7/25 Expressions

Financials/Entertainment: Our American Airlines AmEx Cards arrived in the mail. We will be buying Kroger gift cards this weekend to spend our $750 so that we can get 25,000 miles and earn 10% on the Kroger Cards. I also received a survey check in the mail.

Food: Tonight's dinner? Turkey burgers garnished with the last bits of cheese, mushrooms, and garden fresh sauteed zucchini. Yummy. After dinner, banana/yogurt smoothies. We also picked 3 more strawberries out of the garden for garnish.

Frugal Tips: A co-worker shared a local website where we can try to get a gift card for half price to local eateries, etc. I shared information about mystery shopping and getting reimbursed some or all of your expenses.

7/24/08 Expressions

Food: My food bargain of the day - we harvested our first zuchini from our garden.

Gifts: For a family member's birthday, we will take him out to lunch at a nice restaurant. The lunch menu is very affordable and they sent us a $20 gift certificate to join their e-mail club. The gift, Bluberry Jam and Onion/peppers relish from Harry & Davids - both are a favorite and I picked them up months ago at an outlet mall on sale with a coupon. I also saved a gold/tan box from the holidays from Harry & Davids and wrapped the jars in tissue paper and placed them in the box. There was a good deal posted on a blog a few weeks ago. Heavily discounted items from AT Cross and a free shipping code. I got a stylus/pen that was originally $30 for $8. This item came nicely boxed. So, I took 4 strands of gold "curling" ribbon - after holiday's sale at CVS - the roll of 3 colors for less than 30 cents - and tied the 2 boxes together and used the scissors to curl the strands. It looks very elegant. My daughter will make a card. Also at the AT Cross sale, I got my husband a new wallet. His is pretty ratty, and I was hoping it would arrive sooner for his birthday. So, he is getting it for a belated birthday present. But the wallet was originally $60 on sale for $15. It is nicely boxes, in its own fabric pouch, and the leather is as "soft as butter".

7/23 Expressions

Financial: Today, I took 10 more items (the limit) to the consignment - making 30 items for this month. To combine errands, I stopped at the bank. I also called the health saver's plan administrator - I was sure we had spent the limit - nope - I have just over $70 I can submit.

7/22 Expressions

Entertainment: My latest project is planning for spring break and our 20th wedding anniversary. They fall about a month within each other. We are thinking about going back to Oahu. We have usually earned a free flight by saving miles. This time, we think we want to splurge - and pay for the cheapest ticket and use miles to upgrade to first class. I just signed up for an Airline Credit card - no annual fee for the first year and 25,000 miles after spending $750 on it. But it takes up to 10 weeks after spending the $750 to get credited the miles. So, I don't want to get too excited yet with all of the airline merging, going out of business, etc. I just fiddled with the reservation program, and it looks like if we go this route, we can all fly first class for less than the price of 1 first class fare. First class didn't mean much for a long time. They didn't seem to have much extra room or much better service. These days, especially on long flights, it would mean something.

7/20 Expressions

Frugal Recipe: Banana Slushy - 4 frozen bananas (once a banana starts showing a brown spots on the the peel, DD and DH won't eat it. I throw it in the freezer with the peel - to use, I defrost it for about 10 minutes, then use a knife to "peel" it and throw the peel into the compost. I have heard of people peeling them first and freezing them in a ziploc bag). Broken in a few chunks into the blender. A couple of large dollops of leftover yogurt in the large container - store brand. A splash of milk. Drizzle honey and blend.

From the "garden", my daughter got the first "baby" carrot to garnish her lunch. My husband got 2 small strawberries. We also had 2 green beens stir fried with part of our lunch.

Financial: This has happened to us more than once, but I finally went thru mail that looks like junk. One of our shareowner services notified us that "archive services vendor . . . could not account for one of several boxes of data backup tapes that they were transporting to an off-site storage facility . . ." and of course, our data may have been on there - yada, yada. Anyway, atleast they kindly offered us free credit monitoring services for a year - and we will be sure to take them up on it.

7/18 Expressions

Free/Cheap Entertainment: This weekend will mainly be spent doing free or cheap things. We will hit yardsales in the a.m. to see if we can find a few items to spruce up my daughter's room. Then for a fitness walk where there will be serving a free, healthy lunch. Then we plan to redeem our free movie tickets to see "Mama Mia". Sunday night, a local museum is having an event with food and fireworks. $8 per adult and $5 per child.

7/12 Expressions

Stuff: The theraputic massage at the college was wonderful. I cut my own hair - it looks decent if I do say so myself (trim really), and dyed it. My husband and daughter went fishing this morning - and caught zero fish. We also borrowed 3 DVDs from the library - just gas to get there. Stopped at the thriftstore and got 2 really nice glass bowls in a metal base and 3 small cake pans for $5.40.