A lot of folks look at dandelions as a weed, a nuisance, something to be combatted removed at any cost. I see a dandelion and I think of dimpled hands, smiling faces and bright yellow bouquets offered with lots of sunshiny sweetness and pride in a gift well chosen.
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Many people see dandelions as pesky plants they want to eradicate. I see a beautiful bloom that speaks of love and innocence.
I’m sure most people list something fancier as their favorite flower, like roses or tulips, and I understand that. I love those, too. They are lovely to look at, last longer, and smell sweeter than the humble yellow blossom that I’m so fond of. Fancy flowers can’t compete with dandelions and the feelings they evoke in my heart, though.
Sweet Smiles of Spring!
These plain and simple flowers have been handed to me by sticky hands, accompanied by the biggest, most genuine proclamations of “I love you!” that you can imagine, with slobbery sweet kisses and tight hugs from dirty little arms. I have very early memories of running to my mom with a sunny bouquet picked with all the love in my little heart and seeing the smile it put on her face. Dandelions bring up so many memories of sunshine and love, that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
To me, dandelions are a symbol of all things sweet and special, generous and innocent about childhood and the love of the children God has allowed to touch my life!
Whose kiddos don’t enjoy an ice cold treat on a warm day? I haven’t met one yet! Here comes the quandary for the penny pinchers like me who also try to minimize their children’s intakes of artificial dyes and an overload of sugars on less-than-special occasions. The cheap popsicles are full of naughty dyes and sugars. The “healthy” versions are way out of our daily budget for the voracious appetites of our chilly chompers. My solution? Homemade on the cheap, of course!
My children have already started their popsicle trip for the summer, so I was planning to make some homemade popsicles to satisfy their cravings. Last year I’d already purchased a new set of popsicle makers on sale for a dollar, so I was prepared with the right tools. You can also get them on Amazon for less than five dollars: Ostart 8 Cell Frozen Ice Cream Pop Mold Popsicle Maker Lolly Mould Tray Pan Kitchen DIYA similar model to the one I have is: Easy Pack 8 pc Popsicle Maker
As I scanned the juice aisle, I spotted fruit punch marked way down to 50 cents for the real kind in the refrigerated section!! SCORE!!! It’s not the 100% fruit kind, but it is dye free and no corn syrup, so I’m good with that for a treat.
When I got time after I’d gotten everything put up, I poured a set of popsicles up, let Princess Pennypincher put the tops on them and popped them in the freezer to set up. I made a set of 8, but I can easily make a minimum of three more sets out of this one juice container. At this price, that’s less than two cents apiece, y’all!!! It didn’t take much longer than it normally does to fix two sippy cups full of their water splashed with juice, either, so it’s not at all time consuming. A trick for removing them from the freezer container more easily without getting all handle and no popsicle? Carefully twist the handle as you pull the popsicle out if it starts to stick on you. My children love the cold, sweet treats. I love that there is no guilt in allowing them to indulge- from a health or budget perspective. Win-win!!! 😉
“Penny Pinching Peach is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com”
Another winning Wednesday here, just sharing some of the awesome- but less widely publicized- giveaways I find on the wonderful worldwide web. I love entering contests, although until the past several weeks I have rarely won anything. By rarely, I mean practically never, ever, ever. Just since Christmas Eve, though, I’ve won several awesome giveaways!!! One was a $20 boutique gift card! Another was a giveaway for the After Saga I featured here recently! Another was Christmas Eve and a higher entry giveaway for a huge prize package for our baby valued at over $1,200!! Another is a precious children’s book I featured here previously! More recently, I won a $25 Publix gift card, a craft kit, and a gluten free snack box! I’m not sharing to brag, but it tells you that people really do win! I think this baby in my tummy is my lucky charm, y’all! 😉 The giveaways I share here are not giveaways with hundreds of thousands of entries, so you actually have a decent chance to win something. Who doesn’t want to win free stuff?
Enter to win an amazing Lillebaby All Seasons Baby Carrier! (HURRY!!! Ends 4/2)
Any bloggers or small businesses with current family friendly giveaways are welcome to post links to one or two of those giveaways with a brief description in the comments section. If you have an upcoming giveaway you would like to be featured, please contact me via my Facebook page with details. This will continue to be a weekly feature here on Penny Pinching Peach if there is consistent interest, so give a shout if you enjoy these lists and let me know if you entered any contests! Oh, and definitely come back and let me know if you win something, please!!!
Chickens on the cheep, cheep, cheep! Raising chickens on a budget on your back yard homestead!
This post is from a couple of Easters ago. I don’t advocate chicks as gift “just for Easter”, but this worked out perfectly for us because we did want the feathered friends as egg laying adults. 🙂
We got five fluffy baby pullet chicks this spring!
Our daughter was thrilled, I was excited to have chickens for the first time in years and years, and my husband was fascinated by the whole process of raising a farm type critter. This was a new adventure for our little family!
Alot of folks get those cute Easter chicks without a clue or thought of what to do with them.
I got my hens as chicks so they would be friendly backyard pets. I chose the breeds for the dual purpose of being pets and good egg layers. We got three Barred Rock hens because they are both calm and very productive layers. We got two Aracauna hens because they lay Easter egg colored eggs and are moderately high producers.
We had a chicken house that we found on an online yardsale set up in our back yard before we brought them home, although they had to stay in a big box under a heat lamp inside for a few weeks. We had fencing materials and a plan for making a ramp down from the coop into the little pen, which my hubby did for me when the chicks were big enough to need the space. If you want chickens yourself, do your research, make your plans for their long term care and prepare yourself before you bring them home!
Feeding chickens could add up to a huge expense if you don’t do it correctly!
For us, we spend about $12 on a bag of feed for our hens and it lasts about six weeks for our five chickens now that they’re full sized “teenagers”. However, the reason it lasts is because I save scraps for them every day, and have our 3 year old give them their scraps before I pour their feed in. We save things like the chopped up odds & ends from fruits and veggies, stale bread, crushed cereal leftovers, leftover plain pasta pieces, and anything else chickie friendly to chop up for them to gobble up. We also have a compost pile my husband and daughter sometimes dig up worms from to feed to them, and the two of them like to turn over large rocks and boards to collect grubs and worms to feed the feathered fowl as treats. These “extras” not only save us money on their feed bill, but it keeps them much healthier.
Chickies and Chica
Another thing I am doing for the chickens is saving up eggshells, letting them air dry, and crushing them into powder. I let my little girl crush them in a plastic bag with a cup as much as she wants, then I grind them the rest of the way into powder. I’ll be adding this to my hen feed as soon as they start laying eggs, as it is a cheap way to help them get their calcium. They’re due to start laying…well….any time in the next month or so, really. 🙂
A misconception alot of folks have that surprises me every time is that you need a rooster so the hens can lay eggs. You don’t. You only need a rooster if you want the eggs to be fertilized so you can hatch your own chicks. A rooster in the back yard would be loud and obnoxious. Hens are pretty quiet, just clucking most of the time with an occasional cackle, and are actually less likely to disturb anyone than having a cat. My mom got our first hens while we were living in a subdivision, and all three of the neighbors connected to our back yard loved them!
You don’t need alot of time, space or money to keep a few laying hens.
“Teenaged” chickies getting scraps.
Just do your homework and prepare yourself before you bring them home, and you’ll do just fine. They’re cute, fun, teach kiddos responsibility, and the fresh home laid eggs are absolutely amazing and healthy. I loved raising chickens when I was growing up, and am thrilled to be able to share that with my munchkins now.
Is anyone else doing some backyard (or full scale) homesteading? You might be interested in my creative hanging planters!
My closet is the bottomless of abyss, a cavern full of miscellaneous items, gifts bought ahead of time and mountains of clothing that mocks me with the tiny sizes and even more youthful styles worn by my mother’s daughter who was not yet my children’s mother. It’s one of those things that makes me anxious to even think of tackling, but today I got the nerve up to try yet again. This time, however, I’m in massive purge and pack mode, since we are getting ready for a major move and I don’t want to carry all the clutter with us. I haven’t the slightest illusion that we won’t still have too much stuff with us. I am just determined to make sure not to take all of the things I haven’t used or worn in forever, because it is literally dead weight that steals my joy by making it impossible to keep my home looking neat. First on the list is probably my worst personal offense- my clothing!
If you share my struggle with clutter, especially clothing, maybe my mad methods will help you out (or at least inspire you that a fellow clutterbug was able to get rid of so much junk), so I thought I’d share. If I can clear things out, ANYONE can! (Well, I can’t speak for actual hoarders. I’m not quite there….yet!)
My criteria for getting rid of clothing? If I haven’t worn it since my nearly three year old son was born, it’s gotta go. There are very few exceptions to this. I made an exception for a dress my mom personally made me a patchwork bottom for, because it’s still beautiful and oh-so-sentimental. Also, obviously I haven’t worn my wedding dress, but I’m not going THAT far in my purging!!
What are the categories for clothing that I am no longer keeping? Throw away, thrift store, and consignment. Throw away is for the clothing with more than slight stains, tears, etc. that I can’t easily repurpose into rags or something I can use right now. (If you do alot of DIY and are not drowning in your stuff like I am, you can think alot more creatively with this part. I’m overwhelmed, so it is gone, gone, gone!) Thrift store is for items that are still good, but may be very slightly stained or totally outdated. Consignment is for items that are in good condition and either timeless or stylish, because I can use them to get things my kids will be needing. The photo doesn’t include the two bags of thrift store donations I have headed on out. 🙂
How in the world am I sorting the clothing I am keeping? Well, ordinarily I’d divide them by season and put up the out of season ones. However, since I’m having a new baby this summer and plan to breastfeed her, I’m doing things a lot differently. I got a huge storage tub and filled it up with clothing I can’t wear either while pregnant or during the early days as a breastfeeding mom who will not only need to be able to access aforementioned breasts to feed my precious baby girl, but whose body is most certainly not going to be back to normal for the remainder of warm weather. All of the clothing that I believe that I can wear between now and cool weather I kept out. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, since this is my third child and I know exactly which clothing is too aggravating to try nursing a baby while wearing. LOL
Anyone else purging that cluttered mess of clothing in the closet??
Another winning Wednesday here, just sharing some of the awesome- but less widely publicized- giveaways I find on the wonderful worldwide web. I love entering contests, although until the past several weeks I have rarely won anything. By rarely, I mean practically never, ever, ever. Just since Christmas Eve, though, I’ve won several awesome giveaways!!! One was a $20 boutique gift card! Another was a giveaway for the After Saga I featured here recently! Another was Christmas Eve and a higher entry giveaway for a huge prize package for our baby valued at over $1,200!! Another is a precious children’s book I featured here previously! More recently, I won a $25 Publix gift card, a craft kit, and a gluten free snack box! I’m not sharing to brag, but it tells you that people really do win! I think this baby in my tummy is my lucky charm, y’all! 😉 The giveaways I share here are not giveaways with hundreds of thousands of entries, so you actually have a decent chance to win something. Who doesn’t want to win free stuff?
Any bloggers or small businesses with current family friendly giveaways are welcome to post links to one or two of those giveaways with a brief description in the comments section. If you have an upcoming giveaway you would like to be featured, please contact me via my Facebook page with details. This will continue to be a weekly feature here on Penny Pinching Peach if there is consistent interest, so give a shout if you like this idea and let me know if you entered any contests! Oh, and definitely come back and let me know if you win something, please!!!
With Easter fast approaching, I wanted to share with y’all about one of my children’s favorite Easter bunny books.
My children love this book so much, I’m not allowed to put it up the rest of the year. It’s frequently requested, regardless of the season.
“Penny Pinching Peach is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com”
Bunny Trouble is the story of a unique bunny who was part of the Easter bunny’s colony. This little bunny’s love of soccer caused him to get into all sorts of trouble, but in the end, he learned to work better with others toward common goals and they learned to embrace those who may be just a wee bit differently. With adorable photos and an attention grabbing story line, this is a great story to celebrate the fun of the season, teamwork and appreciating what makes each of us just a little bit special.
To get your own copy, you can click the title in blue and go to Amazon to order it new or used. I’m sure your children will enjoy this lively story as much as my little ones do. 🙂
Do you have a favorite Easter book? Try making our adorable Easter bunny cake!
My kids love to snack on apple slices. The problem is, they frequently don’t finish all of the slices at one sitting. I got fed up with feeding the leftovers to the chickens, and remembered that I’d heard lemon juice would keep the slices fresh for longer. I didn’t have lemon juice, but I did have key lime, so I tried it. Here are the results, after 24 hours.
First, I put a slice aside as a control to see how well the key lime juice would actually work. Below is what it looked like after 24 hours, a sort of golden brown. It was also fairly squishy when I’d give it a squeeze between my fingers.
Apple slice without key lime juice
Next, I put a couple of slices of apple in a Ziploc baggie, sprinkled a few drops of key lime juice inside, swished it all around to make sure there was a light coating all over and squeezed the air out of the bag, leaving it on the kitchen counter with the other plain apple baggie. Below is what it looked like after 24 hours, almost as white as when I sliced it. The texture was also pretty much the same, and there was barely a hint of key lime flavor when eating it.
Apple slices with key lime juice
All in all, I’d say this experiment was a definite success. I’ve added a new weapon to my produce saving, grocery stretching repertoire! It’s also a great option for prepping healthy snacks the night before when you know you have a busy day coming up.
Another winning Wednesday here, just sharing some of the awesome- but less widely publicized- giveaways I find on the wonderful worldwide web. I love entering contests, although until the past several weeks I have rarely won anything. By rarely, I mean practically never, ever, ever. Just since Christmas Eve, though, I’ve won several awesome giveaways!!! One was a $20 boutique gift card! Another was a giveaway for the After Saga I featured here recently! Another was Christmas Eve and a higher entry giveaway for a huge prize package for our baby valued at over $1,200!! Another is a precious children’s book I featured here previously! More recently, I won a $25 Publix gift card, a craft kit, and a gluten free snack box! I’m not sharing to brag, but it tells you that people really do win! I think this baby in my tummy is my lucky charm, y’all! 😉 The giveaways I share here are not giveaways with hundreds of thousands of entries, so you actually have a decent chance to win something. Who doesn’t want to win free stuff?
Try to win a big Littlest Pet Shop Basket! (Ends 3/26)
Any bloggers or small businesses with current family friendly giveaways are welcome to post links to one or two of those giveaways with a brief description in the comments section. If you have an upcoming giveaway you would like to be featured, please contact me via my Facebook page with details. This will continue to be a weekly feature here on Penny Pinching Peach if there is consistent interest, so give a shout if you like this idea and let me know if you entered any contests! Oh, and definitely come back and let me know if you win something, please!!!
My oldest daughter is currently learning to read. She is doing an amazing job with her schoolwork, and has inherited my voracious love of learning. However, when we did our review work today, I spotted a couple of letters she was having trouble matching with their phonics sounds correctly. I decided that- instead of doing math today (which I don’t do daily with a kindergarten student, since she likes to do a lot at a time, anyway)- I would make up a fun game with multiple parts to help her get a better grasp on the sounds she was struggling with remembering. We needed some outside time to burn energy and get some fresh air, so I incorporated that in with our school time. (Gotta love homeschooling!! Learning happens everywhere!! Since I’m a second generation homeschooler, this is natural & normal for me, but I am seeing a whole different side of it now. Love it! 🙂 )
My Princess Pennypeacher was having trouble with the letters H and N. I handed her a grocery bag, and explained that we were going hunting for things that start with those letters, making the phonics sound for her. Our goal was to find at least three items with each phonics sound. She is very goal oriented, so she loved this!! As we went walking together, searching for objects, I kept repeating the letters and sounds and helping her come up with words starting with those sounds. We found a few things outside, then continued our search in the house. This kept her busily searching for a while, having a good ol’ time all the way, with her little brother following her around shouting the sounds with her without having any idea what he was talking about. 🙂 Once she found three items starting with the H and N sounds, we moved on to the next part of the game.
I had her sit down and choose two pieces of paper to write the uppercase and lowercase versions of each letter at the top of each sheet. Once she did that, I had her pull one item at a time out of the bag, tell me which sound and letter that item started with, set it beside the correct letter sheet and then I helped her write the words by breaking down the sounds in each word to see if she could tell me the matching letter. This was mostly to reiterate the sounds she was working on, but also to check for any other sounds she might be struggling with. This part was less of a hooray kind of fun for her, but she still enjoyed the challenge.
To finish up, we took a silly photo of my kindergartener, her project, and her loyal assistant! 🙂
Do you think your little ones would enjoy this game? It cost nothing whatsoever, so that made my pockets happy. It definitely helped her get a better grasp on the letters she was getting confused on, although I think we will need to do a couple of more fun reviews to make sure she really has it. I love having fun learning with my munchkins! 🙂
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A similar model to the one I have is: 
With Easter fast approaching, I wanted to share with y’all about one of my children’s favorite Easter bunny books.
Penny Pinching Peach 