Josh Elledge - Chief Executive Angel
Hi! I’m Josh Elledge, the Chief Executive Angel of SavingsAngel.com and welcome to the SavingsAngel show! I’m podcasting to you from a windy and chilly Orlando, Florida.
I am an extremely busy consumer expert, money-saving advocate, syndicated newspaper columnist, and the guy that turns digital entrepreneurs into media celebrities with UpMyInfluence.com. I love what I do and can’t wait to get going on today’s episode.
In order to help you save more, earn more and live more abundantly on today’s show I’ll be covering:
- How To Host Easter This Year
- Private K-12 education is affordable and available
- Coronavirus-What You Need to Buy NOW!
LINKS FROM THE PODCAST:
http://www.foodjimoto.com/2011/04/easter-eggs.html
https://www.dinneratthezoo.com/ham-cheese-pinwheels/
Peach Puff Pastry Tart with Prosciutto & Brie ~ Simple and Amazing
www.laurelsprings.com/savingsangel for waived registration fee
https://www.fox35orlando.com/video/662007
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How To Host Easter This Year
Easter will be arriving soon and with it comes the Easter baskets and the holiday meal. We all know the pressure of hosting a holiday feast with your family and friends. What do you do when it’s your turn to host? With these tips you’ll be sure to have a fun and stress-free get-together:
Prep Food in Advance
Nobody wants to spend an entire holiday day cooking, so begin any holiday party planning with a menu and easy-to-make-ahead items so that you can concentrate on any items that can only be cooked the day of your party. Appetizers and desserts can be made ahead of time and kept frozen or refrigerated until you need them. Even brunch items can be cooked the night before and reheated in the morning so you can concentrate on the main course meal.
Set your menu according to your budget; be realistic as to how much food you need per guest. Plan out in what order you’ll be cooking or making the menu. If you’ll be sharing cooking duties, get with your cooking partner and divide up the dishes. Use ready-made ingredients like pre-packaged crusts or dinner rolls to shorten prep time.
Here are some fun Easter-themed food you can prep ahead of time:
- Easter ‘Angeled’ Eggs – Before you fill your egg halves with that delicious yolk filling, try dipping the egg whites into food dye to give them a beautiful pastel color.
- Ham and Cheese Pinwheels – Using canned pizza dough, lay out a rectangle and cover with thin slices of ham and Swiss cheese. Then roll it all up jelly-roll style. Cut the loaf in slices, lay out the slices in a casserole dish, and slather with a butter, brown sugar, Dijon mustard, and poppy seed mix. These can be made up to 24 hours before you need them.
- Peach Puff Pastry with Prosciutto and Brie – Using pre-made puff pastry sheets, lay them on parchment-lined baking sheets. Score the edges a half inch from the edge all the way around so the edges will puff up like pizza crust. Inside the scoring you’ll place ¼ in round brie slices. Leave room between slices as they will melt while cooking. Place peach slices on top of the brie and prosciutto slices on top of the peaches. Drizzle a tablespoon of honey over the whole tart and bake. When it comes out of the oven, drizzle another tablespoon of honey and balsamic reduction. You can make this up to 2 days before you cook it.
- Mini Wonton Quiche – Spray a muffin pan with non-stick spray and line each cup with wonton wrappers. Fry up breakfast sausage. If you use links, remove the casings. Take off heat and add spinach and finely chopped red bell pepper and green onions. Divide up this mixture among all the cups and top with some shredded cheese. In a separate bowl mix eggs, milk, and salt. Pour the egg mixture over the top of the filled cups. Bake for 20 minutes until golden.
- Sundae Waffle Bar – Set up a sundae waffle station with pastel-colored ice cream toppings.
- Easter Popcorn – Top bags of popcorn with pastel candies like M&M’s, Jordan almonds, or soft mints.
Decorating
You don’t have to go all out and over-spend on decorations. You only need to create an ambience. Try these easy and inexpensive ways to decorate:
- Make papier-mache nests to hold your dyed eggs – Cover a bowl with plastic wrap and turn upside down. Mix together equal parts glue and water in a separate bowl. Using brown paper bags, shred paper into strips, dip into the glue mix and lay each strip over the upside down bowl to create a “nesty” look. Let dry for 12 hours, then gently lift it from the bowl.
- Make a baby’s breath centerpiece with a simple wire basket, speckled eggs, and top with baby’s breath.
- Giant Easter bunny balloons – Using 36 inch white balloons, 5 inch pink balloons, a low-heat glue gun, and card stock, cut out ears and glue them to the top of the balloon on either side of the knot. Glue 1 pink balloon to the front of the white balloon for a nose. Once the glue dries your balloons are ready to hang up with festive ribbon or string.
Set Up an Easter Egg Hunt
Easter egg hunts aren’t just for kids anymore! You can set up different hunts to accommodate all ages making it a family-fun event, and entertaining to watch.
- For the youngest kids, attach small helium-filled balloons to eggs so they are easy to find. Your toddlers will have fun going from balloon to balloon.
- For a twist on the traditional mad-dash egg hunt, try a scavenger egg hunt with clues or following a treasure map instead. Make it even harder with code-breaking or QR codes for older kids.
- Swap out candy for trinkets or coupons like staying up an extra half hour one night.
- Try Easter egg bowling! See who can roll their dyed eggs closest to the white egg to win.
- For adults, include raffle tickets inside the eggs, and raffle off gift baskets.
- Have a Secret Bunny hunt! Hide eggs with 1 guest name inside the egg, have each guest find only 1 egg, then gather around and exchange small gifts with your Secret Bunny.
While Easter falls on April Fool’s Day this year, you don’t have to make a fool of your budget when it comes to celebrating the holiday. Remember, the season is Spring so keep your holiday preparations light and airy, and enjoy the beautiful weather with family and friends.
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As parents, we want to encourage our children to pursue their dreams, and provide opportunities that give them the best chance to succeed. Sometimes that means considering an at-home education to give your children the one-on-one attention that they need. While homeschooling may sound daunting, I have a solution that will take away the stress of creating your own curricula while still ensuring your children get the best K-12 education.
Laurel Springs recognizes that each child is a unique individual with their own personal interests, special talents, unique learning style. Their flexible learning program offers challenging and diverse elective courses for any school age.
Laurel Springs is an accredited, online private school for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade and is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and AdvancED, which means their transcripts are recognized by colleges and universities worldwide.
What’s so wonderful about a school like Laurel Springs is how flexible K-12 education can be. Going on vacation during the off-season? Not a problem! Want to take your kids on a field trip? You can do that! Children no longer need to be locked into standard school day hours.
Register your child at Laurel Springs dot com slash SAVINGSANGEL today and receive a waived registration fee. That’s Laurel Springs dot com slash SAVINGSANGEL for your waived registration fee. Laurel Springs dot com slash SAVINGSANGEL.
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Stocking up for the coronavirus video interview
https://www.fox35orlando.com/video/662007
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If you’ve loved hearing everything on this podcast, SHARE THIS episode with a friend! People NEED this information. You and I, together, can change lives. I recommend taking a screenshot and posting on FB – or wherever you hang out most.
And as always, if you have any specific questions, or if there is something you’d like to hear me talk about, you can drop me a comment in the podcast feedback, write me on my Facebook group, or call my podcast hotline at 407.205.9250 and leave me a message. I’ll answer your question, write you back, or – with your permission – I might even share your question or story with others on this show.
Have a wonderful week – full of saving more, earning more, and living more abundantly – and thank you for listening!
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0:02
Hey, I'm Josh Elledge, the chief executive Angel at savingsangel.com and welcome to the savings Angel Show. I'm podcasting to you, just got back from Social Media Marketing World in beautiful San Diego, California. And now, later today I'm on my way over to pod fest here in Orlando. Now I'm an extremely busy consumer expert, money saving advocate, syndicated newspaper columnist and that guy that turns digital entrepreneurs, intermediate celebrities, up my influence calm, I love what I do and can't wait to get going on today's episode. So in order to help you save more, earn more and live more abundantly on today's show, I'm going to be covering how to to host a spectacular Easter this year. We're gonna talk about how would you make private K through 12 education affordable, and some really good options that you might want to consider. And finally, yeah, we're gonna be talking about the corona virus and what you need to buy right now. Don't be clearing the shelves of toilet paper. Just please. Come on. Listen to what I have to share. This is the show. I'm gonna be talking about it and I am here to serve you all that more and let's get going.
1:41
Easter is going to be arriving soon. And right around the corner and with it comes the Easter baskets and holiday meal. We all know the pressure of hosting a holiday feast with your family and friends. So what do you do when it's your turn to host? Well with these tips, you'll be sure to have a fun and stress free get together. So let's talk about prepping food in advance. Got some great ideas here for you. Nobody wants to spend an entire holiday day cooking. So begin any holiday party planning with a menu and easy to make ahead items so you can concentrate on any items that can only be cooked the day of your party. appetizers and desserts can be made well ahead of time and kept frozen or refrigerated until you need them. Even brunch items can be cooked the night before and reheated in the morning so you can concentrate on the main course meal. So just set your menu according to your budget. Be realistic as to how much food you really need per guest. plan out what you need, what you got to order and what you'll be cooking or making on the menu. Now if you're going to be sharing cooking duties with your cooking partner and divide up the dishes, use readymade ingredients like prepackaged crusts, or dinner rolls to shorten prep time. So here Are some fun, Easter themed foods that you can prep ahead of time I've got six of them.
Number one is my world famous Easter Angeled eggs Come on, it's Easter. I'm not gonna make deviled eggs on Easter, make Angeled eggs. That's my mom's idea. Now before you fill your egg halves with that delicious yolk filling, try dipping the egg whites into food dye to give them a beautiful pastel color.
Number two, ham and cheese pinwheels. You can use canned pizza dough, layout or rectangle layout a rectangle covered with thin slices of ham and Swiss cheese. Then roll it up in a jelly roll style. Cut the loaf in slices, lay up the slices in a casserole dish and slather with butter, brown sugar, Dijon mustard, and poppy seed mix. Now these can be made up to 24 hours before you need them. And again, you will Just Google that we got a link to it. Just go to SavingsAngel, you're gonna see the article for the Easter food and I've got a direct link to those ham and cheese pinwheels you're gonna love it.
Next number three, peach puff pastry with prisco? Prosciutto, sorry, and brie using pre-made puff pastry sheets. Good thing I got a pop filter on this microphone otherwise, blowing out your ears, I think. Now, you can lay them lay them on a parchment lined baking sheet your pre-made puff pastry sheets you lay them out on a parchment line baking sheet. Yes, score the edges, half inch from the edge all the way around to the edges will puff up like Easter pizza crust. And then inside the scoring, you're going to place a quarter inch round brie slices. You're going to leave room between the slices as they will melt while cooking. You can place your peach slices on top of the Brie and prosciutto slices on top of the peaches. This is sounding so good. Drizzle a tablespoon of honey over the whole tart and bake it. When it comes out of the oven, drizzle another tablespoon of honey and balsamic reduction. You can make this up to two days before you cook it.
Number four, mini wonton quiche. You can spray a muffin pan with nonstick spray and line each cup with wonton wrappers. Fry up some breakfast sausage. If you use links, remove the casings. Take off the heat and add spinach and finely chopped red bell pepper and green onions. Oh man, I'm salivating right now. Divide up this mixture among all the cups and top with some shredded cheese. Now in a separate bowl, mix the eggs milk and salt. Pour the egg mixture over the top of the filled cups and bake for 20 minutes until golden. Again, all these recipes are over at SavingsAngel.com. Go check it out.
Number five. I like this, the Sunday waffle bar. Set up a Sunday waffle station with pastel colored ice cream toppings. What kid's not gonna like that?
And then finally number six, Easter popcorn. You can top bags of popcorn with pastel candies like m&ms, Jordan, almonds or soft mints.
Let's talk about decorating. You don't have to go all out and overspend on decorations. You only need to create ambience. You can try these easy and inexpensive ways to decorate.
Number one, take papier-mache nests to hold your dyed eggs. Cover a bowl with plastic wrap and turn upside down. Mix together equal parts glue and water in a separate bowl. Using brown paper bags. shred the paper into strips, dip into the glue mix, and lay each strip over the upside down bowl to create a nesty look. You can let them dry for 12 hours then gently lifted from the bowl.
Number two, you can make a baby's breath centerpiece with a simple wire basket, speckled eggs, and top with baby's breath.
Number three, giant Easter Bunny balloons using 36 inch white balloons, five inch pink balloons, a low heat glue gun, and cardstock, you can cut out ears and glue them to the top of the balloon on either side of the knot. You glue one pink balloon to the front of the white balloon for a nose. And then once the glue dries, your balloons are ready to hang up with the festive ribbon or string.
And now let's finally talk about an Easter egg hunt. What would Easter be without an Easter egg hunt? Easter egg hunts aren't just for kids anymore. You can set up different hunts to accommodate all ages making it a family fun event and entertaining to watch.
Number one. For the youngest kids attach small helium filled balloons to eggs so that they're easy to find. Your toddlers will have fun going from balloons to balloon.
Number two. For a twist on the traditional mad dash egg hunt. You could try a scavenger egg hunt with clues or following a treasure map instead, make it even harder with code breaking or QR codes for older kids.
Number three, swap out candy for trinkets or coupons like staying up an extra half hour one night.
Number four, try Easter egg bowling, so you can roll their dyed eggs closest to the white egg to win.
Number five, for adults include raffle tickets inside the eggs and raffle off gift baskets.
And number six, you can have a secret bunny hunt. You can hide the eggs with one guest name inside the egg. Have each guest find only one egg. Then gather around and exchange small gifts with your secret bunny.
Now while Easter falls on April Fool's Day this year, you don't have to make a fool of your budget. You see what I did there when it comes to celebrating The holiday. Remember this season is spring. So keep your holiday preparations light and airy and enjoy the beautiful weather with family and friends And that my friends is part of living abundantly.
Now as parents, we want to encourage our children to pursue their dreams provide opportunities that give them the best chance to succeed. And sometimes this means considering an at home education to give your children the one on one attention that they need. We did this for a year. While homeschooling may sound daunting, I do have a solution. But it's really going to take away a lot of the stress of creating your own curriculum while still ensuring that your children get the absolute best K through 12 education. So again, doing a lot of research on this I got some good friends or homeschoolers found out about Laurel Springs.
Laurel Springs recognizes that each child is a unique individual with their own personal interests man calling you What? My kids are so different. I know. I bet your kids, it's like, how do they come onto the same mom and dad, right? They've got their own interest, their own talents there. They all learn differently, too. So what's really cool about Laurel Springs is they've got a flexible learning program. And it offers challenging and diverse elective courses for any school age, which I think is really cool. LAUREL springs, they're accredited. They're an online private school for students in kindergarten, all the way through 12th grade. And they are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and Advance Ed, which means our transcripts are recognized by colleges and universities worldwide. Very, very important. So what's so wonderful about a school like Laurel Springs, is how flexible K through 12 education can be.
Going on vacation during the offseason? Not a problem, which I got to tell you as the story SavingsAngel. I love that. Because if you want to go on a field trip while everybody else is not available to go on a field trip, you want to take a vacation when all the other kids are in school, you got the flexibility to do that. If you don't necessarily want that, you know 12, 10 weeks off over the summer and you don't want that brain drain to happen. Not a problem. You can do all of this. Children no longer need to be locked into standard school day hours. So here's how you do this. You register your child at Laurel springs.com slash savings Angel Laurel Springs is LAUREL. springs SPRIngs.com. Slash Savings Angel if you go to that link, again, I had a good conversation with these guys. Check them out did my due diligence. And so listen, I'm only going to talk about you if you hook up our SavingsAngel listeners and they agreed to do it. So they are going to waive the registration fee, which is cool. That's going to save you some money. So you just go to Laurel springs com slash SavingsAngel. Everything you want to learn about is on that same page right there. No registration fee Laurel springs com slash SavingsAngel and I want to thank my good friends at Laurel Springs for sharing allowing me to share this information with you.
Please give me some feedback. Let me know what you think if you're a homeschooler what you think of this, I would absolutely love to hear your feedback on this. All I know is when we did our due diligence, we got lots we read lots and lots and lots of great reviews and felt like this was absolutely a great fit to share with our SavingsAngel friends.
Now last week, I actually recorded a segment about coronavirus, and I was asked by our local Fox 35 station to share my advice on shopping and so I need to preface this
13:01
By by saying if you're not, if you don't know this, there are some consumers that are having very bad behavior. And again, I get it. I know where they're coming from. But look, here's the deal. We all got to look out for each other. So, a virus like this an epidemic or pandemic, wherever it's at, by the time you're listening this, you know, it's something that it affects communities, it affects populations. And I know what it's like to be in survival mode and you know, kind of looking out for you and your family. SavingsAngel. Culturally, our community is one where we we move our own abundance ahead, so that we can better serve others so we can better be a giver, right? We've been able to facilitate, believe it or not over 13 years, millions of dollars worth of giving across all of our community, particularly when savings Did we add our kind of our coupon a membership site? Which I know I miss, I miss it. But you know, you know. So I want to share this information with you. Another thing, if I could share with you in love is that not every content producer on the web in the news has the public good at mind, I'm sure most are trying their best. But I just I just want you to know that, that there are a lot of really, really great sources of information. And And sadly, I don't feel comfortable getting into that. I think you can figure that out on your own. Unfortunately, and I really say unfortunately, I underlined and bold that. I think there are far too many people that are politicizing something that really does not need to be politicized at this time. So, but I do want you to hear this segment. And I do want want you to know that, you know, again, if you're in charge of keeping your family safe, that the advice I share in this segment is honestly one of the best things you can do. I think that, you know, keeping common sense about our behavior is probably a really smart thing to do in terms of, you know, how we interact socially for a season. You know, how we take care of our sneezes or coughs or hand washing, and if we just all be a little bit more mindful of these things. And, again, my advice in this segment, I think, is pretty sound advice. When it comes to what we should be doing from a prepping standpoint. I don't think that panic is is necessary. I do think that just being proactive, you know, maybe even taking some inspired action. You know, if you believe in a higher power, probably not a bad idea. And that way we can make sure to keep our families safe and we can do so in a way where other people can also keep themselves and their families safe.
16:06
He was worried about the spread of the corona virus grow. A lot of people are stocking up shelves, picks completely clean at some grocery stores. Around the country people stockpiling supplies, but extra say you really don't need to buy more than you need. We've got SavingsAngel, Josh Elledge, joining us right now with what you should and should not be buying right now. Great to have you as always
16:27
mad I got a little bit of scolding today. Yeah. So you know, I think particularly as Americans, one thing we hate to see is when something is not there. And so what ends up happening behaviorally is people just get into panic. Oh my gosh, I went to one store and they were at a hand sanitizer, and then all of a sudden we go on this question. We feel like you know, we have to have it because it's the end of the world. It's not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination. If you study that, you know what the who and the CDC are saying we're doing fine, but what that does is it implicit Floridians, we go through this every year to work. And so it's very simple. We don't have to panic about a hurricane or an impending hurricane. But we do need to prepare, we need to take precautions. And again, just keep your cool. And so, in terms of shopping, here's how I want you to do this, okay? You don't need to stock up for years and years and you don't, we're not gonna, we're not gonna run out of things that, you know, if there's a short term supply demand issue, it's okay. It will get resolved. There will be hand sanitizer but as you had in that earlier segment, it's just been invented, go online, anything that any of these supplies you can make your own. You're gonna be alright now you
17:39
can wash your hands with soap Josh.
17:45
As if we have forgotten that soap is still available. Yeah.
17:48
So here's what I want you to do, however, is just like if we know that hurricane season is maybe 45 days away kind of kicks off. So what you want to do is every single week, you want to buy extra, like a few extra of each of these categories of products. So can foods, frozen foods, you know, buy extra toilet paper, but don't clear the shelves. It's I don't think that that's fair to other people, again, who just want to buy a few experts every single week. Now what I like about this plan as well is it's not going to bust your budget, and there's no need to do that. Now, I will say that there are a couple categories that I do want you to be very attentive to. And that would be things like medications that you need supplies for your baby's special diet needs. Now those again, if you look at the quarantine period for the coronavirus, 14 days. So, really that's kind of what we're talking about. Kind of worst case scenario is going to show up at work. Oh, you were exposed. You got to work from home for 14 days. That's the reality kind of worst case scenario for most people. So
18:55
then let me ask you, why do you think people are going out and stocking up like it is Let the major five hurricane or something that really is kind of this impending doom yet
19:05
situation. It's purely behavioral in psychology. It's again, it's that fear that Wait a minute, I want something and I can't have it as Americans we hate that we're not used to
19:18
bottled water thing is puzzling to me too, because your faucet is not going to stop running. If you get sick, you can still drink the water that comes out
19:26
of the tap. Yeah, you know, the experts recommend? Yeah, it's probably and again, in Florida, you always want to have a case, you know, as we get in hurricane season, you know, a case of water for each person, your family that you're going to be good, right. And so a case, you know, having an extra case of water on hand for each member of your family, or again, learning how to, you know, kind of do this yourself, you know, that's really all you want to do. But again, it's just like preparing for hurricane season, except we're not going to lose electricity, and we're not going to experience flooding. And it's, again, we're just in a worst case scenario. You're gonna have to hunker down for 14 days. Get ready to do some Netflix, binge eating, or whatever it is, or stay tuned to Fox 35 which by the way, your coverage has been so wonderful. It's been practical. And that's the kind of thing as a consumer expert, I love to see is not a lot of hysteria, but it's just listen, we're your were your friend. And this is just what you do.
20:17
And again, to remind you, not one case in Central Florida, not one case. Great way to react. Absolutely. Joshua
20:24
patient, you thank you so much for being with us this morning.
20:28
Now, if you've loved hearing everything on this podcast, share this episode with a friend. People need this information. You and I together can change lives. I recommend taking a screenshot and posting on Facebook or wherever you hang out the most. So if you're listening to this on your phone, right now, if you got an iPhone, you push the power button, the volume button and the power button at the same time, and it's going to take a screenshot and then you can go to your images and you can send a text. Your good friend who needs to hear this, and we can help them. I promise I'm going to make you look good. I promise I'm going to serve my heart out. This is again, SavingsAngel at this point is just a labor of love. And as always, if you have any specific questions or if there's something you'd like to hear me talk about, you could drop me a comment on the podcast feedback, write me on my Facebook group or call the podcast hotline right now. 407-205-9250 and leave me a message. We get a lot of great ideas. And so I want to thank everyone who has left a voicemail there. And thank you, by the way, thank you for the kind words that we get from it from time to time, it really makes a difference. I honestly, you know, I no longer really need to do this podcast, business wise for any reason. To me, it's just something I love doing and I'm just honored to be able to serve you and your family and your loved ones with this show. I'll answer your question right back or with your permission, and even share your story with others on the show. With that, have a wonderful, full of saving more, earning more and living more abundantly. And thank you for listening.
