One Hundred Dollars a Month

1 Year Subscription to Everyday with Rachel Ray Magazine Only $4.50!

April 17, 2012 Leave a Comment

DiscountMags is offering a 1 year subscription to Everyday with Rachel Ray Magazine for only $4.50 a year when you use code 9964 at checkout.

In every issue you’ll find 30-minute meals, Rachael’s Diary, small party gatherings for special occasions, stolen weekends, Real Cooks Networks, Every Day Menu Planner, the No Recipe Zone & much more!

*This special rate will be live through midnight tonight 04/17/2012 (PST). You can purchase this deal as a new subscription or to renew your existing subscription. You can also purchase additional subscriptions as gifts! This is such a wonderful magazine at an amazing price.

Go HERE to get Everyday with Rachel Ray Magazine.

Recipe: Breakfast Crepes

April 16, 2012 2 Comments

breakfast crepes (1)

*I thought I would re-post this recipe in celebration of my latest adventure. Bon appétit!

I discovered this amazingly simple crepe recipe from my blogging friend MamaJJ about 2 years ago. These crepes are light, airy and when filled with fruit and whip cream, very filling.

Every time we eat JJ’s crepes the HH says “You should make these with spinach and cheese.” Every.Single.Time. And Every.Single. Time. I give an approving nod… and say “Maybe next time.”

Are you kidding me? I don’t want spinach and cheese… I want sugar and fruit thank you very much. If I want savory crepes I’ll go to a Sunday brunch at a restaurant. I think crepes should be sweet. Not savory. What do you think?

Ingredients

6 Eggs
1 heaping cup of all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk {I use 2%}
Pinch of salt

Directions

In a blender, mix eggs first, then add flour, salt and milk. Blend well. Plug the crepe maker in to let it heat up, spread a thin layer of batter across the top. Watch for indicator light to go off. Stuff crepes with whip cream and fresh fruit. Top with syrup, powered sugar and a little more whip cream. Yummalish!

I prefer using a non-stick crepe maker. Amazon has this CucinaPro Crepe Maker currently on sale for $41.97 shipped.

However, if you are a traditionalist, you’d probably enjoy this Cuisinart Nonstick Hard-Anodized 10-Inch Crepe Pan from Amazon.com better.

Filed Under: Recipe Tagged With: eggs, recipe

{Giveaway} Where In The World Is Mavis, The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird and The Travelocity Gnome?

April 16, 2012

Today I am giving away a $25 gift card to Starbucks!

Want to Play?

Simply Guess: Where in the World is Mavis, The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird & Henry the Gnome?

There are 3 ways you can enter to win.

Leave a separate comment for each form of entry. Comments must be made on Onehundreddollarsamonth.com to count as a valid entry. {You may leave three separate comments}.

#1 Answer this question: What City and Country is Mavis, The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird and Henry the Gnome currently in?

#2 “Like” Onehundreddollaramonth on facebook, follow me on Pinterest, Twitter, and/or subscribe to my daily email and leave a comment below telling me you’ve done so {or already do}.

#3 Leave a comment on the Onehundreddollarsamonth facebook page telling me if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

This giveaway ends on Friday, April 20th, 2012 at 10pm PST.

1 Comment will be randomly selected from all correct entries via the random generator on random.org. You must have the correct answer to win. The winner will be notified via email and have 48 hours to respond to claim the prize.

Good Luck! I hope you win!

♥ Mavis

Filed Under: Giveaway, Travel, Where In The World Is Mavis Tagged With: adventure, Adventures, Giveaway, travel

Mondays With Mavis: How to Feed Your Family for $100 a Month

April 16, 2012 2 Comments

I can’t believe I didn’t pack a costume!

Okay, so I don’t even know how to transition from the photo above to what groceries made their way into my home last week, so I won’t even try. But I do want to say this. Life is an adventure. Be spontaneous and live in the moment. You might just meet a super hero!

Here is a run down of all the food I purchased last week {and some free stuff too}.

Swagbucks: FREE!

I was planning on saving up all my swagbucks until the end of the year and using them around Christmas time, but I decided to cash them in to order a bunch of free food from Amazon.com instead.

The pancake mix, syrup, red vines, fruit leather, clif bars, mojo bars, peanut butter, canned corn and coffee were all free thanks to the points I had earned with my swagbucks over the past few months. Gotta love free food!

Fred Meyer $13.95

Normally I don’t buy Doritos, but since The Girl and I were headed out-of-town I decided to buy Monkey Boy and the Handsome Husband a wee bit of junk food. I also stocked up on 4 lbs of chicken breast at $1.79 a lb. As I was walking towards the produce section to pick up some broccoli for chicken stir fry I noticed a woman filling her cart with bags of rolls from the reduced bread section. On an impulse I picked up a bag full of 6 bagels and 2 croissants for $1.50. Not a fantastic deal, but still a decent one I thought.

Albertsons $6.36

Did you end up buying anything at Albertsons with this round of double coupons? I thought the deals were a bit of a snooze fest personally. The only groceries that made it back to my house were 2 gallons of milk @ $2.19 each, 2 packages of Nabisco Chips Ahoy {I doubled 2 buy 1 gallon of milk save $1.00 on cookies coupon} and some free Hostess doughnuts.

Talk about a totally boring week in the grocery department. Oh well, when you are trying to feed your family for only one hundred dollars a month, some weeks are better than others.

So how did you do this week? Did you:

A) Buy nothing, and use what was already in your pantry and freezer?
B) Go hog-wild buying up brie cheese, caviar and shrimp?
C) Just stocked up the basics? or
D) Found some pretty awesome deals at the grocery store and made out like a bandit?

Total Spent This Week $20.31
Total Spent This Year $401.73
Total Spent This Year on Garden Seeds/Supplies $357.92

Amazon: Eight O’Clock Coffee, 100% Colombian Ground, 33-Ounce Bag is only $12.63 shipped when you use the subscribe & save option on Amazon.com.

Filed Under: Albertsons, Swagbucks, Weekly Shopping Trips Tagged With: Albertsons, albertsons double coupons, Swagbucks, Weekly Shopping Trips

{Giveaway Results} Garden Book, Gloves + 9 Packets of Seeds

April 16, 2012 Leave a Comment

A big thank you to everyone who entered the Garden Book, Gloves & Seeds Giveaway.

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Dee who said “If I could only eat one thing everyday…. I chose potatoes, there are so many different things to do with them.” Dee has been notified via email and now has 48 hours to claim her prize.

Have a great Monday and be on the lookout for another fun giveaway real soon!

♥ Mavis

Filed Under: Giveaway Tagged With: Giveaway, Giveaway Results

Amazon: Printer Paper Only $3.72 Per Ream

April 16, 2012 Leave a Comment

If you are in need of some printer paper Amazon currently has GP Copy & Print Paper on sale for $3.72. This ships for FREE if you have Amazon Prime!

Go HERE to get this paper deal.

Filed Under: Amazon.com, Online Deals Tagged With: amazon, Online deal

The Art of Packing Light : Forget About Clothing, Leave Room For Souvenirs

April 15, 2012 15 Comments

Being spontaneous and packing light is something I do well. Not only have I honed in on my skills over the years, but so has my daughter, The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird.

Last week, before The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird left for school, she asked me if we were going anywhere for spring break.

I was like, “I don’t know, would you like me to see if I can get free tickets somewhere {by cashing in my credit card miles}?”

“Yes, please” she said.

An hour later I sent her a text message while she was at school:

Mavis: I can get free tickets to Washington D.C., Hawaii or XXX. There were no free tickets available for anywhere in Europe. Not even Sweden, can you believe it?

Mavis: Do you want to go to XXX?

The Girl: But I don’t speak XXX…. Hmmm. Maybe.

Mavis: Who cares! We’ll just get a book and point to stuff if we can’t figure it out.

The Girl: Umm. Okay.

And that was that.

After a quick call to the Handsome Husband asking him if he wanted to come along on a little last-minute adventure {okay, so maybe it was a courtesy call because I only had enough points for 2 free tickets} he said no, that he and Monkey Boy would rather sit at home in their underoos, eating Doritos and playing video games all spring break rather than going on an adventure. I quickly booked the tickets and ordered 2 travel guides off Amazon.com. And then went about my day.

Fast forward a few days and well, here we are. Packing. For a trip. To a foreign country. Where we don’t speak the language.

Did I mention we have not had time research this trip at all?

When Gustaf {my hottie of a UPS man} delivered the guide books, we only opened them long enough to find a recommendation for a centrally located hotel.

I mean with chickens, gardening, BLOGGING, and loads of homework for The Girl, who has time for research? Isn’t that what the plane ride is for?

UPDATE

I started writing this post right before we left. Before heading out the door I went on-line to print out our boarding passes to CHINA {yes China!} only to discover you NEED A VISA to enter China. Hole.Lee.Crap. Who knew? So I quickly called the people who issue expedited visas only to find out the fastest you can get one is within 24 hours of supplying documents.

We had to cancel the trip.

You want to know what The Girl said? “Oh well, I was a little worried about the food and language barrier anyway.”

So I called the airlines to see if we could cancel our free tickets to China and go somewhere else instead.

Luckily, 2 tickets to ______ had just been released, and so with just a few hours notice, we are now on our way to ______! Wahoooo!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did”
~Mark Twain

*Check back tomorrow for a super awesome giveaway! Trust me, you’ll want to enter!

Filed Under: Travel, travel tips Tagged With: Adventures, travel

Botanical Interests Container Gardening Contest

April 15, 2012 1 Comment

Calling all green thumbs:

Will you be planting anything in a container this year? Well take some pictures because Botanical Interests is holding a Container Gardening contest this year. And YES, yours truly will be entering!

Simply create a unique, whimsical and/or breathtaking garden in a container. Take photos at your creation’s at its prime and email them to Botanical Interests. There is a limit of three (3) photo entries per person and photos must be received by October 31, 2012. Winners will be announced November 30, 2012. In addition to lot’s of fabulous prizes the grand prize winning container and instructions will be featured in next year’s catalog.

Wahooo! I’m going to be famous!

Head on over HERE for complete details.

*No purchase necessary to participate in this contest.

Filed Under: container gardening, Gardening, Giveaway Tagged With: Botanical Interests Seed Company, container gardening, Giveaway

Container Gardening Ideas: Starting a Garden in a Container

April 14, 2012 4 Comments

This post is for everyone out there who does not have the luxury of a big backyard to plant row after row of fruits and vegetables. If you live in a condo or apartment and want to start a garden, YOU CAN DO IT! Granted, you may not be able to grow as much food as someone with multiple garden boxes or garden beds galore, but you can still have a garden. Just on a smaller scale.

A few months ago as we were clearing the backyard to make room for the new greenhouse, I suddenly noticed there were a ton of saplings to remove. Instead of tossing them onto the “burn pile” I set them aside for later use.

So far I have built a trellis for the peas and beans, and I have also set aside some of the larger saplings we removed for another, much grander project. As I was sorting through the wood, I happened to notice one {6 ft} tree we had cut down. It was perfect. Perfect for a container garden.

After filling both pots with potting soil I tossed in about 40 sugar snap pea seeds, covered them with soil and gave them a drink. A few weeks later, and once the peas were about 2″, I carefully inserted the tree into the soil towards the center of the pot and added 6 lettuce starts {3 romaine & 3 red sails}.

As the peas grow, they will start to climb up the tree and in time completely cover the tree with vines, and eventually peas. This is the type of container gardening that I adore, and best of all it can be re-created so many different ways. The possibilities are endless.

So there you have it. How to plant a garden in a container.

Be creative. Think outside of the box. You can do it!

Here are a few more books on container gardening I think you might enjoy:

Amazon: The Edible Balcony: Growing Fresh Produce in Small Spaces
Amazon: McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container
Amazon: Apartment Gardening: Plants, Projects, and Recipes for Growing Food in Your Urban Home
Amazon: The Complete Guide to Growing Vegetables, Flowers, and Herbs from Containers

Filed Under: Gardening Tagged With: container gardening, Gardening, lettuce, peas, sticks

{Giveaway} Garden Book, Gloves + 9 Packets of Seeds

April 14, 2012

Today I am giving away a copy of the book 1000 Gardening Questions & Answers, 9 packets of Ed Hume Seeds and a pair of garden Digz garden gloves.

There are 3 ways you can enter to win.

Leave a separate comment for each form of entry. Comments must be made on Onehundreddollarsamonth.com to count as a valid entry. {You may leave three separate comments}.

#1 Simply answer this question: What is your favorite fruit or vegetable to grow?

#3 Leave a comment on the Onehundreddollarsamonth facebook page telling me if you could eat 1 fruit or vegetable for the rest of your life what would it be?

This giveaway ends on April 15, 2012 at 10pm PST.

1 Comment will be randomly selected via the random generator on random.org. The winner will be notified via email and have 48 hours to respond to claim the prize.

Good Luck! I hope you win!