Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

My Mac and Cheese Solution (Have You Used Your VitaCost Credit?)

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Did you get your free $10 credit from VitaCost? If not, check into how this works here. Here’s one idea for using your $10 credit to receive a good deal for a little bit of “holiday-time convenience”.

You know that I always make a homemade recipe for healthy Creamy Mac and Cheese. It’s easy, inexpensive, and tastes great. It doesn’t take any longer to make than boxed mac and cheese – and it’s healthier.

However, during the next few weeks, life is going to be busy. No matter how I organize my days, December is just full. I decided to use some of my VitaCost credit last week to purchase some Annie’s boxed mac and cheese. Why did I do this, when making homemade Creamy Mac and Cheese takes the same amount of time? I did this because I can hand the boxes of Annie’s Mac and Cheese to my older boys and let them cook it for lunch on a day I’m too busy to stop and fix lunch.

Ah-hah! Yes, these are the times I resort to the occasional boxed convenience food. At least it’s Annie’s. ;)

If you haven’t used your $10 VitaCost Credit – you can put six boxes of Annie’s Mac and Cheese worth $1.75 each, into your cart. This will amount to $10.50. Then, enter the $10 coupon code VitaCost sent you when you signed up, which will take your total down to $0.50. With the $4.99 shipping, you’ll be paying only $0.92 per box of Annie’s. This may not be a good price where you live, but for me, it definitely is a good deal.

How have you spent your $10 VitaCost Credit? If you haven’t received your credit yet, click here to get yours. VitaCost has 35,000 healthy and organic food/supplement/bath products to choose from. They are a great online food resource!

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Get $10 Free Credit to Spend at VitaCost! (Earn more by referring your friends!)

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*UPDATE*  Vitacost has updated their referral program to state that new customers, get a $10 coupon on your first purchase of $30 or more at Vitacost.com. Still a great deal!

While reading MoneySavingMom yesterday, I discovered this VitaCost deal. Many of you have told me about VitaCost during the past few months, especially since they occasionally have great deals on coconut oil. So, I was excited to see that as a first time customer, I could snag $10 of free credit to their site!

Since I’m well stocked on coconut oil for now, I spent quite a bit of time looking over VitaCost to see what other products they had that I could spend my credit on, and to see if it was worth your time and mine to pass this deal on to you. Wow – you should see the great selection of healthy foods, drinks, snacks, and bath and body products they carry! I found my favorite Giovanni Smooth as Silk Hair Conditioner, put two into my cart for “free” with my credit, then paid a flat $4.99 for shipping. That is a great deal for this usually pricey conditioner!

If you sign up through this referral link, you’ll receive an automatic $10 of credit to VitaCost. I’ll also receive $10 of credit for referring you (thanks!). Then, you can refer your friends through your blog, email, facebook or twitter, and receive $10 of credit for each new customer who makes a purchase through your link! This is a wonderful way to earn some extra healthy grocery cash!

Look around the VitaCost site to see how you could spend your $10 free credit. If you find something for $10 or less, you’ll only pay $4.99 (shipping cost), which means you can score something healthy you need for your family for half price!

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How Many Calories in a Recipe?

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I have been excited to welcome back Say Mmm as a sponsor here at Heavenly Homemakers. Say Mmm is a site that can help you with meal planning and grocery list making – all for free! Plus, I’m excited to see that they’ve recently completed and launched a brand new feature on their site that is sure to be very helpful to many of you.

I’m often asked how many calories are in my recipes. My answer is always:  I have no idea. Counting calories isn’t something I usually talk about because not all calories are created equal. Still, if you want to know a calorie count on my recipes, it would be nice to offer a suggestion of how to figure it out.

Well, here it is! Check out this new page at Say Mmm. To see how it works, copy and paste the following URL into the box on their site:  https://www.heavenlyhomemakers.com/pancake-and-sausage-muffins

Next, click “GO!” and immediately you’ll see a grocery list for everything you need to make my Pancake Sausage Muffins, plus a break down of the calories and other information you might be looking for. Isn’t that nifty? I can’t believe how fast it is. And how handy that the grocery list is all laid out and ready to go too!

I encourage you to sign up to use the Say Mmm site – it’s free and a great site to aid you in kitchen organization!

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Simple Ways To Earn a Little Extra Cash for Christmas (while sitting at your computer)

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Hello, and welcome to a post that might be just about as annoying as your local department store. Summer is barely over and I’m already starting to talk about Christmas. Hey, at least I haven’t put up a tree yet. (Although, that would be an efficient thing to do in October, wouldn’t it?)  kidding

I think we can all agree that Christmas is not really about presents and hooplah. And yet, I would guess that most of us probably do at least a little bit gift giving around the holidays. Here are some simple ways to gain yourself a little extra cash for the upcoming Christmas season. Don’t worry – you don’t have to start singing Jingle Bells yet. Just start planning ahead a little bit now so that Christmas won’t be a financial burden. Christmas should never be a financial burden. Christmas should be a season of joy. Don’t make me get on my soap box.

1. InboxDollars

I’ve mentioned InboxDollars recently in a giveaway they sponsored. You won’t get rich off of InboxDollars (or any of the ideas shared in this post), but you will be able to earn a little extra cash while in the comfort of your pajamas and slippers. (I recommend opening up a separate, free email account to use specifically for InboxDollars – it makes this much easier!)

2. Swagbucks

It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned Swagbucks around here, but if you aren’t using Swagbucks to earn extra money from home, you really should be! There are many, many ways to earn Swagbucks, but my favorite is to simply use the Swagbucks search feature. Each time I need to search for something online (which is quite often), I use my Swagbucks search engine. Several times a day, I earn some swagbucks – all for doing something I would have done anyway. Once I’ve accumulated enough, I turn my Swagbucks into Amazon Gift Cards. (There are many other options for ways to redeem your Swagbucks – Amazon cards are just my favorite.)  One year, I saved all my Amazon Cards throughout the year and we had a practically free Christmas. It was awesome!

Plus, when you refer others to Swagbucks, you can earn extra Swagbucks! So, get yourself signed up, then tell your friends about this feature. You’ll both earn! (See, I’m referring you, so that means I’ll earn Swagbucks based off of my referral to you. Thanks!)  :)

I’ve written more about Swagbucks here if you’d like more information.

3. Shop it to Me

This may be one of the simplest ways to earn a little extra cash – although, like Swagbucks, it comes in the way of gift cards instead of actual cash. I like gift cards just fine. Gift cards buy gifts – what more could we ask for? Or, you could give the gift card away as a gift. Perfect!

How this works:  Sign up to receive Shop It To Me newsletters. These newsletters are painless – I receive them twice a week and either look through them if I feel like the deals they share are relevant, or delete them if they’re not.

I used my personal referral link above. For every ten of you who sign up, I receive a $10 gift card of my choice. (Thank you, by the way!)  Once you’ve signed up, you can then refer your friends and family through facebook, email, blog or tweet – and for every ten people you refer, you receive $10 gift cards too! It’s free, it’s easy, there’s no catch, and you can earn gift cards for Starbucks, Whole Foods (my personal fav!), Gap, Macy’s and many others – whichever you choose.

4. Become a Heavenly Homemakers Affiliate

It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned this feature we have here at Heavenly Homemakers. Did you know you can earn money by referring sales in our Shop? We offer 33% affiliate earnings on all of our downloadable products – that means that not only can you earn a few dollars when someone you refer purchases our ebooks, you can earn a whoppin’ $14.85 each time someone you refer purchases our Learn Your Letters, Learn to Serve curriculum kit! Your earnings can really add up! Read more details here – we’d love to have you on board as an affiliate.

Have you started thinking about Christmas yet – or is it just me?

(Disclosure:  I think it was obvious that many of the links I used in this post are my referral links, but just in case, I thought I’d tell you again. Each of these opportunites are painless and easy and a great way to earn a little extra cash – and sharing them with you will help me earn a little extra cash for Christmas too. Then you can turn around and do the same! But don’t feel obligated to sign up for any of these if you don’t want to. We’ll still be friends either way.) ;)

 

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Raw Cookie Dough Bites (somebody stop me from eating them all!)

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I happened upon this Raw Cookie Dough Bites recipe today over on The Nourishing Home. Since I had all the ingredients and since the thought of eating cooke dough bites made me very happy, I decided to surprise the boys and make these for a snack.

Yum

My goodness these things are good. They took just a few minutes to put together, plus they are packed full of goodness. What an awesome, healthy snack to have on hand!

Best of all, for those of you with food allergies, these are egg, dairy and gluten free!!! (Sorry nut allergy friends, these do have nut butter.)  They call for ground flax seed, which I ground in my food processor. And they call for coconut flour, which is one of my new loves. I used my mini soy free chocolate chips and found that these little bites are super addicting. I decided you needed to know about these so that you could also become addicted. Wait – that’s not what I meant. Really, I just wanted to share a new, great snack recipe idea with you because I’m nice and helpful like that. Yes, that’s it.

 

You’ll find the recipe for Raw Cookie Dough Bites here. Warning:  It’s hard to eat just one. Or two. Or four.

It’s a good thing these are full of healthy ingredients. ;)

Hey, hey! I just peeked over at Amazon and found that the Azukar Coconut Flour is back in stock and still being offered for a great price! These bags always seem to be snatched up quickly, so act fast if you’re interested.

Azukar Organics Natural Coconut Flour 32 ounce bags (3 count)…

Azukar Organics Natural Coconut Flour 16 ounce bags (6 count)…

These are excellent prices for coconut flour!

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Tattler Lids and Flying Knives

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If you recall, I was sent some reusable Tattler canning lids to review several weeks ago. I wrote the review based on positive feedback I’d heard from my friends about Tattler, but I’ve been waiting for my tomatoes to finally turn red so I could actually can something myself and use my new lids!! Finally, last weekend I was able to play with my new “toys”.

I’m very excited to share, in response to many of you asking about Tattler lids, “Do they really work?” YES! They really work!

Because I was so giddy with excitement over my first canning experience of this season, and because based on this happy jar sealing experience, Tattler and I are going to become extremely close friends, I got a little bit camera happy.

Here we have my Tattler lids sealed on tomato sauce jars with okra, peppers and cucumbers in the background:

Here we have an extreme close up of the Tattler lids sealed on the tomato sauce jars. I think their smiles look so nice in this one, if in fact Tattler lids can smile (and I think we would all agree that they can, indeed, smile):


Here they are again, sitting next to their box with my water glass to the right, and my bouquet of last week’s birthday flowers in the background:

And here is a picture of three of my boys painting last Tuesday. While I love my Tattler lids, I love my children more. Sometimes I’m guilty of snapping pictures of weird things like butter splattered on pineapple and taking umpteen pictures of canning jars at a variety of angles, and I fail to take pictures of my children painting dots with q-tips.


We have been studying Australia, and came across a special painting style the Aborigines use:  Warlpiri. We decided to try it. Unfortunately, all of our paint colors except red and yellow were dried out and crusty. Therefore, my kids got to paint Warlpiri art using only red, yellow and orange for color choices. All of our paintings looked kind of like an Australian sunset, but it sure was fun.

How does the picture of my boys relate to Tattler and canning tomato sauce? It doesn’t. Although, if you look real close at my pantry doors right behind Elias, you can see a plastic knife stuck through the door handles. I first noticed that Malachi had parked his “weapon of the day” between the pantry door handles while my arms were full of freshly canned tomato sauce jars, which made it impossible to open the doors with my foot, which had been my original plan. After setting all of the tomato jars back down, I may or may not have yanked the knife out with a grimace and flung it into the living room so that I could resume my task.

I bet you didn’t know that sometimes finding my boys’ toys in precarious places all over the house causes me to fling knives into the living room.

Although now that I see a picture of it here, I find the knife through the pantry door handles rather endearing.

Remind me of this cuteness tomorrow after I’ve just tripped over a lightsaber.

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Homemade Sunscreen (and more)

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We typically put up a new Healthy Marriage Tips A to Z post on Thursday nights, but we’ve had a couple of super busy days which has kept us from writing our newest post in this series for tonight. We should be able to work on it tomorrow, and trust me, you don’t want us to stay up any later tonight trying to compose it. Matt can handle thinking late at night, but I’m personally having a hard time remembering how to spell “marriage” – writing about it would certainly not be a good idea for me right now.

Anyway, watch for that post tomorrow sometime – hopefully. In the meantime, I thought I’d very quickly tell you about this awesome resource from MadeOn.

I was very excited to hear that Renee, creator of my very favorite lotion bar (which is non-toxic and SUPER for dry skin), has recently come out with an ebook that will teach you how to make several awesome products that are healthy for your skin and inexpensive too!

You can learn to make Homemade Sunscreen, Full Body Conditioner, Bug Repellent Bar and more! Each recipe includes only 5 (or fewer) ingredients and all are ingredients you can trust (like coconut oil). Her ebook includes full instructions, as well as resources for finding the supplies needed. She even offers YouTube links so you can watch her making each product.

I’m most excited to try making the sunscreen – how cool will that be?

 

Learn more about My Buttered Life ebook by Renee of MadeOn Lotion.

 

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Homemade Vanilla Extract by Jill

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As you know, for about two years now, I’ve been making my own vanilla extract. This is all because at that time, my wonderful friend Jill sent me some of her homemade vanilla and told me how to do make it. Yes, Jill created this monster of a homemade vanilla craze around here! If you have also made your own vanilla as a result of reading here, you really have Jill to thank for this. I know I sure do thank her! Homemade vanilla is the best!

And so, I wanted you to know about the possilibility of purchasing some vanilla from Jill herself. Every few months, we offer homemade vanilla for sale here at Heavenly Homemakers (for those of you who don’t want to make it yourself), but we won’t have any more ready until October or November. If you’re interested in purchasing some of the finest, most pure homemade vanilla, I’d love for you to support my friend Jill and her family by purchasing from her site.

I won’t go into all the details, but Jill’s family is going through much difficulty right now. Your purchase would be a huge blessing and if I could, I would just hug you for helping. ;)

Click here to visit Jill’s site.

 

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Feel Like Making Peanut Butter?

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Recently, one of my readers asked where to buy peanuts in bulk. I’ve shared about how we love Braga Organic Farms and purchase bulk almonds, cashews and pistachios from them, but they don’t have peanuts. :(

I usually get my peanuts from Azure Standard, but looked it up on Amazon for those of you who aren’t on an Azure Standard route. Sure enough, there’s a great source for organic peanuts that are perfect for making delicious peanut butter. This price is about what I pay through Azure Standard, so I know it’s a great deal for organic peanuts!!

I can’t tell you how delicious homemade peanut butter is. It’s incredibly easy to make, takes very little time and tastes incredible when it’s freshly made like this!!! If you spread Homemade Peanut Butter on these Simple Soaked Pancakes with bananas and Real Maple Syrup? Mmm….awesome.

Homemade Peanut Butter

If you love peanuts in trail mix, as a snack, or so that you can make Homemade Peanut Butter, you may want to check out Amazon as a source for Organic Peanuts in bulk. I found that I could get 10 pounds for just over $40, shipped. Great price for organic peanuts!

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