Blogging Away Debt

How To Make Your Own Pumpkin Spiced Coffee For Cheap!!!

Does anyone follow Food Babe? She recently posted an expose about Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte. Now, as much as I love and appreciate Food Babe’s crusade to make big companies accountable and to use higher quality ingredients, I don’t 100% subscribe to everything. I eat plenty of non-organic foods and I buy plenty of prepared foods (which she would be totally against!). But, seeing some of the McNasty ingredients in the PSL made me super bummed. Sure, I don’t frequently buy coffee because I make my own at home, but I always look forward to at least one or two PSLs during the Fall season. Not this year, my friends! I’ll be saving my money by making my own for way less and way healthier! No high fructose corn syrup, no carcinogenic carmel coloring, and no sugar (unless you want to add some of your own!)

This is something I’ve been doing for years! I’m obsessed with all things pumpkin and when Fall rolls around you’ll be hard pressed to keep me away from the inevitable pumpkin-craze! I actually shared this tip in the comments of an earlier post, but thought I’d share it here for all to see. : )

Ingredients:

Favorite coffee. I buy pre-ground stuff, usually vanilla-flavored. It doesn’t have to be flavored, but vanilla works really well with this “recipe.”
Appropriate spices. I keep it simple and just use pumpkin pie spice, but if you don’t have that on hand you could use a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and other traditional Fall flavored spices.
Canned (or cooked) pumpkin. You won’t need much, but you can store leftovers in the fridge.
Milk or milk alternative. I tend to like really creamy coffee, but I don’t want all the extra calories so I’ll use a lower-cal almond milk with just a splash of the “real” stuff (I use 2%).
Sweetener of choice. For years I have used agave nectar in my coffee (it’s delicious, try it!), but you could use sugar or any sugar substitute of your choice.

Directions:

First, prepare your coffee grounds. I like to mix it all up together in the actual coffee can, but you could certainly mix it up for a single coffee pot sized serving if you prefer. Simply mix your spices into the coffee grinds. Use a little more than you think you need, until you can really see the specks of brown (cinnamon, nutmeg) amidst all the black coffee grounds. You should be able to smell the stuff through the coffee scent when you’re done. Brew your coffee as usual.

Put a heaping teaspoon of pumpkin (canned or cooked fresh) in the bottom of your mug of coffee, then pour the hot coffee over the top. Stir and stir until all the pumpkin is completely dissolved.

Next, add your milk and sweetener of choice (if you prefer, you can also skip this step if you like black coffee). If you want a truly coffee-house style drink, warm up your milk a little and use a frother to really get a good foam going before you pour it into your coffee. A friend bought me a frother for $2.50 from Ikea for Christmas last year after I’d had coffee at her house and raved about how incredible it was. I’d had no idea you can get a frother so cheap! (this is it here < not an affiliate link).

Finally, drink up!!!

I know it sounds weird to put pumpkin in your coffee, but I PROMISE you that it’s delicious! If you stir it up until it dissolves you can’t even tell (warning, if you don’t completely stir you may be left with a little hunk of pumpkin at the bottom of your coffee when you’re done). When you’re done, you get the most incredibly delicious pumpkin-flavored coffee ever!!! I’m telling you guys – I used to buy the seasonal Trader Joe’s pumpkin coffee when it came out, but my own personal recipe has entirely replaced it! You can make it for pennies, particularly if you already have the appropriate spices. And the leftover pumpkin can be stored in the fridge to be used in tomorrow’s cup, or to be added to other pumpkin-y treats. Some of my favorite options include: Add a scoop of pumpkin to pancake mix for pumpkin pancakes, make pumpkin muffins, stir it into oatmeal for a Fall flavored pumpkin oatmeal, make a smoothie with vanilla yogurt, banana, and pumpkin, mix with vanilla yogurt for a pumpkin yogurt snack – the possibilities are endless!

I hope you all enjoy this recipe as much as I do! If you try it out, let me know what you think!!

Happy (beginning of) Pumpkin Season!!!!

Making Do: Hair Color

by Ashley

So I’ve decided to really try to stick to bare-minimums of all non-essential purchases for the rest of this year and see how much traction we can gain on our debt situation (after a full year of blogging – March 2015 – I’ll probably slow down on debt-repayment a bit. See more in my post about life balance).

Last time I shared a “making do” story it was about my desk chair. By the way, this month is not looking good for getting either a desk chair or a new-to-us dining table. With our lower-than-average income, all non-essentials have been slashed. I’m still religiously checking out freecyle and the “free” section of craigslist, but so far no luck. We really don’t have the funds to buy anything this month though (even for very cheap second-hand stuff).

Well, another area that I’ve been “making do” with is my hair care. The last time I got my hair professionally done was back in March just before I started blogging here, and it was a disaster.

At first, I was just not getting my hair done because it didn’t need it – it had just been done! Then I wasn’t getting it done because I couldn’t justify the expense to you all (oh you, always keeping me accountable!). Eventually, I wasn’t getting it done because it had already been so long, it had almost become a thing of personal pride. Look at me and how long I’ve gone without getting my hair professionally cut and colored (6 months….but whose counting? ; ))

Fun photo of my current hair situation – you can clearly see my roots and new growth here. It’s about 3 inches!

And, since I’m all gung-ho and really trying to do the minimalistic thing for at least a year (which would take us to March 2015, at which point I’ll hopefully have the car fully paid off!!!!), I’ve decided that’s it. NO PROFESSIONAL HAIR CARE FOR A YEAR. This was not something I started out thinking would happen, but this is where we are now and I’m committed to the cause!

And so I started waiting, oh so patiently, for some hair color coupons. We do not pay for the newspaper, but our community does papers on Wednesdays for free (I think because all the ads are in the Wednesday paper). Sometimes (not always) there are coupons in the Wednesday paper. And so for the past month I have been waiting and checking, Wednesday after Wednesday, for a coupon for hair color.

And finally it has come! (And just this second I realized I probably could have googled a coupon – DOH!!! – oh well, this has been a lesson in patience).

And this week I will add an inexpensive hair color to my grocery cart while at the store. I will color my own hair and will continue to do so for the rest of the year (again – meaning until March 2015, not the end of the calendar year).

My next task shall be learning to cut my own hair. I’m a little scary-excited about it and have already been googling all types of youtube videos and how-to articles. Let it be known, I will NOT attempt to do anything fancy/crazy. I’m talking about doing a simple trim to keep my hair healthy and the split ends away. So don’t worry about me showing up with a completely botched hair-job. I will invest in actual hair-cutting scissors but, aside from that, no other financial investment will go into my hair cuts.

I’m pretty excited to do this myself and (a) see if anyone even notices anything different and (b) save all the $$$ that would otherwise be going to hair care expenses!

I have to admit – doing this makes me feel pretty hard-core. Excuse me while I pat myself on the back! ; )

Do you cut and color your own hair? If so, any tips you can offer and/or good how-to websites or videos I should check out???