Recipe of the week 8/23 and a new toy

A friend of mine had brought me a few goodies from her garden and one of the gems was a piece of summer squash. Normally I'm all pasta-focused, but this time I decided to go a different route and followed THIS Stuffed Summer Squash recipe. Not only was it super easy, but it was really tasty as well.

Unfortunately I have no pictures because, well, I was hungry and forgot. Opps. But it's definitely worth it and I didn't use any meat, so it was veggie-licious.

Since I lack photos of my meal, I'll post one of my new toy instead:



I finally bought a new laptop! A gorgeous macbook pro! And I'm still in shock at the deal I got, Apple doesn't offer percent off deals, but they do throw in goodies. They tossed in a free iPod touch (currently on eBay), a printer/scanner/fax machine, and I went during the Sales Tax free weekend, which saved me $100. Awesome, I know.

Also, if you like my screen saver I downloaded the Fliqlo clock HERE.

TV: the free way

When I was getting ready to move into my new place, I did the usual calling to turn on all of the utilities which included HD cable. Then before they came out to install everything, I quickly realized that I could save around $100/month by just not having cable TV. And besides Comedy Central and the Thursday night NBC line-up, I really didn't care for TV all that much. It was the best decision that I made as I was happy just popping in my favorite TV on DVD (the usual suspects being Always Sunny or Arrested Development, in case you were wondering) when I'd sit down to eat or felt like watching something.

Then when my parents came up to visit, I knew that the shows I owned wouldn't cut it with them. They love TV and think that I'm crazy for not having it even though I ensure them that my lack of getting cable is more about my desire to read more and less about being broke.

So I was sharing all of this with a friend of mine when she offered to let me borrow her antenna and HD converter box. Remember those boxes? How in February of last year we were all going to switch from analog TV to HD and the government was giving away vouchers to get the $40something boxes? Remember how you were like, I don't care about this? Yea me too, but low and behold it is of interest to me!

After hooking up the box and antenna I found that I was able to get 8 channels - all the usual suspects (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX), BBC news, PBS, and a couple other random ones. And after a little research into the necessary equipment, as my parents were in love with the idea of me getting this, I found out that the majority of TVs made after 2007 already are equipped with the converter so all you need to buy is an antenna. I ended up going to radioshack and for $30 bought a small, indoor antenna that works great.

I thought I'd share all of this because 1) my mom sent me THIS post which made me feel ahead of the game and 2) because we all need to save money and if you find that you're only watching the Usual Suspects and the rest of the shows on Hulu, you might as well cancel the cable and spend $30 on an antenna. Did I mention all of these channels are in HD? Sure it may cut out during a rain storm (I haven't experienced that yet), but I loooove getting things for free.

You say cheap like it's a bad thing...

So as you might have guessed at the tone of my salvation army/free finds - I love a good deal. I'll brag about it to everyone I see about how cheap I got something. I can't help it; nothing makes me more excited than scoring a deal. And even when I order items online, I never pay full price.

And I'm going to let you in on a not-so-secret method to my online shopping madness. There are two great sites that I contribute to my success: Retail me not and CouponCabin. Now these sites should be used interchangeably and sometimes together, for as you see, retailmenot is sort of a community of promotions, anyone who receives an email or special code from a store can put it on this site to share with everyone. It's a great way to see what promotions are available, but like all things wiki-related, getting information from a number of individual sources can be unreliable at times. CouponCabin, on the other hand, seems to have a connection with certain stores so that the discount that is available to you is coming directly from the store to CouponCabin exclusively. The only downside is that you have to click on the deal, add something to your shopping cart, and then look to see if the promotion actually went through. It's less appealing than getting the code and pasting it into the "promotions" box yourself.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well to share the secret of my money-saving success. Currently I'm debating on buying a few items from World Market (which I'm kicking myself for not remembering how great this store is! And the closet one is in Ohio, the east coast likes the world too, people!) and using CouponCabin I'm able to save $5 off my shipping cost and retailmenot gave me a promotion that grants me 15% off my order - that's over $20 in savings!

And these are the only valuable sites - simply google "[store where you want to buy something] promotion" and see what pops up. I do this for concert tickets too because pre-sale promotions are always available online. How else was I able to surprise my mom with mothers day tickets to see Wicked 2 weeks before they went on sale....

Now the big question is, do I buy this rug.... Yes, I already bought one from overstock.com but frankly it's a little dull, but this might have the opposite effect of which I'm nervous about.

Whatdayathink? (Image can also be found HERE.)