Christmas Gift Ideas - Frugal Living

 

If  you have friends who are planning to cut spending and live a more frugal lifestyle, my book A Penny Saved would be a great gift this Christmas.

Christmas Gift Ideas - Gift Card or Money Envelopes

 Gift cards and money are always welcome gifts but finding something to put them in can be costly. $2 for a tin or envelope.

I found this great idea for an origami envelope on you tube. I used 8 1/2 x 11 card stock for my envelopes, but you could use any paper. I have a few encyclopedias that I use for crafts and those pages would be a fun idea. 

Removing Tea Stains from Spoons

 Most of my spoons are stainless steel which is a misnomer as they tend to be stained with tea constantly.

I found several videos to remove tea stains and I found this worked really well:

Instructions:

Cut a lemon in half. Squeeze lemon over the teaspoons. I used the lemon to also rub the lemon juice on any stained areas (you can also do this with a stainless  steel mug). Leave for ten minutes.

Melt 2 tsp sugar in 1 cup of hot water. Pour over the teaspoons. Use steel wool to scrub  off the remaining stains.

Note: Many of the comments with the video suggested not using steel wool as it scratches the surface and will incur more stains in the future.

Online Purchasing Warning - Kendally

 Make sure you research companies before purchasing online.

I recently purchased items from Kendally.Com and unfortunately failed to read their return policy or the reviews on Better  Business Bureau (of  which there are many  negatives).

I waited nearly a month for the items  and was disappointed when I opened the package, 

The two items were considerably smaller than advertised and very different from the picture shown on their advertisements (mostly on Facebook). The items were very flimsy and not at all like the items which supposedly offer support in the videos. (there was no return information or in fact any information contained in the package).

The other thing I failed to review was their return policy which shows that they won't refund items that are the incorrect size and returns have to be sent to England (even though the package shows it was shipped from California.) Even with a refund, half the amount would be spent on returning the items to England and also incur customs forms both of which seems to be a deterrent from returning items. Their office is shown as Boulder, Colorado on the Better Business Bureau site.

I don't understand why companies don't want satisfied customers or those who would re-purchase items, surely this would considerably reduce the cost of advertising. But sadly this seems to be the way our world is going these days with substandard service and customers who are no longer valued.

Tips for online purchasing from Better Business Bureau here.

Growing Vegetables from Kitchen Scraps

 With food prices soaring, I'm making full use of my vegetable garden this year and have been watching a lot of You Tube gardening tip videos. One I really like, from Australia, is Self Sufficient Me. Mark has lots of good tips on growing vegetables and one experiment he did was re-growing kitchen scraps. It's worth a try and doesn't cost anything. I'll post later if I have any success following his guidelines.

Dump and Go Crockpot Dinners