Party themes, food, decorations, and more to help you plan thrifty parties to impress your friends.
Do you ever struggle to come up with a good gift for your kid’s teachers that are useable, thoughtful and frugal? At the end of this school year I decided to try and think outside the Starbucks gift card and Sharpie filled cup for my son’s teacher appreciation gifts. I was on the hunt for…
It’s that time of year again! When you’ll start opening your mailbox and pulling out fancy white washed envelopes containing high priced graduation announcements. Now that you’ve seen the announcement, you have a few choices. You can mail them a check, which will probably get spent on late night taco runs or you can send…
Big thanks to my dear friend Rhonda for infusing this blog with some real Cajun love! Here is her instructions for how she makes her Really Easy Slow Cooker Chicken Jambalaya. If you’re not familiar with Mardi Gras, it is a time of celebration before the Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday. A lot of…
It’s Valentine’s Day. The first Valentine’s Day that I remember NOT being depressed was the first year I was dating my husband. I had a monumental AP Chemistry exam the next morning and so I spent Valentine’s Day studying in a coffee shop with my best friend. Little did I know that he was…
This cake is not guaranteed to make you famous on a cooking network, but it might just make you famous with your friends and family around the holidays. I live in a fantastic neighborhood that hosts several gatherings, all based around food of course. Ever since I first served up this delicious Rum Cake, the…
Now that the title got your attention, I’d like to share a few of my stress reducing Holiday shortcuts with you that will truly save you time, money, sanity, etc.! 1. Decorating Shortcuts: Custom decorations are beautiful, but they can be difficult to find and pricier than traditional décor. Instead, buy inexpensive décor at dollar…
Special thanks to Chocoley for providing the chocolate to make this tutorial free of charge! The thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are 100% mine! I remember coming home from school, putting my back pack down and searching for that little, round, green tin box. The one lined in wax paper and filled with…
Year after year I strive to come up with really thrifty gift ideas. During the Holidays I often find that there are people on my list that I buy nice gifts for and then there are people that I do nice things for. This is simply because I don’t have the cash to give everyone a gift….
So you’re staring at your ugly sweater Christmas party invite. You keep re-reading the part about bringing a $15 gift for the white elephant gifts exchange game. Your mind races with various ideas but you settle down in the comfort of knowing that with everything else you have going on during the holidays, there…
I’m gonna be brutally honest here. Finding cool gifts for guys can be hard. Am I right? Men are the hardest people on the face of the earth to shop for. You might think you’ve found the ultimate gift for that person only to have them look you square in the face and tell you…
Something most people don’t know about me is that I am a caramel addict. I walk by a stand of caramel candy apples and it’s over. But you know what the real problem is? Candy apples are darn HARD to eat. So when Chocoley, a gourmet chocolate and candy supply company, offered to send me…
Have you ever gone on the hunt for the perfect gift for your wife but come up feeling a lot of pressure and overwhelm. You are in the right article then. I’ve turned this post into the useful birthday gift for wife guide! Some are simple, some are fancy and some are techy. My goal…
Ahhh pizza night! As a kid, when I knew my mom was making her famous homemade pizza for dinner I couldn’t wait to get home from school! She made the dough. She used her made from scratch, beef filled spaghetti sauce and topped it all with simple ingredients. No frozen or take-out pizza could touch mom’s homemade…
True confessions of Kim Anderson here. I love making really easy, non-bake desserts. As you may know, I’m not a fan of measuring. That’s why I love to create desserts like this, Creamy Double Pumpkin Cheesecake Trifle, where I have minimal work for maximum effect. I like to pretend I’m fancy when in reality I…
One thing I love about Christmas is the parties. Every year we go to catered parties and company dinners and get to sample all varieties of amazing and delicious gourmet salads. The salads are so amazing that I wish I could have them more than once a year. That’s why I came up with this…
My wonderful friend Rhonda has the method of decorating that I love. She likes for things to be beautiful in her home, but she keeps it minimal and diverse enough that she can take a simple design and make it stretch through seasons. Last year she did a post for me on her outdoor decor…
If you are looking for the easiest white chicken chili recipe on the planet, you’ve come to the right place. Okay, so maybe it’s not as easy as buying chili pre-made in a can, but I think this recipe is pretty darn easy. Do you love white chicken chili like I do? Do you imagine…
Chalkboard. It’s all the rave right now. I see it everywhere and it’s awesome. It’s adorable! While picking up a few things at Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago I found this super adorable wooden pumpkin that screamed “spray me with chalkboard paint and make me amazing!” Not literally, but in my head it did!…
I still remember holding onto to the door handle, knuckles turning white every time we got in the car in Trinidad. It was a frightening ride every time because that we were traveling on the opposite side of the road as I was used to, and we went very quickly around very tight spaces in high…
My husband and I came to conclusion in early spring that we never see our friends anymore. Time flies by and we go months without seeing the people that really matter to us. Our resolution to the problem was to set 3 specific Friday’s throughout the summer to host what we declared as Anderson Summer Shindigs….
Over 4th of July weekend we went up to the North Carolina mountains to spend unplugged time with our family. We relaxed in a nice little mountain cottage that was once a workshop that my father-in-law literally transformed. To add to my rurally revitalizing weekend, we got an invitation by a cousin to come over…
On Wednesday, I wrote about how to make easy, delicious Frozen Herb Cubes for Cooking. The cubes are a frugal way to make your recipes taste amazing and keep your garden herbs from going to waste. I wanted to share a Spinach Stuffed Turkey Tenderloins recipe using the savory frozen cubes. This dish is…
Rhonda and I were recently discussing the popularity of freezer meal cooking. In mid conversation Rhonda mentioned that she really enjoys making and using frozen herb cooking cubes. I had not heard of this before and they sounded AMAZING and so I asked her to share a post about how she makes them the next time…
I love trifle. I really love single serve strawberry cheesecake trifle. It’s one of my favorite things about summer! It’s fast, it’s easy and most importantly, it’s cold! I live Atlanta and it gets soo hot and humid most summer days that I could eat a whole trifle bowl of this stuff. That’s why I…
Guys are the hardest people on the planet to buy gifts for. I sort of think they are the very reason gift cards were invented. As Father’s Day comes around this year and you sit panicking at the thought of getting another tie, consider these 5 out of the box father’s day gift ideas. 1….