Frugal Family--Inexpensive Summer shorts

Hi Everyone!

Thought I would share a little trick I learned last summer, just in case I wasn't the very last person on earth to think of this! :)  I can't believe it took me this long to realize it, but oh well!  The problem is this--besides the fact that kids outgrow their clothes SO very fast, in addition, if you have a little girl and want to dress her modestly even when she is wearing shorts, well, good luck finding shorts that cover anything more than their underwear!  And some shorts do not even seem to cover underwear!  I--personally--prefer to find my daughter shorts that come closer to her knee length.  It's fine if others feel different, but that is just what I personally look for.  Well, even if I had all the money in the world, it seems to be harder and harder to even FIND shorts of that length to buy--no matter what the price is!  If I can't find it in the store, it does make it difficult to buy it for her!!!

Well, last summer I was shopping in my favorite thrift store, which is really two thrift stores under one roof.  On one side they have nice clothes, that are reasonably priced.  On the other side, they have what they call their "clearance" side, and all the clothes are 50 cents--ALL of them!  But keep in mind, this is the side where anything that is stained or torn goes, so you really have to watch broken zippers, etc.  But it can be a great place to look first, because you never know!  One time I found an L.L.Bean girls winter coat on the clearance side--nothing wrong with it at all!  But it was summer time, so that is all I can imagine as to the reason it ended up on that side--but "I" happily bought it and brought it home and waited until the weather to turn cold for my daughter to be able to wear it!  And when she finally outgrew it, we gave it free to a family in our church! :)  I felt like I got my 50 cents worth out of it!  

ANYWAY, so one thing I have noticed about all the kids jeans on the clearance side is 99% of them all have holes in the knees.  Very understandable--kids are hard on clothes, and jeans especially are made for them to play in!  WELL, so last summer I am browsing through the clearance side when I saw yet another pair of kids jeans sticking out of the rack, pulled them out only to be met by the usual rip in the knee.  When all of a sudden it dawned on me--if I wanted SHORTS for my daughter, it didn't matter if they were ripped in the knee!  For 50 cents, it was worth trying!  Besides that--all the money paid into this particular thrift shop goes right back into the community, so it is all for a worthy cause!  SO, I bought the jeans, brought them home, and finished cutting them all off straight across at the knee length.  Then I stuck them on my sewing machine, and proceeded to TRY and hem them--try, I said, because I promptly broke my machine needle! :(  

But all was not lost, because a trip to a JoAnn's fabric store found denim needles.  I had never sewn anything with a denim needle--I'm a quilter, not a seamstress!!!  We do not use things like denim needles in making quilts!  But I figured might as well try. . . well, let me tell you, it made a HUGE HUGE VERY BIG difference!!!!  I could not believe what a difference having the correct needle for the fabric made!  With the denim needle in my sewing machine, my machine just buzzed it's way right over that denim--even the seams where the folds of denim are much thicker (and it was at a seam that I broke my regular machine needle!).  The correct needle made sewing denim very very easy!

So in this picture I have one pair of jeans cut off at the knee, ready to be made into shorts.  I usually cut them off leaving them as long as possible, because once I turn them under to hem, I actually turn them under twice--hemming each time in order to enclose the raw cut fabric edge so it does not unravel, so the length will end up shrinking by a good inch or two before I am done.  Next to the cut off soon-to-be-shorts, I have a pair of jeans I found at the clearance store as well, that actually did NOT have a hole in the knee--amazing!  But they were too short for my daughter, and the hem was ragged and had a hole in the side of it--maybe it was caught in a bike chain?  Anyway, my daughter wanted some Capris, so I thought this might be a good pair to try that with.  I loved the cute flowers around the bottom edge, but most of them were embroidery right onto the fabric.

A few of them were appliques, however, so I managed to snip those off and resew them onto the bottom edge of the newly hemmed capris!  I loved them--my daughter loved them--and they only cost me 50 cents and some time! :)

Well, now you know my "shorts secret!"  This summer when the weather got warm, we went through her shorts from last summer to see what still fit.  Some did, some did not, but back to the thrift store we went to find more holey jeans and we made them into shorts for this year!  And, by the way, the out grown shorts can now be resold at the thrift store to someone else--probably on the regular side instead of the 50 cent clearance side!  I say that is a win-win!

~Susan

From My Journal . . .

Happy Sabbath Everyone!

Thought I would share this beautiful flower from my yard as well as some beautiful thoughts that I recorded recently in my Quiet Time Journal.

Yesterday I was reading in the book of John, and ran across this verse:
"I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own."  John 10:14

Then, when reading in one of my favorite books on the life of Jesus, the Desire of Ages by E.G. White, I ran across this quote:
"Jesus knows us individually, and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.  He knows us all by name.  He knows the very house in which we live, the name of each occupant.  He has at times given directions to His servants to go to a certain street in a certain city, to such a house, to find one of His sheep."  Desire of Ages p. 479

Isn't that beautiful?  Just think about what it really means. . . Jesus knows ME.  Jesus knows where "I" live!  He knows the quirks of my old house like the toilet handle in the kids bathroom has to be held down a long time for it to flush, and my daughter's bedroom closet is open through to the coat closet in the hallway.  He knows I never got  a lot of things planted in my garden this spring, and what I refer to as the "laundry folding table" doesn't usually get any laundry folded on it because instead it is a convenient place to pile things. . .

He knows I am thirsty--for Him.  And He has promised to someday come back to this sin-sick world to rescue me.  He has prepared a place for me to live with Him.  He has promised.

~Susan

Strawberry Pot

Hi Everyone!

Just thought I would take a minute and share a picture of our little strawberry garden!  Remember that big wash-tub container I used for my herb garden?  Well, I liked it so much that I got another one (Tractor Supply!) to use for my strawberries.  These were some berry plants that were given to us last summer, and I really didn't have time to do up anything fancy for them then, so just threw them in two pots and figured they would probably die on me anyway.  But they didn't!  Not only did they not die last summer, but they actually survived the winter in spite of my never getting them covered with straw or anything, and came back in full force this spring!  Which was wonderful--except that they were all a huge tangled mass, and waaaaaay to crowded in their two small pots!  So the time finally came a couple weeks ago when I thought I would separate them and give them a bit more space by planting them in a nice big wash tub.  Except that when I actually went to do it, their roots were so entangled that I was positive they would all die from the shock and trama of being ripped apart!  But they didn't!  Who knew strawberries could be tough little plants?  I usually contain my self to dealing with blackberries--because THEY can usually survive my "black thumb!"

Well, anyway, I ripped those poor little plants apart and put them around four inches or so apart in the new, bigger pot.  Except that the bigger pot ended up not really being big enough for all of them to be spaced out--so they sort of took over the new, big pot, as well as the two pots they previously were in!  Ah well--I figured all is well as long as we got strawberries!  That first strawberry started to turn red.  I was watching it in anticipation, just waiting for the RIGHT color red to pick it, when all of a sudden it was GONE!  :O  I couldn't imagine what had happened to it!  I have not seen any birds at all up near the strawberry pots, with them being right up against the house. And the pots were too high up for the bunnies to really bother them. . .   I finally figured it out--it was our DOG!  Bad dog!  Well, dog has good taste, but bad dog for eating my strawberries!  SO, my little collection of strawberry pots are now all clustered together along the house, and they have a piece of bunny fence surrounding them--which isn't really for the bunnies, but for the golden lab that likes to eat fresh strawberries!  So far, it seems to be working just fine--which is nice, but of course, our patch is to small to get any huge quantities of berries from it.  But it is STILL fun to be able to go out and pick a few to put on your breakfast cereal! :)

Hope you are all having a wonderful Spring!

~Susang

Low Fat Vegan French Toast

Hi Everyone!

I have been frequently enjoying this recipe for vegan French Toast.  I make it with my own home made oatmeal bread--and I do not use any oil when I make my bread, so the only fat in the bread is just what occurs naturally in the whole wheat and oatmeal--very very little.  In times past, I never would have believed that you could make scrumptious French Toast without dairy products--but I was wrong, and very happily wrong.  This recipe uses garbanzo bean (chick pea) flour as it's base.  This is not as hard to find as one might think--I have even found it at Walmart's before, under the Bob's Red Mill company name.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do!  I have tortured my friends by posting this photo on my Facebook page, and then it took me a loooong time to finally get the recipe up here.  But as they say, better late than never! :)

Vegan French Toast

6 whole wheat bread slices
1 cup plant-based milk (I use my home made rice milk--rice and water, that's it!)
1/4 cup garbanzo bean flour
1 tsp. coriander
1 tsp. pure maple syrup
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. powdered sugar for dusting (optional)

Cut bread diagonally and set aside.  Heat non-stick griddle or frying pan.  Whisk non-dairy milk with remaining ingredients and pour into a shallow pan (pie plate works great!).  Quickly dip a few bread slices into wet mixture and cook for about 3 minutes on each side, repeating until no more bread is remaining.  Garnish with powdered sugar and fresh fruit slices, or maple syrup, or fruit sauce.

Yum!

~Susan

Filled

Ran across this video today and thought I would share it here.  Good food for thought--what is filling YOU up?

~Susan

Low Fat Peach Tofu "Ice Cream"

Hi Everyone!

Thought I would share a little experiment I tried last week.  It all started when I ran across a recipe for low fat strawberry ice cream that you could make at home.  It looked SO good--and was made using one of those "ice-less" ice cream makers, where you just put the tub into the freezer and it has some sort of liquid held within the walls of the bowl part of the maker.  I don't know what it is, but you freeze your canister for 24 hours and then put in your ice cream mixture.  Well, I USED to have one of these very ice cream makers--it was given to me by a friend who had a larger family and she was going to get a larger ice cream maker for her family to use, so she blessed me with her smaller one.  WELL, once I really had to start being stricter with the foods I ate, I had no idea how to make a truly healthy ice cream substitute--and we were moving at the time--so I gave it away.  I do not usually regret anything that I give away--I am always so blessed by finding things in a thrift store myself, that I always look at it as a double blessing--someone else will be blessed by my donation and I am blessed by the increase in space by the item that is no longer in my house.  But THIS has turned out to be one of those RARE items that I did wish I had not given away--sigh!  But oh well!

So I found this yummy looking strawberry ice cream recipe and was REALLY wanting to make it--but as stated above, I had no ice cream maker.  Sniff, sniff!  But all was not lost, as when I received my summer sale catalog for our Aldi's grocery store I saw that they were going to have this exact type of ice cream maker as one of their "Special Buys," those seasonal items that they do not carry year round--AND they were going to sell it for only $15.  That is not THAT much money, and I knew about it in advance, so I marked the date the sale would begin on my calendar so I could be there at the store the first day and buy one.  I had no idea how fast the ice cream makers would sell out, but I knew that I REALLY wanted one so I showed up and happily carried my new purchase home.  I was drooling already!

Now, if you have noticed the title of this post, it is called PEACH ice cream, not strawberry.  Yup.  I was SURE I already had a bag of frozen strawberries out in my freezer, so when I was at the store I didn't buy any.  I KNEW I had all the ingredients already.  Except that when I went to make the ice cream up--I didn't! :(   But not all was lost.  I DID have frozen peaches--quick change to peach ice cream! :)

While I wanted to come right home from Aldi's and make it up, the canister has to freeze for 24 hours first, so I had to be patient at least a little bit.  At least that gave me a chance to read through the instructions and the recipe and get it all planned so I would do it the right way.  The canister freezes for 24 hours as I already mentioned, but the directions of the ice cream maker also say to make up your ice cream mixture and have it chill in the fridge at least four hours.  So this morning I mixed up the mixture, and this afternoon I made the ice cream!  Or perhaps I should call it "tofu-cream?"  Whatever it is called, "I" thought it tasted yummy and so did my daughter--who is my resident "food critic."  If SHE eats it, it's good!

Disclaimer:  I, personally, do not care at all that this does not taste like REAL ice cream, so don't leave comments telling me it doesn't.  I know that.  But it also does not contain any dairy, which is an ingredient I am needing to stay away from, so I only care that it tastes sweet and cold.  If you don't like it, that's fine!

Low Fat Peach "Ice Cream"

1 carton Mori-Nu silken tofu--I use low fat, extra firm
16 oz. frozen peaches, slightly thawed
1 cup low fat soy milk--I used Aldi's store brand
1/4 cup maple syrup

Blend all ingredients until smooth in blender.  Chill in the fridge and then freeze following your ice cream maker's instructions.  For my little ice cream maker, it took around 35 minutes.  Keep in mind that home made ice cream does not usually freeze solid like store bought, but will be more akin to a thick milk shake in consistany.

I can see this Peach Tofu "Ice Cream" happening again soon, at a kitchen near me!  And I really DO want to try it as the strawberry version.  But first--I really need to try a chocolate version.  Stay tuned--I will let you know how it turns out! :)

~Susan