Coupon Codes

I have a scrapbooking date with my sisters tomorrow. Thanks to Walgreens promotions, I ordered 25 prints and an 8 x 11 scrapbook page that will cost a total of NOTHING. Then I ordered 50 more prints for $5 plus tax. Not too shabby.

Now, only if I had done this earlier in the week. The photos won’t be ready until a few hours after our scrapbooking date. 😦 Oh well! I can at least have my pages prepped and ready for them!

Update: One of my sisters also procrastinated with ordering her pictures, but called her Walgreens this morning, and her pictures were ready (twelve hours than the website said)! So I called my Walgreens, and lo and behold, mine were ready too. 🙂

Frugal Dinner Out

Tonight, Mr D2S and I had plans with two friends to eat dinner and see a show. This was courtesy of a gift certificate my mother gave me as a graduation present. However, the event was outdoors and terrible thunderstorms ruined our plans.

Since the friends had already arrived, and we’d offered them free fun, we decided to go out to eat and pick up the tab.

We went to TGIFriday’s. I think this place is yummy, yet a little bit more pricey than, say, Applebees or Chili’s. However, I am on their email list and have a coupon (good for all of August) that gets $5 off each of your friends’ entrees. Also, we had a gift card from redeeming credit card points last month.

Here’s what our bill looked like:

2 waters — 0.00
2 sodas — 4.78
appetizer  — 6.19
entree  –10.28
entree  –9.48
entree  –11.49
entree   –8.59

total: 50.81

minus $15 for the coupon…

plus $3.05 for tax….

paid $25 with our giftcard….

and we owed $13.86 plus the tip, which one friend helped cover.

Not too shabby for stuffing four people to the brim.

The deal would’ve been stretched even further, of course, if two people hadn’t gotten sodas ($4.78), if we’d skipped the appetizer ($6.19), and if no one had upgraded their sides ($0.99 times two). But, still…not too shabby!

I also have a Get More Stripes card with TGIFridays. They keep track of what you spend and after 100 stripes (aka 100 dollars), you get an $8 giftcard. This month is double points, so we got 72 points for tonight and are just a three away from our next reward!

Free Fun

It’s been a busy week at work, so I’m quite glad it’s Saturday and that I’m off! Mr D2S used a comp day for today, so we have loads of time together. We just enjoyed a delicious (and cheap) lunch at home of taco salad.

In about an hour we’re headed to a museum with a friend. We’ve been wanting to go to this art museum for over a year, and now we don’t have to pay to get in! When I bought the Entertainment Book, it had coupons for “buy one get one” admission, and I thought that was pretty good. Then Mr D2S bought a coupon book from a kid selling them door to door, and it has several free admissions with no other purchase necessary! The book cost $20, but we’ll recoup that with our three free tickets today. Not too shabby..

And tonight we’re meeting a bunch of my college friends for dinner. We didn’t choose the restaurant, but it’s cool, because the one that was picked is one that we have $35 worth of giftcards to!

Yay for not spending. 🙂

UPDATE: Turns out the 2nd Saturday of the month is free admission for everyone at the art museum!

So Proud!

Mr D2S packed his dinner and took it to work tonight. We haven’t even discussed that idea in a long time. He has been eating out every night he works (four times a week), and we’ve both justified it.

But I just got off the phone with him and he said he ate a sandwich that he brought from home. AND he’s thinking he should pack a meal two to three times a week. He sure knows how to make me happy, ha!

Like I said, I had justified his eating out while at work in my head, but I”ve actually been struggling with it some. While I don’t have the desire to spend a similar amount of money for myself to eat out (or to buy other things for me), I just hated that the money was being spent. I also struggle a bit with other purchases that are required by his job. Stuff really adds up. Just two day ago he really needed some batteries for work. We’d talked about buying rechargeable ones, but they never got ordered. So an hour before he has to be at work, we drop $43.99 at RadioShack for batteries. Insane! Even worse is that Walmart sells them for half that, but the two we called were out of stock. In the end, we should be basically reimbursed for all of these work-expenses, but I always have a hard time shelling out the cash.

Fourth No Spend for the Month!

I just realized today was a no spend day!

How did we NOT spend today?

I took my lunch to work: a peanut butter sandwich and a string cheese.

And it’s Mr D2S’s birthday, so his coworkers treated him. Sweeeeet! 🙂

I was very very tempted to stop on my way home and grab a bite. Instead I came home, ate a piece of cake, then scrounged in the cupboards. I ended up making a box of Tuna Helper and it was all mixed up, minus the tuna, when I realized….we don’t have any tuna! I threw in some browned ground beef that was in the fridge. It tasted fine. I also made up some pasta salad to take to work tomorrow for lunch.

PB, hold the J

I am a hardcore brown-bagger. Minus the brown bag. I use a very cute oilcloth lunchbag to carry my food to work.

Some days I bring leftovers. (Yummmmy!)

Occasionally I’ll bring a sandwich with deli meat.

At least 50% of the time, good ol’ peanut butter suffices.

Yesterday, I took a PB sandwich, but didn’t have the time to eat it, so I took it again today. Two bites into it and I just couldn’t do eat any more. The bread was from the end of the loaf and the peanut butter wasn’t quite the right consistency.

I could’ve bought something to replace it, but a few chips and some pudding (which I made from a box last night) tided me over. Not only did I not want to spend the money (especially now, as we’re closing on our house soon), but I didn’t want to spend the few minutes of my half-hour lunch break to buy food.