By Melissa Batai

How much time do you spend grocery shopping each week? Do you make one large trip and then a few fill-in trips? How much time are you spending at the grocery store over the course of a month? How many impulse buys do you make each time you enter the grocery store?



If you’re like many Americans, you shop once or twice a week, and you buy several impulse buys while you’re at the store. That alone is a good reason to try to cut down on the number of trips per month, but if you’re also very busy or you have young children, you have more reasons to try to grocery shop as little as possible.

Joanie Boeckman’s ebook, The Ultimate Guide to Once a Month Grocery Shopping: Save Time and Money with Less Trips to the Grocery Store , is designed to help you shop just once a month with one or two produce and milk fill-in trips throughout the month.

Boeckman is the blogger behind the blog, Simple Living Mama, and her mission is to help women simplify their lives, homes, and homeschools. This ebook is one way she seeks to do that.

Contents

The contents of the book include:

• Introduction
• Make a Master List of Meals
• Inventory Your Pantry and Freezer
• Making the Monthly Grocery List
• Shopping Day! How to Pull It Off
• Where to Store All of Your Food
• How to Make Produce Last Longer
• Meal Prepping
• Conclusion

About the eBook

If you’ve always wanted to shop just once a month but are intimidated by the prospect, this ebook will help give you the confidence to do so.

Boeckman doesn’t just tell you how to plan for a once a month trip, but she gives you ideas and suggestions based on her own life. For instance, in “Make a Master List of Meals,” Boeckman suggests that you make a list of all of your family’s favorite meals, but then she takes it a step further by giving you all of her family’s favorite meals, many with links to the recipes to help you plan.

I appreciated her suggestions in “How to Make Produce Last Longer” because they included some tips I hadn’t thought of such as storing green onions in water in a glass jar and storing your greens in a glass jar because those plastic produce bags are the antithesis of long-lasting produce.

Extras

At the end of the ebook Boeckman includes several printables including:

• Master List of Meals,
• Pantry Inventory,
• Freezer Inventory,
• Monthly Meal Plan Calendar, and
• Monthly Shopping List

If you’ve always wanted to shop once a month, this ebook will give you the push you need to just do it. And even if you don’t end up braving once a month shopping after reading this ebook, you’ll walk away with new recipes, food storage ideas, meal planning techniques, and some nice printables.

UPDATE: It has been four and a half years since we did this project. The blackboard still works so well! We keep it behind our couch in the family room and pull it out any time our toddler gets in a mood to scribble on the furniture. This project turned out so well, and I wouldn't have changed a thing! You can buy the paint that we used for this project here. 




My kids love to play with chalk.  Unfortunately, we don't have much for a sidewalk, and I get tired of them scribbling over and over on the tiny front stoop we have in front of the house.  To make matters worse, while they do have a chalkboard easel in their room, it's bulky and awkward, is only large enough for one kid to use at a time, and has sure seen better days!



Since my experience with the outdoor kids picnic table makeover project, hubby and I have had a kind of love affair for all things Krylon, so we headed to our local Walmart to see if they had a spray-on chalkboard paint.  They did! (And it is $9.24 a can.)

The first step to creating a chalkboard was picking the perfect piece of wood.  I admit that the first one we selected was too porous and not a very high-quality wood.  For this project, make sure you pick wood that:

1) Is sturdy enough not to bend and flake off the paint
2) Is light enough that you can carry outside and back in again
3) Can be primed (you may need to sand)



Next, you'll want to prepare the surface for the chalkboard paint.  The first time we did this, we did NOT prime first.  The paint kept soaking into the wood, and while it did work as a chalkboard, it wasn't very smooth and we used way too much paint.  You will definitely want to add a layer of primer and allow it to dry completely before you start with the chalkboard paint.

Now that your wood is ready, you can add the Krylon!  Follow the directions on the container and be sure to do this outside!



After it has dried completely, and you have the number of layers you are comfy with, you may want to "prep" the surface by having the kids draw all over it and wipe the chalk off again.  We, however, just went ahead and used it for the first time with no problems, at all:




This board is the perfect size to hang outside on the side of a fence, lay on the ground or a large picnic table, or even work on inside the house.

This is a picture of the chalkboard -- almost 5 years later!!



You can find the Krylon chalkboard paint, as well as a large selection of primers -- and of course, chalk -- at your local stores!

I have a 12-year-old who lives and breathes art. He is forever sketching, drawing, painting, and sculpting. We have made it a priority for him to spend as much time learning about art as possible, and we were thrilled to have the chance to try the Entire Level III courses from ArtAchieve!


The courses don't assume that you have a lot of art technical knowledge, which is good. Since kids can have different backgrounds from learning, it's good to start with some basic techniques. My son's very first lesson introduced him to some great foundational skills. But it was also challenging. He really had to stretch and grow and be open to learning a better way to his art.

The teacher in the courses is very relatable. He is just an ordinary guy, with no commanding "teacher voice." He just seems to be speaking in a friendly way like he was right there in your living room, chatting with your kids while they work!



What will you need for these courses? Everything is laid out in advance of each lesson so that you know what you will need. For the first one we did, for example, at least 3 different types of media were required (markers, pastels, paint). For my son, who usually worked with one type at a time, this was especially exciting!


I really liked how each lesson was laid out. There were printables for you to use that helped the kids get a feel for the final product. There was adequate practice in the drawing portion, for example, by using the templates provided. I also very much appreciated that you could choose between streaming the video online, or using the slideshow feature. While watching the video is the best way to learn, in my opinion, printing out or referring to the slideshow helped when assembling materials, reviewing steps, and documenting what was done for later. I could also see the slideshow as a nice addition to the portfolio or records for each project, if you like to keep those.

Finally, there was always an exciting element of learning that went beyond art for each lessons. Animals was a focus for many of them, and the styles learned were varied and unique for my son. The first lesson rendered rounded frogs, flamingos were in another, and so on. Different art styles and subjects were unique to various parts of the world, giving my child exposure to other cultures as he worked.


These lessons are not just appropriate for kids, as I found them to be challenging enough for grownups who want to learn, too! Since the videos can be viewed again and again, it might be a good opportunity to learn and create alongside your child.

(Note: The lessons were so fun that I hadn't noticed my younger child "copying" his older brother's attempt at art. He had sat with a notebook and markers and mimicked what was being taught. It was adorable and it also told me that my other son was now ready for some lessons, too!


Since there are three levels of art available, I plan on starting him with the Level I courses very soon.)

You can get a bit of an idea of what the kids will learn at the website. I also encourage you to check them out on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram! 

By Melissa Batai

Does the thought of Christmas make you anxious? Do you look at the calendar and realize Christmas is only a few months away and you have little to no money saved for gifts and the extra expenses that come with the month of December? If so, you’re not alone.

Joyce Marrero Zahariadis, the blogger behind My Stay at Home Adventures, experienced several Christmas’ where she either went into debt or avoided paying other bills in December to buy Christmas presents. She’s since changed her ways and wants to help you change yours, too. Her ebook, Merry Debt Free Christmas: Holiday Solutions for the Financially Stressed offers a solution to this common problem.

The ebook contains the following:

Chapter 1: Why a Debt Free Christmas?
Chapter 2: Getting Mentally Ready for Christmas
Chapter 3: Setting Financial Goals for Christmas
Chapter 4: Creating the Perfect Christmas Budget
Chapter 5: How to Make Money for Christmas
Chapter 6: How to Save More Money for Christmas
Conclusion

Mental Preparation

The first two chapters in this book focus on getting mentally ready to have a debt free Christmas. Let’s be honest, there is a lot of pressure from advertisers, friends, family, and our kids to spend a lot of money to have the “perfect” Christmas. Yet, a “perfect” Christmas is a myth, and buying into that myth will leave you in debt come January.

Zahariadis emphasizes that we don’t “deserve” to spend our money and go over our budget in December because we worked hard all year. Instead, we deserve financial security.

Goals and Budget

After she has mentally prepared the reader for a debt free Christmas, Zahariadis then works on the nuts and bolts of the system—making Christmas goals and a budget. Too many of us enter the holidays unprepared, without a budget for how much we want to spend. After finishing this workbook, you should have a concrete plan for how much you’d like to spend as well as where your money is currently going.

Ways to Make Money

Zahariadis is a busy mom of four, so she doesn’t suggest that you get another job to pay for your Christmas. Instead, she suggests things you can do now, like tighten up your spending to find more money in your budget or do things from home like blog, use Swagbucks, or complete surveys to make extra money. The next chapter on earning money goes even further into ways you can round up extra cash for the holidays.

More Details about Merry Debt-Free Christmas

Each chapter is fairly short (the ebook itself is less than 60 pages long), and at the end of each chapter, there is a section for you to answer three to five pertinent questions about the material covered in the chapter such as, “How does your mindset affect your personal finances?” and “What are your budget struggles?”

Although I did not review it, there is also a 52-page workbook that goes with this ebook. The workbook includes pages for notes, forms to help you create a budget, and an income tracker, plus more.

If you’ve struggled with overspending during previous Christmases and you want this year to be different, this just may be the ebook for you.