• ABC Frugality: Decorating for Pennies Part II. She’s got some great tips that work for rental housing.
• Wise Bread: 5 Quick Fixes to Salvage a Good Meal. I’ve done that leftover bread trick many times.
• Make it From Scratch: A little girl’s headband. This is a great set of directions to make a special pattern or design that you can’t find on the retail market.

But do not spend more money than you need to in order to enjoy the holiday. Plan ahead and you can keep out-of-pocket costs down as much as possible.

Here are some of the expenses to consider beyond the turkey:

• Don’t get nickeled and dimed on airport travel: If there are relatives or friends who can drop you off and pick you up, avoid parking at the airport and use the flight tracker sites and cell phones to make your transportation connections. I’ve needed to use an airport parking garage only once since Detroit Metropolitan Airport set up its cell phone parking lots. It cost me $10 to park the car for my passenger on that occasion. But the cell phone parking lot usage is free. You also know, of course, to limit your baggage to carry-ons as much as possible. If you are traveling with someone, share a checked bag so you do not have to pay so much in luggage fees.
• Look up the best options for toll road fees. If you are traveling from the Detroit area to cities near Cleveland or Chicago on Thanksgiving weekend, be aware that the Ohio Turnpike raised its cash rates on Oct. 1. The turnpike also started accepting an electronic transponder system for toll payment on that date. If you have an EZPass transponder, or a transponder from another toll road that is accepted on the Ohio Turnpike, then use it for your holiday travel.  Go to the turnpike site for the details. You also want to map out the difference in tolls and drive time if you got off the turnpike one or two exits early. Sometimes you have to use the exit you’ve always taken, but sometimes another route is possible.
• Gas prices can be planned around. You know where the gas gouger stations are on your regular travel routes. But if you are traveling in new territory, check the Gas Buddy site to help plan out the best fuel stops en route to, or in, the city you will be spending your holiday weekend in. This won’t help when overall gas prices go up or down – I’m talking about knowing whether one exit or city is better than the nearby options. You also want to travel in the most fuel efficient (usually the smallest) vehicle that holds all your family members. Remember – you’re not hauling all of the family’s sports equipment to go to Grandma’s house for dinner.
• Don’t go crazy with the Thanksgiving menu. You know which foods your family will insist on for Thanksgiving – and if you aren’t certain, ask! Then make your shopping list and buy the groceries when you see the sales announced. Do not make any food that is so far down the “must have” list for Thanksgiving that it will not be eaten that day or soon afterward. You also want plenty of plastic tubs, wraps and foils on hand so to repackage leftovers. That refrigerator can hold only so many serving bowls – and leftovers will go to waste if you do not properly handle them quickly.
• Table settings can be multi-holiday. It’s possible to buy dishes and linens with a Thanksgiving theme. If you do buy them, then stock up during sales instead of paying full price. However, it is more frugal to get multiple uses during the year for your good dishes and table linens. Colors of harvest gold and orange work just as well for Halloween; and colors of cranberry and forest green work just as well for Christmas. White table settings go with any holiday. Put the Thanskgiving theme in with just a couple of accessories or maybe a tablecloth changed out.
• Look for the sales on cooking and entertaining gadgets. If something you could use in the kitchen to help with Thanskgiving dinner preparations is also useful during another time of year, consider making that purchase while the Thanksgiving promotions are in effect. This may be your best time of year to buy items such as folding tables and chairs, cookie sheets, slow cookers, coffee pots, roasters and mixers.
• Stick with frugal family entertainment. You don’t need to buy or rent a stack of DVDs for your visitors. There will be football games and holiday movies on TV, and the movie-lovers might want to go to the cinema to see the newest shows anyway.  When the guests arrive, bring out the playing cards, board games and whatever kids’ movies you already own.
• Don’t pretend your home is a luxury hotel. I know that the suggestions for hospitality these days include stocking a guest bedroom with snacks, magazines and floral arrangements; and placing pretty soaps and towels in the bathroom. The fact is: if you are hosting out-of-town guests who expect hotel-style accommodations, then direct them to the nearest hotel. Families on a budget are permitted to provide their overnight guests with an air mattress on the floor, or a hide-a-bed sofa, with clean and good condition pillows, sheets and blankets; and are allowed to expect their guests to share a bathroom with the family members.

If you write a letter to, or get a visit from Santa Claus, telling him what you want for Christmas, that list probably focuses on fun and frivolous things.

My standing patter for the Santa visits is “I want a new Barbie doll.” Now, of course, everyone who knows me gets the joke. I really do collect Barbie dolls and it’s quite likely I will get at least one doll for Christmas. So there.

But what if you had to write your letter to Mrs. Santa instead?

I bet your wish list would suddenly become more practical. In fact, you might even think about what gifts you could ask for that would SAVE YOU MONEY.

Ohh … wouldn’t that be a nice gift?

Think about some of the items we frequently see in the Christmas promotions or have long been traditional gifts. Which among these gift ideas would help you and your family save money? Ask Mrs. Santa for them!

And then you can ask Santa himself for a more frivolous gift.

• Tool set, tool chest, tool bag, power drill.
• Slippers or fun-looking socks.
• Flannel sheets.
• Fleece shirts or hoodies, perhaps in your favorite sports team colors.
• Battery recharger set with rechargeable batteries.
• Pajamas and bathrobes.
• Colorful throws and blankets that match your decor.
• Kitchen electrics such as a slow cooker, hand or stand mixer, tabletop griddle, coffee pot, coffee grinder, fry pan, popcorn popper, food dehydrater, kitchen utensils, bread maker, blender or tea pot.
• Cake decorating supplies and cake pattern books.
• Baking pans in assorted sizes and shapes.
• Navigation device.
• Gourmet coffees, cocoas or teas.
• Blank greeting cards, assortment of stamping inks, assorted rubber stamps.
• Photo album or scrapbook with tape and archival paper.
• Sewing machine.
• Sewing box, maybe with commonly used sewing tools and supplies.
• Cookbooks, especially those with basic “beginner” instructions for home cooking.
• Dinnerware, serving glasses, flatware, table linens (so that dining in feels like dining out).
• Gift card for an oil change or a year’s worth of oil changes for the vehicle.
• Christmas dinner-in-a-box or catered.
• Gift card to your favorite discount, grocery, department, office supply, hardware or craft store.
• Subscription to Consumer Reports or Shop Smart magazine.
• Newspaper subscription (for the Sunday coupons!).

While the FlyLady team aims at helping you stay organized, the program is a very good fit for frugal families. All you need to do is get a binder so you can download, print off and keep handy the checklists and household chore lists. Maybe you already have a spare binder handy.

One of the special features on the site is the Cruising Through the Holidays section. I particularly recommend the Holiday Control Journal that you can download for free in pdf format – there are checklists on gifts to make, gifts to buy, travel plans, catalog orders …

Here’s a snippet:

Every family has its own way of celebrating the holidays. When two people come together to create a new family then the customs and traditions for celebrations also have to be blended. The stress of the holiday can be compounded when decisions are not mutually agreed upon before the holiday arrives. I am not just talking about religious customs but things that are as simple as how to wrap a gift or to what to cook for the holiday dinner. In some cases feelings get hurt because the celebration doesn’t have the same experience as when you were a child.

Well guess what friends; we are adults and we can sit down and come to a compromise. We don’t have to celebrate like our mothers did. We can pick and choose what is important to us and toss out what doesn’t work for our families.

Is the sidewalk area well lit? I know Halloween is about the dark and spooky but a little light will go a long way to keep the trick or treaters safe. If you have solar landscape lighting it may be as easy as temporarily relocating a few extra lights near the front of your house.

I understand. I was tired of my old fall orange blossom wreath and it had seen better days, so I got rid of it a couple of weeks ago thinking I could find a nice replacement as the season goes on.

I haven’t been impressed so far. I’m looking for a reasonably priced harvest wreath at a second-hand or retail store in Monroe, Mich., that would hold up for both Halloween and Thanksgiving. The colors I would like to see are purple, orange, brown and / or cranberry.

I’m still looking.

But Sara Noel, hostess of Frugal Village, has some good centerpiece and basket ideas at Add fall flair to your house on a budget.

The Flat Rock Beautification Commission will hold a perennial exchange from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday Oct. 10 in the parking lot of the municipal building, 25500 Gibraltar Rd., Flat Rock, Mich.

Visitors are encouraged to dig up and divide those plants that need to be thinned out and bring them to the exchange. The plants should be labeled and brought in a container to trade. There will be no selling allowed, according to Sue Farrar, chairman of the commission.

Anyone bringing a plant will be entered in a drawing for a door prize. Ray Hunter Florist & Garden Center will provide pamphlets on fall planting and discount coupons that can be used at their store, 28801 Telegraph Rd.

The exchange will be held rain or shine, Mrs. Farrar said.

Most of those deals expire at the end of October. So if you are thinking about scheduling a furnace maintenance appointment for the fall, do it soon to get the specials.

One of the ads is bragging about how much money you can save on winter heating costs by tuning up that furnace.

If you want to use the Find It Monroe database to look up business reviews or see who’s in your neighborhood, the keyword that works to pull up the furnace repair and maintenance firms is “heating.”

You probably have a collection of something. We have collections of favorite things, and we use some of them to decorate our home.

On my kitchen window sill, you’ll see an arrangement of blue pottery items. This started about five years ago when we moved to our current home.

Since the kitchen colors are blue and white, I started pulling out knickknacks that I had acquired over the years and set them on the window sills if they were blue or white. For example, the solid blue creamer and sugar set is something I inherited from my grandmother.

My daughter thought this arrangement was so clever that she’s been finding items to add to the collection – she’s the one who got me the small bowl at a craft show, and the vase and the pitcher at gift shops.

Probably the most unique thing I do with my collections is feature my Barbie dolls on rotating displays on the china buffet. We don’t have a fireplace so the china buffet is where we put seasonal or floral decorations such as those would find on a mantel piece. If I don’t have a centerpiece for a given time of year, the dolls go on display in various arrangements such as this:

Yes, these are all Native American dolls! I usually do this arrangement in the fall. I’ve also done arrangements with Asian dolls, African and African-American dolls, the historic era princesses.

And yes, I do take my Barbie dolls out of their boxes. I have no intention of reselling them. Most of them are birthday and Christmas gifts from my husband and daughter.

If the dolls get dusty, and they do when I have them on open display like this, I’ve found the dolls and their outfits clean up pretty easy with a dusting cloth sprayed first with a mild non-toxic cleaning solution.

We also have an “Asian corner” that features gifts from students we hosted who were from Japan, South Korea and China and through our involvement in the Monroe International Friendship Association. The only item I purchased in this collection was the candle. The shelf was repurposed from another display.

Why is decorating with your collections a frugal thing to do?

The main thing is: you’re not spending money on additional art or knickknacks if you are featuring or building upon things you already own, and enjoy looking at, as the “color” and personality for your home.

You will also find, as I have, that friends and relatives will cheerfully add to your growing collections on gift-giving occasions. I have bought exactly one Barbie doll on my own during the past three years. It was a doll people didn’t expect I would like, so I was on my own to seek it out.

And if you focus on a collection of items that other people like and enjoy, you might also might some great finds on the second-hand market. I picked up some really cool 1970s-era Bicentennial plates at an estate sale this spring. They go nicely with the colonial / country American items we’ve picked up here and there to showcase in the living room and dining room areas.

What do you have stuffed in a storage box somewhere that can perk up your house?

I do use vinegar as a dishwasher rinse and to clean out my coffee pot and iced tea pot.