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Relax and save this Holiday Season

This post is part of
the HEALTHY ESSENTIALS®
2014 program by Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc. and
The Motherhood, who sent me a box of products and compensated me for
my time. Opinions, experiences and photos shared here are all my own,
and I hope you enjoy them.

Third party trademarks
used herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

The holidays are upon us, and that usually means lots of shopping, baking, cooking, wrapping, running around, and last minute everything! That of course usually comes with a ton of stress as well, and sometimes indulging in way more sugar then we otherwise would.

I’ve got you covered though with the help of Johnson & Johnson’s Healthy Essentials, I can indulge (and so can you!) during this busy time of year, but with a whole lot less guilt. Did you know Splenda® makes a brown sugar blend? Neither did I until now. I’m so glad I found it though. It has made the immense amount of cookies I’ve baked and eaten a little less guilty. I decided to try out some homemade caramels this week, and they turned out wonderful!

Seriously, I love caramels. I’ve never made them at home before, because well, that’s a lot of sugar that I would end up eating. I may have been a bit too excited about the Splenda Brown Sugar…but it just totally made me smile. Are you ready to indulge in half the calories this season?

Homemade Caramels

Ingredients

1/4 cup + 2 TBS Splenda Brown Sugar

1/3 cup salted butter

1/3 cup Corn Syrup

1/3 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

Directions

Combine all the ingredients in a pan. Cook over medium heat, while constantly stirring. When it starts to boil, cook for another 2-5 minutes. Or drop a little into a bowl of ice water. It if forms a good ball, you’re ready. Remove the caramel from the heat. Pour into a buttered 9×9 pan. Allow to cool completely. Cut, and wrap in either wax paper or plastic wrap.

Now that I have a plate full of caramels (and I may have made a second batch and just poured it into a jar for ice cream topping…), I can sit back and relax tonight. With other products like Neutrogena’s long wear makeup, and Clean & Clear’s Night Relaxing face wash, I can truly relax this season. I may have a lot of running around to do still, and many more lines to stand in at the post office, but I don’t have to let those things stress me out.

Find savings on your Healthy Essentials this holiday – up to $35 in printable coupons!

How are you relaxing this holiday season?

December 11, 2014
Saving Money with LED Power #LEDSavings #shop

I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper amplification for #CollectiveBias and its advertiser. #LEDSavings

Ever since my brother told me he’s moving his family to Belgium this summer, I’ve been determined to make a trip back East to see them before they go. I’ve been racking my brain for ways to cut our monthly costs back. I thought I had done everything I could, without starving my family (I promise we eat a nice balanced diet) when I came across LED power.

LED lighting has been around for awhile, but they aren’t cheap upfront, and it’s not something I’ve seen or noticed in a lot of homes. Since I was unfamiliar with it, I wasn’t so sure the initial cost would really save us money. I’m one who won’t buy a store membership just to get a little savings – so buying a single LED powered bulb for what I would normally get 2 or more bulbs for wasn’t too convincing at first.

That would be like judging a book by it’s cover though, so I did some more research into what kind of savings I would get by purchasing the LED light bulb. Check out the types of savings I found – not just for me, but the environment as well!

Infographic sources – GE Energy Consumption calculator

MSN Real Estate

15X Longer than incandescent Bulbs!!! Let’s look at that one a little bit closer – I buy incandescent bulbs for around $3-$5/bulb. One GE LED Energy Smart is on average $10/bulb but can get up to $15 for a regular indoor bulb. To buy one LED I’m spending 3X the money up front. However, if I buy the incandescent, it’s going to burn out a lot sooner than the LED – 15x sooner actually. Let’s do a quick life cycle cost analysis shall we?

$5×15 = $75

or

$15×1 = $15

You all see what I did there right? Over the lifetime of 1 LED bulb I’m saving $60 in bulb replacement costs. That would equal to filling up with gas once. Alright, I’m feeling a little more sold on my upfront costs so I bought a couple at my Walmart to try out.

Now what’s this about the trees? You can head over to GE’s website and input the number and style of bulb you are replacing in your home and it does a couple calculations for you. I’m a tree lover, and that number just astounded me! I decided to start with just replacing the 4 bulbs I bought, and see what kind of savings I was going to get.

With just 4 bulbs replaced I’m lowering our energy bill by $20/year, and reducing the co2 as if I planted over 3 million acres of trees! The savings would cover almost 1 full bill in the summer, leaving me a little extra for our trip back east.Later I input enough bulbs to replace all the lights in my home which is where the 15 million acres of trees comes from on the infograph above, but my yearly savings also jumped up to just over $80. That’s a good winter’s energy bill completely eliminated, and in two years will have more than covered the initial cost of all the bulbs.

Finally, did you see the savings cost on a typical household energy bill? Pretty impressive. I’d love to lower my yearly costs to only $26! Put that other $238 in my pocket. What I love about this, besides just the monetary savings, is that the LED lights are designed to improve lighting performance, while also eliminating the wasted heat.Ever turn off a light and try to change the bulb? CFL’s get hot quick! While playing around with the LED and CFL’s, I found I could leave the LED on longer, and remove it immediately after turning off the light, while the CFL after just a few seconds got way too hot to touch. Disclaimer: please please always do a quick touch to any lightbulb before grabbing hold so you don’t burn yourself. The bottoms of the LED lights do get hot.

Grab this tutorial for a Clarinet Lamp

So remember how I said I wanted to head back east this summer, but I didn’t know what else I could cut from our budget? Look what the GE LED Energy Smart lightbulbs just saved me –

$60 in bulb replacement costs

$80 from my energy bill (but can be up to $238 for the average household)

That gives me an extra $140 to spend on our vacation – we could actually get a nice hotel for that!

What would you do with the savings from a GE LED Energy Smart bulb?

For more Savings info, and to keep up with GE Lighting Follow them on

Facebook * Twitter * Instagram

Sarah Mock from How I Pinch a Penny put together this amazing video on the GE LED lights that is just FAB! Watch the video to see how she is saving

April 14, 2014
Lighting the Stairway

While trying to maximize our home’s appeal to potential buyers while still saving money, we decided to change up the lighting in our stairway.

The biggest problem I found with the original lighting, was that it had no cover, and at one point while going down the stairs you’d be staring straight into it. Not the most comfortable thing. Mark believes at one point there was a large mirror in front of it that would light up. I can see it, but there was no mirror now.

So we decided it needed to be changed. We didn’t want to spend money though, especially since we had the perfect light in the front room.

See that hanging light. It really didn’t fit in the front room, but that’s where it was when we bought the house, and it is the only light in the front room. It plugged into the wall with the light switch wired to it as well. The problem here was it only lit the one side of the room, and the shelf was in the way of the chain.

Mark’s brilliant mind saw this as the perfect stairway light. With the nice long chain on it, Mark only had to do a small bit of electrical and wiring work to wire it directly into the wall, in the same place the old stair light was attached, but now the light hung from the ceiling instead of directly in our eyes.

And in case you’d like to comment on it, yes the walls are carpeted in the staircase. Gosh I love the 70’s! Do you realize how many fingerprints I don’t have to clean in this area because of the carpet?

August 1, 2013
My Memories Suite Special Offer!

Do you scrapbook? I do. I love scrapping. Recently I’ve gotten into Digital Scrapping, because, let’s face it, I just never get around to printing those pictures! I really love My Memories Suite. They have tons of free pages for download, so I can scrap on a budget. In fact here’s a freebie just for you!

If you don’t already have the My Memories Suite Software, you can also download it now. AND save $10 using this code at checkout

STMMMS37783
When you buy the software, not only will you save $10 with the above code, but you will also get $10 to spend on some scrapbooking elements!
AND there’s more (lol, do I sound like an advertiser yet? I just really like this software!).
Between now and March 31st when you purchase the My Memories Suite software USING the code above, you will also get a FREE 1 year membership to RAKstar.
RAKstar gives you monthly scrap kits that are compatible with the My Memories software. You’ll be getting a $247 value just for buying the software (only $29.99 after the discount code!!!)
Ok, so now that I’ve officially sounded like one huge advertisement, I have to tell you, if you scrapbook, or want to start digital scrapping, you WANT to take this deal. Seriously, it’s an amazing value, for a great software! Let me break it down for you

Buy My Memories Software – $39.99

Use Discount code STMMMS37783 – $10.00 off

Total – $29.99

Receive $10 to spend online

Receive 1 year membership at RAKstar $247 value for free.

You spent $29.99 and you get $286.99 worth of sostware and downloads!

Now that I’ve convinced you, and I know you’ve already gone and bought the software (right? what are you waiting for?), to get your free membership to RAKstar you will need to send me an email of your receipt of purchase for the My Memories Suite software. I will then email you back a gift certificate for the RAKstar membership.

Email receipts to familyroom2@gmail.com

February 28, 2012
Gardening Compost

I’ve seen that some of my friends, the lucky ones in warm climates, have begun their gardening. Since I don’t live in a very warm climate, and we had a late winter this year, I’ve resorted to just planning and dreaming about our garden this spring. I’ve got the space marked out I want to use, plans for Mark to build some raised square foot beds, and the veggies I want to grow.
What I really want though is to be able to save more money, and waste less inside our home to help our garden grow. I’ve been thinking a lot about composting. I remember growing up my mom kept an old ice cream bucket under the sink where we scraped our plates. When it would get full we had to haul it out into the woods to out compost area. Besides being pretty stinky, it was so fun to see different things start sprouting in the compost from thrown out seeds – watermelon, cucumbers, and more. We periodically would catch a glimpse of some white tailed deer hanging out near the pile as well.

The problem I’ve run into is that I no longer live in the middle of the woods. I’ve got neighbors that probably wouldn’t appreciate the stench from an outside compost dump. So I’m trying to find any laws, and ways I can successfully compost with neighbors. So far I’ve had no luck. I did however find this CUTE compost bucket though

You can purchase this particular compost bucket at The Foundary on sale through tomorrow. It’s 1.5 gallon square ceramic. It comes with charcoal filters, which I am assuming help with the smell.

If you have any tips for composting please share!

I’ve also come across this brilliant idea to recycle rain water.

Source: shelterness.com via Adelina on Pinterest

Why let all that rain go to waste, when I can save our water bill by using the rain to water my garden? Really it’s brilliant!
As much as I do love the winter, I’m ready for spring and gardening!

February 1, 2012
SaveMore Deal – Frame the Alphabet

oooo, isn’t this gorgeous! You can get your own Frame the Alphabet, custom artwork for 56% off over at SaveMore.

A $134.99 value, you pay $60 for a 39.5″ x 15.5″ custom framed piece of art. If you have not yet signed up for SaveMore deals, you’ll get a $10 sign up credit, making this deal even better! You can buy one for yourself, and 3 more for gifts!

November 7, 2011