Give for Free

This year there is more need and less supply for Toys for Tots and other charities.  There are a few companies that are giving if you do something simple and best of all free.  These companies make lots of money and I’m happy to see some of their profits going for good causes.  If you hear of any other please post here and share these with your friends and family.

Macy’s is donating $1 to the Make a Wish foundation for each letter to Santa they receive in store up to 1 million dollars!!  Be sure to drop off a letter next time you are in the mall.

Become a fan of Pantene on Facebook and they will donate .10 to the Beautiful Lengths campaign

Become a fan of Toys R Us on Facebook and they will donate $1 to Toys for Tots

Turkey Overload!!

So if you went out and picked up a couple turkeys at Walmart for .40/lb you may be wondering what to do with them now. If you didn’t go out you should go and ask when they will be getting more of the cheap turkeys in.  I bought 4 (2 different days) and I may want to go back for 2 more.

I thought I’d share with you some easy ways to cook and get the most out of your turkeys.  Yesterday I tackled turkey round 1 so I’ll share my tips with you.

I’ve had 2 of the birds in my fridge for a few days and they were finally thawed out so I took and cleaned them out and stuck them in the oven.  This is a must buy a box of reynolds cooking bags in turkey size I don’t care if they aren’t on sale you need them they make a great easy turkey.  Cooking 2 of them together took no longer than 1 and it only heated my house up once.  We had turkey meat and gravy for dinner last night and it was yummy!!!

I waited until the birds were nice and cool and got my hands dirty.  This is the part were if you are like me you just have got to suck it up and deal with the yuck.  I got almost every ounce of meat off the birds and bagged it in about 3 cup portions.  This is enough for most of the recipes I make and I put 8 of those bags in the freezer.

Today I took 3 of the bags of meat that I put in the fridge and made Hot Chicken Salad.  I cooked up a triple batch of rice and chopped the onions and celery x3 and mixed it all up.  Then I put 2 portions in the freezer and cooked up one for dinner tonight.

Tonight I am taking the carcasses and boiling them for a while.  I’ll be adding some of the leftover celery and onion and some carrots and 2 more bags of meat from the fridge and I’ll freeze that in single servings for lunches or dinners.  I plan on adding the noodles when the soup is thawed so that they don’t get mushy.

I’m guessing that those 2 turkeys will provide my family of 3 with almost 17 meals all for $12 for the meat.  I used things out of my pantry and spent maybe another $6 so each meal would work out to just over $1 for three of us.  You can’t do much better than that with decent portions of meat in everything.

Please feel free to share your ideas for Turkey, I might need more recipes if I decide to get more birds to go with the 2 waiting for their holiday premier with all the fixings.

Xbox 360 Deal

If you are like me and said no way in heck am I getting up before the crack of dawn to fight for 10 Xbox’s at Walmart you still have a chance at getting one on Amazon for $199 with $100 credit.

Go here at 12 pst or 3pm est but go quick I bet they don't have too many up for grabs. I hope you enjoy your new game.

Fun at Target

Well I finally dragged myself out to Target today to get in on the Wii deal.  I ended up with 3 $49.99 games and 3 $19.99 games, 12 jars of Skippy Peanut butter, 10 Glade glass candle holdres, 10 glade refills, 4 rice krispy treats from the bakery and 1 pack of transformer pencils.

Total spent was $131 but I had a $21 credit from a return and a few missed coupons so really it was only $110 and I got $20 in gift cards for the Glade.  My store had the toy coupon books out but don’t count on your store having them.  You can print out the $10/2 wii games coupon here and while you are there you can also get the $1 off bakery item for some cheap or free goodies in the bakery and the $1 skippy peanut butter coupon.  Skippy is on sale for $1.87 with the $1 tq and my .75 mq it made for some really cheap peanut butter.  That tq expires tomorrow though so hurry even without the mq .87 for peanut butter is a good deal.

I also stopped at Walmart on my way home and picked up 2 more turkeys.  On Sunday I will be cooking them together and making soup and freezing the rest of the meat for future dinners.  Even when you consider the bone weight I can’t beat that price for chicken so we’ll have lots of meal size portions put away so we can spend less in the next couple of months.

So how is your Christmas shopping going?  Please feel free to chime in and let me know.  I love hearing how everyone is doing.  I’m hoping to get back to my homemade gifts and will be sharing them with you as they get created.

Walmart Deal

 

If you have a Super Walmart check out the meat department.  I usually don’t buy my meat there but I couldn’t pass up this deal.  They have turkeys 10-16lb on sale for 40 cents a pound.  That’s right I said 40 cents.  My store has a limit of 2 per person but you can’t beat that price around here.

Update

Hello my name is Tiffany and I have a problem….. LIFE!!!!  LOL  For the past 2 months or so I feel like I am endlessly playing catchup.  I’m on a treadmill and every time I get used to the speed someone turns it up, but I’ve decided something today.  I’m getting off the treadmill, that’s it I’m done.

There will be no more playing catch up.  There are things that I wanted to do, people I wanted to reach out to, sales I wanted to shop, and things I really wanted to organize around here but it didn’t happen.  Plain and simple life gets in the way and I’ve found that walking around with the weight of all the things I wanted or should have done on my shoulders is depressing and draining.  So starting tomorrow morning my slate is clean, there are things that have to be done around the house and that’s fine but I’m not dealing with the guilt of it not being done.

I have recently started a business and would love to start booking parties and that needs my attention and my excitement.  My mother is going through a rough patch and I need to get alittle more out of my head to be supportive of her and I need to do a better job supporting my family.  But there will be no more guilt about not posting, not washing dishes, not feeling like making dinner or whatever.  I feel that this new attitude will help me back to being me.  The lists have come down I’m not carrying anything into tomorrow other than we have family visiting, we haven’t seen them in 2 years and I will enjoy their visit and stop worrying.

I’m hoping that this release will let me get back into the deal and into blogging because I love connecting with all of you and I love reading your comments and emails.  With my new business venture I will setting a schedule and I will be penciling in time for blogging but it will be in pencil so if it doesn’t happen there’s always tomorrow.  I will be starting a new set of goals for the rest of the year and sharing them soon, I’m excited to start reading everyone’s posts and blogs again I can’t wait to here how your goals are coming and what you are doing to get there.  Please feel free to share your struggles and goals here, if you would like to have a guest post please feel free to email me anytime and we can set something up.

I hope you all had a great Halloween and are excited about November and the upcoming holidays!!!

Halloween Festivities

Since I’m making a list of possible trick or treating venues to take Shawn to I thought I might as well share.  I’m working on getting back into blogging since life is starting to settle down a little.

Noon-3pm Toys R Us will have a parade with free reusable bags and candy along the way

6pm-8pm  Florida Mall will have trick or treating no toy weapons allowed

1pm-9pm Lake Buena Vista Factory Outlet will have trick or treating at participating locations

Noon-7pm Premium Outlet Mall will have trick or treating at participating locations.  They say you can get a list at customer service.

5pm-9pm Dowtown Disney will have trick or treating at 22 locations in West Side, Pleasure Island, and Dowtown.  The places are always marked with balloons and giant mickey pumpkin markers.

Starting at 5:30pm there will be a halloween character at Boardwalk (it’s usually Mickey)

6pm there is a small selection of trick or treating and crafts at Boardwalk

If you know of other great places to go in the area that are free please share with us.  I hope you all have a spooktacular Halloween.