SeeHere, which is a online photo ordering company is giving away to anyone who wants them 50 free photo cards PLUS free shipping! This is not a joke! I ordered mine a couple of days ago and it is really free. They are already on their way!

I was so excited because now I don’t have to purchase Christmas cards this year. This is just enough for our family and friends.

This offer is good through the end of November. Just click the following link to get the coupon code and details!

50 Free Photo Cards, Shipped Free Too

Let’s start with the door. What do you have on your door that says, Welcome, we are so blessed that you are part of our family today? A simple wreath can make all the difference. I like this one from Better Homes and Gardens, and I was thinking, since we are now in November instead of October, many of those miniature pumpkins are going on sale at the grocery stores in an effort to move the inventory out the door, so now is a good time to do this project. Just use a ribbon that has an autumn or Thanksgiving print or color on it to make it festive. The Dollar Store has many of these on clearance now as they are already setting up their Christmas inventory.

Another area we need to be thinking about is the steps/porch or area surrounding our front door. If you have it in your budget, a few pots of fall mums would be beautiful. Another idea is to make your own welcome sign. WalMart has blank wooden craft plaques that could easily be decoupaged with Thanksgiving cards, gift wrap, etc. and used in this way.

We found on old grapevine heart wreath at a garage sale a few months back and bought fall leaf garlands and outlined the shape of the heart with the leaves. Then, I tied on a sprig of faux fall flowers, also found at the Dollar Store (along with the $1.00 leaf garland), and hung a welcome sign I already owned on the inside. Before my guests arrive I will make luminaries with my children to line the walkway up to my front door. Candlelight and fall color! Nothing like it to set an inviting and comforting tone for the evening.

Next Wednesday’s frugal decor topic: the entryway/foyer, and the mantle.

What are you using to decorate the front porch and door of your home for Thanksgiving?

Take five minutes to assemble these ingredients in the slow cooker, and have a warm, tasty snack ready for later in the evening. Serve this dip with slices of crusty bread, cutting each slice in half to make a more manageable size.

Look for bacon on sale (this week my local grocer has a BOGO on bacon.) Cook, crumble and freeze ahead of time to make this a quick and easy prep on Thanksgiving day. Cream cheese is also on sale coming up to the holidays. Don’t freeze cream cheese as it affects the texture, but it lasts a long time in the fridge!

2 8-ounce bricks of cream cheese, cut in cubes

4 cups shredded cheddar

1 cup half-and-half

2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon dried minced onion

1 teaspoon prepared mustard

15 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled.

Put all ingredients except bacon into a slow cooker. Cover and cook for 2 hours, or until cheeses are melted. Stir. Add bacon and stir in just before serving. It will be a hit with your guests–guaranteed!

Until midnight on November 12th 2009 you can get The Hillbilly Housewife’s entire freezer cooking system for 75% OFF (yes, you read that right)

Here’s where you can grab your entire freezer cooking system for a fraction of what you’d usually pay for it:

www.hillbillyhousewife.com/thankyou.htm

We’re holding this special sale as a way to say THANK YOU to all the people who have visited Econobusters and The Hillbilly Housewife.

Not only will you get The Freezer Meal System for 75% off, but you will also get five Free bonuses!

*******************************************

* Bonus 1: Quick and Easy Breakfasts

It’s the most important meal of the day, but we often don’t have enough time to fix it. These quick and easy ideas will have you fixing a good breakfast for your loved ones any day of the week.

* Bonus 2: Family Routines

I put this report together for you after realizing what a difference routines can make. Give them a try and see for yourself how much smoother your day will go.

* Bonus 3: Brown Bag Lunches

Kids and adults alike will love these wholesome bagged lunch ideas. We’ve also included plenty of recipes for you.

* Bonus 4: Homemade Ice Cream Recipes

Perfect for these hot summer days or for dessert throughout the year. Make them at home for a fraction of what you’d pay at the ice cream parlor.

* Bonus 5: Chicken Again?

Discover all kinds of different ideas and recipes to make cooking this lean and inexpensive meat interesting again.

WHEW! That’s a lot of goodies… and you get it all FREE when you try the entire freezer cooking collection for 75% off.

Go here right now and claim your copy before they’re all gone!

www.hillbillyhousewife.com/thankyou.htm

P.S. This special ends at midnight on November 12th .

Today, let’s talk about the actual shopping process. Right now is a good time to be clipping coupons on things like cranberry sauce, gravy mix, canned goods, and things that you will serve during Thanksgiving. In fact, I noticed at coupons.com that they even have some coupons that are $1.00 off certain brands of turkey and ham, so go by there and print those off. They also have coupons right now for cresent rolls, icing, cookie dough, Bird’s Eye frozen vegetables, and more. These could definitely come in handy.

Some things I have learned when I am going shopping during the holidays is to go shopping by myself. Now this is not always possible, but if it is, try to go by yourself. This way, little hands are not tempted to keep asking for things and you can stay focused on the task at hand.

Another thing that helps is to take your list! I never go into a grocery store without a list. If I do, I find myself buying things that I would not normally purchase, so take your list and stick to it!

Here are the things that should be accomplished next week. Thanks to Ocean Spray for putting all of these great Thanksgiving savers together!

 Week of November 15: Shopping

• Cut down on planning time by making one of our specialty menus. They have their own downloadable shopping lists with everything you need.
• Shop for non-perishables.
• Study your recipes. Make three grocery lists:
  •  
    • First, make a list of all non-perishable items that can be purchased this week to avoid the busy stores next week. Some staples you might need: flour, sugar, cornmeal, butter, eggs, canned cranberry sauces, fresh cranberries, juices, salt, peppercorns, dried seasonings, frozen vegetables, maple syrup, stuffing mixtures, nuts, etc.
    • Prepare a list of purchases for Thanksgiving week, such as perishables.
    •  The third list should be for anything that needs to be picked up the day before, such as a fresh turkey, breads, pies or flowers.

Next week, as we grow closer to Thanksgiving, we will offer day-to-day reminders of what you actually need to accomplish!

Every week on Sunday evenings, my family and I sit down and write out (or, for the little people among us, draw a picture of) the things we are thankful for in the past week. We write them out on small strips of paper and then we take turns going around the table to read out loud what we are praising the Lord for that week.

This has always been so much fun, but what is also a delight to the heart is to dig deep in the box and pull out really old notes and see what each of the children said years ago. Sometimes it is something funny, other times it is so precious that it brings back a flood of memories (and sometimes, tears).

Some of the blessings we have recorded are:

Our Blessings Box is starting to overflow, so we are going to spend an afternoon this week making a new, larger one. You don’t need to make one, necessarily, but it does add to the fun for the littles in our crew.

We are going to follow the example of Kim at Weaving a Tapestry. Look at these beautiful boxes she decorated:

Decorated boxes for organization… or Counting Your Blessings

Every week, when we do this little ritual that has become one of our most favorite traditions, I wonder how much more fun it will be when we have grandchildren around our table who get to read to notes their parents (my children) wrote when they were little. What fun that will be!

What family traditions does your family have that help you think of all the ways you have been blessed? What other ways does your family focus on resting and being grateful on Sundays, especially during the holiday season?

This week’s featured website is The Smarter Wallet. I happened upon this website while looking through the Frugal Hacks list that is available.

The Smarter Wallet is a website geared toward helping you manage your money by offering money tips, consumer news, and product reviews.

Here are some of the recent articles that I read on The Smarter Wallet.

• Hot Holiday Gift Giving Ideas
• Healthy Breakfast Idea~Oatmeal
• How to Fnd Your Self-Employment Venture

Be sure and stop by and see what kind of money tips you find!

Hi Molly,

Thought I’d ask you about suggestions for celebrating the holiday with really large families. Both my husband and I come from large families with 4 of our own children - and most of our family members are local. So, the holidays are always frustrating, exhausting, expensive, over-commercialized, etc. with gift exchanges, drawing names for both sides, meals, and time expectations. I so want to simplify and not feel forced to spend so much gift money and I don’t know how to go about making suggestions that will still appease most everyone (especially the gift giver love languages in both families). The whole gift thing is very stressful each season (probably because gift giving is last as a love language for me). And, I want to carve out time and money for the six of us - to be able to keep our own traditions and buy gifts for my own children and spouse - who usually get the short end since there’s not much left by the time we’ve covered everyone else. Gifts ideas for parents would also be helpful.

Any suggestions or things you’ve heard that other large families do would be greatly appreciated.

Warmly,
Jennifer

Once you have your pictures, gather up some of the prettiest, most colorful leaves you can find before you head home. While you’re looking for leaves, serve up some hot chocolate from a thermos and graham crackers or a homemade treat. Yum!

Once home, print out the best photos. If you don’t have a good printer, stop at a one hour print shop on the way home. Walmart, Rite-Aid and many other stores can print quickly, directly from your cameras SD card.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/danzen/ / CC BY 2.0

Earlier in the week someone sent me a link to a “paper harvest” at The Homeschool Post. I just loved these scrapbook paper pumpkins, and HAD to make try my hand at this simple craft. Here are a few ideas of how to use them.

~Make a kit for each child’s place setting which includes the pre-cut and pre-hole-punched strips, a name tag and the brads needed to assemble their own pumpkin. Be sure to keep the little holes that you punch out–they can be used as colorful confetti to sprinkle on the table if you wish.

~Make individual pumpkins for each place setting to serve as place cards. You can even tuck a little treat inside like a wrapped chocolate or mint.

Don’t go out and spend time and money trying to find just the right combination of scrapbook papers, unless you feel you really want to. I just used what I had on hand–if you look closely the white pumpkin has bulrushes on it–but it works! Some of my other pumpkins were polka dots, but they all look nice together. I will say that I found the full size (12 inch) pumpkin to be a bit floppy without support. Here are quick instructions for making the pumpkins - for more info click on the link to the original post above.

Start with a piece of 12 x 12 inch scrapbook paper. For the large pumpkin, cut the paper into 12 strips 1 inch wide. Punch a hole at each end of each strip. Poke a brad (those prongy things that are used to hold papers together) through the holes (right side up) at one end, and open the brad to hold the papers in place. Fan the papers into a circle, and one by one thread them onto the other brad, so the prongs end up inside the circle. Make sense?  For the small pumpkins, I cut each sheet of scrapbook paper in half, then cut each half into 12 strips, each 1 inch wide and 6 inches long. Then I put them together the same way. They are a fuller, more closed-in pumpkin this way. I just cut a leaf shape freehand, and tied it to the brad with twine, adding a little stamped name tag. No stamps–no worries–just print names on the computer, or handwrite.

Think of the possibilities! Wrap votive or pillar candles in co-ordinating paper, print out a verse and layer it over top. Make napkin holders by wrapping a toilet paper tube cut in half with scrapbook paper, and again, wrapping a verse around it . . . Lots you can do with this!

Moving on . . . remember my dollar store haul from last week?  Here are a few ideas for holding those 50 cent napkins. All were dollar store items, or gleaned from the backyard.

Tied with jute twine, with a leaf and flower scrounged from a thrift store, sad looking fake flower arrangement that I cut apart, and ended up with about 20 flowers and as many leaves.

Here we have a piece of wired ribbon from the dollar store, embellished with a tuft from my dried out pampas grass in the backyard.  I was able to get 12 9-inch ties from this $1.00 spool of ribbon.

 This one uses the purchased ring (8 for $1.00) and a leaf and berries from a tree in my backyard. The grapes are $1.00 store fakes, but woudn’t real grapes be a tasty treat?

One last photo to illustrate another suggestion: Think white. At yard sales and thrift shops I’m always on the lookout for white serving pieces. They can be decorative, but they’re also very practical, as they can be used for any occasion by just changing inexpensive accessories. Just this week I saw white dishes at Big Lots, Salvation Army, and Habitat for Humanity ReStore for not much more than you’d pay for good quality paper and plastic goods. If you don’t want to wash mounds of dishes after Thanksgiving dinner, just scrape the plates and soak them in hot soapy water in your laundry tub or plastic storage tubs until later. Just a thought–it’s a money-saver in the long run!

Not one item in this picture cost more than a dollar or two. Really.

Next Friday: Centerpieces, table coverings and runners, and setting a buffet table!