A Few of My Favorite Things - July

I've had good reviews from you all about sharing my favorites the past few months and I still find there are a few items that I just think are well worth the money spent on them.  Remember these are items I like and use routinely and I do not get any compensation from anyone for promotion.

I love to hang platters and trays and such on my walls.  We just hung a trio of Tole painted Nashco trays on the wall in the kitchen.

Finding the stretchy sort of plate hanger the size needed for these days is hard enough.   these are metal.  I certainly didn't want to bend them! 

I've also hung old china plates on the guest room walls several months ago.  I've read repeatedly that hanging china with those stretchy sort of hangers stresses the old plates and  I wanted something safer to use.   I recalled seeing a product on the old Kitty Bartholemew decorating show years ago.  I looked for and found these on Amazon.

I ordered them for the plates I was hanging and so when I decided to hang the trays, I knew just what product I needed to buy.

Flatiron Disc plate hangers are awesome.  They are easy to use.  You clean the item you want to hang with dish soap and water.  Then when it's dry, you wet the adhesive on the back of the disc.  Wait 4-7 minutes, then apply to the dish and allow 24 hours before you hang your item to insure that the adhesive is good.  YES, they can be removed.  All you need to do is soak them with water and they come right off.  The adhesive will wash off your plate. I know this because I've actually done this.  I just wish you could reuse the disc.

I cannot recommend these things highly enough if you want to hang plates or trays or other flat objects on the wall.  I've not attempted to use them on wood items (yet. I will eventually try, you can be sure of that!), but I have used them on the metal Tole painted trays and on china.  I've never had one of them release and let the object fall from the wall.  They come in multiple packs of four and I think they run around $9 for the package most places.  I got mine through Amazon but according to my research you can purchase them at Walmart.com and other places as well.

I like chips and salty snacks at times but carb counts mean I am very limited in what I'll allow myself to have.  Nine chips is nine chips any way you look at them and that's just not enough chips unless you're eating them as part of a meal.    I kept seeing these bags of popcorn at the store and I recalled loving packaged cheese popcorn as a kid.  However, it's popcorn which is cheap as...well not chips because we all know chips can be pricey...but homemade popcorn is one of the least expensive snacks around.


I can't remember just where I was but I found an individual sized bag of Smartfood popcorn one day while we were out and I bought it for myself.  I looked at the carb and protein counts and was very impressed.  1 3/4 cups per serving, 13g of carbohydrates, 2g of fiber, 2g of fat and 4g of protein.  Remember in counting carbs you can subtract fiber for the 'true' carb count. It's whole grain, no artificial colors or preservatives or additives.  It's gluten free, too, for those of you that must avoid gluten. 

Suddenly these bags of flavored popcorn didn't seem like such a huge splurge to me, especially after I found the big family bags on sale.  One family sized bag has lasted me a month (John refuses to touch it for some reason).  It's such a satisfying snack to me.  It's salty and cheesy and I can feel good about eating it, where I just stress over the idea of eating 18 chips instead of 9.  Oh and I've yet to eat a full serving at any time.  I don't need to because it's filling, as well.

This next item is something I consider to be in the  'can't live without' category.  I do go without if money is very tight but usually I can manage the cost easily enough.

The top photo is from my mantel today.  The bottom photo is from last Fall.  I seldom spend more than $6 for flowers every two weeks.  Often I just purchase one bunch for $4.  The gladiola were $4.99 for the whole bunch.  They must have sold very well this week because there were only four bunches to choose from yesterday when I purchased mine.  The mums I am pretty sure I bought two bunches of just for the sake of filling that old blue stoneware jug but at that time the cost was $3 a bunch.  The store raised the price to $4 this year on these 'basic' bunches of flowers.

I could spend $5 on a fast food meal.  Instead I choose to purchase fresh flowers for my home.  It is a rare pay period that goes by without  a fresh bunch of flowers in the house, unless I have flowers in the yard.  I think they are worth every penny I spend on them and they are always one of my favorite purchases.

I suppose I should have shown one of my new to me vintage magazines but I took no photos of them. I'm sharing a photo of one displayed online.   However, when I speak of things I really enjoy that are reasonably priced, the vintage magazines I purchase most assuredly come in that category.



Again, for around $10 I can have something that I will get loads of pleasure from having.  That $10 cost includes shipping.  It takes patience and looking hard sometimes to find good copies that are affordable but it is possible.  I bought four new magazines for July and no I didn't spend $40 on the four issues I purchased.  I bought them for much less, less than the cost of a year subscription to any one of the modern magazines would cost.

Why do I enjoy the older magazines so much, when I live in a modern day world?  Because I find that the older magazines carry some really good money saving advice.  Not advice for today's world but good, sound basic advice.  They also are filled with diy instructions, fiction stories, advertisements that are just fun to read (and often instructional), and just plain good thrifty ideas.