Peanut Butter Cake

This is a seriously easy but seriously impressive cake to make for family or friends that love peanut butter. It is so good and so easy, I promise!

Take one box of cake mix- white, yellow, or chocolate. It doesn't matter, just use what you have on hand. Make the cake according to directions except add one extra egg. Once you have the cake mixed up add 1 cup of peanut butter. Mix well and spread into cake pan. Bake until done.

For icing, you have two options. From a jar or from scratch. The from scratch version is so easy that I usually go with it.

From a jar: heat up your icing (chocolate or vanilla) in the microwave for a few seconds so it is easy to stir. Add 1/2 cup peanut butter and mix well.

Chocolate Icing From scratch: soften one stick of butter and blend with 3/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa, 3 cups powdered sugar, 1/2 cup peanut butter, and then add tiny splashes of milk until the icing is a spreadable consistency.

White Icing from scratch: soften one stick of butter and blend with 1 8 ounce package of softened cream cheese, 2-3 cups powdered sugar, 1/2 cup peanut butter, and then add tiny splashes of milk until the icing is a spreadable consistency.

To make it even more sinful you can add chocolate or peanut butter chips to the cake mix, sprinkled shaved chocolate over the top of the cake, or press chopped up peanuts onto the side of the cake.

With this cake, the sky (or the amount of calories you can consume) is the limit!

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Packing List- Uncommon Items that really help out

While packing for Disney, I threw in a few things that I've heard make for a smoother trip. Here are my top 5 "I would have never thought of that" items I included in our packing:

1. Pet ID tags. Not for pets but for my kids. I made these at our local Walmart's free standing machine. I printed them with their name, our resort name, and cell phone number. They each picked out a cool icon and color for the tags. If we get seperated they have the information they need to get back to us quickly.

2. Extra Clothes Hangers. There are usually not enough available for a large family in hotels. Hanging our clothes means we don't usually have to break out an iron. Always a good thing on vacation.

3. Earplugs. My son usually has a hard time falling asleep in new places with weird sounds like AC units, showers running, etc. These soft earplugs get him to sleep fast and make for a better next day.

4. Over-the-door-shoe-holder. Again, not for original purpose of holding shoes but for organizing toiletries and small items that seem to get misplaced in a hotel room. I hang it up about a week before we leave and throw in items like nail clippers, Tylenol bottles, samples of toothpaste, shampoo, Q-tips, etc. Once at the hotel I hang it on the outside of the bathroom door. Now we all know where to find our chapsticks, sunspray, and medicines.

5. Power Strip. With all the technological devices each member of most families has today it is a smart idea to include a power strip in your packing. With limited plugs in the normal hotel, being able to charge up our phones, cameras, and rechargeable batteries is a must and easy to do with a power strip.

What do you pack for vacation that helps make an easier trip?

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My Savings and Earning for the Week

Carrie at Money Saving Methods posts her Savings and Earning each and every week. I love to read her weekly updates but have never been very good at keeping mine organized. Well, this week I decided to get uber organized and keep track. It is really impressive once you look at your list altogether. Here's a recap:

Free Stuff:
sample of Head and Shoulders
Juicy Juice cup
Parents Magazine
TV Guide Magazine
Sushi made by my bff Susan
4 Arby's Roast Beef sandwiches (Wednesday Arby's deals)
Shell and Sand arrangement in a very cool, tall, heavy glass vase from bff Susan

Savings:
CVS: Out of Pocket $12.46, saved $27
Winn-Dixie: Out of Pocket $23.23, saved $13, earned $6 OYNO
Walmart: Out of Pocket $99.16, saved $28 (stuff for trip)

Thrifty Stores/Yard Sale Shopping:
Boogie Board $3, new would have been $12
Correlle Plate $.25
Lemon Topiary $.25
2 glass shell-shaped plates $.50
used once 4-piece Luggage Set $12.00, was looking at buying similar from Walmart that would have been $68
2 Vintage green-glass drinking glasses $1.00
Doodle Bear $.79
1 piece 18 months Disney's Nemo outfit $.99

Earnings/Winnings
Affiliate Programs $159
Cheerios Cash Instant Win Game $5.00
Huggies Movie Cash Rewards $24.00
Free Oil Change coupon from my $390 AC Repair in the Van! UGH!

Sales Shopping:
Addidas shoes for son on clearance $24.99, instead of $65
Asics running shoes for Hubby, $58 instead of $85
8 Yankee Candle Gift Sets for $2.50 each instead of $10 each

Earnings: $215
Savings: $272

How did you do this week?

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A Cheesy Deal at Winn-Dixie

Now through Tuesday, June 30th select varieties of Kraft cheese are on sale for $1.50 each. This includes shreds, chunks, cubes and slices. If you buy 5 or more in a single transaction you will receive a Catalina print-out coupon for $4 off your next purchase of anything in the store. I love Catalina deals.

Some stores have tearpads of coupons for $.50 off any variety of Kraft Naturals cheese. Sadly my store has no more coupons left on the tearpad.

It is still a great deal without coupons.
Buy 5 and pay $7.50, receive $4 off coupon
Buy 5 more, use previous coupon and pay just $3.50.

So 10 packs of cheese for $11.00 and you will still have $4 to spend for free.

If you have kids like mine who love grilled cheese sandwiches, buy 2 loaves of BOGO bread and you will have quick meals for a looonnnngggg time.

And Remember, you can FREEZE CHEESE!

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Free Quart of Paint from Glidden While Supplies Last

This site is getting slammed this morning but if you can get in this is an awesome freebie. Receive 1 quart of Glidden interior, eggshell finish paint free by registering.

They even let you pick the color! I chose True Turquiose, an accent color I'm trying to incorporate into my dining room.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says "Free: It's a Very Popular Color Today".

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Use it Up: Before Vacation Eating

Going on a week-long vacation inspires me to use up items in my pantry and freezer before embarking on our journey for two reasons.

First, I hate spending any money on food the week before vacation. Knowing that food will be a big part of our vacation budget, the thought of spending on food before we actually leave doesn't sit well with me for some reason.

Second, it is a good time to use up bits and pieces of food stuffs. I don't feel bad for feeding the resulting hodge-podge to my family because I know that the next week we will be eating really good!

Here are some interesting things I've created this week:

1. We had a nice grilled steak meal on Father's Day. On Monday I turned the leftover steak and corn on the cob into Grilled Quesadillas.

2. For Tuesday's Lunch I pulled out all the mostly-eaten-but-still-in-the-freezer bags of tater tots, homemade Hot Pockets, potato skins, etc. I placed them all onto a baking tray. The kids got a little bit of this, and a little bit of that for lunch. They thought it was cool and I cleaned out the freezer.

3. For Tuesday's Dinner we had Turkey Breast that cooked in the Crockpot all day. On Wednesday this was Turkey Tetrazinni and Turkey Club sandwiches.

For Thursday I'm hoping to use up a half bag of chocolate chips, a half bag of corn chips, and a whole lot of veggies from the crisper. Anyone have some ideas??

How do you spend less on food before your vacation?

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueyeda73/

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Still Thrifty, Still In Debt

It's been such a long month since I blogged- the longest time I've ever taken off from writing my chronicle of becoming debt-free.

The break started with some health challenges that I'm still facing- who knew that losing weight would lead to gallbladder problems??? Ugh! Still working on that condition. I've lost 30 pounds though and feel better physically than I have in many, many years (except for that darn gallbladder!).

The last month of school was c.r.a.z.y.!!! Followed by a week long science and planning bootcamp to get started on 09/10! Since then I've been planning, planning, and planning some more for our week long Disney vacation that begins next Tuesday! Yoohoo!

And once I started not blogging, because of writer's block from pain and stress, I started doing other stuff. In the past month I've read 10 books, completed 4 craft/decorating projects, made matching T-shirts for our Disney trip for the entire family, went bowling with the kids twice, visited the beach, the lake, and my grandparents, planned an entire school year of reading, math, and science curriculum, ordered tons of free samples, entered some sweepstakes, won a few prizes, evaluated some homeschooled students, and my favorite thing of all- yard-saling and thrift store shopping every weekend with the kids who love it as much as I do.

But now I'm ready to jump back into blogging. I've missed you all so much and I've missed sharing the ups and downs of our journey to becoming debt-free. Thanks for all the concerned emails and lines to tell me that you missed me too. I'm back but probably on more of a part-time basis while I tend to my health, keep my kids busy this summer, and enjoy time away from the computer!

I'm on Facebook if anyone wants to be my friend there to keep up with me and my daily happenings. Search for Angie DeVore Hopkins.

Over the next week I will be chronicling our plans for Disney, our packing, our cleaning, and using up the groceries we have on hand before we leave.

Love ya,

Angie

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Join Quizno's Q-Club for coupons

Click here to join Quizno's Q-club and receive email updates and coupons, including a free Sammie upon sign up and a free cookie on your birthday!

My nearest Quizno's is about 30 minutes away but I'll sign up anyway since I regularly have dentist or doctor appointments in the same city. If I'm out and about I usually end up stopping for a bite to eat so having a coupon makes it less expensive.

And if you are planning to travel this summer, like we are, these fast-food coupons can make the drive a little less expensive.

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Easy Corn on the Cob

Fresh corn is just coming into season here in North Florida. Fresh corn screams, "It's summer!" to me. As the season progresses, corn will become cheaper and cheaper. Right now I'm paying $1 for 3 ears at my favorite local market. Deeper into summer it will be 5 for $1 or maybe even 10 for $1.

Corn on the cob is my preferred way of eating fresh summer corn but I hate the usual process of "shelling" it as my kids call it. The husks and tassels and silks are so messy. I usually send the kids outside to de-husk a bunch at once. Our deer appreciate the mess and will turn up at sundown to help themselves to our corn husks.

But no more!!! I will never. boil. corn. again. Never!

Thanks to Alton Brown of the Food Network, (ya'll know Alton, right?), I will be able to enjoy my corn on the cob without mess this year.

He suggests cooking the corn in the oven without taking the husks off. I tried it last night after finally being convinced by an online friend that this truly is the way to cook corn.

I threw the ears into the 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Took them out and the husks and silks just slid off. Not a trace of the dreaded silk remained on the corn. I added a little salt and butter and we feasted on the corn. It was fresh from the field yesterday morning and melting in our mouths last night.

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