The Motherload Blog

Friday Freebie: Eat Free on Your Birthday

Do you know of a better way to celebrate your birthday than with free food? Here is a list of restaurants that offer birthday freebies. Feel free to add to the list (in the comments section) or let me know if one of these restaurants is no longer participating.

Oh, and an embarrassing serenade from the wait staff from your friends…yup, that is free too!

ALFY’S PIZZA – free mini pizza

ALL-AMERICAN CAFE – free dessert

APPLEBEES – free dessert

AUTO ZONE – free oil change

BAKERS SQUARE – free pie

BANDIDO’S – free entree

BASKIN ROBBINS – free ice cream treat

BENNIGANS – free dessert

BILL KNAPP’S – gives adults a % discount equal to age; plus a free bday cake (w/purchase of a meal) during the week of your B-day

BOB’S BIG BOY – free hot fudge ice cream

BUFFALO WILD WINGS (BW3) – free dozen hot wings

BURGER KING – free kids meal to all Kid’s Club members (check within the store because there is no reference to the club on their website).

CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN – Register First – free kids meal during the month of their birthday

DENNY’S – free meal (for children who are ten and under)

EINSTEIN’S – free meal

FAMOUS DAVE’S BARBEQUE – free meal (w/advance signup)

FUNNY BONE COMEDY CLUB – free cake (party of 5 min.; 2 drink min.)

HARD ROCK CAFE – free dessert

HOULIHAN’S RESTAURANT – free entree

HOLLYWOOD VIDEO – one free video rental

MACARONI GRILL – free dessert

MAX AND ERMA – free $5 dessert

OLD SPAGHETTI WAREHOUSE – free meal

OUTBACK Steakhouse – free dessert

RED LOBSTER – free slice of cake

STEAK-N-SHAKE – free dinner for “birthday club” kids (I didn’t locate a form on the site so you will probably have to ask about this one in the store).

TGI FRIDAYS – free birthday dessert

WENDY’S – free kids meal to all Kid’s Club members (check in stores for this one- no form is located on their website).

This Week in Festivals & Carnivals

Just wanted to post the latest links to the great carnivals & festivals this week.

The Carnival of Debt Reduction was hosted here so you don’t even need to go outside this site to find out how to reduce your debt! Summaries for each article are provided with the links to the entries.

The Festival of Frugality is over at Financial Reflections.
Must Read Article: Jim’s article on How to Invest With Only $100.
MotherLoad Article: Getting the Cheapest Shipping

The Carnival of Personal Finance is located at Just Another Money Blog.
Must Read Article: Penny Folish’s article on How to Start a Blog
MotherLoad Article: My First Purchase (Using Ebates)

The Carnival of Family Life is located at The Pink Diary
Must Read Article: Home Based Businesses: How to Turn Weaknesses into Strengths
MotherLoad Article: Cheap Baby-Making

And we participated in another carnival this week!
The Carnival of Recipes is being hosted by Trub. The sediment of life.
Recipe to Try: Microwave Chocolate Peanut Butter Mousse Pie
MotherLoad Recipe: Pumpkin Pancakes

Thanks to all of the hosts for giving us the opportunity to participate!

WFMW: Microfiber Obsessions

Welcome to this installment of Works-For-Me-Wednesday. It is my favorite day of the week and I love to share my solutions and read everyone else’s great solutions for their families. Please visit Shannon’s blog for some amazing ideas for your family.

Today I wanted to discuss my true obsession with microfiber cloths. I have been using these for about three years now, for just about everything around our house. Microfiber is one of God’s great gifts because it can be used for so many things.

I originally started using microfiber cloths just for cleaning the house. Dry, they are amazing dust cloths. Wet, they can be used to wipe down counters, mirrors, and showers.

After using those for just those reasons, I started to expand my list of uses. I then started to put a microfiber cloth on the end of my Swiffer and used that to dry dust my floors. I could also attach a dry cloth and use my Swiffer to reach up into the corners of the rooms, where all those dreaded cobwebs take over, without pulling a muscle. Wet, attached to the Swiffer, they can be used much like the expensive wet cloths you buy, but these babies can be reused.

More recently, I have used them as cloth diaper stuffers. They sell a variety of diaper doublers and stuffers that are made from microfiber. The problem with these is that they are usually sewn into a long strip, with many layers in between to capture odor. I just trifold these into a diaper and they help to keep my daughter nice and dry. When she was small, this was our only diaper stuffer. Now that she is bigger and a super soaker, we just use this to double up on her regular inserts.

When I was chatting with my best girlfriend, she had told me about her dilemma with getting her daughter’s hair dry in the morning. Who has time to wait for a 3 yr old’s hair to dry or have an hour to blow dry it dry? I suggested a microfiber cloth…guess what? It works like a dream! Microfiber is highly absorbent and for tiny heads, these little cloths are the perfect size. For wavy & crazy curly hair like mine, microfiber is great to keep my curls from getting the frizzy ugly look (that only curly haired women seem to get!) I just use my microfiber cloth to scrunch my hair and it keeps my curl looking….um, curly!

Caring for microcloth is easy as pie. Simply throw these in your washer with a teeny tiny amount of soap. You do not need to use a lot of product when cleaning with these or when washing them, it reduces the absorbency. I usually throw them in with a load of towels (a load that doesn’t produce a ton of lint is good) and omit the fabric softener. It isn’t good for your towels and it isn’t good for microfiber.

I purchase these at our local wholesale club- you will find them in the automotive section. They are very inexpensive, and worth every dime! If you don’t have a membership to a wholesale club, these can also be purchased at Dollar Tree, Target, or Walmart.

That is it for me- please let me know if you have other uses for your microfiber cloths! I am always inspired by you all!

Here are a few other links to some of my past ideas-Sand Between Your Toes Blues Giving the Gift of Magazines (Frugally) Solution for Cheap Trash Bags Programming Your Cell Phone Free Up Pantry Space: Make a Snack Weeding Through Your Child’s Art Work Creatively Using the Coffee Maker With Ease Making Your Spice Rack Usable Maximizing Space

Name Dropping

I just had to share! One of my favorite blogs, Something So Clever, featured one of my slow cooker recipes in her blog. I am so honored because I absolutely love her photography and get so many great recipes from her blog. Check out her great picture- don’t you just want to come to her house for dinner? Thanks, Alicat, for featuring us- I am *so* flattered.

Speaking of flattery, I have found a new favorite blogger….White Trash Mom. Don’t you just love that title? Speaks to my heart, in so many ways! She discovered our site and featured it in one of her entries. Again, totally flattered and excited!

Thanks, ladies! You both made my day!

McDonald’s Birthday Parties

We just celebrated our son’s fourth birthday. In the past, I have made the food and we have had the party at our house. It has been fun (for everyone else!), but we still ended up spending a lot of money on food, cake, party favors, etc… We only invited a few friends, but our family continues to grow and now our immediate family alone is about thirteen people. This year, I decided to let someone else host the party…But what is a frugal momma to do when most parties cost so much money?

Have no fear! The McDonald’s Birthday party is the way to go! Each McDonald’s offers a different price, but the prices are usually in the same neighborhood and all of them usually offer the same types of activities.

For $59.99, we could have ten children attend his birthday party. The cost included ten Happy Meals (everyone got their own choice in entrees & sides), party favors, games, cake (chocolate or white), and ice cream. The party times, at our McDonald’s, were two or four, which meant that no one was there eating and we had the whole place to ourselves.

We chose a nice McDonald’s, in our area, and they cleaned up and closed off the play area just for our party. It was, honestly, the best party we have ever had. The kids had a blast in the play area and played for three hours, while the parents sat around and visited. The host did all of the work for us, entertaining the children, taking orders, bringing food…and the ultimate part? All of the cleaning up!

In short, have a McDonald’s birthday party- it is the way to go!

Sunday Supper: Chicken Tonight

This edition of Sunday Supper is coming to you on Monday since Sunday was spent working on the Carnival of Debt Reduction. Please be sure to stop by there and see all of the great posts for the week!

This Sunday we dined on my Chicken Italiano recipe. I keep switching this recipe around though, so each week it seems we have a little different variation on it.

There used to be this sauce in a jar called, “Chicken Tonight” that our family used to eat. In particular there was a red sauce that you poured over chicken and you could saute the chicken and then pour the sauce on top or you could bake the chicken in the oven with the sauce. This was one of our favorite dishes growing up, and this Chicken Italiano reminds me a lot of that dish. Using a jarred spaghetti sauce, with mushrooms and green peppers, it has exactly the same flavors. You could also dice green pepper and mushrooms (if you are so inclined) to get a fresher tasting dish.

I serve this chicken over orzo pasta. I use one can of sodium-free chicken broth, heat it up until it is boiling and then pour one cup of orzo in with it. It usually takes 10-13 minutes to cook and the chicken broth really adds a lot to this dish.

I buy the Aldi Fit & Active Italian salad dressing because it is fat-free and it works great.

I hope you can serve this dish at your table one Sunday!

Slow Cooker Chicken Italiano
Serves 4

Ingredients
4 chicken breast halves
2 cups marinara sauce
1/3 cup chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup Italian Dressing

Place all ingredients in your slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for eight hours.

*Last minute dinner preparations: Throw frozen chicken breasts in. Pour sauce, tomatoes, & Italian dressing on top. Bake at 375 for 1 hour (or longer if they are large chicken breasts).*

Nutritional facts per serving (daily value): Calories 157kcal Protein 2g (4%) Total Fat 11g (17%) Sat. 2g (8%) Chol. 0mg (0%) Carb. 13g (4%) Fiber 2g (8%) Sugars 9g Calcium 30mg (3%) Iron 1mg (6%)

Monday WAHM Spotlight: Stuff A Friend

Thanks to Lisa for being part of our Monday WAHM for MomAdvice.com. We wish her much success in her business and with her family.If you are interested in being featured, we will be selecting a mom for each Monday of my blog. You can read more and apply. Email confirmations are sent to each mom if they are chosen. I still have many people to reply to on these so please be patient waiting for my reply. I promise to get back to you guys soon! Also remember to do your own research on these companies. If there are obvious red flags on BBB, I do not post them. Check my scam article to find out more about the potential dangers of work-at-home businesses.Thank you to Lisa and her WAHM business, Stuff A Friend, for taking the time to apply and be a part of my Monday feature.

Name: Lisa Johnson

City/State: Green Bay, WI

Name of Company: Stuff A Friend

Two or Three Sentences About Your Company:


Stuff A Friend is a mobile stuffing workshop that comes to you or you can come to us! We do workshops, birthday parties, and fundraisers!

Two Tips for Moms Trying to Work-At-Home (these tips can be how you stay organized, how to be successful, how to get started- anything that you feel would help someone just starting out):


1. Research research research before signing up with a company! Make sure it’s a fit for you (the product, the company values, costs, quotas, everything) and your family if you’ll be working around them.

2. Get organized from the beginning and keep up with it, because once your organization becomes a mess, your business follows!

Carnival of Debt Reduction (#44)

Welcome to the Carnival of Debt Reduction (#44). I am excited to be hosting my first carnival (or festival, for that matter!) so I hope that you all will enjoy it! If you have not visited this blog before, I encourage you to take a peek. My blog focuses on cheap eating, recipes, frugal shopping, and inexpensive solutions for anyone who is trying to live a more frugal life.

I love to dine out, but because of the expense, I rarely get the opportunity to do so without considerable guilt. Today’s carnival is guilt free though and full of good information to bite into. I have divided the posts into different categories. The main dishes are the posts that really shine this week.

Thank you to all who participated. Next week’s carnival will be hosted by Money Under 30. Please be sure to stop by there for more great reads.

Finally, if you are interested in hosting, you can find out more information here.

Amanda, the Young & Broke webmistress, shares a new tool at Money Central. This new tool is supposed to help users determine where they stand, debt-wise, and how to proceed towards reducing that debt. Is it a good tool? Check out Amanda’s comments to get the real scoop.

On the Getting Out of Debt blog, Supermom shares her amazing progress that she has made towards reducing her overall debt. You can read her plan of action for the month and where she is planning to put her next funds towards.

The Prince of Thrift, over at Becoming & Staying Debt Free shares how Dave Ramsey encourages everyone that takes his Financial Peace University course to create a financial mission statement. It was because of that that he decided to post his statement in his blog, setting off waves of other PF blogs to also create and post their own mission statements. So what is your financial mission?

Free Money Finance shares some real & true stories of people who managed to pay off their debt, including a couple who had 30K in wedding bills and got them paid down in a year. They implemented things like not eating out and not shopping for expensive toys as ways you can reduce your debt. Hmmm… how about not spending 30K on weddings and say, “I Do!” in Vegas, baby!

Boston Gal’s Open Wallet submits a great piece, entitled “Neither Quick Nor Easy.” Of hot debate: was Scrooge a good guy and just misunderstood because of his frugalness? Or, was Scrooge the villain that the world portrays him as? You be the judge!

One of my favorite blogs, “We’re in Debt” suggests a better way of managing all of that paper. What? The random piles we have established all over the house (and in the car, and under the bed, and under my seat) is not a system? I beg to differ!

Jim, over at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity shares his dilemma on paying his student loans back. No, he is not wondering if he should pay them. He is really just questioning in what order one should pay their bills. The post was interesting, but I really found the comments even more interesting.

AboutPMI shares some tips for paying down your mortgage faster. Included is a link to a handy dandy calculator (and I know how much the readers love a good calculator!) showing how much it would benefit you if you paid biweekly versus monthly. Now if I can just get that darn PMI removed over in our house, I would be a happy camper.

Free the Drones asks the question is debt really bad? And if it is, what types of debt do you need to be tackling? Find out about ways you can knock out your debt (oh, and there is a calculator for all of you number crunching junkies!) and find yourself on the fast track to financial freedom.

Steve from Debt Free throws out a suggestion to his readers that maybe if you want to live a debt-free life, you should consider eliminating a family pet into your life’s equation. It is interesting to see the astounding costs associated with owning an animal, but look at their sweet little faces and just try to say no….

The Car Buying Tips blog offers some tips to people who think playing musical chairs with cars is a good idea. Guess what? It isn’t! Read more of Chuck’s blog to find out why you should hang onto your cars and not experience these nasty cases of tradeitis.

Frugal Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Warehouse discusses a recent letter to the Dollar Stretcher in relation to the fundamentals of economics. Did you ever wonder why the potato chips in those bags are getting smaller and smaller? Well, Wenchypoo explains it all (and then some)!

Paul’s Tips (by Paul, imagine that!) shares how to determine whether you are better off renting or buying. Dust off your calculators, get a pen and paper, & get ready to find out your housing destiny.

Call for Submissions

I will be hosting the Carnival of Debt Reduction this week. If you would like to participate, please send your entry to me by Sunday at 5:00 PM. All posts regarding experience with debt reduction or advice on how to get out of debt are welcome. For more information, please visit Mighty Bargain Hunter to get the full scoop!

Saturday Sales

The sales are flying since we are quickly approaching the end of summer. Take advantage of all those summer clearance racks before the items are gone!

Here are some hot places to show this week…

Bluefly (should directly link you to their clearance section). You can use Coupon Code AFF15 to receive $15 off of a $100 purchase. This coupon code is valid only for new customers.
*Ebates members receive an additional four percent cashback bonus*

Ebags buy two items, receive a 20% discount. Good for gearing up for the back-to-school season. Lots of great backpacks to choose from. Sort your prices from low to high and there should be some great choices (in an affordable range).
*Ebates members receive an additional six percent cashback bonus*

Snapfish offers free shipping on your first thirty prints. Use coupon code HPFREESHIP (expires 07/31). You can also get thirty free prints & save twenty percent on photo gifts using coupon code AFFMEM2006 (exp 10/01)
*Ebates members receive an additional ten percent cashback bonus*

Etoys has a great Christmas in July sale, currently running. If you sort by price, you will see a ton of stuff under five dollars. These would make great gifts to keep stashed for all of those children’s birthday parties. I also noticed a great Bunco Party Game set (for the mommies in your life!) for only $4.49!
*Ebates members receive an additional three percent cashback bonus*

123InkJets offers free shipping & 5% off with the coupon code SAVES. These are SO much cheaper than in the store- you really can’t compare their prices to any of your local retailers.
*Ebates members receive an additional sixteen percent cashback bonus*

Netflix offers a free trial for one month on their movie subscription plan. If you are a movie buff, this is worth the money. When we had time to watch movies, we used this service. They offer plans now (starting at) $5.99 per month.
*Ebates members receive an $18 cashback bonus*

The Children’s Place is currently running their Back to School specials. Use coupon code FA76, now through September 4th, for an additional fifteen percent off of their already low prices.

If you are interested in learning more about the Ebates program, please follow this link for more information. An additonal $5 is applied to your account, upon making your first purchase.

For current Ebate members, they have recently added a blog to their site, where you can catch up on the latest & greatest in good deals!