It's amazing how much greeting cards cost these days. I am hoping to save money by making my own cards this year.

I just completed two cards for Father's Day - one for my dad and one for my dad-in-law.
I was able to use supplies in my scraproom and some drill bits from hubby's workshop.

I actually got this idea from a Home Depot gift card I recently saw. I am so excited to create something for these two wonderful men in my life - and save money too, of course! The cards have the same sentiment - "Go a little BIT crazy Dad" with small drill bit attached.

One of my goals for June was to Plan menus for the entire month. While playing around on the internet (my favorite hobby), I came across a FREE website called

The Tasty Planner.

It's probably one of those sites that has been around forever, but to me it's a new discovery.

I've been playing around with it and there are a lot of features that I like.
(1) The menu plan can be added to my Google calendar
(2) An itemized grocery list is created with the recipes for the menu plan
(3) There are lots of recipes already included and it's SO easy to add new recipes. (We're going to have hotdogs one night, so I created a "recipe" for hotdogs. Ingredients - hotdogs, rolls, ketchup, mustard, relish, celery salt. Now all those items will show up on the grocery list.)
(4) There's a recipe box where you can store your favorite recipes.

So, I planned my menu for the week and printed my shopping list. Hopefully this will cut down on the number of shopping trips I make during the week.

Don't you just love it when you open your electric bill and discover it's less than you budgeted for?

I'm very excited right now. I just opened my electric bill and it's only $116. I had budgeted $164 this month; so that means I'm adding $48 to my savings! It's like extra cash.

Now I'm trying to figure out what I did different this month to bring the cost down so much. It's got me thinking of all sorts of things I can do reduce this bill even more.