Chicken Tip

Snag a few pounds of bone-in chicken breasts the next time you see them on sale. Once you're home, cut the breast meat from the bones. Now you have boneless skinless chicken breasts! Toss the bones into a pot with water, peppercorns, pieces of celery, carrot, and onion along with bay leaves and salt. Simmer for about an hour, cool, strain and freeze. Now you have chicken broth! Now that's a lot of bang for your cluck!

Sweet Endings

These little chocolate beauties are perfect for satisfying the after-dinner sweet cravings without the guilt. It's also a great opportunity to use up leftover chocolate chips, bars, and those assorted dried fruits and nuts languishing in your pantry!

Ingredients: good quality dark chocolate, dried fruit and nuts.
*My personal favorite combo is almonds and cherries.

Melt chocolate over double boiler till glossy and smooth. Add dried fruit and nuts.

Scoop out mixture onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Pop in the freezer for 10 minutes to set.
Store at room temperature or fridge in a sealed container.

Yard Sale

As school looms ahead (or has already begun) try having a yard sale this month. It's the perfect time as folks are home from vacation, looking for school clothes, and getting into fall nesting mode. Here are some tried and true tips from my sister, fresh on the heels of her very successful yard sale last week.

• If your schedule permits, try having your sale on Friday and Saturday to maximize traffic.
• Advertise on free sites such as Facebook and Craigslist. Be sure to offer specific details in your ad such as the sizes of clothing you have.
• Offer free coffee, bake brownies to sell, and have music playing to avoid awkward silence.  
• Make your signs all the same color and use plenty of arrows.
• After a certain time, have a "sale" where customers can fill a bag for a dollar or offer half off of everything.
• Yard sales are great for fundraising for charity, adoption, and sports teams- make sure your customers know this!
• Finally, when the sale is over, advertise a curb alert on Craigslist. You won't even have to haul anything away!

Money Guide

A fun way for the kids to learn their coins is to make a coin board and hang it in the car. They can learn on the go and you can quiz while you drive with questions regarding size, color, and value. Tape the coins onto a piece of cardboard, write in the values and names, and clip onto the back of a seat.

Decoding the produce label

In case you can't find great local produce in your area, you can still know exactly what you're buying just by checking that ubiquitous little round PLU sticker found on all grocery store produce. Here's the lowdown:

• PLU stickers that have 4 digits and begin with a “3″ or “4″: produce is conventionally grown. This means that this produce was probably treated with pesticides and/or herbicides.
• PLU stickers that have 5-digits and start with “8″: produce was genetically engineered and may have been chemically treated.
• PLU stickers that have 5-digits and start with “9″: produce was raised organically.

Rainy day fun

This nifty little target will be perfect if you find yourself with the challenging combination of a rainy day and bored kids this summer. Simply cut a circular hole in a paper grocery bag for a nerf gun target. If the target is hit, the projectiles wind up in the bag.
*This was tested on 8 and 6 year old boys and was a huge success!

From bag...

to target!