Top Twosday - Pizza and Prosecco

That four day week last week was killer. I’m still not sure what day it is or which end is up.  I’m going to go ahead and trust my gut that today IS Tuesday, in fact, and move forward with this week’s Top Twosday. My top two at the moment:

1.     Prosecco. That’s all.

2.     With my list of injuries that keeps growing and knocks me out of the running game too often these days, I have had to be very careful about my calorie intake. And with my added obligations and dwindling time, I am also looking to build a rotating menu of quick, easy, delicious, budget-friendly (and of course healthy and veggie) recipes. I finally tried out a cauliflower crust pizza today, and I can safely say this will be on our menu at LEAST once a week from now until….forever.

I experimented a bit and changed up some recipes I had seen in the past to ultimately end up with the perfect texture and consistency…way closer to a pizza crust than I could ever have imagined! And I added some of my favorite toppings that I had on hand (including a white/pesto sauce rather than traditional red sauce). But there are SOOO many awesome topping combos I can’t wait to try!

The pizza wasn’t mushy and didn’t fall apart when picking up each piece, and in a way I was almost disappointed by how little cauliflower flavor there was! BUT, this made it feel like we were truly eating REAL PIZZA…but we could each have SIX pieces with almost ZERO guilt!

I can’t wait to put together a special tutorial for the recipe, but since several people are asking I thought I would share it here on the blog for now.

Holly’s Favorite Cauliflower Crust Pizza

     Makes one 12-inch pizza

Ingredients

       Crust

            1 large head cauliflower, coarsely chopped and washed

            1 egg

            ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

            ¼ cup shredded mozzarella cheese

            2 tsp salt

            2 tsp pepper

            1 tsp Italian seasoning

            1 tsp garlic powder

           

       Sauce/Topping

            ½ cup alfredo sauce

            1 Tbs prepared pesto

            1/3 cup shredded mozzarella

            A few handfuls of baby arugula

            Balsamic reduction, drizzle

1.     Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2.     Add about two inches of water to a large pot and bring to a boil.

3.     Add chopped cauliflower, cover and boil on high for 6-7 minutes.

4.     Strain cauliflower and immediately transfer to a food processor.

5.     Alternate 2-second pulsing and stirring until a coarse rice texture is achieved (not a paste or puree).

6.     Spread a cheesecloth or thin dish towel on the countertop and spoon cauliflower onto it. Let cool slightly for 3-4 minutes (will still be hot/steaming).

7.     Wrap the cloth tightly and wring over the sink to get rid of excess moisture. Keep going until towel stops dripping. Use a second towel or food prep glove if it is still too hot to touch directly.

8.     Transfer cauliflower to a large bowl and add egg, parmesan, mozzarella, salt, pepper, seasoning and garlic power. Stir or knead with hands to combine.

9.     Press (don’t roll) your “dough” onto a sheet of parchment paper to about ½ inch thickness. Build up the outer edges to be slightly thicker to prevent burnt crusts.

10. Transfer the parchment and crust onto a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or until just browned around edges and very lightly bubbling.

11.  Remove crust from oven and set aside.

12. Combine alfredo sauce and pesto in a small bowl, and spread evenly over pizza crust. Top with mozzarella and arugula. Drizzle desired amount of balsamic reduction over entire pizza.

13. Return to oven for 8-10 minutes.

14. Remove from oven and let cool on parchment/baking sheet for 5-10 minutes to allow crust to “set” further.

This is seriously one of my new all-time favorites! We could not believe how close to a traditional pizza it was (but WAY healthier), and I can say with 100% confidence we will never go back to a bread/dough crust again!

Keep your eye out for a super fun and detailed tutorial on this in the next few weeks, but until then I hope you enjoy! Let me know how your cauliflower crust turns out and what you top it with!

Thrifty Thursday - sell, sell, sell!

Thursday already?! Four day weeks are the devil/best thing ever. I hope everyone’s savings jars are going well so far! We would love to hear how you are doing!

As I said last week…saving money is always a good idea. But let’s not forget making money.  We lived on a golf course when I was a young child, and my brother and I would collect all of the stray balls that landed in our backyard and sell them back to the golfers through the chain link fence for a decent profit. When the course ranger put a stop to that, we disguised our little business as a lemonade stand. And I have always been a garage sale girl.  I have vivid memories of holding garage sales in almost all of my extended family members’ driveways growing up. My own one-year-old and three-year-old have probably already participated in more yard sales than the average American!

While I firmly believe that the most money can be “made” by simply saving and not spending, there is certainly something to be said for turning seemingly invaluable possessions into cash. You may not have a backyard full of golf balls, but I can almost assure you that you have a few thousand dollars of potential cash sitting around your house.

Around the summertime of last year, I really started to adopt the less-is-more mentality and lifestyle. I combed through closets and cupboards over and over to find out what I truly needed and/or valued. We turned our dining room into an “eBay room,” and I went to town. In just two weeks, I had made over $400! A car payment.. month’s worth of groceries…a plane ticket…a credit card bill…a full month of Mother’s Day Out tuition…..$400 was just SITTING around in the form of…extra stuff. I had always heard the eBay advertisements and testimonials of friends and family but never thought that I had anything of value to sell.

WRONG.

Newsflash: People will buy anything. People will buy everything. An old stuffed animal sitting in your child’s closet may be the EXACT one some poor kid has lost somewhere across the country (true story…we sold a random Target bear for $40). Once-worn Halloween costumes in the attic? List them in September/October and make a killing.  The random graphic t-shirt you bought at Old Navy five years ago might be someone’s favorite. LIST IT. I hoarded my favorite Bath & Body Works 2014 Fall candle (bought at $8/each), and it turns out that a lot of other people loved the scent also. I ended up selling those bad boys (that had been sitting around in a cabinet for over a year) for $39 EACH.  THIRTY-NINE EFFING DOLLARS. EACH.

You never, ever know what people will buy.  It takes one iPhone pic and two minutes (or less) of your time to list these items. There is nothing to lose, and I can ALMOST guarantee you will sell MOST everything you list.  Besides the extra income, the greatest benefit is the extra space, weight off your shoulders and freedom you will feel from unloading possessions. Live simply, friends. It is the greatest happiness there is.

Here is a list of some of my best-selling, most unexpected best-selling and most profitable items from the last year on eBay.

-          Brand name baby clothes: We all splurged (or received) a few Baby Gap/Peek/Hanna items when we were pregnant or celebrating our little one’s arrival. Some of them might even still have tags attached.

-          Misc. Baby Gear: We had about five Skip Hop Zoo bags/diaper bags/rolling backpacks, etc. Breast pump tubes that had never been opened. Nursing covers. Baby Bjorns. Etc. The markup on these items is incredible, and they are used so rarely and for such a short period of time that they are usually in excellent condition.

-          Craft Supplies: Cricut cartridges and paper punches are hugely popular on the secondary market.

-          Stuffed Animals: I have to say, I would NEVER have considered buying my child a stuffed animal on eBay. But when your kid becomes attached to a discontinued Pillow Pet or random 2012 department store stuffed animal that is no longer available, you will get desperate for a backup/replacement and turn to eBay in hopes that someone has that exact one to sell. Promise.

-          Costumes: Any seasonal item, especially Halloween costumes, sell wildly if you have the patience to wait and list it at the appropriate time. Again, because the retail markup is so crazy and because “used” items in this category are SO gently used, selling them on eBay is a breeze.

Those are just a FEW of the categories. Really and truly, no exaggeration, EVERY item I have listed in the past year has sold within 18 days. I was a skeptic, but I finally tried it and now my only regret is not having done so sooner.

Finally, a few tips:

-          Take decent photos: You don’t have to be a professional photographer. iPhone photos are fine. But invest in a $2 white foam board to lay your items on, and try to take advantage of natural light. Use PicTapGo (especially the “Lights On” feature to brighten things up. And if you’d like.. include a few stock photos of the item in its original state, but beware that some companies police this and will petition to have your listing removed.

-          Don’t lose money on shipping: In the very beginning, I underestimated the weight of an item and lost money on the fixed cost or free shipping I offered to customers. From then on, I always selected the “charge actual cost” option which I highly recommend. This lets you invoice the customer for the actual cost of shipping their item to their actual zip code once they have agreed to the purchase and completed it.  If you want to charge a fixed cost or offer free shipping wrapped into the cost of your item, make sure to weigh your item (with packaging) first and calculate the potential shipping cost based on a zip code furthest from you. I like to use Seattle, for example. And I just weigh things on a regular food scale...a great (and inexpensive) investment if you are going to be shipping lots of things.

-          Finally, time your listings and research similar items for sale if at all possible. BUT, at the end of the day…just LIST IT. I sold a Halloween costume twenty minutes ago (in mid-January). And I sold a pair of road bike shoes for $20 more than an identical pair in the same size was listed for. Those may be flukes…so please research….but again, you just never know. It costs nothing to list an item, so do it.

Happy selling and saving to you, foxes! Until next Thursday!

Festive Friday - Valentine's Day Gift/Favor Printable

Every Friday is festive around our house…because…hey, it’s Friday! But this week is extra special because I am getting in the Valentine’s spirit a bit early with a festive printable! You may remember the “Merry Kissmas” Chapstick gift printable I shared last month…the perfect last-minute, inexpensive, fun little treat for teachers/classmates/neighbors. After all the candy (calorie)-consuming and budget-blowing that happens between Halloween and New Year’s, I thought it would be nice to have an even cheaper and non-edible option for Valentine’s favors. Just like the Chapstick favors, you can do this on the fly (shoutout to you, 24-hour Walgreens!), but even better is the fact that you can theoretically spend all of ONE DOLLAR for a set of 24 of these babies! I know you’re on the edge of your seats..

If you have ever spent any time with a kid two years or older, you will totally understand the Band-Aid obsession. Band-Aids are my kids’ love  language, and after spending a completely absurd amount of money on Band-Aids over a couple of months, we boycotted the Target pharmacy section and headed to the Dollar Tree where you can score a 24-pack of truly badass character (or plain) Band-Aids for ONE EFFING DOLLAR.  And in the spirit of the 2016 weekly savings jar, I thought this was appropriate.

I used a tiny smear of glue stick to attach each Band-Aid to the cardstock squares and printed out “to/from” stickers for the backs using regular address label sheets. I know a lot of Valentine’s cards use the “I’m stuck on you!” line, but I thought I’d make this a little more personal and true to my voice. I like to let everyone I love know…pretty often…that they are stuck with me!

Hope you enjoy the printable...download here.

Thrifty Thursday - Weekly Savings Jar

Saving money is always a good idea. But when its only January 7^th, its even better. You’ve got a WHOLE year to get your shit together! Start NOW!

If you’ve been a long-time reader, you may remember several similar posts with money-saving or spending-cutting ideas, but I think this one is worth reposting. The 52 week money saving challenge has been all over the internet for years, and there is a reason. It is such an easy way to put away a few dollars at a time without thinking about it, and you end up with a significant chunk at the end of the year. The real key is doing something with that money at the end of the year rather than just keeping it in your kid’s Color-Me-Mine Spiderman bank disaster treasure.  Last year, I contributed the contents of our jar toward finishing funding my IRA for the year, for example.

This year we are starting one for Trent and one for Emily separately, and I am so excited! The first several months are fairly easy, but once the weekly amount starts to increase you have to really start thinking about where to cut things. It becomes easy, though. Mama gets one less glass of wine at lunch or bypasses the dollar spot at Target that week. You use one slice of colby jack on the kids’ grilled cheese sandwiches instead of two. You get the idea. As you get toward the later part of the year, the savings jar becomes habit and it is much easier to find ways to cut your unnecessary spending for the sake of making your weekly contribution.

Don’t be afraid to cut the amounts in half or even double them to fit your lifestyle and budget. This is simply a guide and helps hold you accountable to putting a little something extra away regularly. If you follow the guide exactly, you'll end up with $1378 in your jar at the end of 52 weeks, but you can also make a different savings goal if there is a specific amount you have in mind or if you are simply planning to have weeks where you put more away.

Happy Saving!

Watch It Wednesday - Take One!

To follow up "Top Twosday," I am thrilled to introduce "Watch It Wednesday" as part of my weekly blogging schedule. I know my husband and I are always looking for a new show, movie, documentary or series to bingewatch, and lately we have run out of places to look! As I asked for recommendations from friends and family, it seemed that everyone else was having the same problem as well. So I am going to start digging deep (in my brain, on Netflix, around the internet, etc) to bring you a weekly suggestion or two.

 First up is a movie we watched recently that quickly reached one of the top three spots on my "All-Time Favorite Movies" list. Interstellar, starring Matthew Mcconaughey, is one of the best movies I have seen in a LONG time. And while it takes a LONG time to watch it (3+ hours), it never felt as if it was dragging, and I can honestly say I would watch it again and again which I don't say about many movies. My focus, interest and intrigue were held the whole way through, and the ending didn't let me down either, as so many do. I won't give away any spoilers or details, but I will say that I was totally against watching it for the longest time because I, like so many others, assumed it was just another sci-fi movie...which I am so not into. However, it is much more about family, relationships and real life, and the science/space travel part adds constant suspense. Everyone should watch this movie, but I do have to admit that I'm not sure it would have moved me the way it did had I watched it before having children.

Okay, I will stop there before I give anything away and/or start gushing about my love for Mr. Mcconaughey!

The movie is available to stream on GooglePlay ($14.99) and also available to stream for FREE with AmazonPrime Instant Video, but unfortunately it is no longer available to stream on Netflix. 

Let me know what you think about Interstellar in the comments below, and for the love of God PLEASE send your own movie suggestions my way if you have a can't-miss on your list!

Looking forward to introducing a new Thursday feature tomorrow. Happy Humpday, foxes!

Top Twosday - Take One!

Welcome to the first edition of Top Twosday! Every Tuesday…okay, let’s be honest…maybe every fifth Tuesday and the occasional Thursday when I’m not even sure what day it actually is…I will be sharing two things that top my list of greatness that week. Products, websites, people, TV shows, blogs, stores, etc…it could be anything. When I love something..I LOVE it. I have often been mistaken for a paid representative for many companies because when I find something great I just don’t.shut.up.about.it.

So..first up is my newest obsession: Shipt. This online grocery delivery service is like the perfect marriage of AmazonPrime, Uber and your local supermarket..but even better. Choose from a $15/month or $99/year membership and get unlimited FREE delivery on orders over $35. You can literally place an order seven days a week at no extra charge. Like other online grocery services, there is a very small upcharge on each item, but when you factor in how much you save in character-topped juices and $3.50 snowman cookies for EACH of your kids just to make it through the trip, extra items that tempt you when you are physically in the store and the value of your time…it is so, so worth it.

Shipt is incredibly mobile-friendly and actually designed more for mobile/app ordering than at your computer, which makes it super convenient. There are tens of thousands of items listed, but if you don’t see what you’re looking for, the process of adding a special request couldn’t be easier. In all of my orders so far, there has never been a case where my shopper couldn’t find all of my requested items, including special requests. You receive a text when they start shopping for your order and updates throughout the shop, like if the store happens to be out of something and they suggest a substitution.  They arrive in their own car but have the recognizable green “Shipt” shirt on and tote your groceries in matching branded insulated bags.  There is a personal, friendly vibe, but it all still feels very professional and legit rather than just a rando handling your food, yo.

You can even use the service to send groceries to another person – the perfect gift for new parents or someone who has just returned from vacation, a house-warming gift, etc.

And can we talk about the best part? As if all that wasn’t enough? Deliveries are all SAME day, usually within an hour or two. I mean…it still blows my mind. There are SO many more good things I want to say about Shipt. 

At the moment it is only in a few markets, but I am 100% confident they are going to expand super rapidly. Read more about it here, and sign up now to take advantage of the free two week trial Shipt is currently offering!

Next up…one of my favorite finds of 2015 was/is The Trendy Timber. This Oregon-based Etsy shop makes gorgeous and unique custom wooden signs that are seriously irresistible. 

Using a scrollsaw, natural and colored woodstains and paints, they craft signs with any phrase, lettering or even logo that you desire. They can even replicate your business logo!

I ordered one as a Christmas gift for my mother (the Hunt Club sign), and soon after receiving it realized I couldn’t help but snag one for myself using my shop logo. And just days later I knew I had to pick up another as a gift. They are so beautifully made and are truly one-of-a-kind gifts. The shop owner is easy to work with and very responsive and eager to take on custom designs. This shop is going big places! They were closed the entire month of December to knock out a HUGE rush of Christmas orders, but they are up and running again now…so RUN!

See you next Tuesday.. (HA! Sorry.)