Frugal Fakes - Fruit Cups

I can't for the life of me remember if I saw this on Pinterest, or if it was just "Pin-spiration" from all the DIY's I've seen on it.  I searched my boards and the site but no luck in finding it, so maybe it's my own brilliant idea. ;)

I fancy myself to be a pretty frugal girl...I love a good thrift store or yard sale, I use coupons and buy on sale, but after seeing all the DIY's on Pinterest, I realized that I'm not as thrifty as I thought!  How humbling...

Soooo, while grocery shopping the other day I had a frugal idea, thanks to Little Miss!  Little Miss saw fruit cups.  Little Miss wanted fruit cups.  She loves them.  I try to get the ones made with fruit juice or extra-light syrup so she's not getting too much sugar.  Being "frugal" I only buy them when they're on sale, and hopefully I have a coupon.  Unfortunately, I didn't have a coupon the other day, so I would have spent $5 for 2 packs.  Right next to them was a can of fruit (no sugar added - bonus) for $1.69.  So I decided to DIY my own version of fruit cups.

I've been saving the cups from the pre-packaged kind when Little Miss is done with them, for all sorts of things, so I knew I all ready had the same size cups, but I could have used any little bowl that we had on hand (plastic baby food container would work great too since they have the lid!).

First I drained the fruit, which I usually do when I open them for Little Miss anyway, so she doesn't spill it.  Then I spooned some into each cup.  I guess if I'll decide after this batch if the fruit is dried out, I'll either leave the juice from the can, or add a splash of whatever juice we have on hand.

Then I covered each cup with Glad Press & Seal to prevent any leakage.

Voila! Semi-homemade fruit cups!

Breakdown:
 2 cans fruit cocktail @ $1.69 each - $3.38
8 4 oz. servings @ $.42 each
 2 packages fruit cocktail cup @ $2.50 each - $5.00
8 4 oz servings @ $.63 each
Savings of $.21 per cup

Next time I'll probably only open 1 can at a time since we'll hopefully be getting into warmer weather and Little Miss will be eating more fresh fruit than canned.


Linking up to A Bowl Full of Lemons

Easy Peasy - Pin Copy Cat Cupcake Liner Storage

One of the first pins I saw and definitely one of the easiest was for storing cupcake liners.

Not that I do a lot of baking, and particularly not much of cupcakes, but while organizing my "pantry", I found 3 separate stacks of liners! One set was in the original plastic container they came in, unopened; another was in the bottom part of the container, missing the top (how the heck?!?!); the third set was in a plastic bag, obviously missing both parts of the container they came in.

So I stuck them all near each other with the other baking stuff.  Then I saw the pin-spiration

 
 originally from Toriejayne.blogspot.com

Unfortunately the ones in the plastic bag lost their shape, so I stuck them with the craft stuff (plenty of pin-spiration out there for wreaths and other crafts!).   I see these containers everywhere for upwards of $15, but I don't need them hermetically sealed or anything, so I just grabbed an empty peanut butter jar and put the liners in that and voila!

Cupcake liner storage that is cute, cheap and easy, peasy!