Kids Bowl Free

Check out Kids Bowl Free at AMF bowling alleys around the country. Each kid gets 2 free games a day all summer long! All you have to do is sign up.

Free Quizno Sub

Go to the following website and print out a free Quizno sub coupon! Hurry they are only giving out a million!
http://www.millionsubs.com/

Finance Review

About once a year I like to take a look at our bills and review ways in which I can save money as well as ensure that billing is being done correctly. It is time consuming but almost always pays off. Here are a few things I have found from calls I made today:

• Call your credit card companies and ask them to lower your credit card rate - they almost ALWAYS do saving TONS of money.
• Double checking billing. For instance I found I was being charged $1/month for international call service on my phone bill - I have NEVER made an international call. So I had this removed.
• Cable/Dish - I looked at the channels we were using and was able to reduce the channels we subscribed to and saved $12/month.
• Insurance - Switching companies although tedious can often significantly reduce cost. Also, telling your current company that you are looking at other companies can often get them to look at new discounts offered that they didn't bother to tell you about. This is what happened to me. So far it has saved me $147/year on homeowners and I'm waiting on my agent to get back to me regarding the auto portion. UPDATE: My auto went down $55/month!!!!
• Prescriptions - I've mentioned this before in this post - but getting prescriptions done every 3 months as opposed to monthly has saved us a significant amount of money as well as being much more convenient.

So in about 1 1/2 hours today I have saved at least $80/month!!

I'd love to hear tips that you have for saving money on your monthly bills!

A Thrifty Day

Today was a thrifty day. We started off by going to the used book store to exchange some books. I got Joshua 3 new books and 8 books for myself and still have over $10 in credit left for the books I brought in. Yay!
Then, I have decided that Joshua is bored with his toys as he has matured quite a bit since last Christmas & most, if not all, of his birthday toys were for outside. So his toys aren't really toys that he can 'do' anything with. They are toys that he can stare at as they play music or figures like dinosaurs that he can't really do anything with other than have them kiss all the other figures (which is what he does with them). AND as it rained all day yesterday his only entertainment was harassing the dogs. Anywho, since Christmas is around the corner I don't want to overdo the toys...so we went to one of our favorite places, Goodwill and I am just so tickled! We found a Little People Castle with all the little action figures for $3!! I thought that was great. One of his only toys that he really plays with right now is his Little People Farm...but he could use something a little different. I also found an entire box full of 2 separate wooden trains...one of them was obviously homemade for some special kid and is just sooo adorable. The other one has different stacking blocks that go on top. They don't have tracks or make any noises which makes them all the more charming. The box of trains was a little more expensive at $9 but I felt it was well worth it.

So Joshua has a few new toys & books to hold him over till Christmas and I only spent $12. Not too shabby!

Saving Money

I've been thinking a lot about ways to save money. Here are a few of the things I'm doing or have done recently...

1 - Purchase mail order subscriptions rather than going to the pharmacy for ongoing medication. Our co-payment for 1 prescription for 1 month is $50 x 2 prescriptions + $25 for another one= $125 a month Mail order prescription are 3 months at a time and cost $180 for 3 month supply for 3 prescriptions. Pharmacy 3 months is $375 - Mail order $180 = $195 savings EVERY 3 months for $780 a year!! That is HUGE!

2. A smaller effort is re-using towels that we dry off with after a shower. Some people might think this is gross - but you are clean coming out of the bath - so you should be able to get at least 3 uses out of a towel which = less laundry = less laundry detergent = less energy. Wahoo!

3. Finally, using less laundry & dish washing detergent. For the dish washer - I NEVER fill that extra compartment they have and only fill the regular compartment 1/2 full. Laundry - I use 1/2 the recommended amount and I actually believe I've seen an improvement - because I believe too much detergent builds up on the clothes. I might be crazy though.

Free Magazine!

I like to get my magazine subscriptions for free through Delta Skymiles- Magazines for Miles. Since I never have enough miles to purchase another ticket - but I always have enough for one of their magazine subscriptions. Anyways, I check on there frequently because they always switch what magazines they have to offer and I'm SOOOO excited because they just added "Everyday Food" magazine. So I ordered it and can't wait to start getting them in the mail!

Little Blessings...

I'm soooo hopeful right now...because a few days ago our grill broke. Well, really it has a gas leak cause one of the lines split - not the safest way to grill. Anywho, we went to Home Depot to get the part to fix it and found that it was basically un-fixable because everything was welded into place, yada yada yada. So I've been totally bummed cause 30% of my cooking, if not more, is done on the grill. AND... we are pretty strapped for money right now, so there is no way I can justify buying a new grill and not grilling until Christmas will make life pretty tough. SOOOO...lo and behold I get a random email today saying someone is selling their gas grill. (Now, in all my years no one has ever tried to sell me their grill - so what are the odds that it happens 5 days after we find our grill is un-salvageable.) So I called right away and found that they will sell it to me for $10 more than the part that didn't work that we are returning. It's a better brand than our grill and they said they have only used it about a dozen or so times as compared to ours that has been used like 300 times. Wahoo!! So Joshua and I are headed to go check it out in about 30 minutes. This really seems like a little blessing from God as an affordable way to replace our grill. So hopefully it's all this lady says it will be - stay tuned!!

Update: We are now owners of a new (rather used) grill! I have yet to get it all hooked up to see how it works but more on that later.

A Fancy New Dress!!

So, I decided to attempt to make a dress and I would have to say it came out pretty well and only cost me $7 (and most of that is because of the cost of the pattern).

Houseplants

When my mother passed away I received lots of beautiful plants. Well, 2 of the houseplants I received were dish gardens and they are starting to outgrow their dish. So I'm planning on separating them to make more room and a new plant. So frugal as I am...the painted pots I saw were TOO expensive. So I decided to paint a regular Terra cotta pot. I first put the cream base coat then added the flowers. I'm not a very good painter AT ALL. But I figured these turned out ok. I'm going to put a mini-plant in the tiny pot and gift it to a friend so she can re-pot as she would like.

Consignment Sales!

Today marked the official start of the Fall consignment sales. I'm totally bummed that I will be out of town during 2 of the 'major' consignment weekends so I had to get my fill today. I was lucky enough to find 8 adorable outfits for Joshua, his halloween costume (which is SOOO cute - but will have to be a surprise), a few simple toys, a great pair of shoes, and a rocking chair. Joshua is really big into chairs right now, so I wanted him to have a rocking chair for our family room. I need to repaint it but it was SIGNIFICANTLY less than anything else I've seen so far. Eventually, I would like to find him a little table & chair/s so he can color on & do little crafts on. So far I haven't found anything cute enough or capable of being refinished so it can look cute - in my price range - which is pretty low. :) Total I paid less than $3 an item - which is actually being skewed a little high by the high priced chair at $10.

A good buy & note cards...

I like to occasionally wander into our local Goodwill store to see if they have any decent furniture that would be good to refinish. So today, I decided to take a peek in and found a Williams-Sonoma Bread Machine. I don't think it has ever been used as it is clean as could be inside. It's really fancy and I can't believe I got it for a total of $10!!! By the way, if you have any good bread machine recipes...please share them!

I also have been trying to do a few more crafts recently - especially as Christmas gets closer and we are on a tight budget. So I found this great idea on another blog for making home made note cards & envelopes from old magazines. I was quite skeptical about the envelopes but figured I would give them a try and I think I am addicted!! They turned out pretty cute considering my magazine choices are pretty slim right now since I JUST decided to recycle my big basket of magazines. What do you think?