Frugal Friday....the May 28th Edition on Saturday

Here are the few frugal wins from this past week.......

*  We picked a contractor to renovate our main bathroom and he started this past week, 3 weeks earlier than expected.  I forgot to take before photos but here are some in process ones......

This has always been a dreary looking bathroom as it's on the North side of the house.

Tan everything with an oak vanity. bleh.

That's the bottom of part of the tub.

And one of the bathtub surround walls(on it's side)sitting in the hallway after removal.

Here's where the mirror/cabinet will go.  He had to enlarge the hole in the wall for it....

Here's the new vanity/sink sans faucet in the room but not installed yet....

The new tub in place.  We are still waiting on the tub surround to come in as the tub and walls have to be finished before he can do the floor.

Everything leaving is out and everything going in is here except the tub surround. The new floor will really help this all come together.  And he should be finished by next Friday, I can't wait!

The reason I am calling this reno frugal is because his bid was was less than the others.  He's a one man operation and doesn't have to pay a big crew and his quote included the cost of all the "appliances" while the other quotes were at least $2K MORE plus we had to pay for the sink/toilet/tub/mirror/lights/etc. too!  The only thing we'll need to do after it's finished is paint the walls in there.  If this goes well and we are pleased with the work we'll have him redo the powder room downstairs too.  At this point we aren't in a big hurry to get it done so a one man operation works for us plus Hubs can lend a hand if needed.

*  We finally had to ditch our deck swing.  It lasted a long time but rust and weather finally made it unusable.  We found a new one to replace it at Wayfair.

It came earlier in the week and we got it put together.  Nice and cheery color!

* I ordered from Rite-Aid online on Sunday.  They were offering $15 Bonus Cash when you spent $50 plus there were a $10 off code on an online order this week.

This came to $48.76 in Bonus Cash after discount code and digital coupons used and I earned $45 back in new BC.  Of course I made a few trips to local Rite-Aids to roll more BC this week and utilize that Spend $40/Get $10 off Coupon.

* Hubs and I went out for lunch at Applebee's this week.  Used a gift card to pay and I've still got a little left on it for half of a free lunch. lol

* I found money!

Two whole cents for the week.........

A penny at my Rite-Aid.

And another penny at the Clueless Rite-Aid. lol

And that's about it for this past week.  Except for working on getting ready for a Stockpile Sale, hopefully next weekend if the weather cooperates. ;-)

What frugal wins did y'all have lately?!

Sluggy

Stretching Those Eating Out Dollars

Here's a tip to file away to use next Holiday Season.
It's something I do that stretches the money we will spend anyway.

One of our splurges is going out to eat.
Nothing better for a worn out "cooking machine", a.k.a. MOM, like me, than sitting down at a table and not having to jump up to finish cooking something AND having someone else serve MOI!

We don't go out nearly as much as we use to but when we go out I still want to get a good deal.
Lots of eating establishments offer deals on Gift Cards around the Holidays.  They want you to spend all those gift-buying dollars with them!
Deals like "Buy $X worth of our Gift Cards and get an extra $X worth of Gift Cards to keep and use on yourself."

These silly businesses "assume" I'm buying gift cards to give as gifts.
Au Contraire!

I wait all year long until they offer these deals on their gift cards and then I buy a stack of 'em......to keep and use through out the year when we want to go out!

I figure it this way....
I'm going to eat at their restaurant during the coming year.
And I have some spare money not tied up in other venues besides a checking account.
So I might as well take that spare cash and tie it up into gift cards if they are also going to give me more than my money's worth.

So I bought $100 worth of Gift Cards and got an extra $40's worth for free!

Now the dark side of doing this....
*Make sure you don't buy more than you will use and only buy them for places you KNOW you will go and you like their food.
*Don't lose your gift cards.  While cold hard cash stays safe and snug in your wallet, gift cards tend to wander off and get misplaced.  If you lose it, you are screwed.
*Make sure you are aware of any terms or conditions the company places on their gift cards.  Are there expiration dates or fees if you don't use them within a certain time frame?  Get the straight poop before you hand over your cash.  My $40 in free cards have conditions but I knew it from the start and I can deal with those terms.
*Do NOT do this and pay for the Gift Cards with a credit card(unless you are one of those rare individuals that pays off your statement completely each month).  If you don't and you are paying interest on a gift card purchase, you are negating any savings you sought.

And of course, not only am I eating cheaper each time I go to the restaurant, I also take a coupon with me to make my meal even more frugal!

Now if ONLY our local Asian Restaurant would offer a deal like this!!lol
 

Sluggy

My Trip--The Ocean, WW2, Pruney Donuts and Russian Prostitutes Part 1

Well, I guess that title got your attention enough to look at my post, huh?lol

Let me tell you....thought I run a boring blog and life, it's never a dull moment when I'm around!

Hubs and I took a 3 night get-away to the ocean last week.  That's part of the reason why I wasn't online. ;-)
There is a beachfront motel in Ocean City MD that runs a very nice off-season package including $80 in food vouchers.  And let me tell you, $80 in food vouchers does NOT go very far in the 'OC'...but I digress.

I've been to Ocean City 3 times now in the last few years.  Let me say, I am NOT a big fan of big, built-up beach places....like Ocean City.  The place goes on for miles....over 140 blocks of big ass hotels/motels, junky souvenir shops, pizza joints, restaurants, putt putt golf, ice cream and candy shops and on and on and on.  It's a cacaphony of Visual Clutter in bright colors as far as the seared corneas of your eyes can see.
Not only that but I hear the place swells to a population of over 300,000 in the summer.  I am not a 'wall-to-wall obnoxious, touristy people' type of gal.  Maybe when I was a college student I could handle a beach scene like this....

But now?....not so much.
So we go in the off season when the college crowd and the families with children are back at home and in school. Having grown up in a beach town I relish the beach in the fall and winter when the tourists are scant and the locals rule.  This was more like the scene on the Boardwalk last week in Ocean City, without the snow however...

Relaxing and nothing moving at a frantic pace.  And the $500 a night hotel rooms have dropped to a reasonable price.
Since the tourists are mostly gone until next spring, alot of the businesses are closed up as well at this time of the year so there are no outside pools, no go-karts, no rides, no arcades.  Nothing that would make my head explode.   Just lots of walking along the beach or boardwalk or renting a bike and looking out at the horizon line.

Last trip we did some historical type excursions in the area.  This year, we just sat around and vegetated mostly, contemplating the water and the occasional surfers.

We stopped on the way down in Rehobeth at the Outlet Malls to do some promised clothes shopping for the teens and Hubs picked up some much needed shoes for a deal.  We also did some Christmas shopping as well.....


I did some shelling our 1st morning, as a storm had just passed.  Being among the first on the beach I was able to score this beauty.....

 An intact 8" long Whelk shell.....

These whelk shells, especially of this size, are hard to come by intact off of OC or any mid-Atlantic beach for that matter.   A predatory sea snail, a marine gastropod, use to call this beauty home.  Sort of fitting that the Slugmama, a human gastropod, owns it now....though I don't exactly fit into it.  ;-)
We talked with a local gal on our beach outing, who was oohing and ahhing over my shell.  She had a beautiful Australian Cattle Dog that was an unusual Red Heeler coloring that you don't see much of in the US.  She  had adopted from an Animal Rescue Group.  Real nice dog....and owner.lol

We headed over to West Ocean City later to do some shopping, food shopping.  We picked up a few things to eat during our stay so we didn't have to go out and spend for the high-priced/mediocre quality restaurant offerings or for the ubiquitous fast food.  Those seem to be the only choices in the off-season as alot of food joints are closed up.  We had a choice of Subway, Arby's, Mickey D's type places or some Crab Houses, non-descript local overpriced Restaurants and Pizza Joints or Ruth's Chris Steakhouse where hamburgers start at $30, not including fries.lol

We also hit a Save-Alot grocery store looking for Smithfield Ham for ham biscuits.  This place had it 2 years ago but not now.  We did find the ham at Food Lion and on sale....woohoo!  While at Save-Alot I found a couple of good deals....100% Juice for $.99 and $1.79 and Veg. Oil for $2 for 48 oz. sized bottles.  Daughter has a 'thing' lately for deep fried ravioli and has been going through my oil stockpile, so I loaded up with 4 bottles, since it was almost half the price of what it goes for around here.

We also hit the Dollar Store and picked up some water for the stay and a couple of books to read on the beach.
I took a nap when we got back to the motel while Hubs took a swim.

We used our $40 dinner voucher Tuesday night at a nearby hoity toity restaurant that's been in OC for ages.

Authentic Italian food but the view was non-existent.  Our hotel has a deal with this place for the food vouchers.  The restaurant provides a price fixe menu(one price meal menu)with a small selection of entrees.  Of course it's $20 a person, so your voucher covers dinner for two.  The food was good but I wouldn't say that it was necessarily "worth" $40.  But I am NOT complaining.  It was a deal with the voucher and the place was empty so we enjoyed the peace and quiet.
We had drinks on the balcony of our room and just enjoyed listening to the water and the cool night air.

Hubs was up bright and early each morning to enjoy the sunrise.
Here's one of the photos he took.  This is the only way I saw the sunrise since I don't "do" mornings.....

Part 2  tomorrow.....

Sluggy