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Christmas Planning Part IV: Paying for Christmas

While scaling back can take a big chunk out of the burden of paying for Christmas, the burden won't be completely gone. We still have to buy gifts or materials to make them, and we want to do fun things around Christmas that sometimes cost money. Since I don't advocate going into credit card debt for anything short of the most dire emergencies, here are a couple suggestions on  how to pay for Christmas.  One way we have done it in the past is to set up an extra savings account at our credit union and transfer $10-$20 a paycheck into it depending on what we can afford. If things are really tight, we sometimes only move over $5. If we have a windfall (such as a bonus or tax return) we will take a portion of that money and add it to the Christmas account as well. This Christmas account pays for both gifts AND activities thorough the Christmas season. I know someone that insists that they are too poor to save even a few dollars a pay check, so they put everything they buy for ...
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Best Homemade Pizza I've Ever Had!

A few months ago I took a small class about sourdough and sourdough starters.  It was all very, very intimidating to me, but I thought I would give it a try.  Turns out, once you have a starter, it isn't so difficult after all, just a lot of planning ahead and waiting between steps. So far, I have made artisan sourdough bread, whole wheat sourdough crackers, and this AMAZINGLY delicious pizza crust.  Hubster and I both enjoyed the artisan bread, but the kids didn't care much for it the first time around.  The second time around they were a little more favorable because it was still warm, but they didn't care for it again once it cooled.  I really enjoyed the crackers, but no one else seemed to enjoy them all that much. Then I made the pizza dough from the King Arthur Flour website. OH. MY. GOODNESS.  Not only was it good, but it was the best homemade pizza dough I have EVER had.  This recipe alone was worth the upkeep of a sourdough starter. ...
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Cutting the Cord: How We Ditched Cable

Ahhh, Television... Growing up, my family very rarely had cable television.   We mostly watched what was on network television, and I grew up on PBS especially.   In those days, the before school hours, the after school hours up until the news hour, and Saturday mornings were filled with children’s content on pretty much every network channel.   Today, I can’t find children’s programming on a weekday morning or afternoon except for on PBS, which we love and adore.   Apparently, in order to get children’s programming, one must pay for cable television and niche channels.   The biggest problem with this is that along with those kid and family friendly channels, you also get what I like to call the junk channels.   Channels that are full of stuff I don’t want my kids to see. The Christmas before we found out we were expecting our first child, my husband and I decided that we wanted to get cable for the holiday season so that we could wa...
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