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This idea is a little late for this year, but maybe it would be useful for next year or another occasion where you are looking to make a gift for someone.
Growing up, my mom would make Hard Candy. I always thought it was hard to do. After all, it’s candy. I decided to give it a try this year and made one batch. Besides what appeared to be an icky clean-up (but it’s not – once you know the trick!), it was very easy to make. The hardest part is time because you do need to monitor the cooking of the candy because the temperature is important.
Here’s a link to the recipe I used – it was on the back of the flavoring oils I bought (here). All you need is sugar, light corn syrup, water, flavoring oil, food coloring (if needed) and a small amount of powdered sugar.
The flavoring oil is what gives the candy the flavor. I searched the local stores for it, but couldn’t find it. While looking one day in Walmart, I was telling a friend what I was looking for and a woman standing nearby mentioned that there was a display of them in the craft section of the store! I never would have looked there for them. I was thankful that the woman helped out!
The flavoring oils I bought came two in a package, like the one you see here. One small bottle makes one batch of hard candy. I paid $1.99 a package.
Back to the process. Basically, you mix the sugar, light corn syrup and water together to dissolve the sugar. Then you get the mixture boiling and let it keep boiling. After a while you can add food coloring (if desired – I found that I didn’t need it for Grape, Watermelon and Butterscotch since it already was colored with the flavoring I purchased). Once the temp is at 300 degrees F (which you’ll need a candy thermometer for – we found ours for $1.50), you remove from heat and add the flavoring. Mix well, then pour onto a cookie sheet (I sprayed mine lightly with no stick cooking spray). Let cool completely. Then have fun breaking it into pieces. I placed a paper towel on top of the candy and used a meat tenderizer on it’s side to break it up. It breaks like glass and the edges are sharp at first. NOTE: If you have hard candy molds, you can make candy into shapes or even make suckers. But it has to be a hard candy mold to withstand the heat.
You dust the pieces a little bit with powdered sugar and then you put in an air tight container. At that point, I shake the container of hard candy a little and that seems to smooth out the sharp edges some. You can also try to break in uniform pieces by scoring the candy while it is still pliable. I kept the candy shape random since that’s how mom used to make it 
After I made my first batch, I was really concerned about clean up. The candy gets hard once it cools and it was stuck like you wouldn’t believe to the pan and spoon. The recipe didn’t say anything about clean up! By accident, we found out the trick to clean up. Soak everything in water for a while. The hard candy will dissolve right off, making clean up a breeze.
I ended up making three batches to give away as small gifts to others – Grape, Butterscotch and Watermelon. The purple, yellow and pink colors actually went together really well. Depending on how much you’d like to spend, you can get a fancy christmas tin or use another container maybe with a bow on top. I don’t think it matters much because the tasty treat inside is delicious. The butterscotch so far is my favorite…yum!
I was a little scared to try making hard candy, but it ended up being easy to make so I thought I would share my experience with it. Next year, I’m making a few more flavors and giving it out to a lot more people as gifts. I’ll shop the after christmas sale this year for some festive containers 
A while ago, I mentioned that I decided to make something for my siblings and my parents for Christmas this year. Everyone will have their gift shortly, but the ones that are aware of this blog have already received theirs so now I can share what it is.
Last time when I visited my parents, I sifted through some old pictures and then took pictures of them with my camera. My plan was to try to restore some of them and perhaps hand them out to everyone. Well, that ended up being a lot of work and I didn’t get very far because some photos were in bad shape.
I had two really cute pictures of my mom and dad when they were probably around 7 or so. I thought it would be interesting to take those pictures of my parents and take a look at us kids when we were around the same age. I enlisted the help of my mother and she gathered the photos I was missing. I restored the photos, gave them all an antique look and gave them uniform plain backgrounds (the backgrounds got fancier through the years) and then printed them.
I had some scrapbook paper and some stickers so I created a little scrapbook picture of all of us. I mentioned that I ended up spending more money than planned and that was due to the frames. I needed a bigger size than originally thought to do a good layout of the pictures. Bigger frames meant more money, even though I was able to find the frames for half off.
I also didn’t account for the shipping cost. I had some in mind, but it ended up being quite a bit more. Again, I need to get a little bit better with planning if I do something like this again. Sadly, one of the frames didn’t survive the trip and in hindsight I could have packed it better. I’m kicking myself a little bit about that since broken glass wrecked some of the pictures and the paper they were on. You live…you learn.
I hope everyone likes them, or finds them interesting. I thought it was interesting to see everyone around the same age. I’m not usually one to do gifts like that, so it will probably surprise them. I plan on getting one together for our family sometimes soon when I come across more scrapbook paper.
Next year I think we will do more of the handmade gifts. It takes a lot of time and involves a lot of planning to get them done in time, but it felt nice to do. I wanted to do more handmade items this year but we ran out of time. Next year I am planning way ahead.
I was tipped off to an article late last month, but I neglected to blog about it right away. So this article is a little behind the times, but an interesting article nonetheless. An anonymous executive in the banking industry sent an email to the writer and allowed the NYT to publish the article.
I’ve known that credit card companies had shady practices. For some reason, we had (and still have) more credit limit available to us than our annual income. That doesn’t compute in my mind. Even if we have cards from different companies, they all have the ability to check a credit report to see limits. They were definitely enablers when it came to our credit card debt. We still used that available credit to the max, so we do take most of the blame.
I agree 100% with the anonymous executive when they say that there should be an opt-in number versus and opt-out number. Opting out doesn’t even work all of the time and I’m sick of all the wasted paper. Not to mention the electricity to run our paper shredder.
Thanks, Dasha for the tip!
I received a comment the other day about choosing to go into debt again. It was prompted because I discussed the possibility of a car loan. I thought I would reply in a post because it brings up a good point to make on how I feel about debt.
When it comes to debt, I am not anti-debt. Do I like being in debt? Heck no. Especially since it was due to us being irresponsible and spending more than we made. While I’d love to blame the credit card companies for our debt…I can’t. They didn’t make me use their cards. I did that. I swiped it each time or plugged the numbers into the computer to make an online purchase. They didn’t do that. Sure, they have questionable practices. You miss a payment and your interest rate can skyrocket. I don’t agree with their business practices and I think they are shady. I’ve always felt that if I concentrated on that and gave them the blame – we wouldn’t learn our lesson. So I’ve focused on the fact that we used the cards when we didn’t have to.
When it comes to student loan debt, I’m not against that either. Tuition and room and board can be expensive. To have that money up front at 18 can be hard. I probably could have taken out less in student loan money if I saved some money while working the summer before college. I didn’t. I spent it and because of that I took out more in student loans than I had to. So I don’t regret all of the student loans I took out.
For mortgage debt, given our income it would be tough to purchase a house mortgage-free. So I am not anti-mortgage debt. It would take us many years to do that. I think the thing to do is to still try to get the best deal when shopping for a mortgage and to not buy more home than you can comfortably afford.
Lastly, for auto loan debt, I am not against that either. I don’t want another auto loan, but I also don’t want to make a mistake of buying an inexpensive used vehicle. The last one we bought was such a horrible vehicle – it only lasted a few months. Like with a mortgage, you still have to be responsible and understand what you are getting into with an auto loan and the car you are purchasing.
I don’t want to have debt. But I have to be realistic and responsible. I bolded responsible there because I think it sums up the one thing we lacked for so many years. We weren’t very responsible with our purchases. We settled on a high mortgage interest rate because we thought it was the best we could do (although we didn’t agree to an ARM that was offered to us – whew!). Same goes for our last car loan. The interest was high, but it was the first auto loan we got without a co-signer so we took it. Thank goodness we agreed to the five year loan versus the 6 year that was dangled in front of us.
We’ve made bad choices in the past. We have learned a lot and with that knowledge are going to make the best out of the money we make and spend. We may not be able to have the best scenario (no debt at all), but we will make the best choice given all of the resources we have. We will be smarter consumers. We are shifting our finances to be more proactive than reactive.
Such is the case with saving up for a new car (which doesn’t necessarily mean brand new – just new to us). Our car probably has many years left to it. It’s a darn good car and although I really didn’t like that car at first, I have a lot of respect for it now. We will start saving up the money for our next car purchase. Here is where my realistic tendencies come in (some may say pessimistic, but I view it as realistic in this case). What happens if our car has to be replaced sooner than expected? We can settle for a cheap used car using funds saved up until that point, but that is not always the best choice.
Our goal is to make the best choices given all of the resources we have. We also want to get to the point where we have more resources since that gives us more options. After being so far in the hole, I feel I am being realistic with even hinting at the possibility of another auto loan. When faced with a problem, I like to look at all of the choices and not exclude any unless it is determined that it is not the best choice. I will not avoid debt if it ends up being the best choice for the situation.
We are actually going through this process right now due to some substantial upcoming medical costs that are not covered by our health insurance. We could pay in full and deplete our savings. We could enter into a payment agreement with the medical provider and have medical debt. We could research to see if there are any programs we can qualify for to help with the cost – maybe even get new health insurance. Etc., etc. We could even decide to not have the medical cost at all (it is not life-threatening, but does affect quality of life). There are many choices we can make and we will dig into each one to determine the best choice given the resources we have.
Going deeper into debt is not an option I like, but it is an option that I have chosen to keep as an option until it is determined to not be the best choice.
I’m getting ready to do a net worth update (which is looooong overdue) so I looked up the value of our car. Ouch. It took a hit of $1,000. Now that gas prices have went down, I think that pulled the value of our car down. For the longest time, it was above the $5K mark. Our car is small, but it is awesome with gas (over 30mpg – during trips it’s over 40mpg). I’m a little bummed about the value decreasing so much.
I also realized that it may be time to start thinking about our car’s replacement. We are a one-car household, and if possible we would like to pay as much cash as possible for our next vehicle purchase. Our car currently has 86,000 miles on it and we probably put about 7,000 miles a year on the car right now with our current situation. It’s a good car and it still has a lot of life. So now is probably a good time to start setting some money aside.
In a way, we want to reverse things when it comes to cars. Instead of spending a set amount a month to pay back a loan, we want to set aside that “payment” in a savings account to be able to pay for a car in cash. That’s a great way to avoid the interest charges. It’s a completely different way of thinking about big purchases than we are used to.
I first heard about Swaptree from some readers of this blog. They mentioned that it was a place to go to trade books/CDs/DVDs with others. Great idea for a site. I looked it over, and thought about it. I decided to give it a try.
When you use Swaptree, you list the items that you have available for trade. You then list the items that you want. Hopefully you see a little “GET NOW” button next to an item under your want list. When that happens, you can initiate a trade of one of your items for that item. If the other party accepts, you can print a shipping label directly from Swaptree and pop your item in the mail. Your credit card on file is charged for shipping and you also pay a monthly fee for using the Swaptree service for postage.
It’s a very easy system. I sometimes have a hard time getting to the post office during business hours but I can easily print the postage from my computer and walk out to my mailbox. The algorithms on the site determine your available trades from your have/want lists so you don’t have to go searching for trades. There is some work to do research on your trade parter (or partners, if it happens to be a three-way trade), but that is fairly easy to do as well.
I’ve done a few trades and received some great items. I was hoping to do a few more before doing a review but it didn’t take long before I was scammed. I participated in a trade and sent out my item. I didn’t receive one in return and the user is not answering my messages to them. It looks like they may have scammed a few others as well. From the sounds of things on their discussion boards, not receiving items is becoming a problem and Swaptree doesn’t appear to be doing much more than just trying to contact the user themselves.
Getting scammed so early was not encouraging and I decided that I would not participate in any more trades right now. I’ll keep checking out the discussion boards every now and then to see if Swaptree changes some policies for items not received. It is a great idea, but a few bad apples can ruin it.
Do I regret trying it? Nope. I am very happy with the items I did receive and I traded things that I attempted to sell for dirt cheap at our garage sales. I did pay some money in postage, but the price for postage was lower than what you would pay for a used book at Amazon or a used book store. Like I said, it’s a great site if you don’t get scammed. Once that happens, it can put a bad taste in your mouth.
For those reading who use Swaptree, how are things going for you?
I got a kick out of this story.
Giant Christmas Tree Video
Giant Christmas Tree Pictures
Around the net, this story has been talked about a lot. Many of the comments about the tree focus on the mess (the needles!) and the cost. Perhaps it was an excessive thing to do. After all, it cost about $400 (US) for the tree and to get it in the house. That doesn’t count the decorations.
On another note, I think it’s hilarious. It made me smile, as it probably has made many others smile. I wonder if he thought his tree would get as much attention as it has. I’m sure he thought the neighbors would comment – but what about people in other countries?
I briefly thought about trying to have a huge display one year just for kicks. We’ve never been in a position financially to do it. Even if we were, I doubt we would go through with it. With downsizing our life, even our Christmas tree shrunk and it’s only about 2.5 feet wide. I do enjoy what others have done, like this giant tree or even a computerized light show (YouTube video link).
Of course, one thing we do every year is go out driving to look at all of the lights. Boy, I’m getting excited for Christmas!
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My Debt
- Original Debt: $97,293.06
- Paid: $1,927.89
- Remaining: $95,365.17
- Emergency Fund: $1100
- Broken Down
- Line of Credit 2: $0.00
- Line of Credit 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 2: $245.00
- Credit Card 3: $405.00
- Credit Card 6: $1,785.00
- Credit Card 7: $2,381.17
- Consolidation Loan: $11,000.00
- Credit Card 10: $14,519.00
- Auto Loan 1: $16,093.00
- Credit Card 11: $23,873.00
- Auto Loan 2: $25,064.00
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