We are planning a new birthday tradition this year – a birthday tree. I think it will be a big hit with all the kids. If I would have come up with the idea before the little guy’s birthday, I would have started it with him, but I didn’t think of it til halfway through this week. We’re going to get a nice branchy tree branch, spray it with glitter paint and glue it in a pot. Then, we’re going to hang a themed group of toys and treats on it. I’m planning to do a bunch of Littlest Pet Shop animals I got for 75 to 90 percent off last year. For the little guy, I would have done army men, I think.

The tree will make a nice centerpiece at the birthday table or could be displayed to the side with all the presents. It could also be a nice way to hold small goodie bags for all the party guests.

Have you ever created a birthday tree for your kids?

I got a big bag of bananas for 39 cents a pound the other day and the kids didn’t get to them all. So, I needed to come up with some ways to use bananas, or at least save them for later use. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. We’d make banana bread. However, normally, it isn’t over 100 degrees outside! No way was I heating up the kitchen with the oven.

Do you dehydrate your ripe bananas? Photo: SXC

I sliced up the rest of the bananas into 1/4 inch rounds and made dehydrated banana chips. Now, if you’ve never tried homemade banana chips, you probably aren’t too excited by the thought of dehydrating bananas. The thing is, these banana chips are nothing like those rock hard things you buy in the store. We dehydrate ours at 135 degrees for about 12 to 14 hours. They come out smelling and tasting just like banana bread. Sooo good. Since they aren’t completely dried out, I recommend freezing your chips instead of just sticking them in a jar in the pantry. We usually don’t end up with enough to bother freezing, though. I stick the bag in the fridge and they are devoured in a few days.

I know. What a corny, corny title, right? But they really were cheap little cheepers! We hatched them ourselves from our own eggs so the only cost was the price of the electricity for the incubator. They are just the cutest things around. Fingers crossed that at least most of them don’t ever emit even the tiniest crow. They come from show quality stock, but it is still really hard to place a rooster in a non-chicken sandwich home and I’ve already been informed that no rooster eaters will be allowed within ten feet of these cuties.

White Rock Bantam Chicks

While these peeps were hatching out, I was making my own cheese. I was going to buy a $50 DIY kit, but it seemed so unthrifty. I did a bit of improvising and a bit of researching and ended up spending $11 total, which included a gallon of whole milk, a container of lemon juice and a packet of rennet tablets. While they can sometimes help you save, kits usually are code for more expensive than doing it completely on your own. Before you spend a ton on something that you may or may not fall in love with, think about whether the original “manufacturers” had all those gadgets. With cheese, the answer was no, so I knew I could scrounge what I needed (except for the rennet.)

I’ve talked about crock pots before, but I thought it was worth talking about them again during all this hot summer weather we’re having. I don’t know how you feel, but if I come home after a hard day’s work, the last thing I want to do it heat up the kitchen. It is really easy to decide to swing by the grocery store to grab some expensive prepared food, like subs, potato salad and a big container of stuff from the salad bar when you are worn out and don’t want to go home to root through the cupboards. That stop can really wreck your budget, since convenience foods have a high price tag attached to them.

photo via amazon.com

Some meals, like the pulled pork recipe from All You magazine I want to try require additional prep work and cooking time. For days that are busy, I prefer easy crock pot recipes that don’t involve the extra work and time. Here’s a family favorite that is super simple:

1 chicken cut up or a package of chicken breasts
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can cream of broccoli soup
1 cup of rice

Cook on low heat for eight hours.

If I have time, I start the chicken and soup first and then add the rice around lunch time. This way, I am not putting rice in with raw meat, which grosses me out, and I can see if I need to add some water for the rice to absorb. If you prefer, you can just cook the rice as you normally do and serve the meat and “gravy” over the rice.

What is your favorite easy crock pot recipe?

This is one of my posts from Simply Thrifty that is still very useful for anyone shopping for an American Girl type doll for his or her child. I thought all my readers here would enjoy it, too:

So, your little one is just longing for an American Girl doll. You’d really like to get one, but the price tag is about 5 times what you can afford this Christmas. Are you going to have to crush your child’s dream? Well, that depends.

Is your child extremely name brand conscious? If so, the only help I can offer is a suggestion to request a gently used doll through Craigslist for around $20. Then, head to the American Girl website and shop the sale page for a reduced outfit so she’ll have something brand new to open. There is usually a sale code of some kind floating around, so you should be able to at least cover shipping costs. (Or check out outfits that fit American Girl dolls on Etsy. There are some adorable clothes there!)

However, if you are shopping for a child who isn’t fixated on name brands, you can find very similar dolls on sale in the $20 price range. They will fit American Girl clothes, including the matching outfits for dolls and girls. (There are many other similar doll lines out there, but they seemed to be almost as expensive as American Girl dolls and I’m trying for thrifty here!)

photo via amazon.com

At Target, we found a really nice line of Our Generation dolls. They are on sale in stores this week for $19.99 and on the website for $21.99. In person, they were cute enough that my mom ended up buying one for a five year old little girl who’s requested an American Girl doll who looked like her. (Update: She’s now almost 8 and still playing with her doll, which held up quite well. For her upcoming birthday, she wants more outfits. When I checked Target the other day, it looked like the doll prices have gone up a few dollars, but they are still a great deal if  they all hold up as well as this one.)

At Toys “R” Us, we found an 18″ Madame Alexander doll line for $29.99 that looked very nice. We actually preferred it, but decided that the child my mom was shopping for would prefer the Our Generation dolls, which came with more accessories to start. These very nice looking dolls are on sale this week for $24.99.

Do you have any thrifty tips for little girls with American Girl wish lists? I’m assuming the desire to own one will spread like the plague on Christmas morning when the other girls see this one’s doll. One thing I am planning is to start sewing some outfits for the doll for a birthday gift. (and maybe at least one matching outfit for her new “mama” as well.) I did this when my sister wanted an American Girl doll when she was little. My home ec teacher was quite impressed because I turned in two pieces for one assignment. I bet I even have the patterns somewhere…In fact, I just found free 18 inch doll clothes patterns to download online!

I just planted a second crop of summer squash in June. June? Yup. June. I had some seeds left over and just read an article that says squash borers won’t harm squash you plant later. This way, I can be completely organic still. If the squash borers got my older plants, new ones can just take over. I hope.

Slugs and flies are yummy treats when you're a duck.

Another tip? Chickens (and ducks) like slugs. Ick. They shake their beaks to get the slime off, but they gobble them up. I can hardly bear to watch, but I guess it is no worse than us eating snails and oysters. I don’t have any big slugs in the garden anymore and they really have to search for the little ones. (I also don’t have any lettuce. It was about to bolt, so I didn’t chase the hens off when they started pecking it.) They are also huge fans of pill bugs, but seem to avoid beetles. I still had to pick potato beetles and Japanese beetles off my plants this year.

The last tip for today is to recycle your cardboard right into your garden. I put a layer down under raised beds before I fill them with soil and compost. I also line paths between the beds with cardboard pieces and cover them with straw or gravel to make them easy to walk on.

Hmm. Frugal gardening and organic gardening have a lot in common, don’t they? All these things also make it possible for me to avoid either pesticides or herbicides.

Plumpton Park Zoo had a few new friends (and some favorite old friends) for us to visit this time around. Since this is Wordless Wednesday, I will try, for once, to avoid writing a book and just let the photos speak for themselves. Here are a few of our favorite animals:

What Big Teeth You Have, Grandma!

His Name Is Henry. Henry the Giraffe.

It's Morning! It's Morning! Err...I Overslept Again, Didn't I?

I am trying to grow a lot of our produce to avoid pesticides and yucky bacteria, but I’m not there yet. So, I was really excited that I was able to get the most enormous bunch of baby carrots for 99 cents the other day. (I love hitting my grocery store right after produce has been marked down. I get perfectly ripe organic bananas for a few cents a pound and bucket loads of produce for so much less than it normally costs.) Then, I had a slight problem – what to do with that many baby carrots? I don’t want everyone turning orange from an overload of carotene!

Photo: SXC

I ended up using the new dehydrator my awesome family gave me for my birthday to dehydrate five trays of carrots to use in soups during the winter. When I ran out of trays, we snacked on the leftover slices I’d made. Still too many. So, I did something I’ve been longing to do ever since I read Wild Fermentation a month or so ago – I made carrot kraut. Now, to see what becomes of it.

To make the kraut, I put the carrot slices in a ceramic bowl with a lid. I added a tablespoon of salt and pounded the carrots for a bit to get the juice moving. I was concerned that there wasn’t a lot of juice and added another tablespoon of sea salt and two cups of water. Then, I made sure all the carrots were pushed down into the brine and put the lid on. In three days, I’ll see if I have carrot sauerkraut or a big mess.

What do you do when you have a plethora of baby carrots?

I am not a salesperson type. So, I don’t do well with MLM type companies. My Avon sales were beyond dismal and don’t even ask about Usborne Books. (Telling people that you’re pretty sure you saw that title at the library so doesn’t make you money!) However, if you have a lot of friends or co-workers who like to buy the products, you can actually make a decent living from your sales. I found out about Shop the Earth from a family member who has a store there and decided to check it out because it has a green emphasis.

It is pretty much a shopping portal – more of a rewards site that rewards the person managing it after you buy through it than a site that sells products. That is nice, since people who have joined the program don’t have to handle inventory. However, being a shopping portal means you’ve got a TON of competition. If you decide to join Shop the Earth, you really need to plan on dedicating a lot of time to promoting your store, both online and offline.

You can make money be referring others, but, from their presentation, it looks like a percentage (1 %?) of the money people spend when they go through your store will make up most the income you could expect to earn.

I can see this type of site working for someone who already has a lot of followers, doesn’t have time to fool around with affiliate program links or lives in a state that passed the “Amazon tax” law and asks the followers to buy through the portal if they are planning to shop. I wonder if any charitable organizations have a space at Shop the Earth for supporters to shop through?

Do you have a Shop the Earth mall? How is it working for you?

I think I’ve mentioned before how much I love the 8×10 collage prints at Walgreen’s, so I was thrilled to see they are offering a free collage print to Facebook fans through Saturday in honor of Father’s Day. I always pick up in store to get the print completely free, but you can choose to pay for shipping to have it sent directly to you or to the recipient if you want to share some cute photos with your family.

These collages are great as the front of a really big homemade card (use a manila folder as your card and attach the print to the front of it) or as the start of a hybrid scrapbooking page. You can also frame them nicely to give as gifts.

Have you come across any other fun freebies for Father’s Day weekend?