durhamonthecheap

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Sunday bargain shopping trip - lots of clearance items at the S. Roxboro Kroger

This morning I stopped by Kroger to buy groceries and use up a bunch of free product coupons that I had, including two products from Pillsbury and the Freebie Friday download from Dole.

While I was at the Kroger, they were pricing out a lot of clearance items, including frozen raspberries and a bunch of skillet meals. They also reduced blintzes and pierogies, plus from frozen vegetables. So if you are looking for bargains, the S. Roxboro Kroger will have plenty of clearance items this weekend. I picked up a lot of clearance items as well, including raspberries, skillet meals and blintzes. All the items above were less than $9 out of pocket - what a bargain!

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Requiem for another subscription box: My last Goodies box October 2013

So with Goodies another subscription service stops. First Cravebox, now Goodies - what is a blogger with a yearning for new items to review to do? Well I did make use of a special to Nature Box and signed up with them and my first Nature Box is supposed to get here next week. We will see how I like their products.

The above image shows the contents of the October 2013 box for Goodies. I love everything in it. The Nourish Kellogs sample is great for the cold morning we have, when people want a warm breakfast. The Lunchables Jr was nice, although I did not care that they included blueberry-flavored dried apple pieces. I would much rather have real fruit in the flavor indicated included. The Belgian truffles were awesome, smooth and silky, just dissolving in your mouth. The smores bar was a great snack since it was healthy, but still tasted great.

I love Chai and I was happy to see a new brand included since it will give me more options when buying Chai in the future. I have not had time to try out the pizza dough, but I have some veggies from the garden in the fridge and so a homemade pizza with some peppers and grated cheese and may a little bit of ham and some onions sounds like a good dinner in the near future. The Greek yogurt in the bag was outstanding because the flavor was strong and the portion size was just right. Best of all, you can now pack yogurt in the lunch bag and do not need to keep it cool. The weakest component was probable the Choco-Pie because the chocolate flavor was weak and the whole concoction tasted almost stale. I was not a friend of this sample.

Overall, this was one of the better Goodies boxes and so that makes it double sad that no more Goodies Boxes will be coming my way. I discovered some great items through Goodies. We are still sampling the Chipotle Mango and Raspberry sauces that I got to know through this subscription service. I hope that Walmart will come up with a new subscription service at some point in the future because they had some awesome products and for $7 the price for each box was more than reasonable.

Do you have a favorite subscription service for food, makeup, clothing etc? What makes that subscription service special to you?

Disclaimer: I received the Goodies Company box in exchange for a nominal fee. The opinions expressed in this blog are solely my own and have not been influenced by any third party.

Rare treat - Dunkin Donuts Dozen and a large coffee with cream and sugar

And before everyone panics, no I did not eat a dozen donuts from DD. I simply splurged for a weekend treat on buying a dozen donuts from DD to enjoy and treat ourselves to fresh donuts and flavors that we like. We have survived our grocery story holiday with plenty more money in a bank account and I still monitor carefully what I am spending (less than $12 at Harris Teeter today). So I felt that I could splurge on dessert for the weekend.

As I was selecting the donuts, I noticed several new flavors. Besides our usual favorite of toasted coconut, they now also have a chocolate coconut at DD. New to us was also a red velvet donuts. No dozen would be completed without the frosted maple or the lemon. And then of course there is the Bismarck. Combined with a large coffee, cream and sugar, to go, just looking at the picture makes you happy. At least it makes me happy.

What is your favorite donut flavor? And are you a Dunkin fan or do you prefer any of DD's competitors?

Book review: Plain Peace (A Daughters of the Promise Novel) Paperback by Beth Wiseman

This book deals with the struggles of a young Amish woman, who struggles with combining her own personal desire of love and marriage with the demands and strict discipline enforced by her grandfather. I think we can all relate to this situation. Everyone went likely through a phase of teenage rebellion in which we felt that our parents just did not get it that we were growing up and especially the case of a dad who is overprotective of his little girl, even though she is in her 20s already.

available on Amazon.com here

While Anna is certainly no rebellious teenager, the struggle she faces to live her own life is something that is reminiscent of teenagers longing for independence. Things really get problematic for Anna when Jacob Hostetler moved to Paradise and seems not to worry about the imposing figure of Anna's grandfather, who also happens to be the bishop. Jacob is starting to court Anna and Anna herself is longing for the love of Jacob, dreaming already of marrying him.

But how to show her grandfather that falling in love with Jacob and marrying him is not equal to betraying her faith? And how to convince the bishop that his ways may seem outdated and also threaten the community itself?

But Anna is not the only one who feels that she has to keep a secret. It seems that her grandfather's strict rules slowly force almost everyone in the community to hide personal wishes, desires or actions. This cannot end well. But Anna manages to change her grandfather and get him to understand that adapting his rules to the current times is a small sacrifice in exchange for creating a healthy and open community of Amish.

This book contains a list of questions that are intended to reinforce the major themes of the book and help the reader in discussing the book. I found the questions to be helpful when read beforehand because they made me more aware of character developments as I was reading the book. As an added bonus, the book in an Appendix also has some really yummy recipes, including a wonderful raspberry chocolate cheesecake that I cannot wait to try out.

I liked this book despite its fairly overt Christian theme. One of the main themes of this book is forgiveness. The community is healthier because people trust each other to have errors in judgment forgiven and not having to keep secrets makes life so much easier for individuals.

Disclaimer: I was provided a free copy of the book through booksneeze.com in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and have not been influenced by booksneeze or any third party.

Is anyone still reading a real newspaper? In any case, this comic will work for online stories as well!

I saw this image on Facebook. It was posted by a lawyer friend of mine and I wanted to share it. News articles can be fairly depressing at times and with the economy still not really recovering and many people still struggling financially, any bit of humor that can be injected into the news helps.

source: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/substitutions.png

I really like that the politicians in Washington are actually called by, in my opinion at least, their appropriate names. It is not as if anyone these days have much faith left in congress or its members to righten the ship and bring about a recovery through legislation. If the economy recovers it will be by other forces, not through decisions and actions by our government.

So next time you read a story about Washington politics, think of an elf-lord commenting about the actions of the homestar runner and river spirits getting together for a discussion and requesting a tumblr post to help them reach the final decision.

Redecorating your home and needing to paint a room, but wanting to do it on the budget? Benefit from the mistakes of others

I have painted almost all the rooms in our house since the rooms were all the same plain light yellow when we moved in and I could not stand the uniformity of the rooms. I need personality in the rooms and so plenty of color on the walls is one way in which I make the room fit their purpose or the person that uses a specific room. Painting is one way in which you can easily spruce up your house and it is also one of the cheapest ways to decorate the interior of your home. But even paint can be pricey, often costing $30 a gallon.

Here comes the service of home supply stores to mix up paint into play and how you can turn the mistakes that happen when custom colors are mixed into an advantage for you and your wallet.Home Depot and Lowes will not only have regular missed tint sales throughout the year, but you can just stop the store and usually find on a cart near the paint area a bunch of paint cans with custom colors gone awry.

I have used missed tints almost exclusively for the past few years when needing to paint a room in our house or one of the rentals. No need to pay full price for paint, when you can take your time and find very nice colors at bargain prices. The above room is our home office and I love the dark green. I was actually looking for a green paint for the walls and was so happy when I found the dark green for $5. I have one wall in white as an accent wall because in front of it is a dark wood bookshelf. But the rest of the room has dark green walls and it makes it very cozy in the winter.

For the guest room I was lucky to found a turquoise color that reminded me of Tiffany blue. I wanted to do that room in blue and a neutral color, such as brown or gray. I was lucky to have found bedding in blue / brown at Ross on clearance and also bought the curtains on clearance. The wall color seems like a natural fit and no one would every suspect that the color was an accidental find and bought very cheap due to a home supply store employee having made a mistake when mixing a custom color.

So next time if you need paint for a home decorating project. Take your time, stop by Home Depot or Lowes a few times and check out the missed tint carts to see whether you can find bargain paint for your room and save a few bucks upfront!

Monday, November 4, 2013

Crowdtap sampling: Truvia Natural Sweetener

As indicated earlier, I received a huge gift pack from Crowdtap to host a party for Truvia, an all-natural sweetener. Today we party day and that means yesterday was baking day. I had decided early on to make Truvia-sweetened muffins with orange and raspberry flavor and then serve some croissants to go with the Strawberry (sugar-free from Smuckers) that Crowdtap had provided. I also served from Halloween-inspired sugar cookies since it is this time of year. Everything turned out great and my colleagues were impressed with how well Truvia tasted in the bake muffins. I had used the baking blend from Truvia, supplied by Crowdtap, and you can use it just like sugar, no conversion necessary. This makes baking with reduced calorie sweeteners so much easier. I hate to have to convert between the original recipe and any recipe with sweetener, but having a Truvia baking blend means that I can simply follow the original recipe.

Above you can see operation " baking with Truvia" underway. It was really easy and the Truvia crystals behaved just like regular sugar when mixing the muffing dough.

Above you can see the muffins and they browned nicely in the oven, but still stayed moist. This is the same consistency of my regular sugar muffins and so Truvia really does behave like sugar when using the baking blend for muffin baking. I was definitely impressed!

The goodies are ready for sampling and I will pick up some croissants to go with the jam tomorrow before work. I love croissants for brunch/breakfast because the butter is baked into the dough and so it is enough to just add jam, no need to extra butter!

We had a really nice spread and I loved that Crowdtap had included some goodies like the t-shirt and the spoon because they were great for decorating the table. I like to add some informational material as well or items such as the spoon because they are eye-catching and help people remember the brand name.

Plenty of informational material on Truvia, such as recipes and websites, and then various forms of Truvia to educate the guests about what Truvia is and how it can be used. Most have either used or are currently using Truvia to sweeten their coffee using the single serving packets. No one had even seen the spoonable containers of Truvia and none of my guests had even heard that a Truvia baking blend was even available. So this was a real discovery sampling event for my guests.

We all sampled Truvia in the coffee and one person remarked that it really looked like sugar and, after tasting the Truvia in her coffee, stated that it sweetens real nice and she actually preferred the spoonable container to the single serve packets.

Everyone sampled the baked goods, especially the muffins since people wanted to see how Truvia tasted in bake items.

We got a few more fans for Truvia, especially the baking blend was an item that people liked because they never even thought of trusting their baked goods to a sweetener. But having a specially blended baking blend available is so reassuring that a couple of the guests stated they would go and now buy Truvia baking blend to substitute for their sugar and make dessert healthier!

Overall, the party was a success, even though we had it in two installments due to work conflicts. But the ladies at work really appreciated the opportunity to learn about Truvia and especially sampling baked items that were made with Truvia to see how well Truvia held up compared to sugar when used in home-baked goods. Truvia definitely impressed and the baking blend will make its way into several homes among my guests. Everyone is looking for health substitutions, but our families demand dessert and so Truvia is the solution. Fix dessert, but not with all the sugar. So you can fell good as a mom providing your family with dessert, but still keep dinner healthy and lower in calories!

Disclaimer: I was provided a sample package / giftpack by Crowdtap that contained items for hosting a sampling party. The opinions expressed in this blog are solely my own and have not been influenced by Truvia, Crowdtap or any other third party.