WINNER: Anything Adorable Purse Organizer

The winner of the Anything Adorable purse organizer giveaway (chosen by random.org) is...

Tera!

Isn't that the greatest picture? 

Tera is one of my best friends -- who now lives in Germany! Talk about a long-distance relationship :) But as an Army wife and mom of 4, she definitely needs an organized purse!

Congrats, Tera! I've emailed you, so just email me back. :)

And if you didn't win this time, don't despair. I'm lining up some more great giveaways!

Mmm Mmm... Caramel Cake and Chocolate Pie from The Help {recipe & book review}

Last chance to enter to win a great purse organizer from Anything Adorable!
Giveaway ends today at noon (or at whatever point after that naptime starts :) so go enter now!

Have you read The Help? It's a great book, and perfect for a book group:

The Help
by Kathryn Stockett

The Help is the story of three women in the South in the 1960's -- two black maids and one white young woman.Their lives intertwine and the story is amazing, both for the historical aspects and for the characters. This book was fascinating to me -- and fascinating that this happened recently, from a historical perspective. I had to keep reminding myself that this was during my parents lifetime -- NOT over a hundred years ago. This was only 50 years ago!

Final word: A-. Fascinating and enthralling story. A great read, and it moves quickly especially considering that it's over 400 pages.

This was our book group selection for this month, and since I was hosting, yesterday, in a bout of baking insanity, I decided to try FOUR new recipes. That I had never tried before. To serve to company. I was going to push for five, but I knew that would just be tempting Fate too much. Since I was kind to Fate and only tempted her four times instead of five, she smiled on me and all of them actually turned out mostly edible! Woohoo!

Why four new recipes? Because food plays a large part in The Help. And I don't bake much so it's not hard to have recipe that are new to me. :)

First up:

Homemade pie crust (my first ever!)

with made-from-scratch Demetrie's Chocolate Pie

topped with Cool Whip
(because I enjoy the irony of topping the handmade goodness
with the most processed product on the planet)

The pie crust turned out well, especially considering it was my first pie crust ever in my whole life. The chocolate pie was good, but tasted VERY bland next to the caramel cake. It could have used a bit more sugar, and I even subbed half-and-half cocoa and powdered sugar for the sweetened cocoa and added an extra 1/3 cup sugar. But it was pretty easy and set up well -- good texture.

If you've read The Help, you probably think that it's disgusting that I made chocolate pie. But the recipe is straight from the author and, really... I left out Minny's special ingredient. :)

Whether you've read the book or not, you'll love this cake, the star of the night:

Caramel Cake

with Never Fail Creamy Caramel Icing

The cake was dense like a pound cake, but moist and just the right amount of sweet. The icing was, for this cake, too sweet and overpowering. And made WAY more than I needed to ice my two 8" rounds. But I will definitely be making the cake again (and probably trying the glaze). As it is, I'm eating around the frosting to eat just the cake. :)

So, in summary:

Read The Help

and make this caramel cake.

All others optional. :)

Becoming the Housewife MacGyver FINANCIALLY

Don't forget to go enter the purse organizer giveaway from Anything Adorable!
Ends tomorrow (Friday) at noon.

Welcome to March, the month when we apply the Housewife MacGyver treatment to our finances. Thus far we've followed the commands to commit ourselves and then organize ourselves -- and we'll still be following those two commandments throughout the rest of the topics that we cover. (If you're just joining us and wondering what in the world I'm talking about, you can get the details here.)

So, achieving financial self-reliance through wise use of resources. By committing to improvement and organizing our finances.

Sound like a pipe dream? Maybe. But the goal with this whole Housewife MacGyver thing isn't to perfect everything right this instant -- it's to help each of us (okay, to help me and maybe hopefully some of you ;) to take the first small step to achieving that self-reliance.

So, take a look at your finances and think about self-reliance. Think about where you are, and where you'd like to be financially. Maybe you'd like to save more or pay off those debts; maybe you'd just like to know where all of your money disappears to between paychecks. I am in that second category. :)

In looking at your finances, how organized are they? how organized are YOU? What can you do to put your finances a bit more in order? Remember, we're learning to use our resources wisely, so we have to know what financial resources are available -- or NOT available.

So, the challenge for this month is to commit to taking one step toward that place-where-you'd-like-to-be-financially. ONE step. Baby steps are steps too! Commit, blog it, and link up (party below or click here if you're in a feed reader).

And then, get excited because we have four fantastic guests who will be joining us this month:

• Emily from Bloom (read her Budgeting Basics post here)
• Cathy from Fiscally Chic (read her Home Buying Finance post here)
• Stephanie from Couponing 101 (read her interview and site feature here)
• Amy from A Savvy Life and Savvy Shopper Deals

It's gonna be great! Thanks for reading!

Housewife MacGyver for Finances {the linky party}

The Gospel of Links: Visibility

The final sermon in The Gospel of Links, According to Lu is up over at Housewife Eclectic today. Come learn (or refresh your memory) about the how and why of making your links visible and hover-friendly.

Thanks for reading!