1st Annual VC Girls Reunion

The first job I had out of college built some amazing coworker camaraderie, for a variety of reasons not worth going into. Suffice to say, those friendships carried on long past our quitting dates and I am ever-so-grateful for those ladies.

When Jordan and I were living in Sioux Falls, those friendships meant couple date nights, game nights, coffee dates, weekly lunch dates...and I really, really missed all of that with these friends when we moved to KC.

With Omaha as the middle ground between KC and SF (and three mommies eager to have a girls' weekend), it was easy to persuade them!

We didn't take pictures of the room, but we stayed in a suite at the Hampton Inn in Omaha - best. idea. ever. They have a fabulous free breakfast, where we enjoyed a little coffee with our creamer in the morning, waffles hot off the press, an oatmeal bar, cereal, eggs, bacon, bagels, toast...the list goes on. Delicious. And the suite was perfect for 4 of us - it had a little mini fridge, a couch, and LOTS of open space. We didn't feel crammed in the room when we were there, which was really nice. We were also able to relax in the hotel's hot tub and pool. Yes, please.

We enjoyed two dinners out - one at The Twisted Fork and the other at Cheddar's. The Twisted Fork gets props for adding avocado to my BLT for free. Cheddar's I'd definitely visit again - affordable, delicious, and lot of options. (Also a quick lunch at Subway, and who can forget the homemade ice cream at Ted & Wally's?)

Me & Jess! These drinks were only $3.75!

Shalaine & DeeDee!

We saw a movie (Gravity, which I've heard that astronauts have said is the closest they've ever seen to an accurate depiction of what space is actually like) and relaxed in these bad boys - all for no extra charge! - at Majestic Cinema of Omaha.

Shopped till we dropped at Just for Her Expo, and also enjoyed 10-minute chair massages, so nice after a night of sleeping in an unfamiliar bed.

I got this cute owl for the kitchen wall and also a couple Christmas gifts.

And all in all I came out around $250 for the whole trip! (And it could have been even cheaper!)
$80 - hotel
$25 - gas
$45 - food
$95 - Christmas gifts and wall decoration
$6 - chair massage

What sort of trips do you go on with your friends? How else are you intentional with your friendships?

I'm So Frugal I...

It's pretty common knowledge that I'm pretty darn frugal. Other people know that Jordan and I managed to pay off $88,000 of undergrad debt in 3.5 years. I get asked "How do you do it???" a lot.

So here's some of "how I do it":

At the grocery store, I buy only off the weekly sales ads. (With the exception of the "staples"...but even for staples, milk is the only thing I [generally] pay full price for. I watch for sales on bread, butter, cereal, hamburger, chicken, cheese etc and then stock up.) (I just looked in my freezer and I have 8lbs of butter that I paid around $1.76/lb for!)

I only buy milk from a certain Walgreens (39th and Broadway, KC peeps), where I can get a gallon of 2% milk for $3.69+tax. The same brand at my HyVee is $4.38+tax. WHAT.

My other grocery store "rule" is that it must be $1.99 or less. I pretty much always hit this "rule", with a few exceptions (milk being one). 

I cook everything from scratch. No "pre-made" frozen meal stuff in this apartment. (Frozen pizza. But only if they're $1.99 or less.)

I wash ziploc bags. (Within reason, people! No gross raw-meat baggies or moldy cheese baggies...yuck.)

I seriously contemplate my "larger" purchases. (To clarify: "larger" to me means $30-50+) Example: After 2.5years of wanting a green bedskirt to match the quilt mom made Jordan and I as a wedding gift, I finally bought one. Until a few month ago, my most recent jean purchase was 6 years ago. I only bought a new pair because the current ones bit the dust (aka, I wore them so thin my fingernail poked a hole in them, haha).

On the very rare occasions that I buy new clothes, I try to always buy off the sale rack and then I leave them in the shopping bag, with the tags on, for a week or two. If I haven't "had" to wear it within two weeks, I obviously don't need/want it, so I return it.

I'm not much of a couponer. That's not to say I don't use them; if I have a coupon, I check to make sure the generic brand isn't still cheaper than the coupon brand (and, generally, generic is the best-priced option).

I have relatively long hair...that I only wash twice a week (Monday and Thursday). Shampoo/conditioner is spendy and this makes it last much longer.

I rarely eat lunch out. The more lunches I can bring from home, the better. We also rarely eat dinner out (I know it looks like we eat out quite a bit...but it's generally with a Groupon, where we can get a pretty good deal). If we do eat out, I always bring home the leftovers.

Getting "fancy" coffee rarely happens - only if I'm meeting up with friends at a coffeeshop; so maybe once every other month. Same goes for going out for drinks. (Which in my case is always A drink...why waste money on more than one!?)

Jordan drinks coffee every day. The man can't function without it. And no Folger's either. We always do the World Market coffee deal. (Scroll down in that post to the "coffee" section.)

I just asked Jordan what "weird frugal things I do" and this is the list he gave me:

• I use a spatula on everything. Not one ounce of food is wasted. I even scrape out the PB jar and the ketchup bottle.
• When my shampoo and/or conditioner is gone, I keep it in the shower for one more washing (okay, maybe 2 or 3) and then add water and shake it up. 
• Long after Jordan has deemed the toothpaste tube to be empty, I'm still squeezing it out. I scrape whatevers in there to the front, and then when that doesn't work anymore, I cut it open and scrape it out with my toothbrush. 
• My parents gave Jordan Netflix for Christmas, because of that, I rarely want a to get a Redbox movie. Okay, I rarely think we need to get a Redbox movie...we have all of Netflix to choose from!
• I buy generic everything. He's probably right about this. 

I'm sure there's more, but that's what comes to mind right now. What do you do to save money?