October 26th is National Pumpkin Day. Whether you celebrate with a pumpkin spice latte or by carving pumpkins, this day has something for everyone.
Here are a few of my family’s favorite pumpkin recipes:
Don’t forget to check out my Halloween Events and Activities post here. There are all sorts of fun (and free) events all over San Diego County!
Have you heard?
Now through November 30, 2026, Procter and Gamble is offering some new rebates! Participating brands include Tide, Downy, Olay, Bounce, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Prilosec, Pepto-Bismol, Always Discreet, ZzzQuil, Herbal Essences, and Gillette. For the full list of brands included, go to the rebate page here.
There are three tiers of rebates:
• Spend $20, get a $5 reward
• Spend $50, get a $15 reward
• Spend $75, get a $25 reward
If this rebate isn’t your cup of tea, but you still want to save money, check out Procter & Gamble’s website here for more savings like:
October is National Pizza Month, so I thought I’d share with y’all some of our favorite pizza stuff: recipes, pizza swag, and even ways to save money on ordering pizza.
Goodness knows we have pizza about once a week (Friday take-out night is usually pizza), so I have all kinds of tips and tricks.
If you are new to making your own pizza at home, here is a list of my must-haves, including ingredients and kitchen tools!
Need a break from cooking and want to order takeout? Here are a few suggestions for saving money and/or earning cash back on your next pizza night:
There are tons of videos and posts online across multiple platforms about multi-use cleaners for your home, or why one singular ingredient is better than others. Everyone knows that one person in their life who swears by vinegar.
I know a lot of people like to clean with vinegar, and some people swear by Fabuloso or Pine-Sol.
Having lived in the same house for 11 years, I have realized that there are some things that just need a specific type of product to clean.
And here are my favorite “niche” cleaners, or tools that really get the job done, and aren’t terribly expensive.
Drain fly remover. The way our house is set up, fruit flies and drain flies come in, but they never go out. So I recently discovered drain fly remover, and it has been an absolute game changer. It’s also good for fruit flies and house flies. The best part is, it is safe to use in a garbage disposal.
Pumice stones . These are great for hard water or calcium buildup. We live in a place that has very hard water, and the hard water stains our toilets. These pumice stones are easy to use and are very inexpensive. You can get them at Dollar tree/Family Dollar, Walmart, and even on Amazon. No additional cleaner is needed; you just scrub at the hard water stains in your toilet with the pus stone, and it basically just exfoliates the stain/buildup right off.
Dishwasher cleaner . You would think something full of hot water and detergent would be clean, right? Wrong. Your dishwasher also has a filter/trap that collects all of the food particles that are blasted off of the dishes. Using a dishwasher cleaner is pretty easy. You just clean your filter, add the dishwasher filter, and run on an empty cycle.
In a similar vein, use a washing machine cleaner. I use this kind once a month.
The other ways that I keep my washing machine nice and clean are pretty simple: when you are not using the washing machine, keep the lid up. This only works if you have a top loader; if you have a front-loading washing machine, it can be difficult sometimes to keep the door all the way open, depending on where your washer is stored in your house. If you can keep it cracked open just a little bit. If it’s a space concern, it will keep your washing machine fresh and mold-free. The other thing I like to do is I like to take a cloth about once a week and wipe down the top of the washing machine, including the gasket that is around the top of the drum. It can get a little funky sometimes.
Inspired by Your Barefoot Neighbor, this recipe is really tasty and pretty easy.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Variations:
Looking to switch up your classic chocolate chip cookie recipe this fall? I have just what you need.
Over the years, I have made hundreds (maybe thousands) of batches of cookies, and I have substituted all sorts of different flavors of chips and extracts.
With the holidays approaching, there will be a lot of variety in baking chip flavors available at your local retailers. Some of my favorites include mlik chocolate, candy cane, pumpkin spice, butterscotch, and peanut butter. If you are an online shopper, The Bulk Priced Food Shop on Amazon has a lot of great baking chip flavors.
If you like a little more texture in your cookies, substitute one cup of the chips with dried diced fruit, or crushed freeze dried fruit, or diced candied fruit. Candied lemon peels are excellent in cookies with lemon extract, and white chocolate chips. Dried cherries go great with dark chocolate chips/chunks.
Change up the flavor with different extracts. I like cake batter, lemon, or almond in place of vanilla. Watkins is my favorite brand- they have a wide variety of flavor extracts. Rembmer Essential oils and baking extracts are NOT THE SAME THING.
If you are vegan or gluten-free, there will be substitutions at the end of this post just for you.
Choose Your Chip Cookies
Ingredients:
Directions:
Variations: substitute half a cup of the room temperature butter for nut or seed butter of your choice. This will give your cookies a subtle nut flavor.
If you are vegan, substitute butter with your favorite plant-based butter, or hydrogenated shortening. Butter flavor shortening works best.
Additionally, you can substitute the two eggs for two flax eggs or egg replacer of your choice. It does affect the texture of the cookie, but if you are vegan or egg free, you’re probably used to the texture.
The weather this week is going to be weird- Hot in the beginning of the week, and rainy and wet towards the middle and end. All I want is fall weather. I’m craving SOUP! I’ve got a few new recipes in the works- I’ll be sharing them once I make them.
I do my grocery shopping usually early on Saturday morning, after I inventory the fridge, freezer, and pantry (the forms I used are in this post- they are FREE). This week I didn’t buy a lot. We’ve got a lot of pantry staples, and I’m leaning into those, plus a lot of frozen veggies (from our last delivery of veggies for the local CSA. I cleaned, chopped, and bagged what we weren’t able to eat right away), and a big package of chicken breast.
Breakfast: The Big Kid has joined the Protein Coffee train with me. He has his with the equivalent of 2-3 shots of espresso in it, served hot. I take my Protein Coffee iced. 1 protein shake and 20 ounces of cold brew. The littler dude is on an Einstein Bros. Bagel kick. I buy them once every few weeks, pre-sliced, then I stash them in the freezer and pull them out and toast them as needed.
Lunch: Monday through Friday, I pack my own and the kids’ lunches. I bring 5 lunches to work on Monday and stash them in the fridge. I pack the kids’ lunches each night before bed, except for the cold stuff and ice pack- those I put in when I get up in the morning. This week I have frozen entrees- there was a sale a few weeks ago, and I bought enough for the first 2 weeks of school. The big kid has basically the same lunch every day: Sandwich, drink, Quest Protein Chips, and a couple of cookies or whatever I made this week. The little dude has cheesy popcorn, mandarin oranges (2), a cheese stick, a yogurt drink, a cookie, and a fruit snack. Whatever keeps them fed!
Dinner: It’s a mixed bag of crockpot meals and quick-cook, easy dinners this week.
Wednesday: Smoothies and Charcuterie plates (this has become a Wednesday special)
Thursday: Quesadillas, beans and rice
Today is National Savings Day! I wanted to share with you a few tips and tricks for saving money beyond using coupons and apps.
Saving for College:
Trying to budget to get by:
In 2020, I wrote a three-part series about making a practical budget that a family can adhere to and how to get some extra help if you need it. This was written during the pandemic, so there is a lot of information and resources, especially for those feeling the financial panic that many felt during the height of the pandemic.
If you already have a budget or feel that your spending is out of control and you aren’t to the point yet where you feel that you need a budget, I did a series of posts in late 2019 about how to rein in the out-of-control spending.
Take Control of Your Credit and Credit Score
Did you know that the recent FTC study found that over 20% of Americans, or 40 million credit reports, have reporting errors that are costing consumers money in credit card interest rates and loans?
Make sure that your credit report does not contain erroneous information that could be impacting your credit score. Keep tabs on your credit report activities and your score by signing up for free credit monitoring and score services like Credit Karma, so that you can easily protect your financial good standing.
I’ve used Credit Karma for years; they are owned by Intuit (the TurboTax people). It’s free to use and takes minutes to get an account set up.
UPromise Fine Print: *Bonus is awarded as $5.29 for email verification and $25.00 for 529 or student loan account linking. Member must link a valid 529 College Savings Plan or U.S. student loan account within 30 days of Upromise sign-up and keep it active through the first cash back rewards redemption cycle to receive the $25.00 bonus. Member’s cash back rewards account balance must meet the minimum transfer amount to be eligible for transferring cash back rewards into a linked account.
One of the perks of Amazon Prime is that you get a free subscription to GrubHub+ with $0 delivery fees on orders over $12 and reduced service fees.
Here are two codes to save you even more for those nights when you do not want to cook:
Active Grubhub+ members can use the promo code DEALS20 to get $20 off an order of $30 or more through October 5, 2026. Save even more by ordering for pickup! No Delivery fee or tip!
If you are new to GrubHub+, use FIRSTORDER for $10 off a first $20+ order through October 15, 2026.
I used code DEALS20 yesterday to pick up dinner, and I spent $11.00 out of pocket for the three of us. It is definately a great deal.
Love samples? Check out PinchMe! Join PINCHme and receive free samples that you can provide feedback on.
PinchMe is awesome! Once you are signed up, they will email you reminders when new samples are about to drop, and remind you when it’s time to leave feedback.
Answer a series of questions about your household and shopping habits in the Member Profile. PinchMe learns what you like and offers samples just for you.
Once you’ve had a chance to try the samples, complete a short feedback survey to tell PinchMe what you think of the samples.
I get PinchMe samples every month. Here is a box that I recently received.
What are you waiting for? Sign up here and get on the free sample bandwagon! I’ve gotten all kinds of awesome sample/trial size items, as well as full-sized items to try out from PinchMe!
