Soooo, I found this sweet little craft to make for Valentine's Day! She picked up thrift store candle holders and affixed little mailboxes to them for each of her children. As much as my Littles love mail, this would work all year round at my house. Stick an intial on the front (via the Cricut natch) and it's win, win, win. I'd also maybe pick up some of those glass candleholders at the Dollar Tree to make this truly frugal and faboo. It's a good idea either way. Peace, B.

Lots of folks keep asking about what diet I'm doing. I'm not dieting. I'm making healthy choices. There's a difference, friends. It's not just words here. Dieting implies some sort of deprivation, some kind of limit. Making healthy choices is just that. I eat every three to four hours and I make sure what I eat is filled with good-ness.

I'm learning so much about how food fuels my body and one of the things I learned early on is that I need to make sure I have some protein in the afternoon and I also need to make sure I have access to healthy choices. If I don't, I'll make some really goofy choices and that defeats the purpose of all the hard work I'm doing five days a week at the damn gym.

My trainer, Carl, told me to make sure I kept something like almonds at the ready for when hunger hit. I stopped by Aldi's that very day and found a good size bag of dry roasted almonds for $3.99. (I was able to get 11 servings from one bag. 39 cents for a snack isn't bad at all, friends!)

A serving size of almonds is 1/4 cup (170 calories). I had two really helpful thrifting finds for making snacking easy- a glass jar that reads "nuts" and a travel container for powdered baby formula.

I knew I couldn't just fill that glass dish up and sit it on my desk. I'd eat the mess out of those almonds thataway. I measured out individual servings in plastic baggies, knotted them closed, and stored them in the jar. One serving, ready to go, no excuses.

I also filled the travel container with almonds. Each section holds exactly 1/4 cup. After my three hour mornings at the gym, I can get a good dose of protein on the way home. Healthy choices, no excuses.

Almonds have become one of my go to snacks and this system is making it easy to have the correct portion when I need it.
Peace, B.

Yep.
Peace, B.

Pictured above is One Fabulous Snack for One Fabulous Mama. I picked up six ounces of blackberries for 74 cents at Aldi's this morning and threw in a satsuma (a tangerine made by the hands of baby angels) for good measure. We're talking around 75 calories total for this snack right here. It took me less time to gather and eat this delicious-ness than it would to seek out some junk food. Plus, the total cost was under a buck. Healthy is frugal. Healthy is fabulous. It's all about good choices, friends. Peace, B.

I came home from Your DeKalb's Farmers' Market with a bag of good-ness, wearing the euphoric glow of someone who has just experienced The Spice Wall. Among my fabulous finds was a couple handfuls of marked down pears. I thought about making a tart (which makes me feel all Julia Childs, only tatted up and cooler), but I stumbled across this recipe for a pear and blueberry pie. We always have blueberries in the freezer, so I went for the pie recipe because I needed to try those flavors together stat.

It's a short cut rercipe with premade pie crusts, but it takes absolutely no time to make your own. Seriously. I just had some premade crust from co-op. Here's the really easy way I make pie crust.

We ate half the pie at supper that night while it was warm, but enjoyed the rest cold the next day. It was a crowd pleaser for sure and so simple to make. Peace, B.

You'll need the following ingredients to make one 9 inch pie:

4 cups diced pears
2/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3 cups blueberries
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter
dough for one 9 inch double crust pie

Prehat oven to 350 degrees.

Peel and dice pears.

Add pears, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg to a large mixing bowl. Stir gently until well mixed.

Add blueberries and lemon juice.

Tuck one of the crusts into a deep dish pie pan.

Fill crust with berry filling and dot the top with the butter. Place the other crust on top of the filling and crimp the edges to seal.

If you have a Little, let him or her cut out some shapes in your extra pie dough and decorate the top of the pie. This pie was decorated by my little-Little. Place a few slits in the top crust and bake for abut an hour or until crust is golden brown.

I've posted about these before when I found them online here, here, and here, but I haven't really ever shown you one of my own. You can be as fancy or as simple as you'd like. 

The trick is in the layering. You want the dressing (if you're using any) on the bottom. Next, place any of the crispier ingredients (those that will stand up to being in contact with the dressing). I layer any meats and cheeses next and then, the greens. If there are any croutons or tortilla strips, I place those on the very top. 

You can store your salads in the fridge and grab them every morning on your way out the door. I've never let the ones I make go longer than five days, but that's because we generally make these for weekday lunches when we're on the go at work, school, or volunteering. 

When I'm ready to eat my salad, I empty the mason jar into a bowl and toss everything together. 

Yummy good-ness that's both cheap and easy. You can't beat that!

Peace, B.

PS
You can find tons of ideas by Googling "mason jar salads."

You're welcome. 
Peace, B.

Y'all know what I like? When I kick another year's ass. Especially when that year threatens to swallow me whole. Twenty-twelve was a great reckoning for One Fabulous Mama. The world may not have ended Mayan style, but it sure ended the OFM way- with a shit ton of cheap wine, wordy words, cursity cursin', and ultimately, the truth. 

It always comes down to truth.  

When I started this website in 2010, I pledged to be real, but it's taken me two years to get to that. Two years of being afraid. Two years of feeling around how this works and who I am. Two years of pissing people off and making people laugh at the exact same time. I finally understand that I don't have to be anything other than myself to be readable. I can do what I want here as long as I'm being real about it.

In other words,  The Frugal Blog and Mother Blogger can finally coexist.

That might not mean much to some of y'all, but if you've been with me for a while now, you know I write a personal blog (Mother Blogger) and a frugal blog. They're both housed here on One Fabulous Mama. I always struggled with keeping the two separate for fear of offending someone. Well, not anymore.

If you get offended by my sense of humor or my creative cursing, then this just isn't the place for you. No hard feelings, friends, but the time has come (the walrus said) to get busy being who I am, everywhere I am. That means all up over this here website.

But all of that really describes the end of 2012. Let's look at the whole year, friends, because it's pretty damn exciting!

The number of hits the website received just went crazy stupid wonderful this year. In 2011, we saw 1.5 million hits. I was mighty proud of that number. It sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it? Well, hold your underdrawers 'cause, the hits just kept coming and coming and coming in 2012.

We made it to over 5.1 MILLION hits last year! 

I've seen a hell-a-lotta changes in readership, too. Last year, the top ten posts were equally divided among The Frugal Blog and Mother Blogger. This year, there are more Mother Blogger in the top ten, but the most viewed posts came from the frugalsphere thanks mostly to Pinterest traffic. (Thank you, Pinterest!)

9. Mama Bee's homemade fabric freshener (Febreeze)

8. Mama Bee's yeast rolls

7. Sweet Home Alabama

5. The Battle at Pebble Ridge

4. (not quite) Pam's homemade powdered laundry detergent

3. Reasons why being fat makes me happy

2. The 40 year old fan girl

You know what's funny about that top ten list? 

Onions. 

I'm pretty excited about this year after reflecting on the last one.  The website not only survived, but thrived. Just like me! My journey makes for good content here on One Fabulous Mama. I mean, it can be a train wreck sometimes, but I get to the healing part, too. I share as much as I can with a commitment to being as real as I can be. It's entertaining and useful, right? I can't fathom being any better than that. 

I'm delighted you're along for the ride, friends. Thank you for showing up and reading about frugal living, cupcakes, vibrators, onions, and growing up poor in Alabama. I always imagine my words bouncing around out there on the internet. It's nice to know they land somewhere. 

Now, let's go kick some ass in twenty-thirteen! 

Peace, B.

Parties for Pennies upcycled lidded jars to make apothecary jars! It's pretty amazing what a little ingenuity and spray paint will make. I think this would be a lovely way to present some home baked good-ness or sweets this Christmas.Check out how this blogger did it, here! Peace, B.