The Frugal Family Fun Blog has a cute idea to make scratch and sniff Valentine’s.

Little Birdie Secrets shares her tutorial to make Heart Strings.

If you have some of those cute heart buttons, you can make this adorable onesie called Wearing Your Heart on Your Chest.

Print these free Chuck E Cheese Valentine Cards (they are good for five free tokens per child)!

Skip To My Lou shares her tutorial on making a Ladybug Valentine.

Dollar Store Crafts has a cute Valentine lei that looks absolutely adorable!

What have you found around the Internet lately that is Valentine related? Is it something we would all enjoy? Email me the link! I would love to see it.

This is what I did for my husband on our first Valentine’s day after we got married. I wrote a short poem, then I blew up a ton of red balloons and wrote each word from the poem on each balloon. The apartment we were living in had a drop ceiling so I tied a string to each balloon and used paperclips to hang them in order from the ceiling.  When he came home from work he was able to read his Valentine hanging from the ceiling. ~ Virginia Donahue

Malia Russell from Homemaking 911 shared a couple of posts from her website of frugal Valentine Ideas: http://www.homemaking911.com/2008/02/16/valentines-day/ and http://www.homemaking911.com/2008/02/02/give-loving-gifts-valentines-or-any-times/

The year my met my husband to be, I was very broke. I wanted to make him feel uber special though! He worked at Lowes, and every day he would eat his lunch in his car just to get out of the store for a bit. So I blew up a bunch of red and pink balloons (1.00 a bag at the dollar store) and put them in a trash bag. I made some hearts from construction paper and wrote sweet things on them. I made a handmade card from the paper too. And I made a loaf of banana bread to leave on his seat, he loves banana bread! I drove over to the lowes parking lot and first taped the hearts on the windows, except for the front windshield, and then filled the car with the balloons. Several of his co-workers saw it and snickered but didnt tell him why, he found out at lunch. Im still not really sure if he liked that or not, LOL. He had to use his pocketknife to pop some of the balloons just to get in. ~ Beth Morris

My daughter just pulled out the scraps of paper from various projects and made bookmarks.  She printed off “Happy Valentine’s Day”, cut that out and glued it on, punched a hole in the top and added strips of ribbon.  Free Valentine’s!!!~ Chrystal Tuckness

Hope you enjoy these ideas. If you have your own frugal Valentine story, you can email it to me and I will share it on the blog later in the week!

One of my favorite places to find great recipes and helpful GF information is Lynn’s Kitchen Adventures. She has the most wonderful recipes and is really helping me in my effort to obtain a gluten-free diet.

Today, she shared a recipe that can be made in a bread machine! I cannot wait to try this and see how it tastes!

You can find the recipe HERE and more like it on her website!

Hope you enjoy!

Here are the freebies for this week:

• Jamin’s freebies this week are about the human body. My kids are studying this right now and I am definitely going to be using some of these ideas!
• Homestead Originals is offering their Primer for free again! I love this book.
• Proverbs 22:6 Academy has a free copybook available. This one is verses on love.
• Mahatma Saffron Yellow Seasoned Long Grain Rice w/Real Saffron is priced around $0.66 at Walmart. Use the $0.75 off printable coupon here to get it for free.
• Weaverfield Mills has a free face towel sample available.
• Sign up to be a Waffle House Regular and receive a coupon on your birthday for a free waffle. Click here to find a location near you.
• Recipe Lion is offering a free Game Day Appetizers Recipe eBook with 60 pages of appetizer recipes perfect for your Superbowl party.
• Kikkoman Ponzu Soy Sauce is priced around $0.97 at Walmart. Use the $1 off coupon here to get it for free.
• Get afree sample of two Breathe Right Extra nasal strips (50% stronger than the regular kind).
• When you share Earth Grains with 5 friends they will send you afree Earth Grains reusable bag and they’ll send your friends a $0.75 coupon for Earth Grains bread.
• Sign-up for CVS Photo andget 50 FREE prints.  This offer is for new customers, those who do not already have a CVS Photo account.
• Get a free bag of Catster kitty litter.

Happy Friday friends!

Super Bowl Sunday is right around the corner and if you are anything like me, you have already been invited to several parties.

To be honest, I am not much of a football fan, but I love food and fellowship, so while my son and husband love to watch the game, I am busy catching up with my lady friends and eating until my heart’s content.

Last year around September one of our newsletters dealt with game day, so I thought I would share a link with you today from that newsletter. There are tons of crafts, recipes, and really good ideas for game day. Some of them might come in handy for Sunday, if you plan on going somewhere or are hosting a party at your house.

Since I have really been trying to eat a little more healthier this year, I was a little concerned about how I was going to handle that this year during the party–because let’s face it, snack food is FULL of stuff that is not good for us. But as always, I found this really neat site that has healthy Superbowl snacks and they look delicious!

Fitness and Freebies has all kinds of great healthy snack recipes and great health information for everyday use. You might want to check them out.

What about you? Do you have plans for Superbowl Sunday? Are you making something to take somewhere?

Note: I labeled this post a “So-So Saver because it probably won’t save you much, if any,  in the grocery store. However, if you consider the long-term health savings of eating better, it would definitely be a Super Saver!

Here is what she had to say:

Sandy Says:The most cluttered place in my home is my bedroom. When I need to get things out of the livingroom, it goes into my bedroom and never seems to be taken care of after that.

You will be contacted shortly Sandy regarding your prize!

We have another great giveaway starting soon, so keep your eyes peeled for it! If you have an item that you would like to offer for a giveaway on Econobusters, you can email me with the details.

I wouldn’t recommend this site except that I know several people who have ordered from here and have been thrilled with the results. At Zenni Optical you can get eyeglasses for as low as $8!! This is a great resource, especially if you are buying glasses for children who tend to lose and break glasses fairly often.

You will still need to get your eye exam done by a local optician, but can then use your prescription to order glasses online. I wear contacts but will definitely be making use of Zenni Optical for my backup lenses. As is, I generally let them lag several prescriptions behind, simply because I hate spending so much for something I wear so minimally. Now I can even afford to buy some fun, fashionable lenses!

What about you? Have you used Zenni Optical? Do you have another tip for inexpensive eye care?

Cheap glasses Works for Me! To see more Works for me Wednesday tips visit We Are That Family.

I came across this one article on page 93(for those of you who have the book), entitled “Interior Decorating for Tightwads”. How do you feel when you visit a home that is neat, orderly, inviting, and decorated lovingly? Sometimes when I visit a home like that, it kind of makes me feel guilty for all the things I should do in my own home, and then other times, it gives me new ideas to help spruce up my home. Amy (aka The Tightwad), offers some thoughts and I thought they were pretty pertinent to us for today. She says this:

Where we live has a marked effect on our sense of well-being. If we are happy in our home we have less need to leave it and spend money. As tightwads, how we feel about where we live is important. But we approach interior decorating in a unique manner–money is an object. Therefore we must resort to the strategies that yield the most improvement for the least money.

Here are her tips from the book:

• Housecleaning: Make a concentrated effort to eliminate the permanent pile of clutter, minimize eyesores, and put things away. Smaller places are harder to keep clean so the less stuff you have the better.
• Rearranging: Redecorate by putting old things in new places.  When you clean house and rearrange you can still keep the decorative items that please you, but try to group them and create a focal point. I did this with some old picture frames and an empty wall space. It freed up space on a counter and helped make the wall space more inviting and family oriented.
• Eclecticism: Why not mix furniture of all types? Who says everything has to match? Eclecticism is a great liberator. You can’t make a mistake as long as you choose things that you like. It doesn’t have to match or conform to someone else’s standard of tastefulness.
• The Potpourri Approach: A potpourri is a grouping of items that are similar but not identical. Do you have a variety of picture frames of various sizes? Paint them all the same color and hang them on the wall. Or do like I did and buy a set of mismatched that paired well together and created a nice focal point for my dining table.
• Do-It-Yourself: If you see something that needs work, like a chair that needs refinishing, or growing plants from seedlings, why not research how to do it and try it yourself? You can save a lot when you learn to see the potential of something that needs work. (my husband and I are doing this right now with a boat and a camper)
• Flexibility: Don’t try to cram all your interior designing into one weekend. Carefully choose things over time and as bargains come your way. For instance, my children have been using a set of bunkbeds that we purchased several years ago. When it was time for them to get their own room, instead of purchasing new beds, we just took those apart, used the ladder for a clubhouse outside and now they both have beds for their rooms. When the time comes for them to get a new bed, we can put the bunkbeds back together and sell them.
• Breaking with Convention: Just because an old tv has always been an old tv doesn’t mean it is ready to be thrown out. Take an old tv, remove the guts, and refinish it, add shelves and now you have a fabulous shelving unit for collectibles. The goal here is to break out of the box–don’t always think about what it was, think about what it can be.
• Stick with the Classics: Some of the most basic and least expensive things you can do is stick with basic colors when redecorating: black, white, wood color–anything that is natural looking. If you look through magazines, you will see most of the walls in cute country homes are painted white with lovely accents.
• Think: Look around your home and ask yourself, “What is it about my home that bothers me?” Try cleaning, rearranging, and a fresh coat of paint and see if that helps!

I think I just might use these tips today and rearrange my living room! What about you?

Packed with fun and excitement, this 25 page E-Book will not only keep your child busy, but will have him smiling as well. Mazes and coloring pages are just a couple of the activities you will find in this book. Your elementary aged child will love solving the word puzzles, stretching their thinking skills with a variety of Sudoku games, and making the easy recipes in this book!

My kids loved all the puzzles in this book and I am sure yours will as well! Click THIS LINK and you can be on your way to downloading your free resource!