The Only Way I Make Bacon

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August Review and September Goals

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Money Saving Patience

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Sweet and Sour Chicken

Original recipe here from Made It, Ate It, Loved It

How do you make your sweet and sour chicken?  I've seen so many different recipes and each of them tastes completely different.

Growing up, sweet and sour chicken always included pineapple and those little hard noodle looking wheat things.  I was never a big fan.

I recently made this sweet and sour chicken which was delicious but I would actually prefer it to be more sour.  What do you use to make your chicken sour?  The recipe above uses vinegar.

Please share your favorites!

Writing Styles and Editing Your Book

               Buy the digi book here.  Buy the hard copy here.

After finishing your story outline, you are ready to write your first rough draft.  This is where knowing your audience is really important. 

Let’s say I was writing about a bouncing ball.  Watch how the simple story ideas change as the audience changes.  Can you guess who the audience is?

I love to be outside.  I eat outside, I run outside, and I play outside.  I like to play with my ball outside.  I throw the ball in the air.  It comes down and bounces up real high.  I like to play with my ball outside.

One day, Isacc and Naveah were playing catch in their backyard.  Naveah threw the ball to Isacc so hard that it almost knocked him over.  Since Isacc didn’t want to be hit with the ball again, he came up with another idea.  They were going to have a competition to see who could throw the ball the highest!  Isacc took the ball and threw it as high as he could.  When the ball came down, Naveah caught it and threw it up to see how high she can throw.  On the way down, the ball hit the ground and bounced back up as high as the top of the tree.  Both children laughed and they continued throwing the ball high into the air.

There are many benefits to young children playing with bouncy balls.  They can learn hand-eye coordination and depth perception, as well as shape and color recognition.  Additionally, they will learn sharing skills by interacting with other children and the balls. 

According to Newton’s first law of motion, an object needs to have an external force exerted upon it in order for the object to be set into motion.  The object then uses kinetic energy while it is moving, and when the object returns to its motionless state, it is said to have potential energy.  For example, a ball sits on the floor.  At this point, it has potential energy.  Then, Jimmy picks up the ball and bounces it.  Jimmy provides the external force, which comes from him bouncing the ball.  While the ball is bouncing, it is using moving energy, or kinetic energy.

                                                                    

Did you say that the first example was for toddlers and early readers?  Or that the second was for elementary aged children?  How about the third being geared towards parents?  Or the last being geared towards students, teachers, or researchers?

Things to Remember

For children’s picture books, the main purpose is to have the story be a learning experience for the child.  The child will use the book as a guide towards how the world works.  There is always something, whether physical or moral, to be learned.

For children’s chapter books, the main purpose is to encourage the child to read.  To do this, you need to make reading fun.  Children this age love adventure, mysteries, and being able to pretend they are in the character’s shoes.  Make sure to add a lot of extra description to the main story line to peak your reader’s interest. 

When writing for adults, remember to maintain a certain level of professionalism and respectability.  Try not to use slang in your writing as it makes others more skeptical.  At this point, your audience is completely capable of pulling out hidden meanings and translating metaphors.  Use less description or ‘juice’ as you would for a children’s chapter book because the adult likes to be able to create the fantasy in their head.  Leaving a little for mystery is a good thing; just make sure not to overdo it.  You still need to have your storyline firm.  

Lastly, when writing for research and learning purposes, use a guide to ensure that you are formatting your work correctly.  Each piece of educational literature has a rhyme and a reason for how it is done.  Make sure to research enough before you attempt to create your piece.  Don’t forget to maintain professionalism in your writing as your target audience is adults.  

Reconciling your Savings

Last week, we discussed how to reconcile your checking account based on your projections.  This week, we will begin reconciling the savings account as well.

In our projections example, the first month we transfer to the savings account is April.  To reconcile this transaction, begin by reconciling the checking account the same as previous months. 

When you get to the 'Transfer' line, C37 in our example, we will use an equation to get the total amount to transfer.  You could also grab the transfer amount from the Projections page but I prefer to use the equation because it acts as an extra check point. 

Because we want to keep $1500 in the checking account at all times, we want to transfer everything over $1500 to the checking account.

To do this, subtract $1500 from the running total.  This is the amount that you want to transfer.  Make sure to put this amount in as a negative amount since we will be taking it out of the account. 

 Here's the equation:

• =-(D36-1500)

Add a tab titled 'Savings' and create the same header as we did for the checking account.  Add the Transfer as the first transaction.  Continue adding on for following months.

Smoothie Central

   

I started this summer off by making a smoothie of some form every day after work.  While we are getting closer to fall, it's time to get in our last few summer smoothies of the year. 

Before getting into the ingredients, I use a Bella Sport single serve blender.  You can see the blender bottle in the red smoothie picture.  The blender was $15 and I am now on my third blender because the gasket keeps breaking.  I'm wondering if it would make sense to get a better blender or to just keep replacing the gaskets.  Any ideas?

I typically don't make the same smoothie more than once.  I try to use a variety of different fruits or water enhancers to keep the from getting bored.

Here's what's in my smoothies. 

• The yellow smoothie on the left includes banana, coconut milk, and orange Mio (water flavor)
• The smoothie in the middle is actually more of a slushy and is just orange Mio and ice
• The final smoothie contains bananas, raspberries, black berries, soy milk, and some chocolate syrup. 

You may have noticed that the first and last smoothie do not have ice or ice cream in them but are still frosty.  

Here's what I do:

When my bananas get brown (or start to get brown.  I just don't like the sweeter banana taste on it's own), I slice the bananas and place in individual baggies.  Then, when I get ready to make a smoothie, I take out one baggie and add the bananas to the blender as I would if I were using ice. 

This saves the need to microwave the bananas to get the peels off thus losing the frozen texture.

What are your smoothie tricks?

Reconciling Your Monthly Expenses

Last week, we learned how to use our spreadsheet to build a savings account or rainy day fund.  This week, we will use our spreadsheet to reconcile our monthly balance of the new checking account.

Let's begin by labeling our tabs.  I've labeled our current worksheet 'Projections' and then labeled a new worksheet 'Checking'. 

 Open the Checking account tab and begin by building the headers.  I started my labels in cell A1 and used the following labels:
A1: Date
B1: Transactions
C1: Amount
D1: Running Total

I also made my row 1 Bold because I find it easier to read the table if my headers are bold.

 From there, we will add the information from our 'Projections' tab into our checking account.  It is assumed that all transactions that occur throughout the month are done through the checking account.

The order of the transactions here doesn't need to match the order of the transactions in the projection's tab.  Use the transaction date to create the order for your transactions.

To enter the amounts, I use a function rather than entering them by hand to avoid errors in typing.  For income, I type the equals sign, click on the projections tab, then click the cell I want.

• For Paycheck 1, the equation would look like this:  =Projections!B3

For expenses, I use the same process but add a negative before clicking projections so the amounts will be debited from the account

• For January's Rent, the equation would look like this: =-Projections!B8

 To fill in the running total (I made all of column D bold), we need to start by pulling our first transaction.  To do this, type the equals sign, then click on C2 in the same tab. You can also type the equation =C2.  This is the only cell you will use this equation.

In cell D3, type =D2+C3 or click on the cells to add the cell numbers to the equation.  This will take the previous balance in the checking account and the new transaction.  Fill down using the methods discussed earlier in the excel budgeting series to complete your running totals.

Make sure that your end balance for the month is the same as the end balance for the month in the Projections tab.  (This example's end balance is $475.20).  If they are not the same, your account does not balance and the transactions need to be double checked for accuracy.

Use the same process to add additional months, making sure to double check your totals. In the above example, I added February and March.  Next week, I will show how to include the transfer to the savings account that happens in April of our example.

Side Note:  I also like to use colors to separate my months so I can quickly glance and see the entire month.

Quick and Easy Oven Chicken Meal

As always, I'm not one to measure or be exact.  I just throw a bunch of ingredients together and hope for the best.  This one has turned out to be one of my favorite meals.  It was extremely simple and turned out delicious!  Added bonus:  Minimal clean up!

Ingredients

Chicken Breasts

Onion

Tomatoes

Potatoes

Salt

Pepper

Parsley

Oil

Quick Steps:

1. Add your preference of oil to the bottom of your cookie sheet. 

2. Dice the Onion,  Potatoes, and Tomatoes and add to the cookie sheet

3. Half the chicken breasts and place on the cookie sheet.

4. Lightly coat the ingredients with oil and add spices. 

5.  Bake until chicken and potatoes are cooked through.  

The Plus Side of Having Your Own Domain: + Coupon Codes

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Easy Chicken Curry

This is one of my favorite easy five ingredient meals!

Ingredients
Chicken
Rice
Coconut Milk - Canned
Five Spice Powder
Curry Powder

*Base your quantities of chicken, rice, and coconut milk on how many people you have for the meal. If you have over three large chicken breasts, I'd suggest using two cans of coconut milk, otherwise, using one would be plenty.

Quick Steps

1. Slice the chicken into your desired shape and size.  I prefer skinny strips for this meal,

2. Cook the chicken in a skillet without any spices.

3. Prepare the rice.

4. Heat the coconut milk in a shallow pot/pan until boiling.

5. Add the spices to taste.  The original recipe I used years ago called for 2 tablespoons of each which I found was not enough.  Remember, you can always add spice but you can never take it out.

6. Let the sauce mixture simmer until it cooks down a bit then add the chicken.  You can add the sauce to the chicken but I find it's easier to add the chicken to the sauce that way the I don't spill.

Bringing it all Together

7. Add rice to a plate or bowl and top with the chicken and sauce mixture.  Enjoy!


Do you have any suggestions for this meal?  I leave out ginger because it's not something I typically have in my house.

$2 Makeup Organization

For years, my makeup has been all together in one drawer.  Recently, I've become fed up with always having to dig through all of the make-up to find what I'm looking for and decided it was time for a change.  

I researched multiple make-up organizing techniques to and found a lot of cute ideas, all that required needing more storage space and quite a bit of money.  

Since neither of those were feasible, I took a trip to the dollar store and for $2, I was able to get some storage bins that fit well inside my drawer. Now, I've got all of my face makeup in the front, brushes in one section, and eye makeup in the others by shape and size. 

Now I ask, why did it take me so long to do this?  It's so simple and makes my morning routine so much easier!

Using Your Excel Spreadsheet to Build Rainy Day Savings

Now that we have our savings account created and have determined our saving schedule, we can use our spreadsheet to predict how long it will take to build a Rainy Day Savings.

It is good practice to always have six months worth of expenses in your savings account just in case something unexpected happens.  We could also include the money in the checking account, but I would always prefer to air on the side of caution because my motto is 'better safe than sorry'.  Because of this, I will only include the savings account total.

In our example, we know that the monthly expenses are roughly $1050.  Six months of expenses would be $6300.  By looking at the savings account total in column M: December, we see that the total amount in the savings account is $3900.  This is not enough to last six months.

To project further, we will need to add another year to our example.

Using the techniques from before, we will highlight all of the the December column (M1:M21) and drag across to column Y.  Highlight all cells in the sheet by pressing the Triangle in the top left corner then double click on  line between the column headers to widen the fields and remove the pound signs.  *If you have trouble with this step, please refer to the first tutorial's video.



Next, add a column between December and January to separate the years.  You can add the year in this column if you would like.  Example: 2016.

Now that we have our projections extended for another year, we can see that the savings account will reach $6300 in June of year two.

If we were including the checking account, the savings account will reach $6300 in February.  None the less, the more savings the better because you never know what will happen next.

Cream Cheese Monkey Bread

I saw a recipe on Pintrest that looked amazing so I decided to give it a try.  My comments and review are at the end.

Here's the original from Pip & Ebby, I've modified a bit Cream Cheese Monkey Bread.

 Ingredients
Dinner Rolls
Cream Cheese
Butter
Cinnamon
Sugar
Brown Sugar

Quick Steps

1. Put the rolls into a pan.  I used a round pan because it would be easier to clean than a bunt pan as used in the original.

2. Use your finger to make a divot in the rolls then add some cream cheese.

3. Melt enough butter to cover.

4. Sprinkle a good amount of cinnamon, sugar, and brown sugar over the top.

 5. Bake until complete.  I know it's done because the smell begins to fill my house.

See the final cooked product at the top of the page.





Review and Comments

The picture in the original recipe looked so much better than mine!  Overall, I think I should have added MORE SUGAR!!!

1. I don't think I used enough sugar.  More sugars would have made it have more of a consistent taste.

2. There is too much bread!  When I'm eating something sweet, I don't like much of the original dough to be un-coated. Because the dinner rolls are thick, much of the inside of the bread tasted just like a typical dinner roll.

3. The cream cheese threw off the flavor a bit.  I'm a big fan of cream cheese but I think because the cream cheese was just inside a large piece of dough, it was a bit boring and bland.  A suggestion to remedy this and add flavor is to use a flavored cream cheese, Brown sugar and Maple would have been a great choice.

How to Patch 3/8" Holes

When I moved into my house, I had four shelves awkwardly hung on one of my closet walls. They stuck out farther than the door which made them always be in the way and did not have much storage space.

I quickly decided to take the shelves down and put a shoe rack against the wall instead but taking the shelves down meant having many pretty large holes in the wall.

Lucky for me, I always have Spackle around the house.  Typically, I buy the Spackle that goes on white because I like that it seems to have a more gritty texture.  Although that may be my imagination. But, last time I went to the store, I actually got my Spackle from Walmart and pink is all they had.

Good news though, pink Spackle makes for easy demonstrations.

Step 1: Put a small amount of Spackle on a putty knife or your finger.  I prefer to use my finger for these small jobs and only use a putty knife for large holes.

Step 2: Fill the hole with as much plaster as can fit and smooth as much as possible.  If the hole is large, it will not fill all the way at this step. Just add as much as will fit without making a bump on the wall.

Step 3: Repeat the process for all holes and then let dry.  With this Spackle, I knew it was dry when it turned completely white.  

Step 4: Add a small second coat to completely fill the holes. Notice that I didn't go out nearly as far because I was applying significantly less Spackle for the second coat. I also used my finger to add a little texture to the patch rather than making it smooth.

Step 5: Repeat step 4 for all holes.

Step 6. Let dry overnight (or at least until dry and hard)

Step 7: Take a piece of high grit sand paper and lightly buff over the tops of all of the patches so the texture will look more uniform.

Step 8: I will eventually get to this step...  But, the wall now needs to be painted.  If you have touch up paint, great!  That makes this really easy.  For me, the house was all painted in flat paint when I moved in and I've since changed to semi-gloss but have yet to paint the closet.  I guess this will be a winter project.  But what color?  Anyways...to paint the wall, I'd suggest putting a quick coat over the patches first since they will soak up a lot of paint.  After they dry, paint the entire wall including the patches.

Did you notice the jewelry hanging?  Here's how I've got it laid out.  They are hanging with clear push pins. :)

Working with Your Excel Budgeting Spreadsheet

Last week we made our spreadsheet a bit more robust by adding in a Checking account and Savings account rows.  If you need to review, you can find the post here. 

This week, I will explain how to use this spreadsheet on an ongoing basis as your expense tracking tool in addition to being a budgeting and projecting tool.  

Let's start with the most fool-proof way of sticking to your budget and meeting your projections. Each month, in our example, remove $300 (the incidentals) from your checking account.  You can do this all at once at the beginning of the month or split it up.  Maybe $150 on the 1st and $150 on the 15th.  This all depends on your comfort level with managing your spending.  Here's the kicker:  DO NOT TAKE ANY ADDITIONAL MONEY OUT OF YOUR ACCOUNT.  Period.  Of course, occasionally there are emergencies such as a blown tire or a medical bill but, if it's not an emergency, don't do it!  

This money is yours for the month.  Use it however you please remembering that you will need to buy gas and groceries out of this money at some point. If you do not use all of the money in the month, decide what is best for you.  Would you rather hold it as your spending money just in case, save for a larger treat, or put it in your savings account. 

If you are trying to build credit but can't get approved, consider opening a secure credit card where you deposit your money into the account and you can only use how much you have.  With this option, you can have an automatic transfer that takes the money out of your checking account for you and deposits it to the secure account. 

Tracking your expenses is more than entering in about what you think your expenses will be for the month.  While this is a great tool for predicting, it only acts as a placeholder when it comes to utilization of your spreadsheet.  

My suggestion for tracking your expenses is to color code your cells.  For all income and expenses where the amounts change each time they occur, I change the text to Blue.  For all of the expenses with set amounts, I keep the text Black.  

As I get my bills and paychecks, I add the correct amount over the blue estimated amount and change the color to black.  This shows me that I have already accounted for the item and helps me track where I'm at in the spreadsheet so I don't have to look up to the months each time.  Once the month is complete, there should be no blue words left.  

Review

1. Take the incidentals money out of your checking account.

2. Update your spreadsheet with every new income or expense. 

Home Made Fried Wontons from Scratch!

My favorite part of any Chinese meal is the Crab Cream Cheese Wontons.  One day I decided to try to make them from scratch and I determined that it's actually really simple!

As we know, I'm an abstract cook, thus I don't typically use timers or measuring devices.

Ingredients
Flour
Egg
Water
Salt
Cream Cheese
Crab meat or imitation crab meat
Worcestershire Sauce
Green onion (if desired)
Oil (I used vegetable oil because that's what I had)

Quick Steps


The Dough
1. Put a pile of flour onto your table.
2. Mix a pinch of salt into the flour.
3. Dig a well into your flour mound
4. Add an egg to the well then mix.
5. Add water and kneed little by little until the the dough forms.
6. Section the dough So and cover with a moist towel any time it is not in use.

The Filling
7. Put a package of cream cheese into a bowl
8. Add a dash of worcestershire sauce and mix.
9. If desired, mix in some green onions.
10.  Add crab meat and mix again.

Putting it All Together
11. Role out about 1/4 of your dough.
12. Cut dough into squares.
13. Add a spoonful of filling into the enter of the square
14. Use a dab of water to act as a glue and pinch the corners together
15. Repeat until all dough is used
16. Place wontons in a pot of boiling oil until golden brown then place on a paper towel until dried.

*Helpful Hint - Create an assembly line since the cooking process is very quick!

Now all that's needed is the duck sauce.  I just bought that at the store.  Easy peasy!

Modest Couponing Tips

I would consider myself to be a modest couponer.  I am cautious about the sales and coupons available but do not go overboard stocking my cabinet with 20 bottles of ketchup just to save money.

Here are six couponing tips that will help you save money without spending all of your time dumpster diving for coupons.

1. Pick One Store - Unless a store doesn't have something you need, going to more than one store to grocery shop could be costing you money.  The travel time and time in line both go up each time you add a new store to your grocery list.  And, since time is money, is it really saving you in the long run?  You still have to fuel your car to get to the other stores.

2. Plan Before you Go - Always create a grocery list before shopping that way you know what items you intend to buy.  This way, you can grab what you need and then leave.  It helps save time and can help you stay focused on your needed items and not your wants or impulse buys.

3. Take Advantage of the Sales - Check the sales paper while you create your grocery list.  If an item that you typically buy is on sale, pick up more than you usually would.  Even though you are spending more money on this grocery trip, you will be saving money in the long run because next shopping trip you won't have to buy the item at full price.

4. Get a Rewards Card - Rewards cards can help you gain fuel points to save money on gas, provide store sales, and provide access to coupons.  The cards are linked with your purchases so the more you buy an item, the more often you will get a discount offer.  My store of preference offers personal prices on items I buy often and runs coupons through this card that you can use up to five times.

5. Download Coupons - Downloadable coupons are a very simple way to start saving money.  If you aren't sure you are into couponing yet, log on to your grocery store's portal, and load all of the coupons to your card.  Chances are some of the items you will be buying are on sale and when you see the improvement in your savings, you will begin to want more.

6. Clip the Coupons - Since you've decided you enjoy all the savings, you can head to coupons.com to print coupons or subscribe to the coupons section of your local newspaper.  Both options are free!

What couponing tips do you have?

How to Use Excel to Project Your Savings - Part 2

This is Part 2 of the ‘How to Use Excel to Project Your Savings’ series.  If you have not viewed the first post, you can find it here.

Now that we know how much is possible to save, let’s talk about how to stay on track with savings, starting with a bank account. 

I’d recommend getting a checking account to serve as a place to hold enough money to pay all of your bills for one month.  Having a checking account with enough money in it for one month’s worth of bills will allow you to use auto-pay on many of your bills if you desire.  This will free up a lot of your time and as we all know, time is money.   While creating your checking account, I’d suggest creating a savings account that way each month you can transfer money from your checking account to your savings account.  

Once your accounts are up and running, decide how much needs to be in the checking account for you to safely pay all of your bills without over-drafting.   I recommend always steering on the high side.  

In our example, the total Expenses are $1050.  Keeping the checking account end of the month balance at $1500 should be more than enough to cover all automatic payments.

Now, let’s get this on the books.

I start by changing my ‘Monthly Total’ color to black for ease of navigation, add a row below, then change my ‘Accumulated Totals’ row’s name to ‘Checking Account’.  Notice that in April, we will be at our target of $1500 in our checking account.  This means we will need to begin transferring to the savings account.

I create two additional rows below ‘Checking Account’ and title them ‘Transfer to Savings’ and ‘Savings Account’. 

In my checking account row, I will determine how much needs to be transferred to remain at $1500.  To do this, I will subtract $1500 from the checking account.  Because the first three months are not at $1500, there would be a negative amount.  You can either delete the negative amounts or use the IF function as I did.  =IF(B18>1500,B18-1500,0).  Note that our numbers are growing exponentially.  This is because originally we had accumulated all of our savings into our checking account.  We will adjust this after we add our savings account functions.

For the savings account, we want to add the amount we are transferring into the savings account to the previous savings account total.  =C19+B21  This equation begins in February because January does not have a previous amount to add the transfer to.  For January, just copy the ‘Transfer to Savings’ amount.

Next, I add a row for the checking account balance after the transfer.  For this, I will subtract the amount transferred from the checking account.  =B18-B19  As decided earlier, the checking account should always have $1500 in it after the transfer to the savings account.  Because this is now the end of the month total, I change the title of the row to ‘Checking Account’ and I change the row that had been called ‘Checking Account’ to ‘Checking before transfer’.  This is all just preference and can be changed as desired.

Now that our accounts are set up, we return to the accumulated savings that has caused our numbers to be incorrect.  Previously, we had added the ‘Monthly Total’ to the monthly total from the previous month to create our total savings.  Because we are no longer adding these totals together, we need to create a new equation starting from our first transfer into our savings account. 

To get the correct amount in the checking account prior to the monthly transfer, we will add the ‘Checking Account’ total from the previous month to the ‘Monthly Total’ for the current month and fill across. =F16+E20

When we fill across, now we will notice that in the ‘December’ column, we show $1500 in the checking account, and $3900 in the savings account, totaling $5400 as we determined in Part 1.