Saturday, June 7, 2008

# busy # fun

Whew - Summer is Tiring

This year, I wanted my kids and I to really enjoy the time that we get together, so I decided that when I could, we would go out and do things. Last weekend, it was garage saling...5 garage sales on Friday and 22 on Saturday. I still haven't gotten the back of the van unloaded from the goodies we found plus the stuff that my ex-husband threw in there.

This weekend, it was Surprise Saturday..or that's what I'm gonna call it now. lol! Last night, while checking out some of my favorite frugal blogs, I noticed a few things that we could do together that would only cost me a tiny bit of gas to get to the places. So, here was our day:

Stop 1 : Neighbor's Garage Sale. I've lived here a year and never met them so I thought I would say hi. Darned if I can remember her name though..man, I'm bad with names. Picked up a few things including a like new small samsonite suitcase for $10. She was going to hold it for me since I didn't have the cash on me. Note to self : Stop by tomorrow's sale and pick that up from her.

Stop 2 : Our local library. The boys and I didn't have library cards yet and I was sure that they would be doing a summer reading program. So, we stopped and got our cards and the boys each picked out 4 books as well as some cds to check out. I got a nice stack of 5 books, as well. I did snap some pictures here, but I left my camera in the van tonight...oops. Oh, and no summer program like I thought. I'm used to the read so many books, get a prize kind of thing. Instead, they have a program every Monday that you go to where they do crafts and reading and such. I took a brochure and signed them up, so I'm sure we'll check it out.

Stop 3 : Walmart. Yes, we had to mix errands in today to make this work for us. Got the boys an icee as a treat because it was so hot and sticky today. Managed to get out of there for under $40 and got everything we needed. I was hoping to pick up a 2nd small dehumidifier for the kitchen, but at $70, I can't afford it. Note to self : Put extra bread in the deep freeze since the humidity will mildew it in 2 days if I don't.

Stop 4 : Michael's. Today they were doing free crafts for kids day! Yay! My youngest loves crafting so he loved making pipe cleaner caterpillars and butterflies and then making paper flowers to tuck into a paper "vase." Of course, mommy watched closely so that we can duplicate this project since they didn't give out instructions. Ben wasn't at all interested and more tried to drag on me and act silly, but we still had fun. Money spent : $0 on the projects, $30 on ribbons and color books and a couple other odds and ends.

Stop 5 : Post Office. I needed a few stamps so I ran in real quick. I think I spent $1.78 here.

Stop 6 : Friendly's for our free one scoop icecream cone. Our local R & B station was also there and the kids and I won 3 free cds. I'll be honest and say I have no idea if they're good, but hey..music is always good, right?

Stop 7 : Pizza Hut. The boys had good report cards and our Pizza Hut in Michigan rewarded good report cards with a free personal pan pizza and a drink. Turns out that our one here in New York doesn't. They don't even deliver. I do all my ordering from little local places..which is good because I like supporting the little stores.

Stop 8 : McDonalds. Because they do reward kids. The boys each got a free happy meal for their report cards. It turns out that locally, the stores give coupons to the schools to hand out but because I had their report cards, the manager was more than happy to give us the deal. Only downside? The place needed a serious clean up. I know they'd been swamped but there wasn't a single clean table.

Stop 9 : Grocery Store. Nothing too exciting here other than as usual, I spent too much on groceries. Now, due to circumstances, I don't need to worry about my grocery budget, but still..I think it's time to spend a couple of weeks eating out of the cupboards and such. See how far we can go with it. I'm picking up a couple of boxes of food at the end of the month, so I think July will work great for starting that project.

Stop 10 : Back at the apartment. My annoying upstairs neighbor yet again parked in the driveway so I pulled in behind her long enough for us to unload everything down into our place. Then, I moved the van back to the road. Roger was a trooper and helped carry things down. Ben did as much as he could. Then, on commercials, Roger helped me find all the perishables and put them away.

Now, I am a tiiiiiired mama. But, I am so thankful for all the wonderful women who blog about living frugal and how to find some great deals. I need to remember to ask them..or ask all of you...Do you know if Rite Aid has anything like CVS and Walgreens does? Our Walgreens (almost literally across the street from my place) got bought out by Rite Aid and it seems like a waste of gas to try to find a CVS or one of the few remaining Walgreens stores.

1 comment:

Jim said...

WOW, busy day! No wonder you were tired. All the same, sounds like you guys had a really fun day. These are just more of the little memories the boys will always have. Another thing you can do is look for a local company and see if they do tours. For example, I live about 60 minutes from Jelly Belly's distribution center. They have a doofy little train tour which is mostly made up of videos of the main factory in California, but you get to find out ho Jelly Bellies are made and you get samples at the end. We also have a company called Quality Candy, but they only open for tours around Easter, but they also give free num-nums at the end (did I just say num-nums?). There should be a local website that promotes tourism that would help you find stuff like that.

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