Daily Thrifty Tips
Volume Three, Number 132, September 21, 2004
http://www.ThriftyFun.com
Hello,
We will be working on a Halloween topic site over the next week. If you have any Halloween tips, requests or costume ideas feel free to submit them on the contest form.
We haven't decided on a topic for this week's ThriftyFun News yet. For those who don't know about the TF News, it is our weekly newsletter which deals with a different topic each week. Let us know If you have a topic that you would like to see covered.
Thanks for reading,
Susan
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Today's newsletter contains:
Today's Tips:
- Clean Your Home's Siding with a Hose and Push Broom
- Keeping Important Items Handy
- Removing Odors From Your Microwave
- Plastic Knives as Row Markers
- I Carry Iced Tea With Me
- Stubborn Oven Cleaner
- Make a Pretty Framed Picture for Pennies
- Christmas Wreath With a Bicycle Tire
- Painting Tip: Use a Skateboard
- Decorating a Guest Bedroom
- Spare Change Your Car Ashtray
- Feedback: Green and Healthy Grass
- Feedback: Use Less Splenda
- Feedback: Chair Made out of Clothes Pins
- Feedback: Uses for Oatmeal Containers
- Feedback: Nicotine Saturated Walls
- Feedback: Uses for the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
- Feedback: Pattern For A Granny Square Poncho
- Feedback: Basil Toner
- Today's Recipe: Italian Herb Salad Dressing Mix
New Requests:
- Crystallized and Hard Honey
- Removing Paint From Carpet
- Dry Erase Marker Stains on Clothing
- Instructions for Making a Tin Man Bird Feeder out of Tin Cans
- Gross, Yucky, Creepy Halloween Recipes
More Reading:
- Cooking Together: Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
- Easy Bake Oven Mixes and Recipes
- Starting and Keeping a Worm Bin
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Dear Webby's Humor Letter
Dear Webby publishes a daily ezine with clean humor and tech tips. We get it here at ThriftyFun and really enjoy it. They offer 3 versions: Text, HTML, and large font HTML versions for vision impaired people. As an added bonus, they have begun publishing our syndicated thrifty tips! Check out Dear Webby's Humor Letter by clicking the link below.
http://webby.com/humor
Today's Tips
Clean Your Home's Siding with a Hose and Push Broom
An easy way to clean your siding on your house is: Tape a garden hose to a wide push broom, using duct tape at 2 or 3 places along the handle. Position the nozzle near the top of the broom head, just above the bristles. Now start scrubbing and rinsing at the same time!
By Katz
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Keeping Important Items Handy
Hey, I'm 15 years old and hope I can help you all out! My tip is that if you find you lose things perpetually, like cell phones, car keys, credit cards, phone numbers, or any other small item, you can buy a simple CD holder (the ones that hang on the wall or door), hang them up, and store all your small but necessary items in it, it works great! The items are easy to remove and put back in, and if you hang it somewhere obvious, you'll never lose your stuff! Hope I helped!
By Becca P.
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Removing Odors From Your Microwave
To get rid of smells in your microwave, cut half a lemon up into several small pieces and place in a cup of water. Add a couple of whole cloves. Place this in the microwave and boil for 5 minutes.
By Lisa Trudeau
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Plastic Knives as Row Markers
Save those plastic knives from your picnic to make durable row markers. Mark plant variety and planting date with permanent marker. Push knife with handle side in the ground. These can be used year after year.
By Katz
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I Carry Iced Tea With Me
I brew extra strong tea every morning and put it in a small 1/2 cup plastic container I keep in my purse. When eating out I get ice water and pour a little of the tea I have made in the glass. This is especially good if your drink herbal or decaf tea as those are not usually offered.
By Owen
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Stubborn Oven Cleaner
Recipe By: Natural Cleaning for Your Home by Casey Kellar
1/4 cup ammonia
1/4 cup baking soda
1/4 cup white vinegar
Preheat your oven to its lowest setting; once the light goes off, turn
off stove. Put ammonia in a bowl or pan and let sit in the closed oven for 4-6 hours. Remove the ammonia and add vinegar and soda to make a paste. Use the paste and a heavy duty sponge to scrub most stubborn areas. Mist the oven with water and wipe clean. This cleaner also works great for cleaning your barbecue grill.
This is cheaper and better for you then bought oven cleaners.
By paula
View Article: Click Here
Make a Pretty Framed Picture for Pennies
Here is a way to make a very nice framed picture without the high cost.
Find a picture you love. I've had luck finding these in magazines and catalogs.
Use acrylic paint ($.59 to $1.29 a little bottle) to paint any old plain frame. Choose a color that's in your picture. Those frames for certificates that usually come in black are prime candidates for this project, as they're usually cheap. Takes maybe 4 coats to get it all covered depending on your color choice.
You can use shiny nail polish to put detail color, a border or design on your frame. Or use another complimenting color of acrylic paint for detail, if desired.
For your "mat", cut a piece of brown paper to fit into the frame. Grocery bags (back plain side) work very well for this. Sponge water color onto brown paper. You can also just paint the brown paper, or color it with markers.
A good thing about making a mat is if your picture doesn't exactly fit centered in your frame, the mat takes up the extra space and makes it look good.
Now carefully cut out your picture, cut a piece of cardboard (like a cereal box) 1/4" wider than your picture on all sides, and color the edges of the cardboard with black marker. Glue your picture onto this. Gives it depth.
Glue your picture with its backing onto your "mat", put into your newly painted frame, and enjoy!
Note: If you're not too good a painter, like me, don't fret. Enjoy your framed picture anyway. Just call it "folk art"! LOL
By Jayne
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Christmas Wreath With a Bicycle Tire
A beautiful Christmas Wreath can be made by covering a bicycle tire with chicken wire, then weaving pieces of evergreen boughs through it. Then attach a brightly colored ribbon and anything else that you wish to add.
By Katz
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Painting Tip: Use a Skateboard
Borrow your kid's skateboard when you are painting baseboards and lower walls. Just sit cross-legged on a skateboard and roll along with your paintbrush and a paint can. It's much easier on your back.
By Katz
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Decorating a Guest Bedroom
This is my #1 hint for decorating a guest room and doesn't cost a thing. After you're done, and it looks beautiful -- SPEND A NIGHT OR TWO in your own guest room. Is the bed that you thought was a good support actually a rock? Does the light stream in at 6:00 am? Is the light on the nightstand sufficient to read, etc.? No matter how beautiful, the idea is to make your guest(s) comfortable, and spending a night or two as your own guest will help find any problems.
By Donna
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Spare Change Your Car Ashtray
Since you kicked the cigarette habit, clean out that car ash tray and fill it with spare change. This way you'll always be ready for toll roads and car washes.
By Harm0ny
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Feedback: Green and Healthy Grass
You're going to get a lot of feedback on this one. I am leaving feedback to tell you that grass is seasonal, you either have winter grass or summer grass. Fertilize grass S.O.D. Sept. Oct & Dec. (hopefully organically) The co-operative extension in your local area can tell you which grass does best in your area.
By Diamondee
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Feedback: Use Less Splenda
Is splenda a SAFE alternative to sugar? When aspertame came out everyone thought it was safe, only to find out 10 years later that it was not as they claimed it to be, and caused several side effects. I would really like to find a low calorie sweetener, but not at the cost of my health somewhere else down the line.
By Diamondee
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Feedback: Chair Made out of Clothes Pins
http://members.aol.com/davidfors/chairs/
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Feedback: Uses for Oatmeal Containers
If you have young kids, you can decorate them and make a drum out of them. I personally keep using mine over and over for oatmeal because I buy the bagged oatmeal and dump it in the container.
By mlanders
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Feedback: Nicotine Saturated Walls
I used manage apt complexes, and my hubby did the painting and maintenance. The only thing we used was Kilz, available at any home improvement store. If you're on a budget, you can buy a spray can at a time. It works really well, and sprays on white, probably just like your walls are supposed to look like. Good luck!
By Kim
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Feedback: Uses for the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
I used it to scrub out the filthy bathtub after washing my cats. It was the nastiest I'd ever seen it and I have 2 kids and a husband so that's saying a lot ;) It looks brand new and even clean the caulking and grout to original. I'll swear by it any day.
By Suzanne S.
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Feedback: Pattern For A Granny Square Poncho
There is a granny square poncho at http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/chs-poncho.html. It is just like doing a big granny square with a hole in the middle. I redid mind so it didn't have the thing at the neck for the tie and it is perfect. Works up fast just like the squares and you can do it longer for bigger people. I used up all of my scraps on the first one and had people fighting over it!! Enjoy
By Alice
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Feedback: Basil Toner
I made this basil toner. It's real simple. Use cheese cloth, if u don't have that, a small piece of a cotton cloth will work. Use a Tablespoon on basil and place it on the cloth, then close up the piece of fabric, rubberband it shut. Place in boiling water, do this for about 5 minutes or so. Then take the basil bag out and let the mixture cool. Place in an empty bottle. It has a (b)great(/b) shelf life. It helps pull all the nasty stuff outta your pores.
By Brandie
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Other Active Topics
Be sure to check out our active topics page to follow the discussion.
http://www.thriftyfun.com/board.html
Today's Recipe: Italian Herb Salad Dressing Mix
A convenience mix for Italian Herb Salad Dressing.
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons oregano
1 teaspoon onion powder
2 teaspoons basil
2 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons pepper
2 tablespoons garlic powder
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
Directions:
Mix and store in an airtight container.
To make dressing use 3 tablespoon mix with 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil and 1/2 cup wine vinegar.
By paula
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Tip Contest
New Contest! Submit a tip and you could win:
Foodsaver Vac 300
This is the entry level Foodsaver. It offers commercial-quality vacuum packaging and is great for storing meat and cheese. It has a retail price of $79.99.
Enter the contest!
New Requests:
Crystallized and Hard Honey
How can you rejuvenate, crystallized and hard honey?
Thanks,
Joe
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Removing Paint From Carpet
My cat knocked over a quart of white bathroom paint onto my brown carpet, I was not home at the time it happened, so it had dried some by the time I discovered this. Any suggestions as to how I might be able to remove this paint without futher damage to the carpet?
Thanks in advance!
Tina
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Dry Erase Marker Stains on Clothing
I have whiteboard marker stains on many of my clothes. How can I remove these stains?
Kirsty, Malaysia
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Instructions for Making a Tin Man Bird Feeder out of Tin Cans
My sister-in-law received, as a gift from one of her students, a Tin Man Birdfeeder made of used Tin cans. I would like to have instructions of how to make some.
Thanks,
Laurie from Whitman County
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Gross, Yucky, Creepy Halloween Recipes
My kids are having a Halloween party this year. I was hoping that someone might have some gruesome, gory, or creepy food recipes. I have looked at several sites but it seems that most have the same ones over and over again...
Delaine in GA
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your request here: Click Here
More Reading
Cooking Together: Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
By Brandie Valenzuela
For the best family time, bring your kids into the kitchen to
help you make this delicious, Autumn inspired recipe.
View Article: Click Here
Easy Bake Oven Mixes and Recipes
If you've ever had to buy those refills for Easy Bake Overns you know they are expensive. My daughter and I have tried all of these and really like them (more fun too, doing it together!). We've even put them in bags with ribbons and directions and given them with gifts.
View Article: Click Here
Starting and Keeping a Worm Bin
"For many years, gardeners have been able to tuck kitchen wastes into open compost piles without difficulty. However, the animal populations have made it undesirable now. Frequent four-legged visitors (raccoons, possums, and rats) to both urban and rural gardens compel us to compost kitchen vegetable and fruit scraps in enclosed containers with sturdy, rodent-proof lids. Rats in particular are attracted to food wastes of all kinds. Fallen bird seed and fallen fruit will draw rats, so keep areas around feeders and berry bushes and fruit trees cleaned up, especially during harvest season. The King County Health Department, and the King County Master Composters, firmly teach keeping all kitchen waste scraps out of open compost bins."
View Article: Click Here
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Thanks
Susan
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