SingleWorkingMama

Now that Old Man Winter is showing us hints of gnarling his teeth, simple and (as always) cost-effective “comfort” dinners come to mind.

Busy parents aren’t often able to create culinary masterpieces from scratch, and I am proud to say that I’ve discovered a $5 chili recipe that is easy to make, and requires only 2 cans and some cooked hamburger!

I have always liked the concept of the The Cake Mix Doctor, which helps add zip to a box cake mix. The same idea can apply to main dishes, like chili!

Canned foods make my life easier, are inexpensive, and save time.

Here’s my $5 Chili recommendation:

1 can Bush’s Chili Magic = $1.20-ish, depending on sale or coupon
1 can Petite Cut Diced Tomatoes (They’re cute and teeny, and I like ‘em. Brand is irrelevant.) $1-ish
1 lb. Ground Beef (or turkey) = about $2
Onion

Additional compliments, if desired: Shredded cheese, chopped onion, sour cream, macaroni elbow noodles

To create:
Cook the beef with some chopped onion. (Or skip the onion, if you must)
Season it (if you want to)
Throw the Chili Magic, Petite diced tomatoes and beef into a crock pot or sauce pot.
Add cooked elbow noodles and additional garnishes as desired.

You now have a meal for a small, but mighty crew for about $5.

It is truly magical.

Tip:
Last time I bought two pounds of beef, I cooked one up just for chili. I threw it in a zip-loc bag and froze it. Today, when I thought “Hmm, what’s for dinner?” I threw the Chili Magic, tomatoes and frozen cooked beef into the crock and set it on low. Mmm, THAT was easy!

The other day, we drove through McDonald’s to get some vanilla ice cream for our apple pie. I like their ice cream, because it’s much lower in fat than custard, and it is CHEAP.

I learned a little trick on this visit.

Ordering a cup with vanilla ice cream costs $1. (He told me it’s “technically a sundae.”)

Ordering a vanilla cone costs .49.

Ordering a cone in a cup costs .49.

I don’t know what they’d say if you asked for a cone in a cup minus the cone, however!

Last night, I reached out to my facebook friends/fans for some ideas about cheap, quality fun with kids. I got a GREAT response, and some really creative ideas!

Cha-Ching! Hear those savings rack up!

Here was my question: Answer this: What’s the cheapest, most awesome activity you’ve done with your kiddos? C’mon! Give me “bang for the buck!”

Rob said: “Mid summer, indoor snowball fight with lots of balled up paper…lots of paper. Ambushing the first person to come into the house from behind the couch is priceless.”

Totally fun! What a way to help recycle last week’s newspaper, and you can be sure the kids will love it.

Catherine offered: “Mancala or connect 4 tournaments because they turn fast and nobody gets bored….and I have a hard time dealing with Monopoly:) The fire pit is great, but that’s not till winter. Sometimes we just put on iTunes and dance which is probably very entertaining for my neighbors…”

We haven’t broken out Mancala yet, but we just tried Connect 4 and while we’re still in the early stages of learning, it offers GREAT potential and really gets the wheels turnin’. I got mine last Christmas season at Walmart, and I think it was only $5 or so, too! I absolutely love dance-a-thons, and chuckled about her comment regarding the neighbors. I’ve had that very same thought, many times myself!

Mary Kaye suggests (for those in Wisconsin): “An inexpensive summer outing is to head up to Bay Beach in Green Bay. Tickets are 25 cents and most rides are 2 tickets. The park is right on the shores of Lake Michigan. It’s a little gem.”

I’ve not yet been there, but have heard only great things about Bay Beach. Throw in a visit to Lambeau Field, and any Green Bay Packers fan-in-the-making will get their proper introduction to some serious state heritage.

Erin and Amy both offer different spins on scavenger/treasure hunts:

Erin (Tireless mother of four boys!): “For lunch or dinner when I’m home alone with the kids, I make a scavenger hunt for the boys. I hide clues around the house and they have to find them and head on to the next clue. Depending upon what we are having for dinner, they either find part of there dinner at each clue or play money. their food or money and meet at the final resting place… Read More. (If it is money, they then have to use it to buy their food at the “restaurant”. They love picking off the menu. ) At the end, we sit in front of the fireplace for a living room picnic.”

Amy: “I love the scavenger hunt idea too!
never thought about having them collecting anything along the way.
i do treasure hunts, and the girls love them. i have both hand drawn (therefore sad looking) clues on notecards, as well as pictures i took of somethings in the house and in the yard. the last clue usually leads to some special treat – like ice cream cones, or a small prize.
they love both the end result and the journey!”

Seriously, my friends… The above suggestions are all amazing, and times your kiddos will cherish forever.

Join the discussion and meet these fantastic parents on Facebook!

I haven’t done a post recently about money saving techniques. Thanks to a very generous coworker, I will do so now.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am lucky to have colleagues who have also become friends.

Some of the ladies I work with and I have started a “goods exchange,” which includes clothing for children, various household odds and ends, shoes and clothing for us.

Yesterday, I was griping to my friend that in addition to hating all of the pants in my current repertoire, that suddenly almost all of them seem faded or damaged in some other way.

Pants! New pants for me! (Still working on those abs.)

Today, I am happier than a baby in a candy store, as that very friend brought me about 20 pairs of VERY gently-worn pants that are too roomy for her.

I have the bottom half of an entirely new wardrobe! (I’m thrilled that she and I share a similar fashion sense, which is key in this kind of arrangement working out, of course…)

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

When my kids grow out of their current sizes, I always love to share with friends. It’s fun and nostalgic to see a pal’s little tyke romping around in something your very own kiddo once wore.

I encourage anyone who isn’t too proud to trade pants with their friends to do so. Even the cheapest clearance items are more expensive than free!

Recently, I’ve been wowed, impressed, and most of all thrown off of my parenting game by the logic and persistence of my seven year old.

While her interests seem to come (and go) in waves, her most recent request for a baby sister is hanging around much longer than I’d like.

It’s really funny. First, I try to explain that in order for me to have a baby, I should be married. (It’s the way I roll.)

“But,” she reasoned, “you have Brett and me, and you aren’t married.”

Sigh. This is the time I realize that gone are the days of pacifying my kiddos with a simple answer to any question they pose, and when I have to remind her that when they were born, I was married; that I didn’t enter the realm of the Single Mama until I got a divorce.

“Well,” she said (wheels turning) “I think I know a really nice guy for you. My PRINCIPAL!” She’s also commented on people we run into out and about, and once decided that because a man winked at me at the gas station that he thought I was beautiful and wanted to marry me.

Not good. Now she’s on the hunt to find not my soul mate, but the papa for her dream baby sister.

When I first got divorced, I was getting clobbered from every angle by friends, colleagues, neighbors and even vague acquaintances trying to set me up with “so-and-so,” who was always “really great,” and “blah, blah, blah.” I never imagined that one of these forces would be my own offspring!

I’m trying to prove to my kids that I don’t need some nameless, faceless entity to make my life whole. So how do I do this?

So far, my approach has included the following:

• I laugh with her when she tries to set me up, and agree with her when we see a “cute one.”
• I tell them constantly that I don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy!
• I remind them that happy families come in all shapes and sizes; that they are my focus, and that when the time is right, maybe I will get involved again.

At the end of the day, I stand by my conviction. I really hope that my theory that they’ll get a stronger sense of themselves holds true, and that they learn much earlier than I did about what it really takes to have an awesome relationship.

C’mon. Who else out there has gone through this? Who else has dealt with similar efforts and requests by well-meaning children? I want to hear from you!

You’ve heard me talk about the SuperManny before. Something I haven’t talked much about is the fact that he, Brent Dodge, is a Disney expert and author of an upcoming Disney Guide book!

As a result, I was well-informed about what to see, what to do, and what to avoid at Disney World when we took our trip there a few weeks ago.

That's us in the first two rows!

Tonight, Brent will be interviewing me on his weekly show! Hopefully, I will be able to help offer some tips and tricks for traveling to Disney with small children.

I hope you tune in! The show starts at 8:30 Central, and I will be making my appearance around 9.