Saturday, August 15, 2009

A this 'n' that Saturday

I started off the day by taking Kevin to the airport. Boohoo. This summer was the first time I met him at the curb and dropped him off there as well. My baby, growing up! Hehe. It sure is easy to do it that way and nice that the airport is only about 20 minutes door to door.

On the way home from the airport I finished my bargain shopping for the week with visits to Walgreens and Albertson's. Here is my haul and my total out of pocket cost for it was . . .




$5.14. I had $20 in store coupons and gift cards I'd gotten for free in various ways plus a coupon for every Albertson's item I purchased. I love to stock up at those kinds of prices.

After lunch dh said he wanted to go look at some furniture. Our dining room table has seen better days and it's time to start thinking about replacing it. We went to a typical "Super Clearance" furniture store first. I thought the furniture prices were okay, but the styles were very pronounced and many of them were almost too modern. Like you'd be able to look at the table and chairs and say, "Oh, you must have bought them around 2010." Also, we were in the scratch-n-dent section and I was looking at a table that had a small corner knocked off. The table was nothing more than the thinnest wood veneer over particle board. Looked good, quality was crap.

Next stop was a "furniture in the raw" kind of place. We could get a table and chairs I liked in solid wood, stained and finished the way we want for . . . a lot. $1,300.

Next stop was Whole Foods. I've never been in one before but dh recently heard and likes the owner's policy on health insurance and he wanted to show his approval with his dollars. We enjoyed looking around and bought some cookies for the girls before leaving. The clientel of that place was waaaaay crunchy. I was probably the only woman there with shaved armpits.

Next stop--an oak furniture place. It was disappointing. The quality was only marginally better than than the first place and many of the styles were dated.

Dh would like to get something from the first place because it would look good (for awhile) and be at a fairly reasonable cost. I'd like to wait until we have more money saved and get something from the unfinished store (but have them do the finishing for us). We are not in a rush however, so we have plenty of time to save some money and decide.

Next we stopped off at the mall to see about redeeming a coupon at Christopher & Banks. They finally have a collection I can get excited about. I used to really like their things but they had changed their emphasis the past couple of seasons and nothing appealed to me. However . . . that particular mall didn't have a C&B. Too bad. The coupon expires today so I won't get to use it.

The girls played for half an hour at the kiddie play area at the mall. It's one of their favorite places to play. My three were the only white children there. Most of the rest were Hispanic.

On the way home we fought off the urge to stop for tacos by stopping at the grocery store instead for meat, lettuce, and tomatoes to make our own tacos at home. The nice hamburger was $3/lb and even the fattier stuff was $2.50/lb. The family pack of round steak was $1.37 so of course I took that package over to the butcher and asked him to grind it for me. Eem-poe-see-blay. The grinder was full of pork. Then I hit on the bright idea of grinding it myself at home with the attachment to the KitchenAid. I've never used it for that, but it seemed like a good idea.

Once we got home dh cut up the meat and I ground it. Worked like a charm. While I got things ready for dinner, dh walked over to the school with the girls. C told us she was worried about walking home from school the first day. I'm sure the other two aren't worried in the least because they know C will take charge and get them home safely. We walked it Thursday, but decided to walk it again tonight. We'll probably walk it again tomorrow as well. Unfortunately because of work I can't meet them and walk home the first day, but dh is going to try to get off work Monday to do that. I really do think they'll find their way home just fine with no problems. It is a very straight forward walk.

Kevin called to say he'd made it safely. He stayed up all night last night so he could sleep on the plane. Funny kid.

3 comments:

  1. Lovely for you to share some of your life with us.
    dx

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  2. Good deals! What's behind the box of pasta mix?

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  3. Tina, those are Create-a-Bug fruit snacks. I got another smokin' deal on fruit snacks yesterday and am, shall we say, *well* supplied with them. I've already sent two boxes off to Kindergarten for our first snack contribution. I'm sure more will follow.

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