Blog - Page 12 of 18 - Frugal Thumb

How to Cook boneless skinless chicken in a Crock-Pot

January 18, 2018

I found this article and I’m going to be trying this out tomorrow. Chicken is thawing in the fridge right now! I’m always looking for ways to do more in less time and the crockpot is sorely underutilized right now at our house. This needs to change. Here’s to making helpful healthful changes. https://www.livestrong.com/article/536887-how-to-cook-boneless-skinless-chicken-breasts-in-the-crock-pot/ EDIT: The chicken only needed to cook about four hours on the low setting so I was glad I was home checking on it every hour…

Tree recycling plans

December 29, 2017

Joni Smith

Outdoor DIY

One of our smaller trees didn’t make it in our backyard this year, so my husband cut it down. Ever attempting to think of DIY/RRR projects, I dragged it into our garage with a plan to make something out of it. I’m still not sure what, but I read that tree trunks need months to dry out so that’s what I’m allowing it to do this winter. In the meantime, I am researching how I’ll debark it and make into…

How to Make an L-Shaped Couch from an Old Mattress

December 20, 2017

Joni Smith

Home Projects

This is a project that I completed a couple of years ago when we bought a new mattress and I didn’t want to throw away the old one. We needed a couch (and a bed) in the basement, so I did some googling and found instructions on how to make a sofa from a mattress. 8 hours and $10 of supplies later, we had our new l-shaped couch: Since it was made from a queen mattress, it is also comfortable…

Quick kid friendly holiday treats

December 16, 2017

Joni Smith

Family, Food, Holidays

These are delicious and so easy to make- my kiddo loves helping at every step in the process. Win win! Note: Pretzels are the base for all of these treats. We used regular and gluten-free varieties. We laid out the pretzels, put the chocolate candy of choice on top, popped them in the oven at 350 degrees for three minutes, then finally squished a nut or another candy on top. Once they completely cooled, they were ready for party snacking…

Hyperthyroid medicine

December 15, 2017

Joni Smith

Health & Fitness

Hyperthyroid medicine sucks! As far as I know, I have never had an allergic reaction to any kind of medicine- until now. Three weeks into taking methimazole and I broke out in huge, itchy, red hives all over my body. Here’s a leg photo: My endocrinologist prescribed the medicine to me when my thyroid uptake results came back inconclusive and I wasn’t a candidate for RAI/thyroid oblation. When my rash broke out, she had me stop taking the medicine immediately.…

Easy, Cheap, and Quick Holiday home decorating

December 13, 2017

Joni Smith

Family, Holidays, Home Projects

Who says wrapping paper and bows are just for presents? These cheap but festive items can really spice up any holiday decorating in your home. We put my husband’s nutcrackers on the mantel, but it needed something to snaz it up. So, I used my daughter’s free poster from the nutcracker, wrapping paper and bows to do the job. I added the bows about the nutcrackers and the wrapping paper pieces to the wall. Festive feel up 100% ?: This…

Add Serious Personality to Your Plain Eyeglasses

Add serious personality to plain eyeglasses for less than a dollar

December 8, 2017

Joni Smith

Family, Home, Life

Due to our health insurance coverage and budgeting, we had to get some very plain eyeglasses for my daughter’s first pair of frames. You can read about that frugal experience and how we saved over $300 on the frames here. But I wanted my kiddo to love her glasses, and they were boring compared to the frames she had really wanted. So I did some brainstorming. How can you add serious personality to plain eyeglasses? And how can you change the…

How to Clean Your Own Gutters to Save Money

December 4, 2017

Joni Smith

Home Projects, Outdoor DIY, Saving on Shopping, Yardwork

It is extremely important to clean the gutters on your home at least once a year. Twice a year is even better. You don’t want to skip it. Why? Gutter cleaning is one of those small home maintenance jobs that keeps other bigger and badder things from happening. However, it can be a bit expensive to hire someone to clean the gutters for you. For our smaller home, it would run about $100 per gutter cleaning. So I tried to…

3 tips for hand sewing girl scout badges easily

November 29, 2017

Joni Smith

Family, Home Projects

Are you tired of losing your child’s iron-on scout badges? But do you also cringe at the thought of hand sewing badges instead? Never fear! I’ve got some tips for you that will help you hand sew them all on without getting murderous thoughts. My daughter’s troop is very active and she ends up with a LOT of badges. I kid you not- I had over 50 badges to sew on her brownie vest this year alone. And she still…

Raking leaves 2

November 21, 2017

Joni Smith

Yardwork

Our backyard was blanketed with leaves. That’s way too many to bag! So what’s a person to do?? Well, pile them all around the kid’s play house, that’s what. ? A kid’s leaf pile dream: