Bran Muffins that'll make your life easier

Let's be real, sometimes its hard to get a good breakfast every morning when you're running out the door.

Its hard to make yourself something good that's not just cold cereal, you know? 

Well I have a solution for you!

Introducing 6 Week Bran Muffins

I came across a recipe that makes a lot of muffins and that you can keep in your fridge for up to 6 weeks!

That way you can just cook them while your in the shower, or you can microwave cook them - still working out the kinks on the last one, but so far so good not too bad. 

Okay here's what you'll need:

2 C boiling water

4 C Kellogg's All-Bran Cereal

1 C plus 2 Tbsp. shortening

2 C sugar

5 C Flour

2 C 100% Bran Flakes Cereal

1 tsp salt

5 tsp baking soda

1 qt. buttermilk (substitute: add 1 T vinegar to each C whole milk; let sit 5 mins)

4 eggs

Instructions:

Pour boiling water over All-Bran. Cover and let stand. In a separate bowl, cream shortening and sugar; add eggs and buttermilk.  Add Bran Flakes and moistened All-Bran and let stand while you sift flour, salt, and soda. Blend dry ingredients into wet. Fold in raisins if desired. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full and bake at 375* for 15-20 minutes.

-- Recipe compliments of my Aunt Alice Marie. {She's pretty much the bomb.com nbd...}

Microwave instructions: Spray a minimal amount of pam into the bottom of a glass mug. Fill mug with 1/3-1/2 cup batter. Microwave on high for a minute and a half. Pour muffin out onto plate. Enjoy your hot muffin! When we did this the muffin was really fluffy - but Jeremy said it wasn't bad. We'll keep messing around with it and let you know if we come up with something better. 

So there you have it folks! An easy breakfast that you can just grab out of the fridge and cook each morning! I'm thinking I might load up a little muffin tin and let them cook while I'm in the shower. 

OH I also cooked mine with a little brown sugar on top -hehe. I like a little sweet with my healthy, you know? And I love my bran muffins with raspberry jam! It's so good!

{sorry... I always forget to take pictures... so you'll just have to try them out yourself to see!}

BON APPETITE!

10 Money Tips for New Parents: 1-5

Hello my blogging lovelies - I'd like to apologize for being so lame... my creativity is apparently affected by entering the third trimester.  My body is just worn our and acting weird lately. And thats all I'm gonna say about that.

I recently read an interesting article on babycenter.com {we're friends.  They send me emails each week telling me how big Madeline is getting, etc} but this particular one I thought applied well to everyone.  They offer 10 Money Tips for New Parents.  For the complete article you can click here, or you can just read my thoughts on them below.  {I think we'll just to 1-5 today}

1. Embrace the hand-me-down 

I've gotten good at this one already.  There's a store in Spokane called Other Mother, and once a month big sale where a room full of thousands of clothes is only a quarter! Woah! It does require some serious digging and sifting through stained clothes and random sizes, but so worth it.  I came home with a garbage bag full of clothes for only $15 - c.r.a.z.y.  And honestly, kids are just going to stain or spit up on their clothes anyways, so why not let them ruin clothes you didn't spend a fortune on.

2. Saving doesn't have to be a chore

All my life I have hated saving money.  As soon as I'm paid it literally starts to burn a hole in my pocket. But luckily I married a guy who realizes the importance of saving, and he's taught me a lot about it through his example.  BUT the article talks about how you can make saving fun with out yelling to your kids about how we can't do this or that because it costs too much.  Take your kids to the park, or free festivals in town - there's a lot of options with our constantly going out to eat and buying them endless toys.  When I was little my dad was in Medical School, so my favorite food was mac-n-cheese and otterpops.  I loved it!  They were affordable and good and I didn't feel like I was being forced to live the life of a poor medical student's daughter. 

3. Teach your children the 10% Rule

I really love this rule.  As part of our religion we give 10% of all we earn to the church.  It's done privately, and you're not kicked out if you don't do it, but as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we love the opportunity to support what we believe.  Teaching our kids to save 10% of each dollar teaches them to save and sets a great habit for the future.  Can you imagine if every American saved 10 cents out of each dollar they earned?  Another idea I've heard of is setting up a family bank where if your kids put their savings in the 'bank' they can earn interest through you and your spouse teaching them to value a savings account when the time comes that they are old enough for that. 

4. Show your kids that wants and needs are two different things

This rule makes me grateful for my husband again - because I'm still learning this rule.  Here's an example from my own current life.  My sister-in-law gave us an old stroller and car seat that she had used with her first two children several years ago.  She's since updated and offered them to us.  We of course said yes, but as we took it home and looked more closely at it, it wasn't new.  Sure it worked, but it wasn't the shining beautiful cute car seat I imagined showing off my baby in on a daily basis.  My hormones got the best of me and before I knew it I was trying to convince Jeremy that we NEEDED a new one, when in fact it would have worked fine.  Until we noticed that on the bottom is says, "Do not use after 2009".  So my want ended up being a need, and that's not always the case.   I guess I'm just trying to say that its ok to make do with what you have.  If its not essential to your survival you should probably pry your fingers off and walk away.  Think about setting aside a little of each pay check to save for it instead of splurging on it.  

5. Save in the fat times to help in the lean

Its true that there are times in our lives when things are financially good.  Our job is going well, there aren't a lot of trips to the ER, and we're able to relax.  But we have to remember that the 'fat' times won't last forever.  We're going to have bad years that make us struggle to make ends meet, but if we save up when we can then it won't be as much of a trial to make it through the rough times.  

I know that  being poor is hard - but its part of life, for everyone it seems these days.  I'm grateful for the relief I'm given as I save instead of splurge on things we don't really need.  Saving is important and if we set that example for our children, starting at a young age, they'll be better off too. 

Now I'm going to go whip up some delicious belgium waffles with fresh strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast and give my hubby a kiss :) 

Penny Pinching: Homemade Laundry Detergent

Good morning lovelies!  And a beautiful morning it is I must add 

{probably because it's not hot yet}

Last night I started out on my quest to be a saver this year! hurray for saving money!!!

{husband is very excited}

My sister-in-law Maria recently made homemade laundry detergent with some women in her ward and I thought it was such a great idea, especially with how cheap it is - and easy ;)

Simply because I prefer the easiest possible route, and dry detergent seemed like the littlest mess, I chose a recipe I found online here but Maria actually used the Duggar Family Recipe  with great results as well.  Its up to you what you prefer how involved you want it to be, etc.  

Our recipe simply required {and we cut it in half for our first trial run, just to make sure it actually works}

12 cups Borax

8 cups Baking Soda

8 Cups Washing Soda

8 Cups Bar Soap (grated) Avoid heavily perfumed soaps.  We used Ivory soap, but we're told Fels-Naptha, Sunlight bar soap, Kirk's Hardwater Castile, and Zote work well too.  

 I know it sounds like a pain in the batootie to grate 8 cups of soap, but it took us about 3 mins, no joke!  Simply mix all the ingredients well and store in an air tight container and you only have to use 1/8 of a cup per load (might not hurt to put a little more in if its a really dirty load).

Hard to believe that something as easy as that could save you so much,  but it does!  Here's our calculations: for 8 cups of grated soap $2.27

12 cups Borax $2.50

8 cups Baking Soda $2.12

8 cups Washing Soda $3.77

totaling $10.66 

The recipe makes roughly 36 cups of detergent.  Divide that by 1/8th of a cup per load and you're at about 288 loads for only $10.66! That's 3.7 cents per one load of laundry - wow!

Now incase that doesn't mean anything to you, lets compare to an average load using Tide Detergent.

At the store we saw that a $12 thing of Tide advertises 60 loads leaving us at about 20 cents per load.  

Lets say we do 3 loads of laundry a week using our homemade detergent rather than Tide in just one year we would save $25.43.  I suppose that may seem like meager savings but hey, we're poor college students and we do whatever we can to save!

Of course that isn't enough savings for Jeremy, so as soon as we use up this batch of detergent we're trying the Duggar Family Recipe {I'm still not wild about all the extra involvement and goopy mess around the house... but we'll try it and let you know!}

Oh also  - you're probably wondering, does it actually work?  YES! We tried it and the clothes came out

C.L.E.A.N.

kluvyoubye