What Can $100 Get You at Trader Joe's?

We had a $100 gift card to Trader Joe's, so we decided to see how far your money can go at a place like that. Before this trip, my opinion of the place was not super - I thought that it was an overpriced market for hippies. And although there were a ton of hippies there (and a ton of Subaru Foresters - we fit right in!), I was pleasantly surprised at how affordable the place was.

We started in the meat department since we wanted to buy some steaks for an early Father's Day celebration with Marko. We settled on a flank steak stuffed with feta and spinach, which actually ate up a good portion of our budget. But it was well worth it! Very tender and juicy and the fillings were great. We also bought some ricotta-stuffed chicken that we have yet to try. My opinion on the meat section: great food, a tad pricey.

Then we walked around the dry section and picked out a few things that caught our eye, including some Fair Trade Coffee (hippies) and some gourmet-looking pasta sauce. The value in the dry section was excellent - some of the stuff was priced way lower than my favorite Fry's.

Then we went over to the frozen section where I really went to town. It was so fun to walk up and down the aisles and see food that I have never seen before in a traditional grocery store. It all looked SO good to me and I had a hard time controlling my urge to put everything in the cart. The biggest scores were ice cream cookie sandwiches (which we gobbled up that same night), some yummy looking gnocchi (I have to learn to make these things!), and chocolate croissants. Although to be honest, nothing that we've tried yet has been anything short of fantastic. Jordan even scored with a bag of jerky treats, which she loves. But to be fair, that girl would also eat cardboard...

Matt had been keeping a tally in his head of what he thought our total would be when we got to the register - trying to keep it as close as possible to our $100 limit. At the register, I suddenly decided that the whole experience was making me feel a little hippie myself and I needed some yogurt-covered raisins. Luckily they were close by and I grabbed a box, putting our total at $102.57. I was very proud of my little human calculator - that math minor is really coming in handy in our daily lives :)

So now that I've given it a chance, I can say that I really like Trader Joe's. Fun finds, gourmet foods, cheap wines. I think I'll even make it part of my regular shopping rotation! My only advice is: don't go on Sundays. Apparently hippies love shopping on Sundays...

Extreme(ish) Couponing

Matt recently discovered a show on TLC (the network that gave us such gems as "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" and "Freaky Eaters") called "Extreme Couponing." We're always on the lookout for ways to save money, so he dug into couponing a little more and found that there are a lot of resources online to help you out. One in particular is a lady out here in Chandler who runs a blog called Bargain Believer. She matches up all of the deals stores are running that week with newspaper inserts and online coupons to get smokin hot deals.

We decided to give it a try, and signed up for a newspaper promotion that gets you the Sunday and Wednesday (ad-day) papers each week for only $1. Then I bought myself a cute little coupon binder at Wal-Mart and started clipping away. We wanted to make sure that we didn't turn into the kind of people who would buy something for the sole fact that it was on sale, so we set some ground rules for this experiment:

1) Only buy what you would have bought anyways (without a coupon)
2) Don't go too out of your way to get a coupon deal (I struggle with this one)
3) Don't spend too much time looking for deals

I'm sure there are a few more, but those are the main ones we chose to follow. The last one is tricky because it's tempting to spend a ton of time looking for the absolute BEST deal and making sure you are saving every penny possible. But that would require giving up time that we could be spending doing more productive or fun things.

The first couple of times out, it was just to test the waters of this coupon thing. We got a few free things (Matt was excited for the free candy) and a few hot deals, which motivated us to try even harder the next time. I think I've got the hang of it now, as witnessed by my trip to Fry's yesterday. I spent about an hour prepping my list and coupons to make sure I was ready, and then headed out. The best deals of the day:

- $2 off any Ice Cream and $2 off any produce for "liking" Fry's on Facebook
- Free Seattle's Best Coffee with a coupon from Sunday's paper
- Free Nestle Crunch Bar, Free Tic Tacs and Free Carmex Lip Balm with online coupons (Fry's makes all manufacturer's coupons worth a dollar, which is how you get hot deals on cheaper goods)
- $1 off Milk with a Fry's online coupon
- And then the best deal: $10 off your $50 order by using a Fresh & Easy coupon (since Fry's accepts competitor's coupons)

I ended up saving 57% off my order without buying anything frivolous or that I wouldn't have normally purchased. Plus, you get fuel reward points from Fry's that you can use at any Shell and Circle K stations to get $0.10/gallon off gas, so that's an added bonus. I love me some Fry's.

Then... THEN!! If you really want to get crazy (which I do), you head on over to the Wal-Mart and price-match the heck out of stuff that's on really good deal from other stores. While Fry's has the best coupon policy, Wal-Mart has the best (only) price-match policy. So you can cherry-pick the super hot deals from all of the other stores and get them all in one spot without having to drive around. And since we live in the same market as a Food City - which has LOW prices on produce - we take advantage of the policy.

So I walk in with print ads from 5 different competitors and match up the best prices from each one:

- Pineapple: $0.99 each (Fry's - they were OUT when I went there!)
- Sweet Corn: 6 for $0.96 (Food City)
- Red Seedless Grapes: $0.59/lb (Sunflower)
- Strawberries: $0.77 for a clam shell (Sprouts)
- General Mills Cereal: $1.77 each (Albertson's) + my $1/2 coupon from the paper = cheap, yummy cereal!

I'm sure if you really had the time and the patience, you could put together a pretty sweet price-match-up and get EVERYTHING on your list for dirt cheap at Wally-World, but for us that violates rule #3, so we don't.

So that's my experience with extreme(ish) couponing so far. I like saving money, so we'll probably stick with it for some time!

Painting

When it comes to remodeling, you can't find more bang for your buck than PAINTING!! I especially love when the color you are putting up is drastically different from the one currently on there. It is so fun to watch the change roll on and transform the room in a matter of hours. So it's not surprising that paint day is my favorite day of re-build.

On day 1 of painting, we started with the white "pop" pieces. This included the window sill trim, door frame trim, the ceiling, and the linen closet. Matt handled the closet, which turned out to be a giant pain in the neck. Apparently the shelves were too short for the previous owners' liking, so they added some length by nailing 6 inches of board to the existing shelves. Functionally, that worked great, but aesthetically it looked gross and unfinished. So Matt caulked the seams and painted everything white so the shelves looked seamless. He also painted the walls in the closet, which was difficult given the small space and the multiple nooks he had to work around.

I handled the rest of the white trim, which was pretty easy. But it was not without its messes, and I ended up with paint all over my arms. As the day wrapped up, I was also able to sneak up on Matt and take a picture of his paint-frosted hair before he knew what was happening :) Fortunately for us, paint washes off of skin and hair pretty easily - it's the clothes you have to worry about.

Day 2 was all about the blue! We picked a fun color called "Tropical Lagoon" (or tropical dragoon, as we called it) - a far cry from the browns and tans in every other one of our rooms. It's my attempt to be braver at design, and it's a start. Matt did the edging in the room because I don't have the patience or the technique for edging. It's a lot of over-the-head work, which is tough on the shoulders, so my big strong man takes care of that :) Plus, I really like to cover the big areas with the roller because then I feel like I'm making the biggest difference in the room.

While I rolled on the second layer of blue, Matt took the doors out into the living room and painted them blue as well. Once we put them back on the hinges, they will be framed in white and the contrast will hopefully look cool. So there it is - our funky new wall color! The tans in the tile and the dark brown wood in the vanity will tone it down a notch once they're installed, but for now I'm totally digging our bold new look.

Putting Up Walls

Alright - back to the bathroom!! Matt got around to re-building the walls in the bathroom last week, but we're just now getting around to writing about it. Blame our fun/busy long weekend for that.

Anyway - this wall rebuild went very quickly and easily thanks to Matt's handy skills. I'm a little foggy on the details, so bear with me if any of this seems vague... I was not really involved in this phase, but Matt doesn't have time to write about it so I'm giving it a try.

First, he shimmed the wall studs since the cement board is a tad thinner than the surrounding drywall. That involves nailing drywall shims to the wall studs so once you put the cement board on, the wall and cement are flush. Then he put up a plastic moisture barrier to protect against mold and dry rot. Next came cutting the cement board to size and drilling it into the studs to keep it in place. One good learning from last time: he put blue tape where the studs were while the walls were still open. That way, once the cement board is up, you don't need to guess where to drill your screws.

One of the features that I'm most excited about is the shampoo nook that we are building into the shower. The old shower had one that was functional, but not very attractive. This one is going to have some pizazz, so I'm excited! Matt was able to frame it out with cement, which wasn't too difficult since we're just reusing the existing wood-framed spot.

After the boards were up, he put a weird sticky (alkali-resistant, I'm told) mesh tape along the seams and then mudded over them with cement mortar. That formed a nice, seamless wall base that we will tile over later. We left that to dry overnight, then he sanded it down the next day. Then he put some spackle over the sanded area to smooth it out some. Apparently cement mortar is very gritty and looks bad if you don't spackle over it - who knew...

Finally, it was time to texture the walls to make them match the existing surroundings. That involves spraying on a thick aerosol and letting it set, then taking a putty knife and dragging it over the goop to match the "knock down" texture commonly found on walls. He used the same patching and texturing technique for the area around the old vanity (where drywall was ripped out during demo).

And with that, the walls were back up and it started looking like a real room. It's a lot less scary when there are walls - something about seeing the guts of your house is a little unsettling. And that also meant that I could help with the next phase... Painting!!

P90X Results Blog Part 2

I just wanted to take a break from the bathroom remodel and throw in a quick update on my workouts.  Before we started on the bathroom, I finished my second round of P90X. That was actually the reason why we started when we did. There is not enough time in the day to do a 60-90 minute workout and get much else done. So I’ll be resting my workout muscles and flexing my remodeling muscles for the next few weeks.

This 3 month period I lost another 10lbs, bringing my total weight loss to 25lbs since I started in the fall.  I feel like I have gotten myself back to a good weight, now it’ll be about maintaining that and building more muscle when I start up again. I’m still doing the pictures, and it’s totally worth it. I get to look at the comparison and see the transformation. I’m thinking one or two more sets of 90 days and I can send in the pictures to Tony Horton to show on his infomercial.

Bird Art

Another brief hiatus from the bathroom blogging to talk about some fun art that we made for my mom for Mother’s Day.

I got this idea from HGTV, but I actually didn’t see how they made it, just the end product. It was a whimsical little bird silhouette on a bright yellow canvas. They put the picture in a really modern room and it just looked so cool and funky. And since my mom loves birds, I knew it would be the perfect gift for her.

So we completely improvised on how to make these things – I bought canvas at Michael’s as well as some white acrylic paint. I decided that the little canary could use a buddy, so we bought 2 of everything. Then we went over to Home Depot to get spray paint. I thought about painting it with a brush by hand, but I really wanted a more even coverage without brush strokes showing. I settled on a canary yellow (how appropriate) and paired it with a complementary shade of pink. Once we had all of the materials, we went home and got started.

1) I covered the canvases both with the white acrylic paint to develop a good base and take away from the beige tint of the canvas.

2) I put on some cleaning gloves and held the birds in place while Matt proceeded to spray them from a distance of about 12-18 inches. I had to move my fingers around to make sure we got the full outline of the birds.

3) Peel off the paper birds and let it dry. That’s all folks! Easy, peasy gift that turned out so cute!

I did have to go back and fix that little owl’s eye since he was being less than cooperative in the painting process. We gave them to my mom on Sunday and she loved them. Now she just has to find a place in the house to show them off :)

Final Demo Day(s)

We hit a few little snags as we headed into what was going to be our final demo day. To start with, we wanted to have fun on the weekend instead of working. So on Friday night, we went out to Dave & Buster’s with some of my co-workers for games and food. Saturday morning, Matt woke up at the crack of dawn to go wakeboarding with Doug, and I went to a fun volunteer event for HopeKids. That night, we pushed off work a little longer and decided to go to Grimaldi’s for some pizza – followed by watching “Tangled” at home. It was a nice, relaxing night. But then on Sunday we had to hop to it to make up for lost time.

Matt spent a good portion of the day soldering together the new pipes for the shower so we could finally stop that pesky leak. As he assembled the fixture in the bathroom, he was not feeling too great about one of his weld joints, and told me that he was nervous it was not going to hold. But he finished up and I went out and flipped the water supply back on. As he suspected, water shot all over the place and we had to turn it off again to assess the leak points. Matt was able to do some fancy cutting and re-soldering around the affected area, and got it to a point where it was water-tight. Unfortunately, when we turned the water on again, there were a few more joints with small leaks as well. Turns out the valve we bought for the shower was sub-par. So despite his heroic effort, Matt was not able to save “Frankenpipe,” as we affectionately called him.

Soldering Materials...

Soldering In Action...

Jordan Supervising the Project



Installing the Finished Product:

The next day, I was calling around for plumbers and got a reference from my good friend Kristina for an independent guy she knew from church. After work that day, he came over and had no trouble replacing the bad parts and getting everything back in to working order. And he did it so fast and so well that Matt even hired him on to replace the sink valves while he was there. Rhett is totally our “guy” now for any future plumbing endeavors. Matt can do plumbing just fine (he did our entire Master Bath on his own with no issues), but for the low cost and the amount of time it took Rhett versus us, it’s well worth it!

So that put us back on track with the remodel, and Matt spent the next hours scraping up the rest of the laminate flooring and cleaning up the drywall around the shower.

And that’s it. The demo is done! He’s already started making some good strides on piecing things back together – more to come (with pictures) later.