December 2013 – Susie Strauss

December 29, 2013

What’s For Christmas Dinner At Your House?

What was for Christmas dinner at your house? Is it a repeat of the meal you had for Thanksgiving a few weeks ago or is it something completely different? I guess another question I could ask is when if your holiday meal? Do you have it on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?

In my family we have our holiday meal on Christmas day. We usually eat our meal in the mid afternoon around 3pm. We kind of do a copy cat version of everything we serve at Thanksgiving with the addition of ham. This year we had turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, broccoli, peas, cheese sauce, deviled eggs, cranberry sauce, and crescent rolls.

I know in some families they make tamales on Christmas. A family friend of mine does this and it’s a whole family process that all of the family participates in. I love tamales and would love to do this one year in our family. My neighbors always make a big giant lasagna on Christmas Eve for their holiday meal. That’s another holiday treat I would love to devour. Don’t get me wrong I love to have turkey but sometimes I wish we ate it stretched out over the year instead of all in November and December.

What did you have for your Christmas Dinner or holiday meal this year?

December 23, 2013

Cute little gift

Jim has been dropping hints all school year that he wants a drum set for Joshua for a Christmas gift, and that he is hoping that the whole extended family will chip in a buy one for him. Most of the people in our family is completely ignoring him; they are tired of him expecting us to furnish his kids with presents every year while he gives our kids nothing! So this year I decided to buy one of the affordable cowbells at Musicians Friend and give that to Jim towards the drum set that he keeps talking about. I’ll smile sweetly and tell him that was all that I could afford, and that I hope it helps in some way to get him closer to the drum set that he wants. And I hope he doesn’t act indignant that I didn’t get him more.

December 20, 2013

Giving Back to the Community

As a part of giving back to our community this year we have put together a few baskets to donate to families in need. We picked out a few toys to donate to children that don’t have any. We also did a culling of all of the toys in our home to make room for the new ones the kids will get for Christmas. We cleaned out three big bag fulls of toys to donate. The kids were happy to do it because we talk to them about how they can help others and make a difference even though they are so young still.

In addition to the toys we are donating, we’ve also put together food baskets and toiletries for men and women. I used coupons and got a large variety of health and beauty items for free or next to nothing. I always use these items to give to shelters. It seems silly not to take advantage of the sales when there are people in need that can use these things. Each toiletry basket has tooth brushes, tooth paste, body wash, deodorant, as well as a comb and a brush.

We’re taking everything to be donated this afternoon. We enjoy giving back to the community. How does your family or work give back the community you live in?

December 8, 2013

Gift Bags or Gift Wrap?

Which camp do you fall into? Gift bags or gift wrap? As a child I loved getting gifts covered in wrapping paper and tearing into the paper to see what was inside. It was a thrill to hear the paper shred and discover what lay waiting behind that magical paper. As I got older I stopped tearing the paper apart on my gifts.

Instead, I very carefully peeled it away from the gift, trying very carefully not to tear it so that I could use it again in the future. My mother was always very grateful for the extra paper. I folded the paper up nice and neatly in a pile and handed it to her once we were finished opening all of our gifts.

You can do the exact same preserve and reuse idea with gift bags, and a lot easier too. You don’t’ have to worry about paper tearing or opening something ever soo carefully so you don’t put added wrinkles in the paper. Unless you crush your gift bags they are easy to reuse. Simply fill the bag again and you’re ready to go! You might have to add more tissue paper, but I even reuse that in my house. I have a big box of tissue paper that I’ve collected from all of the gifts we’ve received and I just pull it out to stuff the bags as needed.

Reusing our gift wrap and gift bags is just one of the ways I save money for our family. So my question to you is, do you reuse gift wrap or gift bags? And which do you prefer?

December 5, 2013

I wonder if that is true

I was reading the reviews of the fender precision bass at guitar center earlier today and saw that one of the reviewers wrote that this particular brand and make of guitar was the same one as the guitar that John Entwistle played with the Who in the glory days of 1969-70. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it piqued my interest because I have seen the Who in concert many times. I even saw them before they were famous in their own right – in fact, they were one of the opening acts for Herman’s Hermits back in the ’60s! I remember at that concert the band performed “Boris the Spider” and I LOVED it so much that when their first album went on sale in the US I went out and bought it as soon as I could.

December 5, 2013

Considering Joining A Book Club

I’ve been considering joining a book club. I used to always be reading something new. I haven’t picked up a new book in some time. I think it would be a lot of fun to get back into my daily reading habit. I always used to read before bed. It helps me relax and feel calm before heading to sleep.

Although, some times it would keep me up longer when I was reading a good book. It would be difficult to put it down. I would tell myself I’ll stop at the end of this chapter in order to avoid it getting really out of hand.

The reason why I’m thinking of joining a book club is because I would love to have someone to share and discuss what I think about the book. I love chit chatting about what I watch on television with my friends so why not do the same thing with the books I read. I think it it would be lots of fun to talk about what what the characters are doing and why they are doing it.

Digging deeper into the meaning of books is really exciting. I know it would be neat to hear the perspectives of others on the same book I’m reading. Perhaps they caught something I didn’t or view something in a total different way that I had never thought about.

December 1, 2013

New Printer to Avoid the Empty Ink Cartridge Error

Why does my printer always go out of ink when I really want to print something. It never fails, I have something I need to print, maybe a coupon, a permission slip, tax paper work, you name it… anyway I need to print it and then I get the dreaded error message that my ink cartridges are empty.

It used to be that the printer I had would tell me the ink was low and just continue to print. The quality of the print would be very poor but I could still get something on the page. For some things the lesser quality was not a problem at all and I would continue to print until my pages came out blank.

I got a new printer a few months ago for a number of reasons. The primary reason was that the ink cartridges for my old printer were so darn expensive and I was going through them pretty fast. I was tired of paying $50 a cartridge and not having it last very long. I did research on printers that have low priced ink cartridges. I settled on an Epson Stylus NX430.

I love that the cartridges are only about $8! That is so much better than my other printer. And, this printer has individual cartridges for each color so I only have to replace the color that is out not all of them at once. At this price point I can change all for cartridges for still less than just the black cartridge of my other printer.