Category Archives: finances

Spring Cleaning for Your Family Budget

photo credit: David Blackwell

Northerners have had more than our fair share of winter this year, which means one thing come spring:  it’s time to dig out.  The dirty little secret of hibernation is that your stuff hibernates, too.

But what about your finances?  Has your budget been hibernating along with your stuff?

If so, and you’re ready to get things in order, check out my post about setting a budget together, over at Blissfully Domestic today.

School Fundraisers

Even though I’ve been a PTO President, volunteered for umpteen book fairs, and written my fair share of flyers telling parents about “exciting opportunities” to support the schools, I have a confession to make.

I’m not a fan of school fundraisers.  Nope, I’m really not.

I am a fan of financially supporting the schools.  I am also happy to write the school a check to express that support.  I do not need random candy, sweet breads, or wrapping paper in return.  (Although I will say that the wrapping paper has been very nice paper.)  I especially do not want to pay a 70% premium for a crappy item that I could find for next to free at Target, so that the school earns $.59.  Why don’t I just give the school $25 and call it good? Can someone explain this “get random junk for a high price so your school can earn pennies” philosophy to me?

But, as you may have guessed by my ranting thus far, I do, indeed, pony up for the aforementioned random items.  Case in point:  this year’s sweet bread.  It’s a dessert, I guess.  In an attempt to clear some of the who-knows-what from my freezer, I dug this out from last fall so I could be the Best Mom Ever by serving dessert on a Wednesday.  A Wednesday, people!

So I review the package, and it says this:

Which I did, right?  I just dug it out of the scary depths of my freezer where it was busy making friends with italian sausage and some soup from 2009.

And now I’m ready to bake it.  So here are the instructions for baking:

Anybody notice anything strange?  Why does it have “Thawed” instructions, when I was clearly told to KEEP FROZEN?  Nowhere on the package does it say, “Thaw before baking.”

Luckily for me, it also has the Frozen instructions.  On the downside, it appears that all of the cinnamon popped out the side of the bread somewhere between the time the frozen bread shipped from who-knows-where to the school, where I’m guessing it did not stay frozen, until it arrived at my house, via backpack.

Dessert on a Wednesday might not turn out to be so great after all.  Frosted Mini-Wheats for dessert, anyone?