Berry nice savings to be had on blueberries!

I have found the answer to enjoying the health benefits of blueberries is in the freezer aisle! Blueberries are so good for you, but very expensive if you buy the punnets of fresh fruit. The regular price of fresh ones works out at well over $30 per kilo and while they look nice on a fruit platter, they don't have a lot of flavour. Instead, I now buy frozen blueberries at around $4 or $5 per 500g pack - less than a third the price! Simply throw a cupful in the microwave with a teaspoon of sugar and zap for a minute or two. Much tastier and are delicious with ice cream, natural yoghurt or just on their own!

End ant invasions pronto with Talon gel

I have found a truly fantastic product which gets rid of ants like no other pest treatment I've ever seen. Upon my recent invasion of ants, the faithful old borax and sugar mix was barely making a dent in their numbers. I couldn't use my own kitchen bench, guests were commenting and while I hate killing anything, it was driving the whole family crazy.  Thank goodness for Talon Ant killer gel! It works immediately (I saw ants leaving food and running to this gel), they swarmed it and as the product promises, they are gone in 48 hours. I can leave food out on the bench now and there are none to be seen. The gel works for 14 days, but at $8 for 5ml, it is totally worth it!

Fill a treasure chest with gold!

One year a friend gave me a money tin and on the side of it was printed, 'If you fill this tin with only gold coins by the time it's full you will have at least $500'. It really didn't look big enough to hold that amount of money, but I love a challenge so I decided to find out if it could!

We started in March and any gold coins we had went into the tin. Our goal was to open the tin at Christmas and use it to pay off lay-bys plus have some spending money over the Christmas break.

November rolled around and the tin wasn't quite full. However, when we opened it up and counted our 'gold' we were very surprised and extremely happy to discover we had collected $700 in our little tin!

Because of that little treasure chest of gold we enjoyed a fantastic stress-free Christmas! I was able to pay for all the presents for our immediate and extended family as well as cater for a great Christmas day feast, AND we had spending money left over for the holidays.

Now it's a family tradition. My sceptical husband happily donates all his gold coins to the tin and my 12-year-old will go hunting for gold coins just to add them to the collection! I know that I don't have to worry about the financial strain of Christmas any more as my tin has got it covered.

Crockpot party feeds the crowds in winter

I came up with a great low cost, low stress way to feed the crowds at my son's 21st birthday party. With the weather being chillier, the food needed to be warming and more robust than usual. I came up with the idea of a crockpot party! I am borrowing family members' and friends' crockpots and am filling them in the morning with different dishes, then I can 'forget' about them until the evening! When it's time for everyone to eat, I can then just plug them all into a power board and put them on the table. This is a triple whammy saver for me! It saves time as I don't have to spend all day in the kitchen and can get other things ready for the party instead. It saves money as I can use cheaper cuts of meat to achieve tender dishes and - as I don't have to use serving dishes, it even saves on washing up!