I really like this blog I stumbled across a while ago called $5 Dinners. Each week Erin posts a menu plan and then throughout the week she provides the recipes. Though this isn’t ideal for those of us who shop for dinner ingredients a week or two ahead of time, it works if you use the ideas a week or so behind.

The writing is down to earth, there are pictures when available, and she offers great suggestions, like in her recent Menu Monday where she explains how she’s cleaning out her pantry (I totally need to do this too) and how she plans to do it.

She also provides a Bargain Meal of the Week round-up, which includes a ton of links to other blogs which feature meals and dishes using sales and discounts for items from local grocery stores. How great is that?

With my next grocery trip I’m going to pick up the ingredients for some Breakfast Tacos, which are featured as a “breakfast for dinner” meal:

Breakfast Tacos
from 5dollardinners.com

10-12 eggs
4-5 small potatoes, peeled and diced
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
Salt/pepper
1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup salsa
8 corn or flour tortillas

1. In large skillet, add olive oil and let warm for 1 minute. Add peeled and diced potatoes with salt and pepper to taste. Saute for 6-8 minutes, stirring often. (Add a little water to help them cook faster!) Season with other favorite seasonings if you like!

2. In bowl, whisk together eggs. Add a few dashes of salt and pepper. Pour over the potatoes after they have been cooking for 6-8 minutes. Cook eggs with potatoes and scramble them as they cook.

3. Warm tortillas in oven wrapped in foil or tortilla warmer (so they don’t get crispy!).

4. Serve potato/eggs with cheese and salsa in a warm tortilla.

[image: flickr]

Post from: Blisstree

Food Blog Spotlight: 5DollarDinners.com

for my torso to shrink

or the shirt to lengthen 2 inches.

I’ve got this crazy entitlement issue with my shirts. I feel I should be allowed to move my arms without showing my stomach.

The one with the pink scarf too. My mother bought them for me and it feels ungrateful to admit they don’t fit. What’s the statute of limitations on this?

My torso not only has to shrink for the striped one to fit, but my boobs do too. I’m holding out because shrinking boobs is a possibility.

I invested an entire quarter, that’s 25 cents at a garage sale, in the brown shirt.

That’s worth losing a few inches of torso isn’t it? Have you ever seen a shirt that has the ability to grow?

This is when frugality becomes a mental health issue.

Post from: Blisstree

Incredible Shrinking Torso

I’ve turned my entire bathroom into a library. The haphazard way of just putting books and magazines on the back of the toilet was driving me crazy. So, I added a magazine rack next to the toilet paper roll holder.

But, the part I love most about my library/restroom is the wallpaper. It’s the pages of a real vintage book. I tore the pages out and modge podged them onto the wall and painted the molding pink.

My grandmother had a pink bathroom and my whole childhood I just loved that room. Since becoming an adult I’ve always painted my various bathrooms pink.

While using the guest bathroom at someones home I was taken with their wallpaper. It was expensive, I’m sure. What I loved about it was that it was all poetry. But, it was poetry about Time. Every poem was in relation to time. Time, and running out of it, I decided, was not going to help me do my business.

I loath most poetry. Say what you have to say. Don’t make me critically deconstruct it to figure it out. But, rhyming poetry is much, much worse. The one poet I truly adore is Dorothy Parker. So I took an original Not So Deep As A Well printed in the 1960s that I already had and glued the pages to the walls. Because the book was over 40 years old it gave the walls a really romantic aged look.

I accented with signs and towel hooks that say things like ”When train is in station, please do not flush” and “Bath 5 cents, Towel 10 cents.” I kept the cameo pink and white cut-outs (honestly I haven’t the slightest idea what they are really called) for art. 

But, alas, my daughter is starting to read and Dorothy Parker is more suicidal, morbid and maudlin than is appropriate for small children.

Razors pain you, drugs cause cramp, acid stains you, rivers are damp, guns aren’t lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful – might as well live.

I thought perhaps the bathroom should be just a tad more optimistic and uplifting. So, I found a Leaves of Gold book, also printed in the ’60s. This time the pages are encouraging thoughts and affermations about life. My favorite is the one about Abraham Lincoln’s resume, which includes a lifetime of failure after failure and then BAM President of the United States. Dig that. I pasted these pages right over the top of the Parker pages.

I adore my bathroom. It’s probably my favorite room in the house. I love words and this bathroom reflects that. It also functions as our library or reading room, so I dig that it reflects that. And it was cheap, the book was $3.50 and the liquid starch I got at the dollar store.

Post from: Blisstree

Library/Restroom Wallpaper

I can’t really understand why kids need a whole new wardrobe for school. I mean, kids get clothes all year long these days right? It’s not like in my Grandma’s day when she saved up enough to buy her children two pairs of shoes a year, for school and Easter Sunday.

I went garage sailing and picked up about all she’ll need for about $12. I’m not about to blow a couple of hundred dollars for this consumerist tradition. I picked up a black  pair and brown pair of nearly-new Mary Janes and some super cute Sketchers for $2.50. The rest was spent on new-looking matching outfits, dresses, tops and jeans in her size.

If I have the cash on hand I may take her to Old Navy and let her pick one outfit for the first day.

To read about how I really did take all her clothes away after repeated clothing tanatrums and fits of hysteria, you can check out Kindergarten Fashion Show on Sioux So Me. Yes, I did. It worked, and I’ll do it again if she loses her grip on reality about how important her clothes are. I got the advice from Madonna of all places.

Post from: Blisstree

Debt-Free School Clothes

Actually, I scored a sturdy entertainment center at the Goodwill for $20. It was an ugly cream faux-wood color but it has great Zack-proofing storage so he couldn’t get into all the electronics.

Bought a $25 gallon of black paint – never skimp on the paint or it will look like crap – and painted the ugly stained-up end tables I was already using to match. Borrowed the primer from a friend who already had some – always prime or sand or the paint will peel off and that’s a waste of money.

I also got so sick of my couch that the one sitting in a friend’s garage looked pretty good to me. She also had a great red slip-cover, which I’m going to staple gun into place so it doesn’t shift around.

I wanted to paint the workstation – the ugly tall blond faux-wood thing in the background – but my husband thought being off the computer long enough for paint to dry was just too much to ask.

Whalla – new living room! Love it!

Side Bar: Lest you think I’m some kind of lunatic and never get upset about not having any nice “things,” I wrote an article titled Dear God and Dave Ramsey: when I was feeling not at all good about being cheap to the point of mental illness.

Post from: Blisstree

I Need New Furniture . . .