I started this post before Christmas, but never finished it. Since the 12 days of Christmas starts on Christmas day I am going to still post a few thing over the next week or so.
Here is our family room, empty from all our other décor, with our new real tree ready for our Christmas decorations. We have boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations in our attic, most of which we did not use this year.
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This is one of our favorite Christmas cookies! They are easy to make, are always a hit, and the kids love helping. Although we usually eat healthier, we do splurge once in a while!
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Finally here is another tip to save money and get out of debt. With Christmas not far away we thought we would post on how to save money on shopping and entertaining during the season. If you are like us and have a lot of people you have (or think you have) to buy for, you may be buying or spending more than you have too.
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We are wrapping the Christmas gifts that we put under the Christmas tree this year with brown packaging, wrapping paper. I like the simple and pretty look of these gifts.
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This is one of our favorite recipes. Have you ever ordered a soft pretzel. Sooo soft and delicious? Then you will love this super easy recipe for homemade Soft Pretzels.
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If you have been following us through all of our tips to get out of debt you will see how much you could be saving, and adding all of these savings together to really make a huge difference in paying off your credit cards, medical bills or other debts you may have.
We have always lived very frugal and have been able to stay out of debt just about our whole lives. One of the things that helps us stay out of debt are our shopping habits. Our food expense with 12 people living in the house is huge. We use the tips below so we don’t waste food.
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We are back! We were on a vacation, which was awesome, I will post about it later. Sorry about being behind on our money saving tips. Our intent was to have post scheduled to go out, but that obviously didn’t happen. We know a lot of you are enjoying our tips to get out of debt, so we will continue with our them.
We love to have purified water and don’t trust the water coming out of the faucet, (We have well water with a water softener) but buying bottled water is not the answer for various reasons (mostly for your wallet).
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How was your week end? I thought I would Show you some family pictures of our weekend. The weather was beautiful and we had a great time. On Saturday we went to a “Trail of History” and on Sunday we went to a “Fall Family Festival.”
These pictures are from our Fall Family Festival.
Michael, 17, helping Mary, 20 months.
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Sorry we are so behind on these tips. We are slightly busy! This tip, to help you get out of debt, could save you a considerable amount of money each month.
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I bet most everyone could take advantage of this tip.
You could save your self a little or a lot of money depending on how many subscriptions you have.
Most of them maybe charged
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We are about a third of the way through our 31 day challenge and it’s time for a quick summary of your savings. (A little behind schedule.)
Tip #1 How to Find Excess Spending. Explained more in other post; Savings ???
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Seeing that the weekend is tomorrow we thought we would share some ideas for a free or cheap date night. That sounds bad, but you don’t have to spend a lot of money to have an enjoyable evening.
We have always been a little tight with money some years were worse than others. Even if you don’t have any money or are in debt there is no reason you can’t have fun. We have found a lot of things to do for really cheap or for free. We feel it is important for any relationship, whether it is with your spouse or your children to take the time to be together and have fun.
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Tip #8 To Get Out of Debt: Find cheap or free activities for the family.
Spending time as a family is important, but it doesn’t have to put a dent in the bank account or rack up the credit cards. We have found that you could have quality family fun and not have to spend anything or very minimal. If you are use to spending a lot on family activities, and change your activities to FREE ones, you will be able to save that much more. Remember to put the savings towards one of your debts.
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Tip #7 to get out of Debt: Limit the amount of water you use.
Everyone uses water and most of us take for granite that it is just there. With these tips you could save yourself a lot of money each month.
Whether you live on a lot with well water or have city water, it still costs a lot of money, and if you conserve water, then you could save a lot of money.
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Tip #6 Buy a Used Car
We have owned several cars throughout the years and none of them were ever bought new. That may not sound to strange to some of you, but considering my father-in-law worked at a dealership for 40 years you would have thought we would have bought at least one new one.
We have always lived very frugal and never could justify having car payments for a new car.
Our last post was on eliminating a car and how it may be possible for you. If that is not an option you may consider:
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Over the years we have owned several vehicles. We have four of them right now and six drivers (12 people living in our house) and with all the work and sport schedules it is sometimes difficult arranging the car schedules, but it is better than buying another car for right now. Well, our 25 year old son has a car for his two jobs and our 23 year old daughter has one for her 2 jobs, hubby has a car for work, and we have the family tuckster (We call this our BUS!) It is sometimes a struggle arranging the car schedules but it is better than buying another car for right now.
This is our BUS!
![How to save money on you vehicle[8]](http://lh4.ggpht.com/-yM_FG3pmeE0/UG93ZPoU1uI/AAAAAAAAETc/HjTVcAecknw/s1600-h/How%252520to%252520save%252520money%252520on%252520you%252520vehicle%25255B8%25255D%25255B2%25255D.jpg "How to save money on you vehicle[8]")
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Thank you for following along with our 31 tips to get out of debt series.
Everyone is different. Some people eat out quite often, while others only eat out occasionally. Whichever way you go, you can save money eating out.
If you are trying to cut your debt, not eating out or eating out less can definitely save you lots of money. However,
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I am glad you are joining us with the 31 Days blog party, that the Nesting Place is hosting. This is going to be very difficult to get all the posts written and out in the 31 days, but we are going to do it. We are happy to have you follow us through the month to find out more tips on to get out of debt and be debt free. Hopefully you will find some or all of these tips helpful to you in your journey to become and/or be debt free. If you like these tips please share our link with your friends and family.
We have always packed our own lunches for work and
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Since it’s the beginning of the month and there’s starting to get a chill in the air (at least where we live), we thought this would be a good place to start with this tip.
Turn your thermostat down 3 degrees (even more at night when you go to bed, just use an extra blanket). If you have a digital thermostat, set it to go down at…
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Do you have credit card debt? Are you earning less money than you were a few years ago? Are you struggling to stay afloat? You’re not alone. Many people are in the same boat as you are today.
Many people have asked us how do we manage to have no debt (except for our mortgage) while also having 12 children.
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For the next 31 days we will be joining hundreds of bloggers who have accepted The Nesting Place, 31 Days Challenge, to write about one subject every day.
We are going to be trying to post posting 31 tips on how to become debt free.
We have been able to stay debt free…
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Do you like Giardiniera? There is nothing better than when it is homemade. I have only made this a couple of times, it is easy to make and is delicious. I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com. I like using this website, although I usually alter recipes a little do to what I have on hand. They are still delicious!
I bought this big box of all
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The Olympics are over but the adrenalin lives on. The USA rocked this summer didn’t they?
I’m usually not such a big fan of watching the game but hearing about the large number of athletes that are Shaklee users made me want to watch this year more that usual. At our Shaklee Global Conference in Las Vegas, we had a live feed to London with our Shaklee Olympians talking to us about
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Last week was another busy week for us. We celebrated 29 years of marriage, our daughter’s birthday, and our son’s birthday. We also had guest in from out of town, a 50th birthday party to go to, and my Mother-in-law had a hip replacement, who is now having complications from that. (Please pray that she recovers quickly.)
We got this grill at a garage sale this past summer for $20.00. The family that was selling it was putting in a built in grill along with a new brick patio. Our grill we had thrown out, because it was no longer working and rusted through. As you could see it was not looking too pretty, so we brought out our trusty cleaners and got to work. Look at the before picture. Yuck! 
I am so excided! We finally installed the hardwood floor that was sitting in our hallway for a year. (See the boxes on the left.) We used the flooring (3/4 inch thick tongue and groove hardwood) that was left over from our main floor. You could see a post on that here. It looks so much better! What do you think?
Here is our hallway from both directions before the hard wood.
We have had the most unbelievable weather this past week, for the area where we live. All the plants are about a month ahead of schedule, the grass is green and we actually mowed our lawn this past weekend.
Last Friday we had a lot of rain and our boys collected probably 100 earthworms from the driveway, patio, and the sidewalks. They really wanted to go fishing and with the weather being so nice we decided to take the younger boys the the state park that is near our house to try our luck at fishing. We don’t really know much about it, but it was a nice outing and we all had fun.
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