it generally is, you just need to know how to look at any given situation.
I thought once Gary went back to work life would slow down, but instead it has kicked into a higher gear. Something that I didn’t think was possible prior to this last couple of months..
Sean has become my mystery shopping/merchandising partner. We planned on doing mystery shopping on Mondays and Thursdays for just a few hours each day until the mystery shops died their normal death this time of year. Remembering this time last year when we had trouble finding mystery shops to do we figured we’d probably be down to one day a week by late November.
We started working on an idea for a small home based business and doing all the business plans and such required to make a knowledgeable decision on whether or not to do the business has been very time consuming—WHEN we have had time to work on that. More on the new business another time.
Because even though the mystery shopping has slowed down, it has not ceased like we thought it would and the merchandising has quadrupled in volume. We have been putting in 9-10 hour days 5-6 days a week for nearly two months now. NOT complaining Lord! Even better it doesn’t look like it’s going to let up between now and the end of the year.
Gary has not only gone back to work, but has been on overtime for three weeks now and it looks like that too may last through the end of the year.
We are so gazelle intense around here it is crazy! For those of you who are not followers of Dave Ramsey that means we are running from the debt cheetah at gazelle speed to become totally debt free. Every spare penny we make is going on our debt snowball. It has become fun to pay bills! No I am NOT crazy, I said fun.
The three of us now have our Step 1 Baby Emergency Funds fully funded and are now working on our Baby Step 2—the debt snowball (see Dave Ramsey’s book “The Total Money Makeover”) and are making great progress on it.
Sean has paid off a medical bill that was eating him alive and nearly has his only credit card paid off as well. The credit card of course is long gone as we no longer use credit cards in our household. That will leave him with a few truck payments and his student loans and then he will be debt free. I’m so happy for him.
I am still paying on our first installment of the debt snowball, but it will be completed by this time next week. It was a $2,400 medical debt and we are paying it off over three years early based on the scheduled payments. Next will be a credit card that we hope to shave three years or more off the scheduled payoff on. It is truly exciting to see our debt spiral downward for a change. I am so glad we found the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover. By staying on this plan we should be totally debt free in 3 years or less including the house! Not bad for a family that was maxed out credit wise and unemployed this time two years ago.
If you are a user of yahoogroups, you should visit with the knowledgeable people at Dave_Ramsey_Debt_Beaters@yahoogroups.com it’s a free to join list and I’ve learned so much from these people!
Now back to merchandising. I’ve never really covered merchandising when talking about mystery shopping so I thought I’d expound a little more on it today.
Most of us walk into a place like Wal-Mart, Target or any number of stores and take for granted the sparkling displays were all placed there by the store’s employees. NOPE! While the employees do re-stock and are responsible for certain merchandise many of those displays and what’s on them is placed there by merchandisers. Here’s how it works.
The store will receive a certain set of merchandise. For this scenario let’s use gift cards. The store will receive the materials to build the actual display case, along with the materials needed to set the display up and stock it. Sometimes they will set up the display themselves other times a merchandising company will send out a merchandiser—or two to set it up. That’s where we come in.
We go in, unbox the display case, assemble it, add the hanging pegs and then set the cards to a planogram and are paid for our services. Then either the store will keep the display stocked OR they will send the merchandiser back once every 1-4 weeks to restock it. Depending on the company the merchandiser gets paid anywhere from $8 to $15 an hour to do the job.
We have each acquired several repetitive weekly jobs. That means guaranteed income weekly until the project runs out. Once the project is set-up often times the hourly rate will drop slightly because it will simply be a short walk in to verify the display is still in good shape and the move onto another project. We’ve been blessed enough on some of our merchandising shops that we have been able to “stack” jobs. Meaning that Sean or I will have a job from one company in a certain store. The other of us (or sometimes the same person) will have 1-2 more jobs in that certain store from other companies. That makes the gas usage is far less and the possible income for each of us greater on a single stop.
I once spoke with a person who did nothing but merchandising and she said she cleared after taxes and expenses over $4,000 per month. We would like to achieve that goal. That could really speed our gazelle along! We aren’t there yet, but we are working toward it. Be aware though merchandising has to be done between certain hours, like a regular job, but generally you have 1-5 days to get the project done. So it is a great “part time” job if you are going to be staying home. We didn’t do these the last two years because we were traveling, but now that we are home for at least 2-3 years it is the best plan for us.
Don’t get me wrong, some of these merchandising jobs are HARD and tiring. Some sound simple to do—repackaging a product and do an inventory of said product—13 hours later you are worn out and the job still isn’t finished. So if you decide to do merchandising READ the instructions closely BEFORE you accept the work, including the fine print. Also be prepared to stand for LONG periods of time.
Another possible source of income is demonstrations. You know the people you see at Sam’s Club handing out samples. This is also contract labor work and can be applied for through several companies at volition.com as well. All three types of work are listed at volition.com.
If none of the above is for you check out the legit jobs at ratracerebellion.com Most of them are work at home jobs. There are all sorts of jobs for all sorts of talents. So if you want to become a earn a little extra money to survive unemployment, earn extra money for the holidays or become gazelle intense volition.com and ratracerebellion.com may have the answer for you.
As always if you need more info or a referral to certain companies feel free to leave me a message and I’ll answer as soon as time allows.
Jan who has no affiliation with any of the websites she mentioned in OK.
I haven’t forgot you all, we’ve just been super busy. Life is good right now, but then it generally is, you just need to know how to look at any given situation.
I thought once Gary went back to work life would slow down, but instead it has kicked into a higher gear. Something that I didn’t think was possible prior to this last couple of months..
Sean has become my mystery shopping/merchandising partner. We planned on doing mystery shopping on Mondays and Thursdays for just a few hours each day until the mystery shops died their normal death this time of year. Remembering this time last year when we had trouble finding mystery shops to do we figured we’d probably be down to one day a week by late November.
We started working on an idea for a small home based business and doing all the business plans and such required to make a knowledgeable decision on whether or not to do the business has been very time consuming—WHEN we have had time to work on that. More on the new business another time.
Because even though the mystery shopping has slowed down, it has not ceased like we thought it would and the merchandising has quadrupled in volume. We have been putting in 9-10 hour days 5-6 days a week for nearly two months now. NOT complaining Lord! Even better it doesn’t look like it’s going to let up between now and the end of the year.
Gary has not only gone back to work, but has been on overtime for three weeks now and it looks like that too may last through the end of the year.
We are so gazelle intense around here it is crazy! For those of you who are not followers of Dave Ramsey that means we are running from the debt cheetah at gazelle speed to become totally debt free. Every spare penny we make is going on our debt snowball. It has become fun to pay bills! No I am NOT crazy, I said fun.
The three of us now have our Step 1 Baby Emergency Funds fully funded and are now working on our Baby Step 2—the debt snowball (see Dave Ramsey’s book “The Total Money Makeover”) and are making great progress on it.
Sean has paid off a medical bill that was eating him alive and nearly has his only credit card paid off as well. The credit card of course is long gone as we no longer use credit cards in our household. That will leave him with a few truck payments and his student loans and then he will be debt free. I’m so happy for him.
I am still paying on our first installment of the debt snowball, but it will be completed by this time next week. It was a $2,400 medical debt and we are paying it off over three years early based on the scheduled payments. Next will be a credit card that we hope to shave three years or more off the scheduled payoff on. It is truly exciting to see our debt spiral downward for a change. I am so glad we found the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover. By staying on this plan we should be totally debt free in 3 years or less including the house! Not bad for a family that was maxed out credit wise and unemployed this time two years ago.
If you are a user of yahoogroups, you should visit with the knowledgeable people at Dave_Ramsey_Debt_Beaters@yahoogroups.com it’s a free to join list and I’ve learned so much from these people!
Now back to merchandising. I’ve never really covered merchandising when talking about mystery shopping so I thought I’d expound a little more on it today.
Most of us walk into a place like Wal-Mart, Target or any number of stores and take for granted the sparkling displays were all placed there by the store’s employees. NOPE! While the employees do re-stock and are responsible for certain merchandise many of those displays and what’s on them is placed there by merchandisers. Here’s how it works.
The store will receive a certain set of merchandise. For this scenario let’s use gift cards. The store will receive the materials to build the actual display case, along with the materials needed to set the display up and stock it. Sometimes they will set up the display themselves other times a merchandising company will send out a merchandiser—or two to set it up. That’s where we come in.
We go in, unbox the display case, assemble it, add the hanging pegs and then set the cards to a planogram and are paid for our services. Then either the store will keep the display stocked OR they will send the merchandiser back once every 1-4 weeks to restock it. Depending on the company the merchandiser gets paid anywhere from $8 to $15 an hour to do the job.
We have each acquired several repetitive weekly jobs. That means guaranteed income weekly until the project runs out. Once the project is set-up often times the hourly rate will drop slightly because it will simply be a short walk in to verify the display is still in good shape and the move onto another project. We’ve been blessed enough on some of our merchandising shops that we have been able to “stack” jobs. Meaning that Sean or I will have a job from one company in a certain store. The other of us (or sometimes the same person) will have 1-2 more jobs in that certain store from other companies. That makes the gas usage is far less and the possible income for each of us greater on a single stop.
I once spoke with a person who did nothing but merchandising and she said she cleared after taxes and expenses over $4,000 per month. We would like to achieve that goal. That could really speed our gazelle along! We aren’t there yet, but we are working toward it. Be aware though merchandising has to be done between certain hours, like a regular job, but generally you have 1-5 days to get the project done. So it is a great “part time” job if you are going to be staying home. We didn’t do these the last two years because we were traveling, but now that we are home for at least 2-3 years it is the best plan for us.
Don’t get me wrong, some of these merchandising jobs are HARD and tiring. Some sound simple to do—repackaging a product and do an inventory of said product—13 hours later you are worn out and the job still isn’t finished. So if you decide to do merchandising READ the instructions closely BEFORE you accept the work, including the fine print. Also be prepared to stand for LONG periods of time.
Another possible source of income is demonstrations. You know the people you see at Sam’s Club handing out samples. This is also contract labor work and can be applied for through several companies at volition.com as well. All three types of work are listed at volition.com.
If none of the above is for you check out the legit jobs at ratracerebellion.com Most of them are work at home jobs. There are all sorts of jobs for all sorts of talents. So if you want to become a earn a little extra money to survive unemployment, earn extra money for the holidays or become gazelle intense volition.com and ratracerebellion.com may have the answer for you.
As always if you need more info or a referral to certain companies feel free to leave me a message and I’ll answer as soon as time allows.
Jan who has no affiliation with any of the websites she mentioned in OK.
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