Our Fun Day Out

After working our little fannies off getting our house in order I wanted to treat myself and my girls to a nice day of shopping and going to lunch.  I was inspired by my friend and fellow blogger over at Blessed Beyond Measure to do it sooner, rather than later.  Sometimes in the middle of a lot of hard work you need to take a day off and do something fun.  Saturday was our day to do exactly that.

Friday night I gave the girls their allowance along with an additional $5 bonus.  I told them it was because they had been working so hard and doing such a good job in helping me get things cleaned up and put away, plus they had helped me get the RV ready to sell and had been incredibly patient and resilient during the whole move in process.  I am very proud of them.

We started out Saturday morning checking out thrift stores looking for gifts, items for our house or whatever caught our fancy.  As it turned out there wasn't much that we found that was worth buying.  Not much tempted us to part with our hard earned cash.  So we went to lunch.

I had received a gob of coupons to area restaurants.  Normally I toss these in the recycle bin but last time I received them I decided to cut some of them out and put them in the glove compartment of our truck.  We went through them and decided to go to Burger King.  We ordered two Jumbo Jack meals complete with fries and a refillable drink for me and my oldest for $7.99.  The youngest ordered a 10 piece chicken nuggets for $3.  It came with fries.  It was more food than we could eat but quite enjoyable.  We left feeling pretty full and ready to tackle a few more thrift stores.

In the afternoon we took another break and stopped in to visit the mom of a friend of ours at the nursing home.  She loves it when the girls come to see her.  We stayed for about an hour and then headed off to check out more thrift stores.  At this point we still hadn't bought anything.

At the final store we went to I found a brand new Belgian waffle iron for $4.99.  I thought it would be nice to have so we could make more waffles in a shorter amount of time and we could eat together instead of in shifts as we often do so everyone gets a hot waffle.  We tried it out on Sunday and I really was nice.

As we were leaving the store my daughter was checking out the bargain table set up outside.  The sign said "Fill A Bag For $1".  We rummage around in all the stuff and my daughter picked up a purse to move and I recognized it as a Kate Spade.  It was in wonderful condition except that it appeared to have had something spilled all over it.  I checked it out and inside was a matching wallet in equal condition.  My thought was for $1 I could risk it and see if I could clean it.  We grabbed a bag and stuck it inside.

We also found a freezer container, three votive candle holders, a laundry sign we felt we could makeover, a wooden matte for a picture frame, a cute little wicker basket and a decorative hook that I thought would be nice in our garden or on our porch to hang a flower basket on next spring.

After that bonanza we headed back toward home and stopped for gas before heading over to A & W for a root beer float.  I used a coupon that got us three medium sized floats for 99¢ each.  We also used another coupon to get an order of fried cheese curds for $1.99.  They were really yummy.

On the way home we stopped at ShopKo to get a few things that were on sale in their flyer and use one of the $10 coupons I was given at my last visit.  I treated myself to the cutest long sleeved top on sale for $7.88 regularly $19.99.  We found flip flops on clearance for $1.59 a pair so the girls each picked out two pair to put up until next spring.  I bought two of their basic pillows on sale for $2.88 each to use with my new pillow shams for my bed.  I also wanted to get a rug for the downstairs bathroom.  I found a nice one on sale for $15.  I wanted a good quality one that won't fall apart after a few washings.  It is also super soft on bare footsies.  I picked up a bag of cat food on sale and used a $1 coupon.  I also grabbed another bag of Milky Ways off the clearance shelf for my new pumpkin jar. 

We finished off our day by going home and making up a veggie plate with dip.  Healthy snacks to counter our junk food lunch and afternoon snack.  After putting away our new purchases we settled in to munch and watch a marathon of How I Met Your Mother on our Roku.  It was the perfect way to end our day.