Budget friendly Christmas Craft for kids

I try to do an art or craft project with my son (Zac) every day, sometimes they are as simple as drawing with pencils/painting and other days we make collages with things like leaves or different items from our craft kit. I absolutely love craft (probably more so than my son) but not the “adult kinds” like scrapbooking etc. because I am far too messy to make anything that is actually presentable or even remotely artistic. Craft is a brilliant activity to do with your children, even just once a week or whenever you have time. It allows them to explore their imagination, learn new skills and ideas, develop their fine motor skills and it also gives them valuable quality time with you.

For Zacs birthday I made him a “craft box” I simply bought small bits and pieces (mainly from cheap shops like “Crazy Clarks”) like paints, feathers, sequins, glue, texta’s, paddle pop sticks, googly eyes and anything else I could find. It didn’t cost much and it’s a great gift for family and friends to “build on” for your child’s birthdays and Christmas. We have built his “craft box” up over the last year and a half and it now takes up an entire 55 litre plastic container (and gives us hours of enjoyment). But you don’t have to have a lot of craft supplies to be able to make amazing creations.

We ended up finding these nifty little cases for quite cheap at Super Cheap Auto so we bought two of them to house the “collage items”. These cases make the items far easier for Zac to look over and make his own choice about what he would like to work with. They are a great way to organise your child’s craft supplies.

Today we decided on some “Christmas craft”, we decided to make our own Christmas decorations. I googled recipes for dough that could be cooked (and solidified) then painted and it came back with this recipe:

2 cups flour

2 tablespoons oil

4 tablespoons cream of tarter

1 cup of water

We threw it all in together (adding extra flour or water when needed) mixed it up, rolled it out and then ‘went to town’ with our cookie cutters! Once Zac had cut out all the shapes he wanted, we poked holes in them (for the ribbon) and put them on a baking tray in the oven set to 180 degrees until they were brown/solid.

We then painted them all with beautiful colours and decorated them with glitter and sequins in the Christmas colours, then added the ribbon. Try to excuse the white "glue marks" all over them as I took this photo before they had dried completely. We are going to send these out with Zacs framed Santa photo to Zac’s grandparents and aunts and uncles. They are a simple, cheap gift that you could give out straight from your child! My sons  only three but I am sure that your older children could do alot more intricate designs and you could always seal them with a quick spray of clear coat to make them last for a long time.

The decorations pictured above are some we made a few weeks ago, they are simple and very budget friendly. All we did was paint pictures using mostly Christmas colours, let the paintings dry then cut out Christmas ornament shapes. We then glued glitter and sequins on and used a sparkly pipe cleaner to hang them. You could use chopped up bits of paper from magazines/packaging etc to decorate them and leftover ribbon to hang them.

Another budget friendly craft project we did recently was this nature collage. We “made a day” out of this one by spending part of the day walking through gardens and bushlands near a local park, collecting leaves, gumnuts and dirt. We then went home and cut out the backboard from the side of a Froot Loops box, we covered the cardboard with PVA glue and Zac stuck all the different nature items onto the page (while we talked about where they came from and what they were).

Another of our budget friendly craft projects involves a lot of cardboard boxes. I collect EVERY cardboard box (all shapes and sizes) from any grocery items, tissues, toilet rolls, egg cartons, gifts etc. then once we have a big collection we will spend one day assembling (with masking tape) robots, cars and anything else we think of. The next day we will paint them all. Then on the third day when they are all dry my son will spend the majority of an entire day playing with them. That’s three days worth of exciting activities for the cost of a little conscious recycling!

Children can learn so much from simple craft projects and there are so many different ways to enjoy these activities with your child. There is a craft activity for every budget!

What have we taken away from this lesson?

Takeaway food... Its overpriced, over-oiled and never quiet leaves you feeling as satisfied as you'd like it to. When we started living a far more frugal lifestyle we very quickly discovered that takeaway was a massive wallet drainer. Embarassingly some of our favourites were foods like Macdonalds, Dominoes, Subway, and KFC (pretty much all the major ones, right?)

The last time we had dominoes our meal was $50, yes you read right. Theres three of us. When we got home and started eating it we discovered that the cheese wasnt entirely melted and the pizza was cold in the middle and the pizza was soggy right through to the cardboard box which was also soggy - so afrter $50 we couldn't even eat our meal. Now, I'm not joking when I say - I can (and have) fed my family for $50 a week before, when times were tough. So wasting an entire $50 for one nights food certainly was the wake up call I needed.

We decided that there was a definate pattern to our takeaway experiences, the meals were either too small, too big, too oily, or when we arrived home and opened the package it just was not what we ordered at all. So we decided to stop buying takeaway, I mean - if they can make it, we can too right? YES, we can.

It was that easy and honestly saved us so much money. We are also able to control things like cooking times, oil levels, ingredients used, portions, additives/processed ingredients. We dont compromise on taste at all and find that we achieve even better flavours.

So now we have our favourite takeaway meals on a frugal budget, we also have them whenever we like because they are far healthier options. Most of the ingredients can be stored int he pantry or the fridge/freezer and will be enough to make an array of different meals. Some of the things we make?

Making our own homemade pizzas is somthing we do EVERY week, without fail. Its our "go-to" Friday night meal. They are eaasy, delicious and nine times out of ten cover the next days breakfast too. We usually use "mountain bread" (avaliable from woolworths and coles) as a low calorie long life pizza base to travel with (they are very thin though so each pizza requires two). However last night we splurged a little and bought proper pizza bases (from now on weve decided we will make our own bases, I hadn't realised how simple they are). We add ingredients like ham, chicken, frozen prawns (cheap from Woolies), tonns of capsicum, onion, tomato, fetta, pineapple and much more. We try to make sure they have lots of healthy ingredients. We quickly discovered (one week when I forgot to buy it) that they taste just as good without pepperoni as they do with it, so we no longer purchase that anymore. Homeade pizza is simple, budget friendly and 100% effective at curbing those cravings for takeaway. Pizzas are a fantastic meal for other caravanners when you are somewhere remote and craving somthing delicious (and seemingly unhealthy/naughty).

Home made burgers are so quick and easy to make. All you need is beef mince, salads, cheese and a roll. All we add to our home made beef patties (for that macdonalds cheeseburger effect) is salt and pepper, simple. They takte delicious (fresh!) and if you splurge a little on the healthier mince you dont end up with your bun being a sponge to all the oil. They are also a great BBQ food for when you are on the road.

The thing we like about hot dogs is that they last - they come in a long life package and sometimes last weeks or months, plus you can freeze them if you find you havnt eaten them close to the use by date. When you find yourself in a little town with a nice bakery, all you need to do is pick up some lovely fresh rolls and you have yourself a VERY easy, cheap and kid friendly meal. You can have them for lunch, or dinner!

Subs are another option for when you pull up near a small town bakery and find yourself with some nice fresh rolls. The filling is only limited by your imagination but here are some of our favourite combinations:

- tuna, cheese and tomato (toasted)

- pazza (tomato paste with herbs, pizza meats, cheese, toasted)

- chicken parmijana (tomato paste, chicken, ham, cheese, toasted)

- fresh ham and salad

- fresh chicken and salad

Subs are delicious and filling and are certainly one of th ehealthier options of this list! They are easy to make and there will  be a combination to suit the entire family!

One of my absolute favourite takeaway meals would have to be the trusty garlic prawn noodles. I absolutely love these! I realised very quickly though (after leaving the town with my FAVOURITE version of them) that I would have to learn to make a simple, yummy version myself. Challenge accepted! I bought a bulk pack of home brand "2 minute noodles", popped them in a bowl in the microwave (submerged in water) until they were soft. Meanwhile I heat up a frypan with a few sprays of the most low calorie oil I can find (it's 1.7 calories a spray and is avaliable from Woolworths - "Lupi, extra light olive oil" in a pump spray bottle) I add in some prawns from my trusty frozen bulk bag, some chopped shallots, frozen peas (and optional snow peas and broccoli) aswell as a heaped tablespoon of crushed (or fresh) garlic and a dash of soy sauce, wallah! Thats it! Once the prawns are cooked, the noodles should be too, just drain them - add them to the fry pan, spritz a little more light oil onto them and enjoy. Sometimes if I dont have shallotts I will use an onion and just the frozen peas instead of the other vegies, this way I can make this recipe when we are nowhere near shops!

Home made fried rice is quiet possibly one of the simplest and most delicious things I know how to cook. Its my absolute favourite! I always make sure I have eggs at home aswell as shredded ham, prawns and frozen peas in my freezer. Sometimes I will cook fresh rice for it, other times I will use some I have pre-cooked in the freezer and somtimes I will be a lazy a** and use those microwave rice packets fromt he supermarket. Either way - it always tastes the same amount of yum! I simply oil the fry pan, lightly whisk an egg and throw the egg, prawns, frozen peas and ham into the pan, basically scramble it all around the pan until the egg and prawns are cooked, then add in either onion or shallotts and any other vegies you want then a spoon of garlic and a good splash of soy sauce, throw the rice in, DONE! It takes just minutes to cook and is absolutely delicious!

These are some of our versions of the takeaway meals we enjoy. They may not all be stupendously healthy but we dont have them all, all the time! Learning how to make your own favourite takeaway foods can save you ALOT of money and alot of hassle. Its also a fantastic way to limit your own and your childrens intake of food additives, fats and oils. If you like somthing different to what I have posted about here why not google a few recipes and give them a try? I once made a very simple and delicious peanut satay chicken noodle dish and im sure you could find a simple recipe for your favourite takeaway meals.

Make it at home! A few contraptions and items to make life a little easier and more convenient.

Once of the most benificial things for us in maintaining a lower grocery budget has been learning how to make things our selves. This has also involved purchasing some of the right "contraptions" to use to make things. Some of the things we have bought (and a few we plan on buying) in order to make our grocery bill a little cheaper or to just cut out those "mid week" runs to the shop and late night trips to the service station:

Soda Stream Machine:

I highly reccomend it. We dont drink *alot* of soft drink but when your own the road there are alot more opportunities to relax and rest and alot more people willing to indulge in "happy hour" each afternoon with you. Having a few soda stream bottles in the caravan fridge filled with cold water means that at any given time we can use the soda stream to fizz them up. We can then use them to make cola to mix with alcoholic beveridges or to make a nice cold bottle of fanta or creaming soda to enjoy with a picnic lunch. We have saved alot of money by avoiding the odd late night trip to the service station on a Saturday night to get extra Coke.

A bread maker:

I tried making bread without one and I failed EVERYtime. My mum ended up buying us a breadmaker machine for christmas (a compact one). Its FANTASTIC. When you are on the road and can end up having to buy bread from service stations etc you can expect to pay in excess of $5 a loaf. Not anymore! I can set the bread maker the night before and it will have a warm, fresh loaf waiting for us at the crack of dawn which will do our breakfast and lunches once we arrive in the next town. A breadmaker (for those who fail at handmaking bread, like myself) is a definite investment!

Easy-yo Yoghurt Maker:

I havnt bought this yet as I heard alot of negative feedback on the price of the sachets. They ARE good for convenience but the savings arent really phenomenal, unless of course you consult the "Stay at Home Mum" webpage ( http://www.stayathomemum.net.au/ ) and use their "Home Made Yoghurt Recipe" with your yoghurt maker, then the savings are more than phenominal. Im buying one of these tomorrow and plan on making all of my own yoghurt from scratch now.

A slow cooker:
These are very common now and are fantastic. Especially if you arrive in a new town and have a big day of exploring planned, you can just pop the food in and when you get home that afternoon absolutely exhaused, dinner is ready! Wonderful invention! The list of dishes you can make in them is growing everyday so dont think you have to miss out on variety if you use one. They are uber economical too.

Icey pole moulds:

This is super simple, obviously when living in a caravan you have a teensy weensy refridgerator and an even smaller freezer. Keeping some of these on hand means that when you have some fruit thats on the blink you can juice it (or process it) and freeze it up, shove them wherever they will fit in the space that have appeared in your freezer midweek, YUM! Great for when your in the outback too and when your on the road travelling these are fantastic if your like me and stop at servos to fuel up, see the ice cream fridge while your paying and INSTANTLY crave a cold, sweet snack. Your combinations are only limited by your imagination, you can use yoghurt, frozen berries, fresh fruits, fruit juice, cordial, milk and milk flavourings, a genuine home made ice cream recipe etc.

Potao chip maker:

Today, during my grocery shop I discovered a "microwave potato chip maker". Potato chips are basically the last "prepackaged snack" we had left to elimenate for a "home cooked" version. Obviously when I seen this contraption I HAD to try it, so we purchased one. We brought it home, used the included slicer to chop up the potato slivers - popped them in the "thingy" (pictured above, lol) and popped them in the microwave. They came out fantastic. The only challenge now is finding some interesting - cheap - seasonings for them.

I will add more to this list down the track as there are many things that can help you to be able to have your favourite snacks, treats and meals along the road for a low cost and a high level of convenience.

Some of the other items I like to keep well stocked are:

- ALL baking ingredients
- bread mix (for the breadmaker)
- long life milk (I use long life milk for baking, I also use it in place of full cream fresh milk when we run out)
- lots of butter (for baking)
- eggs (you can make ANY type of meal from eggs, breakfast, lunch and dinner!)
- lemon cordial (particularly handy for when your stopped in a town with water you arent used to)
- a big, home brand, block of tasty cheese. (much cheaper to grate it yourself then buy grated)
- I keep pizza bases and the ingredients for pizza frozen, this way when we crave pizza instead of ringing dominoes we make it ourselves, this saves us about $50 a time as when we buy from dominoes we also purchase other junk food items we dont need)
- tinned items like baked beans, spaghetti and soups/stews (just incase you are stuck somewhere without adequate supplies)
- toiletries - these can become quiet expensive if you end up forced to buy them from mini marts in small towns or from service stations. It's always good to have at least one spare bottle of each if you have the room for it.
- water - I keep some homebrand bottled water for the same purpose as the lemon cordial. If you are somewhere and you REALLY dont like the water then you have the bottled water to drink. We havnt really come accross this problem yet but the bottled water has been useful for in the car (until we purchased drink bottles which we now keep in the fridge).

I will update this list as I think of more things to add to it.

El-cheapo food.

My husband works seven days of day shift, then has four days off then works seven nights of night shift then four days off (over and over). So in order to keep our grocery budget as low as possibe I've developed a "fail proof" routine.

Grocery shopping, ARGH!

I grocery shop in his days off before he begins the week of dayshift. Once I get all the groceries home I bake him a batch of muffins for the week, some sort of a slice and I make a ginormous batch of "chilli con carne" style mince (with lots of red kidney beans and tomatoes) and cook it into single sized pies in my pie maker. Each day that week he takes a piece of fruit, 1-2 pies, some slice/cake 2 and a few ham and salad sandwiches or rolls. Then each of those 7 nights of his dayshift week when I make dinner I freeze the leftovers (which can be anywhere from 1 - 3 serves) in containers that he can take to work and put in the pie warmer on his night shift week. So when his night shift week comes around I dont have to do ANY cooking for meals (I make myself simple, single serve meals each night like omelletes, toasted sandwiches etc). So right before his nightshift week starts I will bake another big batch of snack food (slices/cake etc), more savoury muffins (or whatever else he wants that week) and a big batch of homade sausage rolls. Then for that week he will take a pre-made meal, a sausage roll or two, and the snack food and a piece of fruit. Its really simple.

Sausage rolls are cheap, easy and freezable. I also find that rather than buying the tubes of sausage mince for them it is cheaper to buy a 2kg packet of bulk sausages and just remove 50% of them from their cases (mix in a bowl with a couple of cups of breadcrums, some garlic, herbs, sauces etc) and then freeze the other 50% of the packet for your "sausage meals".

This means that  I shop for a 18 day period at a time. Which generally costs me about $300 - $350 (which includes $50+ to use halfway through that time period to restock fresh vegies, milk etc).

Make taco mince go further with red kidney beans you could even use this to make the meal cheaper so you can afford to buy the "heart smart" or "healthier" mince instead of the normal, fatty mince.

It also makes life easier for me as I only have to cook for about ten of the 18 nights. I also will buy things like (for example) two "Taco kits" (boxed kits to make tacos for dinner). Each kit is supposed to take 500grams of mince but on the first night that we have tacos (generally on my husbands "off work" nights) I will fry up ONE lot of 500grams of mince with the seasoning and add a VERY cheap can of red kidney beans. Then when the meat is cooked I can split it into two, use half for that nights dinner and freeze half so we can have it for tacos the next week. This saves money AND once again saves time because all i then have to do the next week is pull the mixture from the freezer and defrost/reheat it.

Red kidney beans are a brilliant resource for making your mince go further and you can put them in pretty much any of your mince based dishes from tacos to pies to spaghetti bolognaise and they will make it last an entire extra meal.

frugalise it!

I've been really full on with my "penny pinching" techniques lately. I have to honestly say this is the best effort at sticking to a budget I have ever made. In all honestly, it's actually the first time in my ENTIRE adult life I have ever been able to stick to me self imposed budget. I'm feeling pretty proud about it and for the most part its been quiet easy.

I have picked up ALOT of "penny pinching" techniques from different online forums and just general common sense. Some of the things I have been doing?

- I bought 12 white facewashers, 12 brown face washer, a big (homebrand) bottle of nappysoak and two small buckets. Now I use the white washers to clean up my son after meals (instead of baby wipes) and the brown washers are for cleaning benches/floors/walls etc. Whenever I finish with one I pop it straight in the bucket to soak then every few days I run them through the wash.

- only using half the amount of products like shampoo, conditioner, body wash, washing powder, dish washing liquid, spray and wipe, hand wash, etc. Essentially this means all of these products WILL last twice as long so I will go from buying them once every six weeks to now buying them once every three months. (therefore 4 times a year instead of 8 times a year).

- cooking EVERYTHING at home, from scratch. Buy doing this I have eliminated MANY prepaged/jarred foods some of those are - variety pack chips, spaghetti bolognaise sauce jars, macaroni cheese sauce jars, curry sauce jars, stroganoff sauce jars, apricot chicken sauce jars, gravy (gravox), white sauce, cheese sauce, cakes, muffins, bread, biscuits, flavour sachets (eg. taco seasoning) and MANY other snack foods. I now make all of my husbands work snacks (such as meusli bars, cocnut slice etc) rather than buying pre-packaged snackfoods for him. We also have not been having ANY takeaway/takeout nor have we been out for a meal other than packing our food and taking it somewhere for a picnic.

- Three of the big things we spent money on were A) buying drinks at the service station. B) buying magazines (think: celebrity gossip/health magazines/etc). C) late night junk food cravings. We decided to elimenate ALL of these by A) buying the types of drinks we would impulse buy - with our groceries (they are WAY cheaper in 4 or 6 packs from the supermarkets, plus if you go in when they are on special you can get TWO 24 packs of cans of diet coke for $30 instead of for about $48. We then put a few in the fridge each week and grab them as we are running out to leave the house. B) I now get ALL my celebrity gossip fixes, health tips etc from the internet, duh! Its free, its accessable 24/7 without leaving your lounge/bed. Too easy! D) I learn a little recipe called "cake in a mug".... I ALWAYS have the basic ingredients needed for it so if im desperately craving chocolate I make one of these (but leave it slightly undercooked and gooey) and hubby and I share the one. It literally takes three minutes from pantry to mouth and tastes amazing (especially if you use brown sugar instead of white). (Cake in a mug recipe -

http://www.notquitenigella.com/2009/05/29/the-five-minute-chocolate-mug-cake/ )

We have many other changes too which I will outline further down the track but right now I can honestly say that just these few simple changes have made a MASSIVE change in our weekly finances. Cooking everything at home can save you so much money and cooking everything from scratch puts yet another noticeable dent in the grocery bill, you will be amazed. I feel like these changes are such a small sacrafice in the grand scheme of things.

I basically think about it terms of how much time my beautiful husband has to spend at work. Every minute is a dollar and if we are spending them as fast as he is making them then he wont be leaving anytime soon. I'd much rather park our caravan at a beach somewhere and spend every moment having fun in the sun with Brent and Zac as opposed to having takeaway food regularly. Ultimately I nearly always either feel sick after takeaway OR dont *actually* get given what I ordered. I could honestly say that about 95% of my "takeaway food experiences" have left me highly dissapointed aswell as shocked at their cost (upto $50 for one nights worth of dinner).

So the more I penny pinch the less he works - the more time we have together, as a family and as a couple. Sounds blissful to me.

Why in the world would I want to miss beautiful moments like the photo above which is of my husband and son on the beach at Lee Point in Darwin during sunset. We only live one life and I hate wasting moments.

Have a beautiful evening everyone.