Works for Me: What to do with soap slivers and hotel soap

Now that I've returned from vacation with about 6 small bars of Hotel soap, which smell fabulous I might add, I need to do something with them plus a few slivers of soap I've saved from around the house for the past few months. I found this recipe for oatmeal soap balls at one of my favorite frugal forums- Frugal Families.com.

Oatmeal Soap/Body Scrub

You'll need..... 1/2 cup oatmeal or cornmeal

1/2 cup soap pieces (small pieces or hotel size bars)

1 to 2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 to 2 tbsp. water

Place the oatmeal (or cornmeal) and soap in a blender. First blend, then pulse. Pulse until the mixture is fine. Transfer the mixture to a large, deep bowl and add the oil and water. Form the mixture into a ball. Let dry for 24 hours before using. Note: Using oatmeal will make an oatmeal soap and using cornmeal will make a body polisher/scrub type soap.

I let the kids roll these into small balls and then we place on wax paper to dry. They smell great, work great, and are nice for gift giving tucked into small tins or baskets.

A great way to reuse and recycle soap!

Check out more "Works for Me" ideas at Rocks in My Dryer.

Works for me Wednesday: Gas buying tip for Walmart

This is actually two tips in one that my friends told me about. I agree with Shannon (at Rocks in my Dryer), that having best friends to share everything with and learn new stuff from is absolutely what works for me! So here are my two tips (learned from Karen and Tiffany):

Gas is almost always cheaper at Super Walmart than any other place. Most people know that. But you can get $.03 off the advertised price if you use a Walmart gift card to buy the gas. With gas so high, that $.03 can make a big difference over time. But most people have two minor inconveniences in continuing to buy and keep up with the gas cards.

Karen bought one card and wrote "GAS" over the front of it with a sharpie. It goes into her wallet and she only uses it for gas at the Walmart stations.

Tiffany found a solution to my biggest problem. Usually when I want to buy gas, I don't want to have to go into the store to put more money on the card just to get the $.03 discount. But if you call the 1-800 number on the back of your card you can load money onto the card straight from your bank debit card. So, now if you are like me, you can pull out your "GAS" card and load money on it when you pull up to the pump, no need to go into the store!. That works for me!

Works for Me: Uncommon Uses for Cooking Spray

We have had some squeaking doors and cabinets for awhile now in our house. The front door, my bedroom closet door, and the cabinet door underneath my bathroom sink squeaked entirely too much today while I was trying to make myself rest in hopes of getting rid of this monster cold. I could no longer take it. I ransacked the garage looking for WD-40 but could not find any. I had to find a solution.

I found it in the kitchen- My can of generic cooking spray. In just a few short bursts of this marvelous product my ears and head felt better when someone opened a door. This was the first official day for all of us to be home together and I think every door opened and shut at least a billion times today. But it didn't matter, they didn't squeak anymore. So if you have squeaky hinges try cooking spray. It smells a whole lot better than the other stuff.

Here are some other uses for cooking spray that I've actually used in the past:

1. I have sprayed the front of my car with cooking spray during Lovebug season. Those things are nasty to try to remove after their dead little bodies bake in the sun. Using the spray made the job much easier. I don't do this anymore because I like to watch my kids wash the car. With bugs on it they are outside a whole lot longer.

2. Spraying your cheese grater or the blades of your food processor with cooking spray will ensure that clean up is much easier, especially if you are grating sticky stuff like cheeses or marshmallows (yeah, I tried that once, didn't work!)

3. Spray your plastic container with cooking spray before putting in leftovers that contain tomato sauce. This will prevent them from staining.

4. It also makes derby cars go fast so your kids can win prizes at the Awana Grand Prix. Just bring it along to race day and coat the wheels with spray. Graphite has nothing on Pam!

Uncommon Uses for Cupcake Liners

Cupcake liners are awesome, little, usually overlooked tools for a variety of uses. Here are a few ways I use them.

1. I like to bake brownies in cupcake liners. Before I started doing this we ended up with brownie crumbs everywhere in our house. These smushed dark blobs are not fun to get out of carpet! So I started baking my brownies in the liners. We have almost zero brownie mess now and the bonus for us is that there are no edge pieces. I know there are many people who only want the edge pieces, but not us. We are inside pieces people. It is nice to send brownies to classroom parties in these liners too because they are easier to hand out to kids.

2. I use cupcake liners to serve ice cream at my kids' birthday parties. I just scoop out the ice cream a couple of hours before the party, stick them on a cookie sheet and put back into the freezer. When it is cake and ice cream time I pull out the tray and put the liner full of ice cream on the kids' plates. This means that the melting ice cream doesn't touch the cake on the plate either; a cardinal sin for some kids!

3. Cupcake liners are great for giving kids a few treats like pretzels or cheese cubes. They can hold it in their little hands better.

4. Cupcake liners are good for craft projects involving small pieces. If my girls are working with beads and baubles to create jewelry they put the "like" pieces into liners and then they can see everything available better.

5. And of course, cupcake liners are great for making cupcakes, too! Have you seen the popular, fancy cupcake parlors popping up around the country??!! They sell those things for over $3 a piece!