Money Saving Monday (times 2): Money Saving Weekly Recap

I am slowly coming up with a slogan for every day of the week for the stand in Frugal Friday post days, which shows how sick I've been and how sad it is that I need to do that at all.  So, welcome to "Money Saving Monday" for the last two weeks.

By the way, Happy President's Day to everyone in the US :).  I had hoped to celebrate today by making a cool Martha Washington recipe I found on "18th Century Cooking" on YouTube (Orange Fool for those curious), but I'm still out of it, so we're having bratwurst, sauerkraut, baked potatoes and salad.  I was going to make German cucumber salad to go with dinner, but my cucumber went disgusting mushy in record time, even by Alaska standards, so we'll have salad with tomato (a luxury I indulged myself in at the store was buying one Roma tomato as they are currently like 2.99 lb) and carrot in it instead.  Note to self:  Buy another cucumber and try again.  But, yeah, that's my frugal fail for the last little bit as cucumbers aren't cheap either *sigh*.

Anyway, back to the last two weeks and what I've been up to.  Being sick, mostly.  It really stinks.  I woke up feeling GOOD Valentine's Day and was good all day long and it was wonderful and the husband and I spent a really nice day together along with getting shopping done and paying bills since it was also pay day.  I hadn't felt good in months, so I was thrilled that maybe, just maybe I was on the mend.  And then Friday rolls around and I woke up with a sore throat, a congested head and a nasty cold.  So, this weekend where I had planned on getting the house detail cleaned, I spent most of it on the love seat in the living room feeling icky and trying to rest and drink plenty of fluids to get over the cold as soon as I could.  I'm feeling more human today, so I'm praying *knock on every wood substance* that I'm hopefully going to kick this thing decently quick.

Believe it or not, though, despite catching every bug like it's the greatest sale in the world, we did manage to get stuff accomplished around here, so let's get to that!

1.  My husband kept asking me what I wanted for Valentine's Day and I kept telling him not to worry about it as we've spent so much money the last couple of months due to the earthquake that I was actually burned out on spending money.  The last thing I wanted him to do was go and spend 25.00 on a bouquet of roses or something.

While we were out shopping, though, my husband told me he'd be right back and he needed to go and get something.  I didn't think anything of it and kept shopping, although he was gone for a little while, and when he finally rejoined me and told me he couldn't find what he was looking for I just thought, "Ah well" and got the rest of the shopping done.  Well, when we went out to the car with the groceries I was surprised and touched to find that he'd gotten me a single rose for Valentine's Day.  He'd actually gone up to the floral department counter and gotten one special for me so he didn't have to pay a huge price for a larger bouquet that was already prepared.  He even got me a yellow rose, which was my dad's favorite flower.  Somehow that made it even more special to me :).

2.  Used store shopping went really well the last couple of weeks.  First up there was the daughter's upcoming birthday and when we were at the used store I looked around to see if I could find anything she might be interested in.  My favorite local thrift store has smaller sized kid toys separated into these clam shell type things (usually old berry containers people have donated) and you can buy a grab bag of smaller toys for like 1.50 to 5.00 depending on value and demand.  I looked through the clam shells and was shocked to see one jam packed full of stuff my daughter would absolutely love to get for 2.50, so I quickly snatched it up.  While going through the stuffed animals I also found a brand new stuffed horse for 1.00 and one of the Palace Pet critters with the tags still on it, so I grabbed that as well.  I felt great about what was in the clam shell when I finally got to go through it (seen above there with the horse I bought in the background).

Then we were at Value Village later that same week and I found the perfect gift to give my daughter from her brother.  The daughter is obsessed with unicorns and things at the moment and I found a nice little unicorn curio box for 1.50.  She might be able to fit a few necklaces in it or small little collectibles but that's about it as it's not that big, but I know she won't care once she sees the unicorn *laugh*.  Since a bunch of her little knick knack type of things got broken in the quake, I was really happy to find this for her.

So, for less than 10.00 birthday gifts for the daughter are done.  I was hoping to feel better so I could make her something, or at least finish the pillow case I had hoped to give her for Christmas, but that just isn't in the cards at this point, so at least she won't be disappointed in her birthday gifts.

3.  We stopped in at another local used store to find a big cart full of frames on sale for .10 each.  You know, this in itself shows how much my outlook has changed over the years.  There was a time when I would have bought a ton of frames at that price, but instead I bought one to replace a frame that got partially broken in the quake and called it good.  I still need to mount some hardware on the back so I can hang it on the wall, but for .10, I'd say I'm ahead of the game when it comes to expense *laugh*.

4.  Carrs/Safeway has started up their Monopoly game again this year and per usual my son's normal "diet" consists of bonus ticket items, so I end up with a stack of Monopoly coupons when I check out.  I haven't really won much in the way of instant win items, but I started collecting the "second chance" tickets with a unique code on them that you could enter online and see if you won anything else on the ticket.  When I logged onto the site and entered codes I found that basically you have a chance of winning a certain amount of tokens with each code and then you can spend those tokens on different items, entries in different sweepstakes and you can even save the points/tokens up and redeem them for shopping gift cards.  I was thrilled when I realized how this system worked this year and started inputting all of my codes as I'd get the tickets because I also found out that you can redeem 30 tokens/points for a free gas reward that they'll load onto your card for you (you can only do this a maximum of five times over the life of the Monopoly game, though, so keep that in mind if you go to do this :).

I looked through the products that you could redeem your points for and 20 points would net you like a free small can of tomato sauce, a free powdered gravy mix and other things that I'd won in the Monopoly game in the past, which I was kind of "meh" about.  Anything that was actually really worth getting was about 60 points (free french bread and such), so I then focused my attention on the free gas reward for 30 points and went onto the Just4U site to see what I could net with one gas reward (Safeway/Carrs has started a new thing where you can redeem your gas rewards for free products and things in case you aren't near where there is a fueling station or if you don't want to use it for gas/fuel) and I found that this month (the rewards you can redeem change every month) they had a free dozen eggs for one fuel reward.  So, I redeemed my points for the fuel reward, went onto Just4U and got my free dozen eggs loaded onto my card.  So, I picked those up when I went shopping last week.  I did this with the express purpose to use the eggs to make Eggs Benedict (which the eggs were nice and fresh and it worked fabulously) and things and I was really happy how it all worked out :).  I'm hoping to redeem gas rewards over the course of the contest and just use them for free groceries instead of just getting off an additional .10 per gallon of gas, but we'll see how it goes as I want to see what will go on "super sale" with the rewards for groceries program.

5.  Speaking of Eggs Benedict, I used the free eggs, some English muffins I found in the depths of the freezer, some little bits of ham I found that needed to be used up and a powdered mix for Hollandaise that I was gifted to make Eggs Benedict for dinner one night.  Was it as good as legit, from scratch, Eggs Benedict?  No.  Did it work?  You bet.  For a meal that cost next to nothing to make I was happy with how it turned out.

6.  I stopped in at a new store that has opened up in the area called "Ten Below".  Think of it as kind of the Alaska equivalent of say Dollar General, but all the products start out at 1.50 and go up from there.  I wasn't over the moon excited by what I found in the store, but I did find they had foaming carpet cleaner for 1.50 per container, so I got four in the hopes of cleaning my stairs and maybe being able to get a bit more of the teriyaki sauce that stained the hallway carpet out.  I also found they had a thing of hair elastics, a decent amount, for 1.50.  Since the daughter keeps stealing my hair elastics I got the elastics and stuffed them in with her birthday gifts in the hopes that she will stop stealing what I have left.

7.  There has been an uptick in crime in our area (well along with the rest of the Valley really) due to bad law and things (don't get me started, trust me) and I didn't like the idea of people being able to see into our den when the light is on because all we have up is cheapy bamboo blinds that came with the house when we bought it and I found when you got the least bit close to the house you could see right into the den when the inside light was on.  I had gotten some curtains at the used store with built in room darkening panels in them a while ago, so I did a quicky job of putting one up over our front window in our den.  We don't have a traditional curtain rods on the windows in the den due to how the blinds are made, so I actually ended up tucking the curtain around the old blinds to hold it up for the time being until I can come up with something better to hang the curtain.  I have to say the curtain isn't what I would call my normal tastes (I bought the curtains because the curtains cost WAY less than buying room darkening panels on their own), but it fits the window just fine, goes with the coloring of the room (oddly enough) and it has the side benefit of helping to block breezes that are coming in through the window as the windows definitely leak more since the earthquake.  So, for the moment I'm happy with it.

8.  I watched a bunch of videos for free on the internet as I was lying down feeling icky. 

9.  I managed to reorganize the kitchen and got all of the dishes that were up above the cabinets down low in one of my bottom corner cabinets instead so that if we get a bad aftershock or something I won't have to worry about losing what casserole dishes and things I have left after the quake.  This also took weight off the top of the cabinets and will hopefully help to keep the tops of the cabinets from bowing in and such as I found out how thin the tops of the cabinets were when I started checking them thoroughly after the earthquake.

I'm going to call it good there.  I am sure there is more that I did the last couple of weeks, but my brain is blanking and I'm going into nasty coughing fits and desperately need a cough drop (and the cough drops are downstairs), so I'm going to button it up here.

How about you?  Been up to much around your place?