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Oh my, my, how the weekend flew by. There was no shortage of activities around the Picky Palace this weekend. I’m proud that we had a good mixture of both productivity and fun this weekend. Here’s how we spent and saved moolah this weekend.

Christmas party!

We had quite a ball on Friday night. Mr. Picky Pincher’s office held their annual Christmas party. And that meant free dinner and an open bar, y’all! We dined on prime rib and sipped on margaritas while chatting with his coworkers.

Santa even made a surprise appearance to bring gifts for all of the employees’ children, which was so nice of him.

The company also hosted a door prize gift card giveaway. I don’t usually win stuff like that, but today was the lucky day. I snagged a $25 Amazon gift card! I was about to order a carrying case for my DSLR camera, so the timing was perfect. We paid just $7 instead of $32. Here’s a link to the camera case I got if you’re curious. 

All in all, it was a fun night of frugality!

Adventures in babysitting

We hung out with Picky Toddler on Saturday afternoon and had a blast with the little dude. We took him to the dollar store, where he had a ball selecting a toy crocodile and a balloon. He did learn that, if you don’t let Aunt Picky Pincher tie the balloon to your wrist, the balloon will float away. Poor little guy. While at the dollar store I also picked up wrapping paper and bags for Christmas gifts.

I also picked up goodie bags to start putting together free treats for 5 lucky readers! The free giveaway ends on Monday and I’ll be mailing the goodies out early next week.  

We then took Picky Toddler to play to his heart’s content at Peter Piper Pizza. After a Whataburger hamburger, the little guy was ready to chill out and watch Boss Baby.

I’m not sure who was more worn out – him or us!

Cooking

Yogurt

It was time for another batch of yogurt!

This time I also decided to make yogurt cheese. I let the yogurt strain for 24 hours to form a loose cheese. It’s a fantastic substitute for cream cheese and it’s probiotic. I plan to use the yogurt cheese as a healthy snack this week with home-grown green onions and crackers. Mmmm.

Here’s a tutorial if you’d like to make your own homemade yogurt. I promise it’s easy!

Puppy chow

One of the many treats I’m sending to giveaway recipients is a bag of puppy chow. This is something I grew up eating every year at Christmas time. This stuff is crazy addictive. I’m happy that it will all be leaving my kitchen soon!

It’s a mixture of Chex coated in Peanut Butter, butter, and chocolate with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Puppy chow wasn’t hard to make, but it’s definitely messy. I can see why people only want to make it once a year!

In other news, my counters are covered in powdered sugar.

Peanut butter balls

When I was a kid, we didn’t bake cookies for Santa. Santa preferred to dine on chocolate-covered peanut butter balls instead. To me, peanut butter and Christmas just go together, so I whipped up a mega batch of these for the Picky holiday giveaway winners, too.

First I made the filling, which is powdered sugar, peanut butter, and a looooot of butter (a pound, to be exact).

After chilling the filling in the freezer, I dunk them in chocolate. I added little swirlies on the Peanut Butter Balls to make them look fancier. Yum!

Failed fudge

Since, to me, Christmas is synonymous with peanut butter, it was also a chance to make my mom’s peanut butter fudge for the giveaway winners. Unfortunately, this culinary endeavor was less successful.

I followed my mom’s recipe, but uh … she wasn’t much of a cook. Looking back, I now remember that her “fudge” was always more of a “caramel” in texture. This stuff tastes amazing, but the texture was way off.

I was disappointed because even my candy thermometer said it was at the right boiling temperature for fudge.

Oh fudge!

In other news, I was happy to have a chance to use my candy thermometer, which I got new in its box from the thrift store.

We’ll keep the fudge and use it as a sweet topping for ice cream. It’s just not something I’m proud enough of to send to people.

Sorry y’all!

Wine about it!

I’ve been slacking on my wine-making. I’m almost at the end of my plum wine supply and I forgot to replenish it! Oops.

Last weekend I processed apples and froze them. On Sunday it was time to pour boiling sugar water on the apples and get the wine a-goin’! On Monday I’ll mash the apples and add in the yeast. After I mash it for a week, the apple wine will be ready for straining and then a month of aging. I’m sad it won’t be ready in time for the holidays, but that’s what I get for being a blob.

Blackberries were on sale for 87 cents a pound at our grocery store. This is the cheapest price I can snag them for, so I loaded up. I grabbed 11 packages of blackberries to make the next batch of wine. I’ll make this batch once the apple wine is done mashing and fermenting. I plan to never again have a shortage of wine in this house.

Brewery adventure

We’ve been experiencing wanderlust lately. We’ve really been trying to integrate more adventures into our lives to keep things exciting. Doing chores and watching TV gets a little boring after a while. We decided to spend our Sunday exploring a small Hill Country town.

The first stop was a fantastic barbecue joint, where we snagged some uh-maaazing brisket sandwiches. You can’t see it in this photo, but we also got creamed corn, bottomless beans, and potato salad.

Soooooo tasty!

We ordered way too much food, so we wrapped our sandwiches to go and will eat them for lunch on Monday. We also snagged a pound of brisket, which we’ll freeze and treat as a freezer meal. I think it’ll go wonderfully with the bulk blackeyed peas in our freezer.

This little town was quite photogenic, so Mr. Picky Pincher and I took it as an opportunity to practice our photography skills.

We had to walk off the barbecue, so we toured around the town square. Their county courthouse is absolutely gorgeous!

I was really impressed by this photo Mr. Picky Pincher took. A year ago, you would have been hard-pressed to see me in public without makeup. And a photoshoot? Ha! Forget it, pal.

But in the last year I’m really proud of how far I’ve come with loving my natural face. Sure, I like to wear makeup, but it’s so liberating being okay with my natural self, too.

I really like this photo because it shows that natural is nice too.

We explored the downtown area and checked out a few local shops. Mr. Picky Pincher has been on the lookout for a nice mug for his office. He came across a local piece made by a potter and fell in love with it. I also found a jar of food-grade lavender and scooped that sucker up! It’s been surprisingly hard to find food-grade dry lavender for baking.

I sense lavender cookies are in our future.

After exploring for a bit, we were ready for some drinks. We made a short one-mile drive to check out the Real Ale Brewery. This is a Texas brewer that only sells their beer in Texas. It was really neat to see their setup and gorgeous location in the Hill Country.

I like beer, but I’ve always been more of a cocktail person. Real Ale focuses on beer, but they also distill whiskey and gin. I snagged a delicious cocktail made with their whiskey, ginger beer, and rosemary. It wasn’t too sweet, which I really loved. I’d wager to say it’s one of the best cocktails I’ve ever had.

Mr. Picky Pincher had himself a glass of scotch ale, which was mighty tasty. It was aged in oak barrels and was definitely more of a “sippable” beer.

We had a few drinks and enjoyed looking at Real Ale’s bottling operation. Mr. Picky Pincher loves brewing beer, so he gets a real kick out of seeing brewers’ setups. Hopefully we can make time to come back for a proper tour.

Zap’s adventures

Oh Zap! He was such a peel this week. It was stormy for much of the week and Zap wanted nothing to do with it. I was working on the couch and he was so bored that he kept me company.

Zap kept staring out the window at the storm. He would look back at me, meow, and look outside. It’s like he was saying, “Mahm, why is there sky water? Why it so wet out dere?”

I opened the window to let Zap sniff the rain. I immediately regretted that. Instead of staying inside, Zap played in mud puddles. When he came inside, he tracked mud EVERYWHERE. I put a towel by the window to sop up the moisture. He then decided the towel was a great new napping spot. What a weirdo.

We want to know: How did you save or spend money this weekend?

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