Archive for TACKLE TUESDAY

Back to School on a Budget

August 31, 2010 / Common Cents Mom / No comments

0083 Back to School on a Budget

Don’t you love all the expenses of sending a child back to school? I was able to do it this year for $100. My daughter is a preteen and well has a sense of what she wants now so with that said most of these were picked by her but on a budget.

How did I manage to get all of this for a mere $100 bill. Well actually I got all of these plus a messenger bag and a pair of brand new converse sneakers for her. How?

  1. First I looked at last year’s school wardrobe and thought what can I use for this fall. Rachel only had 3 items that were in good enough shape to be a part of her fall line up.
  2. I hit 50% off sales at both the Salvation Army thrift store and Value Village. It was there I found brand new converse sneakers in her size for $10.I also found a messenger bad in like new shape for $3.
  3. Old Navy had some great pricing as well over the summer so hit there sales racks. Rachel likes Old Navy.
  4. Gap another favorite store of ours had some incredible sales back in July and I got her brand new jeans for $7 a pair.

By combining last years, some great thrift store finds, and some great sale bins Rachel is a styling tween. Now when it came to supplies I simply hit Dollorama and got the essentials. She is a girl ready for next week and grade 7.


Category: Frugal Tips, TACKLE TUESDAY / Tags: ,

Taking Care of My Mouth Frugally

February 9, 2010 / Common Cents Mom / 2 comments

tough teeth Taking Care of My Mouth FrugallyI have something to admit. I hate my mouth. I hate my teeth and have so since I was a child. I have never liked my smile. I find it the most unattractive part of me. With that said, I have never taken proper care of my mouth or teeth. I know! EW!

Not taking care costs you: it can cost you big financially and more importantly it can impact you overhaul health.

The past few week have seen me paying big because of my negligence.  I spent 3 weeks in pain as an abscess was dealt with and then I had to have a tooth pulled. I am now facing about $5,000 in needed dental care. Ouch, right?

I am thankful that I now have dental coverage through work but it does have a cap. So how can I take care of my mouth and still be frugal?

Here in Halifax there are some options like the dental school at Dalhousie. If you are like me and have not taken care of your mouth I know how you are feeling and may I suggest you check out your local college or university.Check if they have a dentistry program. If they do you may want to use them. It may take a few more appointments and a bit more time in the chair, but it could end up saving you big time in the long run.

Do you need a clean mouth? Do you need a cleaning. Most cities have a dental hygiene school. Check out your local one. From experience I know you can get a good cleaning. Again you may have to spend more time in the chair but it is well worth it.

One of the major things to note if you go this route, you will still be under the care of a trained dentist and there is always one on site. For me that made me feel more comfortable.

So next time you need to take care of your mouth  you might want to check out what is local to you.

I would encourage you to look after your mouth if you are like me and have not been doing so, there could be major consequences ahead otherwise.

I am off to read what others are tackling today at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Category: TACKLE TUESDAY / Tags: , ,

Decorating a Home Office Frugally

January 5, 2010 / Common Cents Mom / One comment

Since I started working from home I really haven’t had a home office. I have worked from the kitchen table pulled into my bedroom. Well this week this frugal mom found a computer desk down by the dumpsters. I have basically created my home office for FREE. How I waited and watched because in today’s world too many people throw away items that can be used that are in good shape.

Now let me reveal to you my new home office! Now remember this office was put together at NO cost to me.

sany0015 2 Decorating a Home Office Frugally

This will now be my work space. I am sitting here in my blue chair( dumpster dive find), watching tv( freebie from a friend), and blogging on my cute little Dell computer that sits on my nice new desk ( another dumpster find). Every night when I work and take calls this is where I will be. I am so glad to be able to tackle this project this week. What are you tackling this week?

Category: TACKLE TUESDAY /

Menu Monday: The One Pot Challenge Begins

January 4, 2010 / Common Cents Mom / 3 comments

sany0014 Menu Monday: The One Pot Challenge Begins

See this picture? This is how I have been cooking forever! Lots of pots and lots of mess. Well I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to simplify my cooking. It is one of my goals for this year so how about joining me on my journey. From now on at least 4 meals a week will be cooked using ONE pot. Yes I said one pot! That is the goal. What pot am I going to use? For these meals I will be using my slow cooker or my large skillet,occasionally I might be using a baking pan or roaster, but each meal will take only one pan.

Want to help me on my journey? I need recipes to try. To use. To make. Send me your favorite one pot meal and you will be my new best friend. The goal is try new recipes each and every week. I will attempt to have 3 meals a week be new to my household. Who knows they might be a weekly favorite at your house.

So what is on the menu this week?

We still have left over turkey so I am using that up this week and trying a few vegetarian recipes as well.

Monday- Cran Turkey Enchiladas

Tuesday-Breakfast for Dinner- Easy Egg Skillet Dinner

Wednesday-Quick Skillet Lasagna-Substituting ham for cubed turkey

Thursday- Insanely Easy Vegetarian Chili ( being made by tween)

Friday- Leftovers

Saturday-Cheese Pizza and salad

Sunday- Marie’s Easy Slow Cooker Pot Roast

The other staple to most of these meals will be a small side salad. Roo and I both love salad so that will be a mainstay.

Now I am off to see what frugal healthy one pot recipes I can find to try next week. I love reading all your menu plans at Organizing Junkie.

Category: MENU MONDAY, THE ONE POT COOK / Tags: ,

The Un Resolution

December 29, 2009 / Common Cents Mom / 2 comments

2154252370 f7d7a38a38 m The Un ResolutionHow many of you have ever made a New Year’s Resolution? I have!  In the past I would have my list and boy some of the things I vowed to tackle. Well never again!

Yes I have things I want to change. Things I am working on goals and themes I want in my life. Personally  I know me and I don’t do well with as of January 1 I will do it. For me tackling a challenge that way does not work. For me it is just plain stupid.

So what does work for me?

When I want to tackle something what do I do?

1. I ask myself is this something I really want for ME? What is my motivation? I then write out my motivation. An example of this 2 years ago I wanted OFF welfare and wanted to be working as well as giving in my community. Why? Well my motivation was I wanted more cash and I wanted to feel like my contributions mattered and that weighed on me very much at the time. I wrote out in my journal about my whys and well then I went to step 2.

2. I came up with a plan. Re-entering the workforce after time off for any reason can be daunting . It becomes twice as daunting when you have a special needs child who will need after school and summer care (that in itself took a careful plan).

3. I wrote my plan out. Okay this is when you have to ask your self . How am I going to get this thing? What things that can I do? Write out the baby steps I did. Then I wrote out the dates of when things had to be done by..

4. I advertised my plan. My goal. I shared it with friends, with family and then I began to network.  I needed to build a community that would encourage me and help me. I in turn would be doing the same for them.

It took me 9 months to find a job that fit the bill for me. I have had that job for 16 months now. I work for a call center ( yes, she is one of those people) but the neat thing for the last 6 months I have done my job from HOME.  Every night if you are a Comcast customer in the need of internet support you could be reaching me at home. It is a pilot project that I am thankful to be part of and I have enjoyed working for Convergys and their client Comcast. I was able to get exactly what this mom wanted and needed.

Now this week I turned 45! Yeah I am an old maid! So what are my motivations for 2010? I want to be a FRUGAL ( that ain’t going to change), FIT ( that means yeah I am going to the gym) and FABULOUS (that means giving and enjoying life and each moment it gives me) and FAITH FILLED( that means my relationship with God needs some work)…these are the things I am working on..and I don’t need a New Year’s Resolution to get me going.

Are you making resolutions?  or do you have goals at all? I really would love to know? and do you have a plan?

Over the next couple of days here on my blog I will be reflecting on the past decade and how I became the Common Cents Mom I  am and how certain events changed and molded this decade.

This post post will be shared as part of the Tackle Me Tuesday on 5Minutes for Mom and as part of What Works for Me on We are That Family.

Category: TACKLE TUESDAY, WFMW / Tags: ,

The One Pot Cook Cries for Help

November 10, 2009 / Common Cents Mom / 6 comments

I have been a blogger for a while now and really it easy for a blog to get stale pretty fast. Really for a blog to remain fresh you have to tackle new ideas unless of course your blog is a humor or story telling blog.

So in my quest to come up with something new and orginal for my blog Iwanted to challenge myself. I wanted a big tackle. I want something that could engage you my readers in helping me in this tackle.

What am I talking about?

My new upcoming tackle is called The One Pot Cook. I am a mom who loves simple things and what is simpler then cooking in one pot whether that pot be my wonderful old slow cooker, my trusty skillet or my roasting pan.

So my big tackle is this: A YEAR of cooking every day using just one pot. Now the rules I have placed on myself. One meal a day whethre it is is breakfast, lunch or dinner must be cooked using just one pot. A cool challenge right?

Now why do I need your help in the tackle? I need recipes to try.

Have you posted your favorite one pot meal online? If so leave me a link and I will add it to my menu plan. Have a favorite recipe not yet online or don’t blog you can email it me and I will give it a whirl. I need 365 recipes to try.

Now what ingredients can’t be in the recipe: pork, and mushrooms.

So can you help a mom out with this tackle??

You may of noticed that I created a page called The One Pot Cook, as I start to make the recipes I will be making a file of 365 one pot recipes that will later be made into a PDF that you will be able to download. This is the tackle. Are you with me?

Category: TACKLE TUESDAY, THE ONE POT COOK / Tags: , ,

Online Safety is A Key to a Good Time

November 3, 2009 / Common Cents Mom / One comment

Every day at work I get calls from customers who have infected computers, have questions about questionable emails and possibly are seeing and reading a scam. So how does one stay safe online? What makes sense? What do you need to know?

Consider this your boot camp for online safety:

1.So when it comes to viruses first invest in a good anti virus program. As well get a firewall and anti spyware software. There are good FREE downloads for each of these. Some internet service providers do provide these for free as well.

2. Update your computer often. This will help you will any unwanted bugs, and will help protect you from some viruses as well.

3.If you have a wireless network make sure you lock it down and encrypt it other wise anyone can use your connection from close by.

Then there are the personal safety issues:

You need to be careful what you open so you do not give out your personal info. These snooping missions come in all forms.

They arrive in  your email inbox looking like legit emails. They come looking like a link from facebook , they come in a form of DM in twitter. So How do you guard yourself?

1. Be careful where you use your online info. I can happily say after 14 years of online activity I have never been scammed. I log in and if buying online use a secured site or I use paypal.

2. Never open a link in an email especially if it looks like a link from a business  you use. Instead go and log on their site or better yet call them.

3. When using Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter I am careful what I links I open, mostly here they are looking for your passwords and log on info. I am careful what sites have access to these and you can check who has access to your personal information by checking your settings.

4. Ignore the scam emails and yes over the years I have gotten many offers that are down right ridiculous..just ignore these.

One of the biggest helps I can tell you is use a strong password. Mine are all a mix of numbers and letters. Safety is important when online so play safely and have fun, but always remember the rule safety first.

Category: TECHY TUESDAY / Tags: ,

How to Find Great Conversations and Who to Follow on Twitter

October 27, 2009 / Common Cents Mom / One comment

I am starting something new here at Common Cents Mom. You see every day I work as an Internet Support techy type for a big name well known Internet Service Provider. When they have trouble or questions I am the person to call.

So I have decided that once a week here at Common Cents Mom I will host a tech talk. I will be talking about different internet and Social Media related topics. I practically live on the online world 24 hours a day. I am a connected woman! I will be giving you my take. Now in some of my previous posts on Works for Me Wednesday I did tackle some basic computer maintenance and some of the basics of Social Media. I will be continuing on that path.

Just last week I wrote about The Basics of Twitter. This week I wanted to talk about how I found some great conversations on Twitter and I wanted to highlight and encourage you to follow some of my favorite people. They are my personal rock stars!

First how did I find great conversations?

1. When I first started out I followed the trending topics a lot but really these days if I want to know say who is talking about my interest of the day I do a simple search. For example some of my searches have included the words: aspergers, frugal, social media, Halifax and so on.

Did you know you can search by any keyword or geographic location?

2.Back in July @Mashable first tweeted about 10 Ways to Find People, I used some of these to find some more like minded people having conversations about things that interest me.

3.I used #FollowFriday to check to see who was recommending people and then I checked out there feed and if they were a match for me I followed.

Now who did I follow? and why do I follow them?

Here are my favorite people on Twitter-

1. @CarissaRogers- Really I love Carissa, she is a mom that is good and crazy.Like me she has a  daughter that is in the tween years. She is also a great caring giving community member both in real life and on twitter. She was a founder of Mom it Forward and #GNO. Over the months I have been blessed to call her a friend. She even created my header for this site.

2.@unmarketing- Scott, is the unofficial bouncer of twitter and besides jut being a great guy and the maker of some dang funny and true YouTube viral videos he encourages us to do good and to engage and be better. Scott knows this, but I am putting this story out there- One night a few months back I was feeling very discouraged, lets just say I was at the end of my rope. Well I came across one of Scott’s videos about doing good. Well that video in the moment was what this mom needed.

3.@herbadmother-Now Catherine I have known and followed long before my days on Twitter. I used to have another blog when I lived in Toronto (Cheaper then Cheap). She is a wonderful blogger, a real mom who through her blog shares her life in ways that will make you laugh, cry and encourage you to do better…and guess what she doesn’t even follow me back but I still follow because of what I learn.

4.@sharonhayes-is simply a goddess, kind, encouraging and well most of us who follow her are blessed by her presence on our lists.

Now there are more on my personal rockstar list but maybe next week I will share about Lists and how I came up with mine.

If you have any tech or net issues you would like me to tackle in the weeks ahead please do leave me a comment or question.

Category: TECHY TUESDAY /

Tackle It Tuesday: The Home Office

May 5, 2009 / Common Cents Mom / 3 comments

TTBigButton Tackle It Tuesday: The Home Office I didnt get to post my Menu yesterday, exhaustion set in the last few days. I think tackling a big project left me so tired to do much so I retired to my bed really early last night. So what is this project that had me exhausted? I set up a home office. I will be working for home as of June 1st but before I could there was much that I had to do. Do you want the list? * my Internet connection had to be tested. This is done.

* I had to purchase a new computer. This is done.

* I had to test my new computer.This is done.

* I physically had to change the layout of two bedrooms. This is done as I took over the larger bedroom to make it my bedroom/office.

* I had to be interviewed for the new job. This is done.

* I had to buy a headset. This is done.

* I had to set up an accounting system for all my receipts. This is done.

As you can see there was much to be done as you move from working in an office to working at home. Now it is just a waiting game until June 1st, my start day.

Category: TACKLE TUESDAY / Tags: ,
 
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