This is another great deal.

I just got an email from Borders offering a discount of 25% off of your entire purchase now through 7/12/09.  Use coupon code SLB7010T at Borders.com, or use this printable coupon in-store.

Also good at Waldenbooks!!!

Go forth and read…

I haven’t posted any deals in awhile, partially due to my lack of postiness in general, and partly because there are just so many other bloggers doing it.

This is a pretty good deal though, and makes a trip to The Rainforest Cafe almost affordable.

Get $10 off a $25 purchase with this printable coupon.  Expires July 31st.

Enjoy!

Kate at One More Thing is doing a weekly carnival of sorts, choosing a topic for other bloggers to write about.  This  week’s topic is “The Beach”.  Two in one day?  Well, I had to catch up…

I have a love/hate relationship with the beach.

I grew up at the Jersey Shore, and we were members of a beach club.  We spent nearly every summer day there, either on the beach or at the pool.  Or both.  And I’ve lived in Florida for 25 years now.

The Hate

1. Being fair-skinned, I got sunburned. A lot.  And severely.  Much to my family’s disbelief, I could and did get sunburned on cloudy days.  Being the late 60’s and early seventies we didn’t know what we do now about the risks of sun exposure and the concept of sunscreen.  As a result I have had a couple of lovely souvenirs of  my childhood – two cute little skin cancers.

2. I never get tan. Not enough so as anyone  would notice, anyway.  I remember coming back to NJ from three months in Florida and being really, really dark tan for me.  My classmates invariably asked, “You were in Florida?  Where’s your tan?”   Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

3.  Bathing suits. Having a far-less-than-healthy body image, I’ve not felt comfortable on a beach since age 10.   If then.   Even when I had a bikini body.  I constantly looked around, checking to see if anyone was looking at me.  I wanted no one to look at me.  I wanted to have a look that made everyone to want to look at me.

4.  Sand in my swimsuit. I think you’re all with me on this one…

5.  Long walks to the bathroom. And lazy parents who make their kids go in the sand, and then bury it.  Humiliating!!!  MY parents – not me.   My Son would never miss a trip to the bathroom!

The Love

1.  I love the beach at night. I love to walk along or sit on the shore and  listen and watch the waves.  I’ve often gone to the beach at night when my soul needed replenishing, and it did the job every time.  The smell, the ocean mist, the sand slipping through my fingers.  Ialways leave recommitted to something, with a great sense of  inner peace.  Heady stuff.

2.  I love the  beach on a cold, windy, rainy day. All of #1 applies.  Add a couple of dogs and it’s awesomer.  When you can leave the beach and go sip hot chocolate by a fire it’s nirvana.

3.  I love riding waves and swimming in the ocean. I’ve even done it naked.  In St. Maarten.  Whoops!

4.  The boardwalk. I remember riding the carousel and the rides in Asbury before it was too seedy, and not minding the seediness of Seaside Heights on summer weekends as a teen.  The lights, the sounds, the smells, the boys – it was everything teenagerhood should be.

5.  Son’s love of the beach. The water, the sand, running after birds…he is my happiness.

The love definitely outweighs the hate.  And Son loves it, so you might even see me there on a not-too-hot day.  I’ll be the one in copious amounts of sunscreen.  I won’t be looking around, though.  My attention will be completely focused on my little boy as I bask in the rays of his joy.

Kate at One More Thing is doing a weekly carnival of sorts, choosing a topic for other bloggers to write about.  This Last week’s topic is “Did That Really Just Happen?”, but I’m apparently a week behind.  Sue me.

Kate’s life.  As of late.

That’s all I’ve got.

I know, that’s a ridiculous statement to anyone who has an iota of frugality in their body. And in most cases it is ridiculous.

But sometimes we need to think outside the box to get what we really want, and save money in the bargain.

Prime example: I needed a table and chairs for the kitchen in our new home. I considered the size of the kitchen (quite large) and the color of the floors (brown ceramic tile – ugh!), and spent some time looking in stores, catalogs and online before I decided I wanted a farmhouse-style table with off white legs and a wood top, plus six chairs. I found one I liked at a local furniture store, and it would have cost $1000. I just didn’t want to spend the money…

So, off to Craigslist I went, and spent a few weeks checking the listings every day. I found a few that I liked, but they were either too small or too expensive. The ones I liked were listed in the $500 – $600 range – too much.

And then I saw a listing with a table and chairs that looked darn near perfect. The catch? They were selling a china hutch with it. I don’t want or need one, and I wasn’t particularly fond of the one being offered. They hadn’t purchased it as a set, and it was a cheap fiberboard piece, likely purchased at K-Mart or Walmart. Just not my cuppa tea. Besides, the only appropriate place for the hutch in the kitchen was already appropriated in my plans to house the pasta table (a lovely butcher block table on wheels that my mother had handed down to me, and that many friends have tried unsuccessfully to buy from me over the years).

So, ick on the hutch.

But.

All of the pieces – the table, leaf, six chairs and the dadgum hutch -were priced at $200. Two hundred dollars!!!!

So, I made an appointment to see it. Naturally.

I knew I wanted the set the moment I walked in. First, the house was immaculate. That tells me that the owners are clean, and took care of the pieces. BIG bonus points. If the house was a pigsty it would be really difficult for me to buy a button, let alone furniture.

Second, the table and chairs were almost exactly what I wanted. Wood top with a leaf (so it could sit 4 or 6), white legs, and six chairs that are sturdy as heck. There were a few things I wasn’t entirely crazy about – the scale of the legs was large compared to the table – not my preference. And the wood top was basically rectangular, but was beveled and curvy. My clean-lines loving self would have preferred a regular old rectangle.

And then there was that hutch. That I didn’t want or need. Or like.

What did I do? I gave her a deposit right there, of course. Then I corralled my best friend (the one silly enough to purchase a pickup truck) to help us pick everything up and drop it off at the new house – and this was before we moved in.

And that night I listed the hutch on Craigslist, and sold it the next day for $75. In retrospect I should have asked for more, based on the number of inquiries I received. Live and learn…

So, I bought something I didn’t need to get something I did, and wound up paying only a net $125 for a wood table, leaf and six chairs.

And doesn’t it look nice?

Some things just piss me off. There are some charges/policies that should be outlawed. They are just not fair. And when I come across something like this at certain times of the month the level of pissed-offedness increases exponentially.

Today I needed to go to the bank to deposit the checks from our renters (I’m thrilled that not only was it on time, it was a week early!). Since we are going out of town and their bank is right down the street from mine, I thought I’d stop by and get the checks cashed and just deposit cash into my own account, avoiding the hold-time for deposits of local checks.

Son and I stopped into Regions Bank and were immediately greeted by a teller. I handed her the checks (two because they pay it out of two separate accounts) and she asked me if I was cashing them. After answering yes, she asked if I have an account with them. When I replied in the negative she said, “No? Then there will be a charge per check of…” and frankly, that’s all I heard. Apparently this bank is one of THOSE banks that charges a fee if you cash a check and don’t have an account with them. Even though it is DRAWN ON THEIR BANK

I find this practice reprehensible, and have ever since I heard that Bank of America started the trend several years ago. If someone is nice enough to accept a check from me (for whatever services rendered) I expect that part of the service I get in exchange for letting the bank use my money (to make themselves heaploads more money!) is to CASH the damn CHECK. Whether the payee chooses to deposit it in an account of their own or go to my bank to get some cold, hard cash should make not one iota of difference. Not. One. Iota.

Regions Bank was instantly added to the list titled “Banks With Which I Will Never Do Business”.

As steam started coming out of my ears I took back my checks, replied that there is no way I would ever do business with a bank who would charge such a usurious charge, took Son’s hand and started to walk out of the bank.

Son pulled me towards the restroom, as he is on a quest to visit every restroom within an ever-constant 100 yard radius. I told him, loudly, “Sorry, not today. They’d probably charge you to see it, anyway.”

Kate at One More Thing is doing a weekly carnival of sorts, choosing a topic for other bloggers to write about.  This week’s topic is “In the Kitchen”.

Being a lifelong picky eater,  and having been single until age 37, I’m not known for my culinary skills.  I can follow a recipe, but spent most of my life thinking, “Why bother?”  It’s much easier to go through a fast food drive-thru than to take the time and energy to cook a healthy meal.

Hmmm.  Could that be part of the reason for my life-long weight struggle?  Ya think?

Because I cooked so little I would get completely stressed out when we would – very occasionally – invite company to share a meal.  Since marrying and having a son I’d definitely expanded my culinary horizons, but had never really entertained at home before.  Our last home was small enough that these visits were few and far between, thank goodness.  I would stress about every aspect of the visit – from the cleanliness of the house to the menu to cooking each item.  Trying to coordinate the meal so that everything was hot and ready at the same time caused me enough stress to send Husband to the garage to look for the wing nut from his 1977 Schwinn, which suddenly became of the utmost importance.

Since we moved into the new house I have room to spare.  We’ve had company every weekend, and sometimes during the week.  This past weekend I’d planned a Father’s Day Brunch, and even though I was sick we went ahead with our plans.

As I was cleaning up I noticed that I hadn’t gotten nervous or stressed this t ime.  In fact, I don’t think I’d gotten nervous or stressed about entertaining since we’d moved to the new house.

Could be maturity, could be that I’ve gotten enough of these visits under my belt to make it that much less a foreign enterprise.

Could be that I love my new kitchen.  Then again, who wouldn’t? At this point I could just link to the post about my kitchen, but I think I’ll just repeat it here:

I posted about the bold paint choices we made for our kitchen, and I finally have some photos to show…

Here’s what the kitchen looked like before we began:

That’s Son in the last shot.  Always happy!

I already had this print hanging in the kitchen in my old house.  That kitchen was painted the same yellow that most of the rest of that house, which is the same color we used to paint over the paneling in Son’s playroom.  It is one of my inspirations for the new kitchen, and this time I wanted to go bolder/  This print isn’t short on bold colors!

Then I found some inexpensive wood bowls (vases?) in Homegoods, and I knew I had my kitchen color – Volcanic Blast by Behr.  Well, at least one of them…

Too bright for the entire kitchen, I decided on green to ground the orange.  I picked the green in 5 seconds on the first green color page on Behr’s color wheel.  It’s Herbal Garden…

Here is the kitchen today…

See the table and chairs I got for a net $125 on Craigslist?  I’ll post about that coup and why it’s a “net $125″ later this week…  And after seeing this photo that red bag is no longer hanging from that drawer pull. 

Those plants were free, and the pots were 99 cents at Ikea.  I was going to paint some regular clay pots using the paint from the walls, but I like the white – and they have cool textures you can’t see in the photo.  And that’s an apple I was cutting up for Son.  Whoops…

The original plan was to paint the inside of the bar area the orange-red, but I changed my mind.  I’m so glad – I just love the way the green looks with the off-white cabinets and the black granite!

This entire room makeover cost under $200, and that includes the table and 6 chairs, the paint and a few accessories.  That’s bang for my buck!

So, yeah, I have a great kitchen.  And I love entertaining in it and from it and around it.

After all, it’s where I now spend most of my waking hours.

Who wouldn’t?

What do you say to a parent who has just lost their child?

What words can possibly have any effect?  What can break through layer upon layer of grief and sadness and desperation and fear and senseless guilt and anger and bereftness?

What prayers can you offer them?

I would not be able to breathe.  I would very likely lose my will to live another instant, knowing that Son was not here.    I don’t have any other children, so there would be no need to be strong for the others…

I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone, be comforted by anyone.

There is no comfort when you lose a child.

My heart is breaking for my old, dear friend.  To lose a child so senselessly.  So suddenly.

Being so far away there really is nothing I can do, except grieve along with her.  Leave a message telling her that I’m so very sorry, and that I’m thinking of her.  Lose sleep myself, and check on Son ten times a night.

And hug him tight.  Tight.

I pray she can find a way to breathe.  I pray that she and her husband and her other two  sons can allow themselves to be and do and feel whatever they need to be and do and feel to get through today.

And I pray for the  same thing tomorrow.

I posted about the bold paint choices we made for our kitchen, and I finally have some photos to show…

Here’s what the kitchen looked like before we began:

That’s Son in the last shot.  Always happy!

I already had this print hanging in the kitchen in my old house.  That kitchen was painted the same yellow that most of the rest of that house, which is the same color we used to paint over the paneling in Son’s playroom.  It is one of my inspirations for the new kitchen, and this time I wanted to go bolder/  This print isn’t short on bold colors!

Then I found some inexpensive wood bowls (vases?) in Homegoods, and I knew I had my kitchen color – Volcanic Blast by Behr.  Well, at least one of them…

Too bright for the entire kitchen, I decided on green to ground the orange.  I picked the green in 5 seconds on the first green color page on Behr’s color wheel.  It’s Herbal Garden…

Here is the kitchen today…

See the table and chairs I got for a net $125 on Craigslist?  I’ll post about that coup and why it’s a “net $125″ later this week…  And after seeing this photo that red bag is no longer hanging from that drawer pull. 

Those plants were free, and the pots were 99 cents at Ikea.  I was going to paint some regular clay pots using the paint from the walls, but I like the white – and they have cool textures you can’t see in the photo.  And that’s an apple I was cutting up for Son.  Whoops…

The original plan was to paint the inside of the bar area the orange-red, but I changed my mind.  I’m so glad – I just love the way the green looks with the off-white cabinets and the black granite!

This entire room makeover cost under $200, and that includes the table and 6 chairs, the paint and a few accessories.  That’s bang for my buck!

Now I have to decide what color to paint the family room – which you can see through the bar in the above photo.  A few people have suggested leaving it white, but I’m not sure.  I was thinking of also doing that room a lighter green, or perhaps the dreaded taupe.

What do you think?

I hardly ever write checks anymore.

Most of my bills are charged to a credit card so I can take advantage of the rewards, and I even most of the rest with my bank’s Bill Pay system.   It saves me the cost of mailing, and it saves  paper.  Yay environment!

Still, checks are a necessary evil.  When sending money as a gift of course I send a check.  Last month I had to pay a friend for an item I sold for her.  Last week I had to pay a plumber who didn’t take credit cards.  This week Husband’s cousin did some work on my car.  Check, check, check.

I don’t think I wrote 30 checks all of last year, and I’ll probably write about that this year – perhaps less.  And being a good girl I’ve always saved those canceled checks.  You never know when you’re going to need one, do you?   I don’t ever want a Judge Judy wannabee to give me the evil eye after grumbling, “What do you mean you didn’t get a copy of the check from your bank!!!???  Where did you think you were coming today??!!!!!”

Last year my bank – like just about every other bank – stopped sending us our canceled checks.  A money saving measure, to be sure, but also a great savings on paper.  Yay environment!

But what’s a good record-keeper like me to do?  Well, nothing for the last year.  Why not?  All the usual reasons – I hardly write checks anymore, the bank has them if I really needed one (for a research fee that’s about a million an hour!), I’m too busy to deal with it…

Naughty, naughty record keeper!

All of that changed a couple of months ago.  I started noticing a little check icon next to the checks I wrote on my online banking statement.  Apparently they have added the ability to view these canceled checks.  Whoa!  Terrific!  AND they will let you print them, too.

So,  I’ve now  printed a copy of each check, and stored it in a file on my computer.  If I ever need one I have it, and I don’t  have to pay the bank a million dollars to find it.

The bank taketh, and the bank giveth.  And sometimes I’m smarteth.