Making Cents Of It All

Hubby and I went to see Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden. The tickets were free to us. A vendor of Hubby's offered them to him. It was a private box with food and drinks included. We have never been in a private box there and it was so nice. There were about 30 people in the box. It was very large. The were seats for everyone with a food buffet and bar with bartender. They had hot dogs, chicken, pasta, salad, eggplant, veggie tray, chips, popcorn, candy, cookies and cupcakes. The bar had beer, wine, soda and water. . It was a great night out for Hubby and me. We did have to provide our own transportation but overall it was a very frugal night. Billy did a tribute to Aretha Franklin that was very good. He is an amazing performer and funny guy. Glad we got to go. If you ever come to NYC he performs once a month at MSG.  The garden is going wonderful. I am picking bowl fulls everyday.  The tomatoes have finely gone crazy. I love it.  N...

I went to Meat Farms to get a few things when we got home. Strawberries were on sale for 99¢ limit 4. Asparagus were on sale $1.99 a pound. Grapes were $1.49 a pound. My total was $14.04.  I cut up 3 containers right away and added them to the freezer. The rest were eaten over the next 2 days.  The garden is doing wonderful. As you can tell, my tomatoes are finally ready. We are really enjoying them.  Meals are being worked around what veggies are available.  Can you see that tiny orange pepper at the bottom of the picture? It is a tabasco pepper. Hubby asked me to try growing them so I got 1 plant. There are about 100 green ones on the plant and this one turned orange. We put it in chicken fajitas and man were they spicy. Next time I will only use half of one. I have no clue what I am going to do with them all when they are ready.  More tomatoes. There are so many, I just go out with my big bowl and fill it up. I see sauce h...

We live on a  budget  so I watch what we spend to make sure all of our goals can be met. However, I have found it is the things that we don't spend money on that save us the most. Here are some of the things I don't pay for. 1. Cleaning lady. I do it. The kids have chores and some of them are helping clean the house. Hubby helps when we are having company over or a party. Would I love a maid? Absolutely, but it is not in my budget and I don't think it ever will be. I am physically able to do this. I understand if there is a medical reason that people need help and would have to pay for this. 2. Landscapers. Hubby and my son do most of this. Again, we are physically able to do this. I do the weeding and the garden. In my younger years when hubby was working 60+ hours and the kids were young, I mowed the lawn. Now I have a 19 year old son that lives at home so he does it. We did pay to have large trees cut down. Hubby has cut down small trees but a professional is needed ...

We were away most of the week. We had a great time. I think Hubby's favorite park was that he got to sleep until when ever he wanted. One of my favorite parts was the views. I love the mountains so I am always happy whenever I get to go see some. We were able to keep the entire vacation to $800 which is really amazing. Our budget was $1000 so we came in under by $200. So we already have a jump start on our next trip to see OD. We did lots of fun things. The kids did an aerial adventure park. We got the afternoon passes and ordered them online saving us $30. They were both sore the next few days. Thank goodness for the hot tubs.  We did eat out twice. Both times were lunch. We were able to have 2 nice meals and not pay dinner prices. One of the restaurants is a historic location. It was The Red Lion Inn. We were able to throw some history into the vacation. We looked all around the inn and were reading about it online.  We did shop around the town but the...

Sorry this is late but that is what happens when you are on vacation. We were traveling home yesterday so it was busy. We had to pick up Oreo, unpack , do laundry, and pick veggies from the garden so there just wasn't time to do a post.   My best freebie of the week was the time share. It is my sister's and she doesn't use it often. She refuses to take anything from us to use it since we watch her dog for her. It is very generous of her and we appreciate it. It makes it very affordable for us to travel by using it. This time we went to Vacation Village in the Berkshires. It was a beautiful resort. We had a 2 bedroom unit with 2 living areas, 2 bathrooms, 2 balconies and a full kitchen and mini kitchen. It can be used as 2 separate units so the kids had kind of their own place which they liked. It sleeps 8 so there was a ton of room for the 4 of us.  There were lots of things to do at the resort. We did have to pay a $25 fee when checking in for WiFi a...

We are currently away and there are signs everywhere we go. Some of them I just loved so I figured I would share my favorite ones. I live on a budget so I don't want to spend $19.99 for a piece of wood with a saying on it. A picture does the same thing for me and it fits right into my budget. I hope they make you smile like they did for me. Have a great day!

I did really well at Stop & Shop. I am still using the free coupons my friend gave me several weeks ago. The chicken breasts were all marked down to $1.79 a pound. The sausage packages were $2.14 each. I had a coupon for $2 off of $5 from the deli, so I paid $3.19 for 3/4 a pound of cold cuts. Strawberries were on sale with a coupon for $1.47. Corn was on sale 5 for $1. Twizzlers were on sale for $2 and YD requested them. Fig bars were on sale with a coupon for $1.87 each. I had $1 off 2 so that is what I got. The chips were on sale for $1.87. I also got 2 peanut butters on sale $1.88 each and a salad dressing after coupons for 67¢. When I went to type this up I noticed they were not in the picture. They were still in my car. Good thing it wasn't ice cream.  The cereals were on sale for $2.50 each. I had downloaded a coupon online to save $3.50 on 2.  That brought them down to 75¢ each. I then had a manufactures coupon save 75¢ on 2 which doubled making the ce...