For the last few years I have participated in the Works for Me link carnival where many bloggers shared all kinds of tips and tricks for everything from saving money to cooking to decorating and beyond. If you have ever clicked over from my site to hers you will see nearly 200 people participating each week.  Some of the ideas are great, some are not so good, but sifting through so many can be daunting.

Kristen, over at We are that Family, who hosts the link party, has taken all the ideas that have been shared and has created an ebook of some of the best ideas out there. That’s right, she did all the work of sifting through and pulling out the best ideas that have come across her site Lucky for me, she chose one of my ideas and I am now featured in her new book.

The ebook has over 800 categorized tips that have been organized into 24 different categories and there are over 300 bloggers that have contributed their ideas. Click here to visit wearethatfamily and buy the ebook today.

Here’s an example of a few of the topics she has covered ::

Holiday
Recipes
Tech/Computers
Garden
Time Management
Travel
Frugal
Baby
Organization

and the list goes on……

I think the idea is just brilliant Kristen!!

UPDATE ::  Not all baking sodas are created equal. More info at the bottom.

That’s right, I am no longer shampooing my hair.  I am sure you have heard about this since it seems to be all the rage. And I’m not gonna lie, I am LOVING it.

I heard about this almost a year ago. I was intrigued, but never tried it.

THEN

I was with a group of friends back in April and we were talking hair. I was sharing my frustration because my hair had become so dull and lifeless. I had tried several shampoos, yet nothing seemed to make my hair shiny or make it feel like it had more body.

So I again Googled “no more shampoo”.  I then forwarded my info on to my friend and we both began the no shampoo.

For the first week I still had to use product in my hair after I “shampooed” with baking soda. My hair still was dry and fly away hair. By week 2 I didn’t have to use any product in my hair at all. I do have to straighten my hair when I wash it because it has an annoying ugly curl. I tried to let it go, but there is not enough curl in it.

My hair is shiny and it does have more body than before. I am now 5 months in and I will never go back to actual shampoo. There have been a few occasions where I ran out of my baking soda mixture and grabbed shampoo because I had worked out and I was sweaty and gross.  I regretted it each time. My hair instantly felt heavy and limp again.

This is great for traveling because you can just throw baking soda in a baggy and add it to water when you get to your destination.

Why You Should Consider This ::

Shampoos and conditioners are full of chemicals. They are made to strip your hair of product, but they also just strip your hair. Like I said before, I am no longer needing other products, so now there is nothing to strip anything.

It’s cheaper. Even if you can get shampoo for under $1, this is still cheaper. I have products that I purchased for 25¢ and I won’t even be using those.

What’s the harm? That was my thought. I would at least try it and if I liked it I would report in with all of you. Well, I am reporting in, just like hundreds of other bloggers. We all like it. We are all happy with the results and we like our hair even better.

How To “Wash” Your Hair Now ::

1-2 Tbls. of baking soda mixed with 8oz of water. This will be enough to last you for at least a week. Mess around with the amounts. I like mine with a little more baking soda.

For the conditioner use 1-2 tbls. apple cider vinegar also with 8oz of water. Use this just on your hair and not on your roots. It will make your hair greasy if you use it on your roots. The apple cider vinegar works a a detangler, so if you don’t need it for that you can even skip it as I have.

You need to give yourself at least 5-6 weeks to work through the greasy phase. Your hair is being striped daily when you put chemicals on it. So it’s producing extra oil to keep it healthy. Once you stop striping it, it does take awhile for your body to know to stop producing extra oil, but it will.

Not only is it good for your hair, but it’s also great for your budget. I bought a huge bag of baking soda from Costco for around $5.

Anyone else tried it?

Here are other uses for apple cider vinegar if you decide not to use it in your hair. Using it as deodorant or getting rid of cold sores.

UPDATE :: Not all baking sodas are created equal ::

• If you are trying this and its just not working use less baking soda in your mix.
• I have also found that only Arm and Hammer works for me.
• And only the small boxes not the Costco container.
• Trader Joe’s also does NOT work for me.
• Your hair should feel light healthy, not heavy and thick. It will become greasy way too fast if it’s like that.

Want more information? Check out Simple Mom. I like the way she laid it out and even she even includes some extra tips.

Photo credit

Need some extra cash? No time to get another job? Sounds like it’s time to give up a few things. Some are realistic, some aren’t. Even choosing one or two things could save you $100 a month.

Let’s start with the basics

• Stop getting your coffee at the local coffee shop
• Stop eating lunch out
• Stop buying flowers for your significant other.  Just kidding, keep doing that!!

IN THE HOME

• Unplug things when you aren’t home. Seriously who remembers to do that?
• Replace your old bulbs with the new bulbs. I won’t lie, that’s a tough one too, since the new ones are so expensive.
• Close the curtains in the winter to keep the heat in and close them in the summer to keep the sun out.
• Make home super enjoyable. The more you like to be there the less you will be out spending money.
• Get on Pinterest and find easy home projects to furnish and decorate your home. Just because you have Pottery Barn taste doesn’t mean you have to pay those prices.
• Don’t keep up with the Jone’s. Turns out, they are in debt over their head. Instead buy what you can pay cash for.
• Get rid of your home phone. Do you even use it anymore? We got rid of ours 2 years ago.

ENTERTAINMENT

• Use Living Social, Groupon, or any of your favorite deal sites. You can score some great entertainment deals on food, activities and even trips.
• Buy the Entertainment book which has great movie ticket coupons.
• Enjoy Happy Hour instead of a dinner at a nice restaurant.
• Watch for free concerts around town. These happen a lot during the summer, but even in the winter you can find a few here and there.
• Instead of grabbing a coffee with a friend go for walk. You usually just want to talk anyways.
• Get rid of cable. There is really never anything on anyways.
• Replace cable with Hulu. I think it’s about $100 a year.

CAR

• Do all your trips together. This is another one that comes up often, but my husband can’t think like this. Some people just need to make an conscious effort to get it right.
• Take 15 minutes and see if you really can save on car insurance. After we added a kid, we spent more than 15 minutes and easily saved ourselves $75 a month.
• Consider selling your car for a car with a lower payment. Or better yet look for a car you can pay cash for and get rid of the car payment altogether.
• Ask for discounts even when getting your oil changed. Last time I had the wrong coupon, so I asked them (after the oil change was done) what they could do for me. They took care of me. (keeping up on maintenance will save you more money in the long run.)
• Share a car if you can.  We actually could have kept sharing if my daughter didn’t have 2 jobs. But we did have 3 drivers and 2 cars for almost 3 years. The 3rd car was a car we paid cash for.

HOUSE

• Keep the lights off if you are not in the room. Don’t think this makes a difference? Check your electricity bill between the summer and the fall. The bill goes up in the fall even though you don’t use heat or air.
• It’s hard to do in this economy, but try and refinance. That could easily save you over $100 a month.
• Keep up on maintenance. Fix the small things, instead of waiting for the big problems.
• Do your own yard work.
• Clean your own house.  I know it would be nice to have help, but when times are tough, it’s one that needs cut out.

FOOD

• Do a weekly menu plan for your dinners. It keeps you from eating out and it keeps you from impulse buying at the store. Make that $4.99 Costco chicken into 4 meals.
• Here’s one that I hate to pass on…eat vegetarian once a week. I really do like my meat.
• Inventory you freezer, fridge and pantry. Come up with as many meals as you can with what you have on hand. I like to do this every once and awhile.
• Whenever you stop in for milk always check the markdowns in the meat department. If something is not marked down and it should be, just ask.

CLOTHING

• When you buy articles of clothing make sure they are super versatile.Then you won’t need so many pieces.
• Don’t feel like you need to buy quality clothing. I know, it seems wrong, but if you buy cheaper items you can afford to get new clothes more often. And some of my quality clothes are out of style.
• Don’t shop reused, well unless you want to. Target markdowns are usually better deals.
• Do a clothing swap with friends.

So you have done the basics. But What else could you possibly cut out??

• Look at switching to a cheaper hairdresser. I had to ask myself if it was worth paying $30 to have my layers trimmed. Not ready to switch? Try and make it last an extra week or two.
• Do your boys have short hair? Consider cutting it yourself. I started doing this 5-6 years ago. I paid $40 for good clippers and have kept them in good running condition.
• Plan days to just stay home.
• Ask friends to come over for coffee instead of out.
• Make nice meals at home and serve it with wine, beer or cocktails. It might not be a frugal thing to do, but they are a fraction of the cost to make as opposed to buying them at a restaurant.
• Don’t go to the mall or any store just to look around. Don’t check out Target clearance. When we were really, really poor I would go shop Target clearance. Yes I was saving money, but I was also spending money I didn’t have on things I might not have really needed.
• Write down what you spend. Just seeing where it goes will help you cut back. To save $100 a month just cut out $25 a week.

Over a year ago we really had to cut back on our spending and I put many of these to good use and I managed to save us over $500 a month. It can be done!!

What are you doing to save money?  I mean to seriously attack that monthly bill??

Check out some other money saving tips.
Works for Me

It’s that time of year again, so bringing back a post from last year.

We are fully into November now and we are coming up on Christmas quicker than you can say “Buddy the Elf, what’s your favorite color?”

If you are one of those families that buys for everyone, why don’t you approach the family this year and talk about maybe not buying for every.single.person.  You could suggest that you draw names, or even set age limits on when the 4 nieces, now 23 or older, no longer need to get $20 gifts.

The sex talk might be easier than this talk for some of you, but if you budget needs this break it might be worth it.  Every year we say “Christmas is not about the gifts,”  but I guarantee there are still people giving because they have too.

Linked to
Frugal Friday

photo source

I really love eating out and good food. So I am always looking for ways to save money so I can keep enjoying those things. Today was that day, a day of coupons and savings.

After a crazy week I love to get up on Saturday morning, with my husband and head somewhere and drink tea and eat a quick breakfast and people watch. And there is no better place to do that than Portland.

Months ago when I had purchased a Restaurant.com coupon I was given a $10 gift certificate for free, so I chose Modern Love.

Today was finally the day I could use my free $10 GC.  We made our way into Portland. The only catch with this coupon is we needed to spend $20. Sounds easy? Well, we had to get creative. We got a big cappuccino, a big tea, 2 breakfast sandwiches with extra ingredients (which cost extra) and we topped that all of with a big, really big cookie.  Yep, a cookie for breakfast.

All of that came to $20.60. Had we gone without a coupon we would not have gotten all the extras for sure. Our $10 breakfast was a treat. We took our time and even got to sit outside on this barely sunny, not super warm, fall day.

From there we made our way down to Benessere Olive Oils and Vinegars. I had a Living Social deal that I wanted to use. I purchased my deal, and 3 of my friends bought which meant mine was free and I had $23 to spend. Love this store and these olive oils. I cook with them often.

Once we got home our kids had finally woken up.  I knew I had to take my teenage son driving, so I made him take me to Fred Meyers since they were running a good cereal sale. I got 4 boxes of cereal for $5. Not the best deal out there, but not bad considering it’s over $4 a box regular price.

My son decided he was hungry and wanted to go to Qdoba, which was right next door. My son gets to eat FREE at Qdoba for a year because him and some friends spent the night at a store that was opening. First 25 people in line got FREE Qdoba for a year. And I should mention my husband jumped in on the deal too and went down and spent the night.

As we were leaving my son asked me if I wanted yogurt from the shop next door. He had earned a gift card as a Thank You for volunteering and wanted to share with me. Being the frugal person I am, and not super hungry, I got $1 worth of yogurt, for FREE.

Overall, it was a perfect day. We did a lot and spent a little.

So let’s see how you spend your days cashing in on deals.

Always struggling?  Here are 8 quick basic reminders for you.

1. Know what your budget is – don’t laugh, some people have no idea
2. Write down every penny you spend. Even if you only do this for a month or so, it gives you an idea of where the money is going. I tell you this all the time. A month sounds overwhelming? Break it down to weeks – sometimes saying you have $1200 for the month gives you too much freedom the first 8 days. Then you have too much month at the end of the money. So instead budget it out to $300 a week.
3. Plan ahead – Decide what your big expenses are and spread them out. We don’t have dental insurance so I have to work hard to keep all our appointments spread out.
4. Try and live under your budgeted amount for those surprise expenses – “Mom I need $10 for Powder Puff football.”
5. If you don’t have the money, don’t go to the mall.
6. Have a meal plan – this will save you from buying last minute at the store or even worse, going out to eat.
7. Make sure the whole family is on board, so you are all working towards a common goal and you aren’t constantly fighting your spouse or your kids.
8. One of the best ways to stay within your budget to is read reminders like this often. Check yourself. How are you doing? You know what to do. Have you done it?

Many people will read this and think, wow nothing new or different.  But that’s just it. They only way you can stay on budget is to do the work, the same simple steps you read everywhere. It’s like weight loss, people want the results without the work. It can’t be done. Do the work, for you and your family.

linked to Frugal Fridays

Photo source borman 818

• Signs to direct traffic in :: $5
• Change in the money box before the day started :: $30
• Sales made throughout the weekend :: over $1000
• Looks on peoples faces when we told them we took credit cards at our garage sale :: PRICELESS

I have a complete list of  How To Have A Successful Yard Sale. You will see everything from Prepping for the sale, Driving Traffic, Day of the Sale and After the Sale.

But today I come to you with More Yard Sale Tips. You guessed it, there’s an app for that.

Must Have Yard Sale Apps

Square :: This is a FREE app that allows you to take credit cards on your iPhone, iPad or iPod with a simple touch. There is no contract, no monthly fee or merchant account required. Every user will receive a free Square credit card reader, for free, in the mail.  Within minutes of downloading you are ready to take payments. (the card reader takes a few days to get to you in the mail)

Per one of my tips, we had 3 families. One of the families had downloaded this app and she was taking credit cards for all of us. It truly upped our sales the first day. It was actually funny how people would use their credit card when they realized we used it instead of using their cash.

These next 2 apps aren’t so much ones you should have, but ones you should try and get your sale onto

Another tip I shared was making sure your sale was posted on Craigslist. Once it’s posted on Craigslist it will appear on Garage Sale Rover. This is a FREE app to use to look for garage sales in your area. Post  your sale, so you can be seen by others using this app.

Yard Sale Mapper is another app that also gathers information from Craigslist adds. (Note to self :: Put yard sale on Craigslist)

Our successful weekend didn’t stop there.

• We didn’t have enough stuff to do our own thing, so we had 2 neighbors join us.
• We also made sure we put out big items. I even put something out with a crazy high price. I didn’t want to sell it, but if it sold at that price, so be it. I did it because we needed something big to get people to stop. Well….it sold. Once it sold I asked the person who purchased it if they would let it sit for a few hours. I then put a sold sign on it that was only noticeable if you got out of the car. A little sneaky? Yes. But it works.
• Another thing that contributed to higher sales was our neighbor also had a cash register. She would ring everything up. Once it was in the register and rung up, people never offered a lower price. SCORE!! I guess it felt like a real store to them.

It is possible to have a successful garage sale. And it is possible to make over $1000. The $1000 was just our portion. Both of the other neighbors did pretty well too. Not as high as us because they didn’t have quite as much as we did.

By the way, do you say Garage Sale or Yard Sale?  Had we not purchased printed signs from the Dollar store I think I would have had mine say Crap 4 Sale.

Linked to Works for Me Wednesday

Finding a great local place in your area is always nice. Great food, great price makes me a happy woman.

Looking for a fun place to go eat that won’t break the bank in Portland?  Head on down to Little Big Burger, located in the Pearl.

This is such a fun, new place in Portland. There are plenty of shops to check out while you are in the Pearl.

You have heard me say over and over I love eating food and eating out. I also love having time alone with my man. Well, this is a great destination that won’t break the bank.

It’s kind of the In-n-Out of Oregon. The menu is very limited and the burgers are great. And since it is the great NW you will also notice that the fries are made with truffle oil, because, why not? Want to read more about this great burger joint?

What is your cheap but great go to place so you can get out, eat and enjoy some time with your someone special?  I also love to travel, so I am always looking for places to eat in other cities.

Another way I try to eat on a budget is watch Groupon and Living Social for good food deals.

I just read the upcoming spring report and yes it did make me grumpy. I love gardening. Not so much the flowers, although I am getting better at that, but I love my edible garden. My tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, zucchini and squash. Just to name a few.

Last year we had an awful spring and many of us didn’t have great luck with our gardens. Here in Portland it barely stopped raining by July and even then it never got hot. I remember being at a friends house in August for an evening outside party and it was almost 2 chilly to be outside.

If you plan on gardening again this year you need to

1. Don’t be overly optimistic
2. Have a plan to make it work better.

Here is my suggestion and what I have done in the past here anyways.

1. Don’t even plant your garden outside until late April early May, and that’s at the earliest. I have waited until June some summers and done well.
2. If you are getting that ichy green thumb, start stuff indoors then move them out doors later. When you decide to move them outdoors be aware of the upcoming weather. If it still looks like rain and not super warm, then cover them with plastic to create a green house effect. It won’t be pretty, but it will help them grow.
3. If our spring, as predicted, is supposed to be as wet as it was last year, make sure you have your garden in an area that drains well. My best sun spot does not drain. I know sad right?

The first thing you should put in the ground are your peas. If you have some that are going to be a little later, make sure they have some afternoon shade.

I can’t wait to really get into it, but for now this is a start. Although I can slack a little this year since I decided to get a CSA.

What have you done in your garden this year??

Prom can get expensive, but we have come up with a few ways to make it more affordable.

I am bringing this post back from last year, How to Do Prom Affordable Yet Beautiful, because it was filled with money saving ideas. And I should say not just ideas, but things that we did that actually worked and saved us a ton of money.

In the process we also learned to make our own jewelery.

One tip I did suggest was buying at the end of the season for the next year. We never did do that, and it’s a good thing because my daughter is not going this year.

Instead I am going to give her $20 and she and some friends are going out on the town for some fun.

This year my son is going to his high schools formal. We had to rent a tux. I had looked into buying one, but never did come up with anything.

On top of the tux rental you also have to rent shoes.  The tux is $59 the shoes $20. Seems high for shoes compared to the rest of the tux, but don’t worry we didn’t rent them. Turns out the thing to do is to wear converse with your tux. My husband needed a new pair anyways, so my son wore those.

Tux rental is not a science by any means, but like anything else they up sell you on everything. I went in saying I wanted the absolute basic $59 tux.

She gave me the choice between 3 jackets. When she run it up it was $114 instead of $59. I asked why, she said it was the jacket choice. Really?? We went over this already. So she switched us to the right jacket.

So $59 for the whole tux, but change the jacket by one button and the price jumps up $55. That’s one expensive button.

What other tricks should we all know about??