Fab Frugal Fun - Visit your State Park

This Sunday afternoon we took a fifteen minute drive to our local state park. We were grandly rewarded for our short trek. We hiked, we took pictures, we waded in the water, and we made plans for future visits! My daughter picked the trails, one of which landed us squarely on the beach as you see in our pictures above.

As you can see the views were great. On this particular day several families were out on the beach with coolers and picnic baskets. Lots of laughter, food and fun were being had all around us. This particular state park doesn't charge an entrance fee either. It has several picnic areas, camping areas, swimming areas, and an education center. They generally host events 2 to 4 times during the weekend. Usually a morning and an afternoon program that starts in the education center and ends with a hike.

I have a feeling we may be back soon to swim and if I am lucky talk my mom into providing us some fried chicken and potato salad for a picnic. Wish me luck :-)

Look for a park in your area here.

Fun Stuff - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

So-o-o-o our library is hosting several activities this week. One of the activities is the showing of the movie, "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs." The movie is based on the classic children's book. The kids will get to see the movie, get a fun movie related activity book and some treats.

One of the treats is this big platter of spaghetti and meatballs I just finished making or really baking. It is really a platter full of cupcakes with vanilla icing, strawberry jam and the meatballs are Ferrero Rocher chocolate. YUM! I was lucky enough to run across this idea in Woman's Day magazine well before the movie was ever released and this was the perfect excuse to try it out. It was super easy.

You will need the following items:

1. 
   
   Cake mix of your choice


2. 
   
   Two containers of vanilla icing


3. 
   
   One jar of strawberry jam


4. 
   
   One package of Ferrero Rocher


5. 
   
   One zip lock bag or use piping bag if you own one

Follow package directions to bake cupcakes. Open one container of icing and smooth over cupcakes. Place cupcakes on a platter. Open second container of icing and place in Ziploc bag. Snip corner of bag and go crazy piping strings over the platter full of cupcakes. You want it to look like a mound of real pasta so have fun. Next you will slightly warm strawberry jam in microwave, remove the lid please. Place a small amount in a bowl, drizzle the remaining jam over the platter of cupcakes to look like marinara sauce. Take the Ferrero Rocher, unwrap and coat in the jam you had set aside. Place the coated Ferrero Rocher on top of the cupcakes to resemble meatballs. It looks fantastic, taste yummy and kids of all ages will get a kick out of it.

This idea could work well for a classroom party paired with a book reading. It would also work well for a child's birthday party. It is also a simple baking activity for the beginning baker. With summer approaching it would make a neat theme for a sleepover too!

Enjoy!

Check this out over at Beauty and Bedlam. Click here.

Cheesecake - Food Processor Style

So what is a girl to do when her mom hands her a pound of cream cheese that is getting ready to expire? Then you go to the grocery store and there store brand cream cheese is marked down to 50 cents per half pound. Well if the girl is me, you spend a dollar so you can pick up another pound of cream cheese and you run home and drag out the food processor!!!

This is the simplest recipe ever, and you only have to clean up the food processor. That's right, only one thing to clean up. Well, the pan the cheesecake is cooked in will need cleaning but that is much more fun to clean up :-)

Crust

16 graham crackers

6 Tbsp. butter or margarine softened

1/2 cup sugar

Drop graham crackers into food processor and pulse until crackers are finely crushed. Add sugar and cubed softened margarine and pulse again 6-8 times. Dump into 9 or 10" spring form pan, pat and press firmly into pan.

Filling

4 - 8 oz. packages of cream cheese

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 whole large eggs

1 Tbsp. vanilla

Cube softened cream cheese and drop into food processor with sugar. Pulse until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla and mix completely. Pour mixture into spring form pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes. Leave cheesecake in oven with door cracked and oven off for another 30 minutes.

Refrigerate for a minimum of 4 hours or overnight. THEN EAT.

You may notice a little nibble missing from the end of my slice :-)

Also, don't be afraid to substitute ingredients. For example we were short on graham crackers so I substituted animal crackers for about half the mixture. Worked beautifully.

PS- Total price for this lovely cheesecake? Less than $ 4.00. I may make a second and freeze individual slices for those late night cravings. Yum!

Fab Frugal Fun - Movie Night

So it's Saturday evening and my family is doing the movie thing on the cheap. We picked up the critically acclaimed movie "Avatar" from our local library. Another quick stop at the local Dollar tree store provided the necessary movie snacks, popcorn and soda. For some reason no movie is complete without the popcorn at my house.

We don't have to worry about where to sit, we already have the best seats in the house. We don't have to worry about missing any scenes while running to the bathroom, we just pause the DVD player as needed. We can also watch the movie as many times as we want because the library DVDs check out for 7 days at a time. Of course we aren't that greedy, we will return the DVD on Monday to continue the circulation.

So a night at the movie theater would have cost us $ 30.oo just for tickets and another $ 20.00 just for one bucket of popcorn and 4 soda's. Since we went the frugal route we only spent $ 1.oo on a 3 pack of microwave popcorn and a $ 1.00 for 3 liter soda. Only $ 2.oo!! Now that's a real frugal deal for a family of four.