35 cents pays for dinner.

Tonight Peter and I had dinner for 70 cents.  Not each, but total.  Wondering how?  Well here's how it happened.  I bought rice pilaf at GE last week for free with the double coupons.  And I bought a pound of fresh green beans on sale for 99 cents a pound.  Well we used half of those in last night's dinner and the leftover for tonight's.  So half of 99 cents is about 50 cents.  For the meat, we picked up Jack Daniel's sesame chicken strips from TGIFridays on the way home from the eye doctor's.  They are $8 with tax etc but I had a coupon for a free appetizer for up to $8.  So the total came to 21 cents.  That with the 50 cents is about 70 cents.  Divided by two = 35 cents for dinner.  So when we came home we had a nice 35 cents dinner of sesame chicken strips, rice pilaf and fresh green beans.  I can't believe how cheap it was haha.  This is really the cheapest I've been able to make dinner.  Usually it hovers around $2-$4 per person.  Sometimes I have a hard time eating out because I can make the meals for a whole lot less at home.  I'm breaking financial records this week with coupon savings and dinners!  It's such a good feeling to save money.  

How is it Sunday night already???

It felt as though I was just being picked up on Friday after work and excited for the weekend.  Now it's Sunday night and another week is quickly approaching.  Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!  

This weather this weekend was beautiful.  Sunny and warm and breezy.  Cool evenings.  My favorite!  

Peter's eye had been bothering him the past few days and on Friday night it seemed to get really bad so we went to the eye doctor at GE Saturday morning.  The expense is reimbursable so we decided to go just to get it looked at.  Boy am I glad we did!  It turns out Peter has recurring corneal erosion.  It basically means that the layer of skin over his eye can get severely dried out and then attaches to the inside of his eyelid.  When he opens his eye, he rips the layer of skin off.  It sounds so painful and according to Peter it really is.  The doctor put in a contact as a way to protect the wound and put Peter on antibiotic drops.  The tiny bottle of drops weren't cheap either-$85.  Thank goodness we have excellent health insurance coverage and didn't have to pay anything out of pocket.  Well, we did, but it's all reimbursed.  

The rest of the day was spent outside doing things around the house.  Peter cleaned out the basement and garage a bit in preparation for our big cleaning out of the rocks in a month or two.  And we painted the two back doors.  We fixed up our old screen door with new screen from some old broken screens in the basement.  Only the frames were bent so we just pulled the screen out and put it in the door.  And a few weeks ago stopped at Lowe's and got a few new pieces of wood for the trim.  For about $3 we have made it a lot nicer.  We used leftover paint from the front shutters and trim work we had done last year so it was a pretty cheap fix.  It looks so much better than the ugly red color the previous owner had slopped all over the doors.  And it matches the mortar just like in the front.  I love it.  We had been looking to get a new screen door because the other door was all glass but found that the old door has removable parts of all glass and all screen.  I'm so glad because our door is smaller than the standard size and would have been over $300 to purchase a screen door.  Outrageous.  We were prepared just not to have one.  But thank goodness for the awesome discovery in the basement of the extra screen removable piece!  $3 instead of over $300.  Much more our style haha.  And it wouldn't have looked right to have a new door on the back because our house isn't new.  It's all old and got lots of knicks and character.  

It took us through Sunday to finish the doors but well worth all the effort.  I didn't strip them and sand them because I didn't think it was worth it.  Since the previous owners didn't take care of the doors and just painted layer on top of layer I didn't want to go through the mess of it.  The fresh color looks a lot better though.  

We also got new patio furniture that Peter and Jeff picked up on Thursday.  It was $50 on craigslist and so nice.  The chairs are nice and light and stack for storage.  We had to spend $80 all together because we also had to rent a truck.  Jeff was driving his down and the brakes went out again!  We felt so bad but are glad it happened while he was stopped instead of on the highway. 

Here's our great new patio set:

The table is much larger than our other one and is actually made for outdoors which is nice.  The chairs are really comfortable too.  We kept the old table and put it in the basement next to the work bench for some added working space.  We just trashed the chairs because they weren't in great condition and we didn't want any hassle.  Trash pickup is tomorrow so they'll be gone before we're home from work.  

All in all it's been a very nice weekend and I'm sad to see it coming to an end.  I'm really looking forward to vacation at the end of the month for more than 2 days off for relaxing.  Peter and I are already chatting up what we'll be taking, etc. 19 more days until the beach!

Coupons are a girl's best friend.

Lately I have been a coupon clipping maniac.  We subscribed to the Sunday paper for $10 for 13 weeks.  Sundays is when they have all the coupons.  I also subscribe online to a few coupon websites.  It's really been paying off.  Though it takes time to clip them all and look at where the best deal is, I am saving mucho money.  I still do the majority of our grocery shopping at Giant Eagle because they do fuel perks so it's a double bonus.  This past week when we went to GE, we spent $92 in groceries.  On the receipt it gives you how much you saved etc and I saved $58!  It's a new record high beating out my previous best of $34.  So we brought home $150 worth of groceries for $92.  It's a good feeling to save so much.  I can never understand why anyone would pay full price for items.  Some of my items were actually free with the doubling of coupons that GE does.  Then this evening on the way home we stopped at RiteAid to get a few items and spent $43.  Savings?  Well...I'll get it all back and actually make 25 cents on the purchase haha.  I get the 2 eye drops we purchased reimbursed through my medical benefit option fund.  The rest comes back in mail in rebates.  RiteAid was actually advertising them all as free.  All you have to do is go get them and then send in for the rebate check.  And it was good stuff too like Crest toothpaste, Olay facial cleanser, Revlon nail polish, etc.  I just can't get enough of bargain shopping and finding good deals. :)