Eat, Shop & Play Without Throwing Your Money Away!

This morning I had the privilege of presenting to my church's moms' group with my wonderful, creative, and resourceful friend Jessica VanMarter!  Jess has inspired me in so many ways.  Her encouragement and recommendations were what gave me the final "push" I needed to try out cloth diapers.  (See Part 1, Part2,  Part 3 & Part 4 of my extensive exploration of all types of cloth diapers if you're interested!)  Every time I talk to Jess I learn something awesome, which is why I'm so glad she recently started her blog! 

We had a a great time sharing our experiences and our tips and tricks for saving money in three areas of our lives as moms...eating, shopping, and playing!   Jess shared many great ideas for saving money in the "eat" section, and really opened my eyes to the enormous savings you can enjoy purchasing bulk spices, among many other ideas!  I shared my own tips and tricks for saving money buying other non-food items in the "shop" section, as well as some fun ways to have cheap and free fun with your kids. We really enjoyed sharing our tips and tricks, and learning even more great ideas from our audience! 

As promised, we have the slide show available for those of you who missed our talk, and those of you who would like to check out the links inside.  In general, the underlined text throughout the presentation are all web links.  (for those of you who attended...I took out the Price is Right theme music and animations to help shrink down this file size!)  We had to cut things short at the end so there are a few random tips and tricks still to see!  For those of you who didn't make it, check out the slide show for a great rundown of what you missed!  We purposely made this slide show in a way that someone who did not attend could still get all of the info they missed.

We also put together a "chicken challenge" and notes page which we handed out hard copies of.  You can download a full color pdf here!  The idea behind the chicken challenge was to challenge you to make one whole chicken, and then see how many meals you can stretch it!  Don't be intimidated if you've never made a whole chicken...the first recipe is really as easy as it gets!  We then show you how to make chicken stock from the carcass, and give two recipes to help use up the left-over meat.  Give it a try and see how far one chicken can really go!

Keep an eye out here and on Jess's blog for more tips, tricks, recipes and links related to our talk today! We hope to put together a "beef challenge" and "pork challenge" soon as well!!  Happy cooking, shopping, and playing everyone!