Big Brood

We have a family goal to learn Spanish at a conversational level. Since none of us speaks Spanish natively and we don’t have a lot of chances to interact with native speakers, we need help.

We have been thinking about buying Rosetta Stone Spanish because it has garnered good reviews and is well-known. It is, however, pretty expensive. We have so far held off on buying it but were thinking that we would buy it this year as a homeschooling expense.

However, I work for a large, multi-national company. I just found out that our company has licenses for Rosetta Stone and asked my boss if I could use it to improve my ability to interact with employees in our Spanish speaking facilities. He approved it, and I should have Rosetta Stone Spanish within a few days at no cost to me.

This is a win-win-win situation for myself, the company and my children. I will really learn Spanish at an accelerated rate, the company may benefit from this in the future if they decide to use my skills and my children will benefit by learning a language much more quickly, too. Since we will be learning together, we will be speaking it together and my skills will improve even more.

Many companies have software purchase programs that allow employees to use some software not only on their work computer but also on their home computer for free or at a greatly reduced cost. For instance, they will often do this with virus software since employees will read email or work from their own home computers.

So, if you have some software needs, check with your IT department and see if they have any purchasing programs like this. It could save you a bundle!

Buenos dias!

Have you found any creative ways to save on software?  Does your company offer any other benefits like this?

The Star-Telegram has an article talking to the Hinkles about 10 tips to save money on your food bill.

We don’t have any teens yet so I’m glad to get a little advice from a more “advanced” family. From their tips, the only things I don’t think we’ve tried are:

• Shopping at international markets where you may find things like rice and spices cheaper.
• Setting a once-a-month Use-It-Up week to use up leftovers and bits & pieces.
• Setting aside stale bread. I don’t think we usually get much stale bread.

We do have a few small international markets around here, so it sounds like we need to take our price book and check them out!

Do you have any other tips to add to these that help you to save money on your bill?

This is the week to get my tomato and pepper seeds started.  The last frost date for our area is about 6 weeks away and the seeds need about that amount of time to get a good start. 

Thursday my grandma will come over to give me a hand.  I have about 150 tomato seeds, 5 different varieties and 100 pepper seeds to start.  This may seem like an insane amount but I want to be sure to have enough to have a good crop and share seedlings with family and friends. 

I want to plant 20-30 tomato plants this year to hopefully can and freeze enough to get us through this next year.  As gander has mentioned, groceries are going up up up in price and anything is a help!  We have all the jars we need and will only need to purchase the lids.  It seems no one cans any more so boxes of canning jars keep getting delivered to our house!  In fact I have a box on my driveway now!

You might wonder why you would start your own seeds…One big reason is the savings.  One packet of heirloom amish paste tomato seeds was $2.75 for 50 seeds.  I may be able to purchase 2 nice nursery grown tomato plants for that price, and probably not heirloom.  I also like knowing how the plant was grown, from the beginning and what has been sprayed on it or not sprayed on it for that matter.   This is also a great educational experience for the goslings.  They get to see the seeds in the packet become the food on their plates.  It always amazes me how much more willing they are to eat the produce from OUR garden. 

You may have heard starting seeds is too complicated or too much work.  I have little experience myself but the couple of times I have tried I have had great success with only a few hours work. 

The supplies needed are:

• A growing medium such as a sterilized soilless mixture like Jiffy mix
• A container to grow in.  Anything will work as long as it is sterilized (be creative, try yogurt containers, egg cartons, produce containers, old garden center flats), just run through dishwasher or soak in a 10% bleach solution
• The seeds, of course.
• A warm place for your seeds to start, such as a kitchen counter. 

  This is all you need until your seedlings sprout. 

Once they have popped up out of the dirt you will need some kind of light source.  A full day sunny window will work.  We don’t have this option so we use artificial light.  We use hanging shop lights with fluorescent tubes in them.  We hang them from chains in the ceiling so they can be raised up as the plants grow.  I will be sure to post pictures once we get it set up.  We put the lights on a timer so the plants get 14 or so hours of light a day and water once a day. 

I would love to hear from others out there who have had success or failure starting seeds at home.

Since mid-October or so, Goosey and I have been maintaining a price book. We have found that the price book has been one of our most effective tools in fighting food costs. As our brood grows in age and numbers our food costs are beginning to increase. To keep on top of it, we have used a price book. Here’s what it has done for us.

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Goosey and I recently stayed in a hotel. When you’re trying to pay off debt, this may seem wasteful but it was worth it to us.  However, we were able to save some money. Here’s how I ended up with a 30% discount, with no hardball negotiation involved.

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