Ever heard of Groupon?

Groupon features one great deal every week day for approximately 50 cities around the US. (Denver, Charlotte, Portland, Jacksonville, Washington D.C, and New York City to name a few.) Typically the deal is 50% or more off of a restaurant, store, activity, etc. Deals are e-mailed every day and you choose whether or not to participate in that deal. You only get it if enough people choose to join in that day, otherwise your credit card is not charged. Its great if you are going on vacation to an area as well. The groupons are usually good for several months to a year. Lately they have been having great deals in our area. Friday it was a $50 Sonoma gift certificate for $25. (Somona is a REALLY nice Ruth Chris type restaurant in our area.) Today's deal is even better though $30 worth of dry cleaning at Zoots for $9 a 70% discount. You can do the deal up to 5 times. So you could potentially have $150 worth of dry cleaning for $45. Each $30 gift certificate must be used at one time. However, they can be combined, they are good at all Hampton Roads locations, and are good for 1 year.

Now I'm off to comfort a little 4 month old sweety that has the hiccups and is getting tired of them!

Adventure in Washington - Part 3

Our final destination before we headed home on Saturday was Georgetown. The town was beautiful.... But who can visit Georgetown without also visiting this place. Thanks Sarah for the good word. We probably would have never waited in this line if it hadn't been for your vote of approval!

After seeing the line Roderick wasn't so sure, but we decided to wait it out. He was a little less skeptical when he saw these beauties.

We had a red velvet cupcake (for my husband) and a cookies and cream (for me) boxed up since the store was so full. That gave us an extra speed to our step as we walked the 20 plus minutes back to the metro and rode it all the way back to Alexandria. As soon as we got to the car this occurred!For my husband surprisingly it was love at first bite. He couldn't get enough of it as you can see in the below picture. The skeptic was then planning when we could return for another visit!

Colorful candy shop in Georgetown.

We left DC about 5:30, made a quick stop at IKEA for a little shopping and a shared dinner...made a wrong turn that headed us back towards Washington D.C., took the very next 'exit' which ended up being an HOV lane without any exits for a very LONG time and were back where we took the wrong turn about a half hour later! We made one more wrong turn that ended up being near a Kroger so we did a little coupon shopping for the LaVictoria salsa I wasn't able to get here. We spent $9 on 4 bottles of LaVictoria, 10 cans of diced tomatoes, tuna (to donate! we are not fans!!!) and some apple juice. We didn't arrive home until after midnight Saturday night! Roderick was hungry so he downed a bunch of LaVictoria and we headed to bed....only to be woke up at 4 by a VERY sick husband! Yep the flu....(and no he has not eaten any more of the 4 jars of LaVictoria I purchased!) I came down with it a little later in the day, but I think that I had the start of it Friday and Saturday. My cupcake didn't quite taste as good as I'd expected and I feel queasy any time I see one now. Hopefully that will change soon because I really want to try a chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting from Georgetown! We are so thankful we made it home before the throwing up began!! And we got another day added to our little vacation.... a sick day on Monday!

Adventure in Washington - Part 2

Warning: Huge picture overload. We mainly took lots of pictures and walked and walked...and walked. The pictures are a bit out of order, but I don't want to waste the time trying to reoranize them. We had fun just enjoying each other's company. However, I do wish I wore something a bit heavier. It was a lot colder than I was expecting!

Adventures in Washington- Part 1

A few weeks ago Roderick and I took a little weekend trip to Alexandria/Washington D.C. Spring Break was not a break for us as Roderick worked a ton at work and on a certain VERY HUGE Hebrew project. Those of you with husband's in seminary probably know exactly which project I'm talking about. So when it was all finished we decided to take a break. Here is what we enjoyed on Friday evening....

One of my main goals was to look at and take lots of pictures of the beautiful spring blooms and trees. We certainly accomplished that goal and I think I ended up with a few cool pictures. (You'll see a bunch more in the next installment.)

Roderick's only request for the weekend was to watch How to Train a Dragon in Imax 3-D. The theater was just a short walk from our hotel and was probably the largest theater I've EVER seen. Let's just say that this frugal got a HUGE shock when they told us the price.... $35 for the two of us. What?!?!? I could probably buy 2 or 3 DVDs at that price...maybe more. Roderick even asked if there were any student discounts, but unfortunately those only apply on Thursday. We did decide to splurge and we had a blast. Probably not worth the price, but we were not sad we decided to go ahead and watch it anyway.

A huge pizza that was great, but too large. (Maybe even one of the best I've ever had.) We specifically asked our waiter if he thought the 10 inch would be enough for the 2 of us as we didn't want any leftovers. He said that was the personal size so we went with next size up... which was only a couple of inches larger. Now my husband eats a lot....but that pizza was huge. Try as he might he couldn't eat it all and we left with one piece leftover. (AND a very full husband that seriously regretted eating so much.) We looked high and low to find a homeless person to share it with, but we couldn't find one....so we left it on top of trash can. (We saw lots that would have enjoyed it the next day.) Hopefully we learned our lesson on that one. Plus we made some great memories.

The hotel we stayed at. We got a great deal and it was quite nice. However, I have to say its parking garage wass kind of creepy. Roderick was sure he had seen online that the hotel had the option of valet parking or park yourself so we drove into the parking garage ourselves. Let just say that I'm sure Roderick would have been able to easily touch the ceiling if we had got out of the car. (If we had a truck I'm not sure we would have even made it inside without scratching the top.) There were cars parked in various places no space was left untouched...and there was no way to get out once we realised we were in the wrong place. After we got a questioning look from one of the valet drivers and asked about it we did find the end and we were able to turn around. That was another expense we hadn't quite counted on so we just decided to walk everywhere we went and nixed the idea of driving around downtown Alexandria. = ( I guess we'll do that another time.

More of DC later...

Where did the spring go???

A friend and I went for a walk today in the sunshine. We were only out for 20 minutes. Why so short, you may ask? We were burning up... in April. What happened to Spring weather? When I got home I decided to see what the weather was like. No wonder we wanted to end our walk early... it was 94 degrees and felt like 101!

(I've tried and tried, but for some reason I can't get the actual data from weather.com to actually show up on here, but believe me it truly is that HOT!! So instead I'll put up a picture from our trip to Washington DC a couple of weekend's ago. I'm in the process of that post... hoping it will be up soon!)

Frugal Finds

CVS

Transaction #1

Total Spent $.50!

Received $8 in ECBs!!

We actually needed none of this, but I made money! Will give away all but Roderick's favorite drink.

Coupons used :

$1 off Colgate

Buy 1 get 1 free on Stayfree

$2 off Stayfree product

$1 off Stayfree product

$4 ECB

Transaction #2

Total Spent $.40

Coupons used: (Used a raincheck for 4.99 a 6 pk from a couple of weeks ago)

Buy 3 get 1 free

$3 off 2 Ensure products (2 coupons)

$4 ECB used

$4 OFF $20 CVS Coupon

* Left with $3.99 ECBs! Target

Total Spent: $1.99

$ Saved with coupons $15.53!!

Obviously most of this was free so I'm not going to detail the deals. If your curious about the deals check out this post.

Farm Fresh

Total spent: $1.67

$ saved with coupons $ 2.29 (54%)

I wasn't planning on going to Farm Fresh this week, as the deals were better at Harris Teeter this week. However, I was at CVS, which is right across the street from Farm Fresh, and I needed to get something for Melody who happened to be at Farm Fresh. I decided to go ahead and purchase a couple of the deals.

Hot Deals -

Red Star $.30 each used a $.35 coupon

Reese's Free used a $.55 coupon

Harris Teeter

Total Spent: $32.25

$ Saved with coupons $30.37

Triple coupons at Harris Teeter this week! Definitely some good deals...unfortunately a lot of the really good deals were gone before I could even get there. Therefore, the bottom line was not quite like I've been able to get in the past. I still used up my 20 coupon limit though!

Hot Deals - There were lots of great deals, but here are a few.

Chicken buy 1 get 2 free - $8.50 for all three packages

Strawberries buy 1 get 2 free - $5 for all three - shared with Melody as we didn't need them all!

Tide - $3.72 used a $.35 coupon

Mission tortillas - $1.50

Flour - $.25 used a $.75 coupon

Joy - $.09 used a $.30 coupon

Sour cream - $.79 used a $.55 coupon

Dole fruit in a jar - $.25 - unsure how much coupon was for

Mahatman rice - $.19 - unsure how much coupon was for

etc.

Freebies -

Country Crock (2)

Saffron Rice

Potatoes

Chocolate milk

Mentos

Beach nut ~ mini-meal

Total for week: $36.81

Total for month:$157.07

Stuffed to the gills...

My mailbox that is....

This is what I found on Monday and Tuesday this week in my mailbox. I love going to the mailbox now.... freebies, samples, magazines, coupons are SO much better than junk mail!

I find out about the deals and freebies on http://www.moneysavingmom.com/ and www.mrsmoneysaver.com.