The Ingham Family Mystery Gift Challenge: A cheap and hilarious date night challenge.

The Ingham's are friends of ours that are the perfect example of how to have a solid marriage after 20 years and many challenges. We both look up to them as marriage inspiration and I love hearing about their traditions and the way they solved common marriage problems. When I heard about the Mystery Gift Challenge, we immediately adopted it.


Here are the Instructions:

1. Take two white envelopes and label them (either with your names or with #1 and #2). You can actually keep these and just re-use them every time you do the challenge.

2. Take two pieces of card stock that are envelope size (or cut them to envelope size) and label them with the The Mystery Gift Challenge. Then write out the rules and regulations. They are as follows:
                                                 
                          A. You may buy as many or as few gifts as you would like, but you must not spend more than you are given. You can also add the clause that you must spend every cent that you are given. This is much more difficult and will likely need much more than an hour.

                          B. You have exactly one hour to meet back at the store closest to the entrance that you used to come in. You can change the time allotment as well, if you would like.

                          C. First Come, First Serve. If you enter a store and see your partner already there, you must leave the store and try again later. This keeps purchases a surprise, so you can't check out what the other is doing.

                           D. All Purchases must be kept secret until the big reveal at lunch.

                           E. All purchases must be made with your partner in mind. For example, Rowy may not buy Jon a scrapbook album.


3. Include the set amount of cash in each envelope and give one envelope to each person. The cash limit should be between $5.00 and $40.00, depending on your budget. This makes the date night cheaper than if you wanted to go to a movie, or go out for dinner.


4. Pack an awesome lunch into a back pack. You can use the soft cooler for anything that needs to stay cold and stuff that into the backpack too.


5. Grab two large gift bags from your gift bag stash and tons of tissue paper. Make sure each person has one gift bag and an assortment of tissue paper. It's easiest if the guy carries the book bag so he can stash his gift bag in it, since girls can fit that into their purse. I mean, seriously, what can't we fit into our purse?


6. Head out to your local mall. Start at a store closest to the entrance and set your watches. Happy hunting!


7. When your time is up, meet back and find an aesthetically pleasing part of the mall (like a fountain) or head out to a close park, trail, or waterfall to have your picnic and exchange gifts.



The first time we did this, my stomach hurt from laughing so hard. We have a large mall, and the idea of covering what you needed to cover in an hour is laughable. I was running full speed through the mall trying to get where I needed to go when we had about 10 minutes left. I turned the corner, and of course, Jon was in the store I was headed for, so I ran full speed back to the other side of the mall to get to my second choice. It was one of the best work outs ever. It's really an adrenaline rush, though when you stop to think about it, it's kind of funny that you feel like your trying to disarm a bomb before it blows, when all you're really trying to do is spend $20.00 in an hour.


 I found that the more sales people you tell about what you're doing the better. They know all the deepest discounts and can quickly give you your best options for your budget. A Target saleslady told me about a $9.00 blueray sale they had going, and a Macy's employee filled a 3 month sample spray bottle of Eternity for Men cologne for free to sweeten his gift bag. When I had $1.06 left, a Hallmark employee found $.99 Superman Silly Bands for me and used the "take a penny" jar to make up the tax difference. Even the Mrs. Field's employee threw in a free mini cookie.


If you have a larger family, you can adapt this by creating as many cards as you have family members and marking each with a name. Have everyone pull a card. If someone gets a card with his or her name, they can choose a person to switch with until everyone has a name that isn't theirs. I suspect the little guys will have their money spent in a few minutes on some rather interesting gifts, leaving the older family members time to get their gifts.


Other variations would be a Christmas Mystery Gift Challenge, a Double Date Mystery Gift Challenge (you can pick names as in the larger family variation above), or a "Buy for yourself" Gift Challenge.


Here are the examples of what we got on our first challenge:

Jon got me a revolving waffle iron (on a great sale!), and a chip that goes into my new sneakers that links to my iPhone to send information on how far and fast I walk, run etc.

I got Jon an American Psycho Blueray (He thinks Christian Bale is the greatest actor of all time), an 8GB thumb drive (he had lost his), a bag of mini cookies from Mrs. Field's, a chapstick (he always steals mine), "The Cool Fix" aftershave lotion, and superman silly bandz.

DIY Cheap Screenprinting Baby Onsies Silk Screening

This fourth of July, My darling husband decided that he wanted to teach me how to silkscreen the extra plain onsies that we had from our baby showers onsie decorating table. I was skeptical. I was picturing blotchy paint all over the onsies (and most likely, our furniture and cats).


I'm happy to admit that he did AWESOME!! I was amazed at the quality and appearance of these! If I had more time, I would totally set up an Etsy silk screening shop. The best part is how uncomplicated they were, I honestly feel like anyone could do it. He did two layers - Meaning you silkscreen one color and then overlap another color to make a two color design. We kept it simple and used our Cricut cutting machine to cut out a design.

Sadly, you can't see the great colors in this photo, but the bug onsie is red and black and the apple onsie is green and red.

I'll send you over to his Instructables Site for the full step by step process since he did such a great job of explaining in step by step instructions with photos at each step. I'm totally picturing all the cool stuff you can do with this- Team tee shirts! Take the time to set up one screen and you can do a whole team's tee shirts in just a few minutes! Jot him a note if you have any questions or success stories, I'm dying to see what the truly creative people can do with this!

Full instructions available at:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-and-print-with-reusable-silk-screens/

DIY: Bookmark Thank You Cards

I've been making my own cards for a while, but I was looking for a way to improve on my card making. The last wedding card I made took me almost two hours. Since I had over thirty thank you cards to send out this week, That wasn't going to fly unless I quit my job and dedicated my life to card making. (Which seems a bit extreme to save $15.00 on thank you cards). Plus, whether your buying or making your cards, it's really a shame that we work on something so hard that will find it's way to the trash after being read (except for the few sentimental people).

I searched Pinterest for DIY Thank You card designs when I saw an errant post on DIY Bookmarks that I loved (as an avid reader who has a naughty habit of folding pages). They weren't using them as cards, but I kept thinking to myself... Why not? There's plenty of room for your message on the back, You can use scrapbook material on the front. It's extremely frugal, and we're saving trash (twice, since the bookmarks are a third the size of a card and the recipient can actually reuse it if she has a need for it).

I created these bookmark cards using scrapbook paper that I already have, and bits of leftover ribbon. Since I have TONS of scrapbook paper organized by color, but not a lot of ribbon, I picked a ribbon I liked first, then matched it to a coordinating scrapbook paper. I kept running out of ribbon for different colors, so I would just switch to a new color combination. Which actually worked out well, because I could choose a style that I thought the recipient would like best. The only thing I had to buy was blank paper bookmarks. I had originally planned on just cutting them myself from white stock paper using my paper cutter, but I ended up at Michael's Crafts when my husband decided that he wanted our fourth of July holiday to include him teaching me how to silkscreen baby onsies (That's right, my 6'3'', 260 pound, bad ass husband silkscreens... and sews, bakes, creates fancy french dishes that I won't eat because I can't pronounce the ingredients, and knows every single line to the Broadway shows Rent and Legally Blonde: The Musical). Michael's had an enormous pack of blank paper bookmarks for 3.49. Sadly, I threw out the outer package before I saw how many were included, but I'm going to make an educated guess of 150. I grabbed that because $3.49 was well worth the time it would take me to correctly measure out 30 bookmarks.


When I got home, I used my corner rounder on each side of the book marks, Then cut strips of scrapbook paper (I just eyeballed it to be slightly smaller than the bookmark). I rounded out each corner of the scrapbook paper as well and glued to the center of each bookmark using scrapbooking glue. I then used my small hole punch to punch a hole in the top, inserted ribbon and tied off. It took about 15 minutes to do all 30, but the majority of that time was spent deliberating on what combinations to use.


I paired them with stationary envelopes that I already had and made a bundle to fill out when I have some down time. The next day, I wrote my messages on the back of each card and included a tag line that said "*Feel free to reuse me as a bookmark!"


Instead of spending the $9.99 on 36 thank you cards that I had planned, I spent 3.49 for (guesstimate) 150 thank you cards and other projects. Plus, nothing says thank you better than giving someone something they can use.

Saving Gift Bags and Tissue Paper: a quick way to go green and save money

I had a baby shower thrown for me last weekend and was overwhelmed by the awesome gifts and creative wrapping. Living frugally, I couldn't stand to throw out all of that tissue paper and those bags that were pretty much brand new. So, I sat down during a break from making pizza's to freeze for the upcoming week and smoothed out the volumes of tissue paper, sorted them into coordinating color packets and folded them carefully. Then I removed any tags from the gift bags and figured out how to fold them correctly (a talent that had eluded me for my entire life). Once I got the hang of folding the gift bags, it went really quickly. I even went so far as to cut the taped edges off of the wrapping paper (making a slightly smalled square of paper) and folding them up.

I then gathered all the paper and bags that were appropriate for a certain occasion only (like blue pastel "Baby Boy" paper), and bundled them with ribbon, Then I gathered the "Appropriate Anytime" bags and paper and bundled those with ribbon. I placed both in a giant blue felt amazon bag in the craft room (Those bags that they use to gift wrap large packages.) This does more than just save me money, it creates a stock room of wrapping supplies that I can use when needed, which ultimately saves me a last minute trip to Walmart. I'm a big fan of reducing the amount of errands I need to run. My limit is one errand a week (not counting my once a week shopping trip on my day off). Anything that I can do to skip that errand puts me in a better position to keep to my routines, relax, and have fun!

It took me less than ten minutes to sort through all the bags, We thew out less than a quart plastic baggie of wrapping material, and the wrapping paper stock pile is pretty impressive. Plus, I made book marker thank you cards, and I was able to re-use the silk ribbon right away on the thank you cards.

Give it a shot next time!

Free entertainment! Things to do for free when you're trying to save money.

There are tons of things to do for free when your trying to save money. The following is a list of our favorites. Be creative and add your own!

FREETAINMENT!

1.    Board Games- Why do we have 20 board games but never use them. Especially chess or two person games.

2.   Gym- We complain about not having enough time to go to the gym and being bored in the same day. Insanity. Especially if you live in a community association with its own free gym. Feeling particularly unmotivated? Just make the agreement to go for 15 minutes. 15 minutes worth of exercise is better than none! Especially when done on a consistent basis. Most likely once you start, you’ll be motivated to stay longer.

3.   Pool- If you have a community pool this is a fantastic option. But wear sunscreen! We have a free community pool that’s not even a block from our home. We keep a soft insulated cooler bag (I think ours came from five below for 5.00 – it looks like an insulated tote bag) stocked with our 2 beach towels, bathing suits, books, a hair tie, and sunscreen. When we want to hit the pool, we just add our water bottles and head right out.

4.   Walking around the neighborhood- One of my favorite things in the world is exploring the things that everyone passes but no one sees. I used to call up random friends to have them come over and walk through the “woods” (well, the small clusters of trees that count as woods in northern Virginia) behind my house to see what we could find. Eventually, we found a river! I had some of my best memories from those walks!

5.   The Library- I know, I know. The library is lame.  But I dare you to give it another shot; it’s hands down my favorite place to be. Chill out and read glossy magazines so you can find out what went wrong with Tom and Katie. They have pretty much every magazine known to man and they’re all FREE to read! If you just can’t bring yourself to hit the library, then head to Barnes and Noble. They have a very relaxed magazine reading policy and comfy chairs. I suggest this only to those with strong willpower, or else you’ll leave the proud owner of a $32.00 book on organic botany that you’ll never look at again once its home.

6.   XBOX- Our XBOX is entertainment central. We can watch free movies on Amazon Prime or TV Shows on HULU PLUS (We cancelled our cable and saved a fortune by switching to these services- see my archives for “Saving a Fortune by Using Your XBOX”), or we can play any of the games we have previously purchased. If you’re not really a “gamer”, but your partner is… I suggest you try out the free trial of minecraft. It’s a world of infinite Lego’s. You can create anything. It’s very easy to play and highly addictive. Plus, you can play split screen (that means up to four people can play on one screen). If you end up liking it, the full version of the game is only 20.00 (Most XBOX Games cost about 60.00). My husband and I have been obsessed with minecraft now for about 3 months. That’s a pretty good use of 20.00 if you ask me! You can also Kinect Chat if you already have a Kinect. We mostly Kinect chat with my family. It creates a widescreen image of your room with everyone in it, and video conferences with each other. You’d have to do it to understand but when I Kinect chat with my family, I literally feel like I’m sitting in their living room hanging out with them. It can be a huge help if you’re far away and homesick. If you have a Kinect and you have kids, there are about a million silly free games you can play that uses the kids body as the controller and takes photos while he plays.

7.   Organize the house! This may seem like more work them play, but we aren’t talking about cleaning. We’re talking about organizing. There’s only one rule. No spending money. So, you have to figure out a way to use what’s already in your house to get what you need. For instance, our pantry has the metal rails in the shelf that make it hard for our shelf organizers not to fall through. I wanted to my husband to go buy plywood and cut them out to the dimensions of the shelf so that our shelf organizers wouldn’t fall. Instead, we upcycled our moving boxes, cut the shelf’s out of them, and when we put them in, they looked great and it worked beautifully! The next project we’re planning is my husband’s tool closet. We have a list of projects so that when we have time, we can pick one that interests us.

8.   Start a Blog! This blog was started by accident when I was trying to add something to pinterest. I began the blog to pina simple idea. The first day, I had 5 page views and called my mother ecstatic because someone actually read it. The second day, I had 700 page views and freaked out. Today, (Which I believe is day 10), I have a total of 170,000 page views and have made over one hundred dollars. It’s one of the few free hobbies that can actually make you money. Most important though, are the amazing things you learn from other blogs like yours and the fact that you’re passing along things that work for you to others.

9.   Cooking Date Night: While it has a lame name, this is one of my favorite things in the world! We still stick with our 100.00/week grocery budget and we plan to make a really fancy dinner on either Saturday or Sunday night. It normally takes us about 5 hours to make. We have a blast, learn to work together and sit down to a phenomenal dinner that we’re ridiculously proud of. As a bonus, all that time without the TV encourages conversations about everything under the sun.  I use tasteofhome.com to create the menu (you can save recipes to your recipe box and they create a shopping list for you based on those recipes). Since we’re using whole ingredients for the recipe, the costs are low and I’ve had no problem keeping within my grocery budget. Plus, you typically have some awesome leftovers. For the last cooking date night, we had a loaf of Cranberry Walnut Bread, Skillet Mac and Cheese, a Herb Roasted Whole Chicken, a Spiced tossed salad, and Twice Baked Potatoes stuffed with sour cream, bacon, salt, pepper and cheddar cheese.

10.  Spa Night – Every girl in the world has an enormous pile of beauty products that she never uses. You know the one I mean; it has years of Christmas gifts and CVS impulse purchases in it. Take a night and pull it all out. Soak in a bubble bath, deep condition your hair, give yourself a manicure and a pedicure, exfoliate, self-tan, pluck and arch your eyebrows, give yourself a face mask, moisturize, and spray on the perfume you only wear for special occasions. Feel like a million bucks, because your worth itJ If you have a particularly awesome partner, and he’s brave enough to join in, it can be a fun couple’s activity (as long as you swear on a stack of bibles that you won’t tell anyone).