Smithsonian Saturday

This week I saw Groupon that I knew Jay and I would enjoy, tickets to the Smithsonian IMAX Theatre (the deal is good through today!)

Without hesitation, I bought it and we planned a little date. I wanted to make sure we got tickets to the show I wanted to see, so we headed downtown a little early to peruse the National Museum of Natural History.

We both really enjoyed the exhibit The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins before seeing the film Grand Canyon Adventure.

The show was definitely worth the Groupon. We even considered buying another one!

Even though we didn’t end up purchasing more tickets, I would like to go back before January to see the exhibit Race: Are We So Different?. Good thing we live so close!

What have you seen at an IMAX theatre?

A Different Case of the Monday’s

Because of a wedding Sunday evening, I moved my day off to Monday this pay-period. It definitely changes the “case of the Monday’s” and made Tuesday just not seem as bad. While I enjoyed having yesterday off, I think I still prefer having every other Friday.

Regardless, it was nice to have a day with my man. We slept in and lounged away the morning before making a healthy lunch that included my zebra tomatoes from the weekend.

There is nothing better than pan fried vegetables on millet! So simple and so delicious!

After our healthy meal we headed to Alexandria to go bowling with a Groupon I bought a while ago.

Believe it or not, I do not really like bowling. My dislike for the game stems mostly from my lack of skill. I guess that is what happens when you grow up playing Duckpin Bowling. Duckpin is a lot like traditional bowling but with smaller pins and balls.

Regardless I had fun and Jay enjoyed showing off his skills. I think if he weren’t so busy he would play in a league. Maybe next summer.

Despite my lack in skill, I was able to beat Jay in one of the 5 games we played.

For dinner Jay made Jenna's Black Eyed Pea Stew. I made it last winter and we all loved it. With the temperatures slowly cooling down, it was the perfect way to end this Monday.

Do you like to bowl? And have you ever played Duckpin bowling?

Let’s Get Sloppy

What can I say, it has been a lazy weekend. Jay and I slept through softball Saturday. While we were sad to miss the game, it still felt great! I didn’t get out of bed until 10:30.

Our original plan was to go to Old Town on Sunday and enjoy brunch at Union Street Pub (using a Groupon). But we had a little more time than we anticipated Saturday, so we went then and stopped at Trader Joe’s for groceries on the way home.

Last night, I made Mama Pea’s Sloppy Josephine’s for Courtney and Lauren. After we enjoyed this easy but scrumptious meal we played Settlers of Catan. Jay got a little defensive as usual and ended up winning. Courtney was ahead most of the game, so it was disappointing to see a seasoned veteran win.

This morning after our long run (more on that tomorrow), Jay and I enjoyed some more Sloppy Josephine’s, but this time over baked potatoes. It was delicious and very satisfying after 15.5 miles.

I have never cooked lentils before now, but man am I hooked. Mary and I were just sitting here coming up with other fabulous combinations. I can’t wait to enjoy lentil more often!

Now I am off to watch some Glee, buy Jay new running shoes and possibly enjoy some ice cream…

What did you do this weekend?

Visiting Vendors Without Breaking the Bank

Planning a wedding in Baltimore while living in DC can be rough! Most vendors are only available during the week to talk about our upcoming wedding because (and understandably so) they have weddings on the weekends!! Then add in the horrific Baltimore Washington traffic and we quickly realized we have a problem.

After evaluating our schedules, Jay and I decided the best way to tackle our vendor dilemma was to just take a day off and do it. Therefore poor Jay spent one of his precious days on break vendor shopping and I sacrificed one of my Fridays off. In the end it wasn’t ALL that bad since each photographer we met with tried to wow us.

We started our adventure on Thursday after work. I don’t know about y’all but I do not do well when I’m hungry!! With a little help from Groupon, we had our first meal at BGR The Burger Joint for $3.16!!! Plus the $4 for each Groupon.

This meal was the perfect dinner and carried my tummy through our first photographer interview and X-Men: First Class with my dad.

The next morning we continued our adventure with bellies full of gourmet bread from my mom’s house. With our cooler packed with soda and some snacks we drove downtown Baltimore for our first meet-up.

About 4 hours and 2 photographers later, we were ready for lunch! And what better way to enjoy it than Buy One Burger, Get One Free!?!?!

I found this deal through the blog I Could Use a Deal. I signed up for the e-mail club and got this nice little e-mail. The coupon worked like a charm and brought our total lunch to $12.00 after tip (I left her about $3). With our bellies full, we headed to see our 3rd photographer for the day.

Our final meal was also thanks to I Could Use a Deal. As I mentioned above, I do not do well hungry. Going into our whirl-wind day, I knew our last photographer was my favorite, so I didn’t want my grumpy tummy to spoil our last meeting. Not quite as hungry as earlier, Jay and I hit-up Quiznos with our coupons in hand and bought 2 subs for $9.99.

At the end of the day, we spent $33. 15 for 3 meals for 2 people. Not bad if I say so myself!! And, more importantly, we found our photographer.  Want to hear about that?  Gotta wait until next week!

Did you visit all your vendors in one day or over several days?

A Deal that is NOT a Deal

I love Groupon, Living social and all the discount websites out there, but it comes a point where a deal is not a deal if you never intended to buy it.

While I buy my fair share of deals/coupons, I only buy ones I intend on using. I even set a date in our calendar to use the deal. There is nothing worse than being caught in the deal dilemma with too many coupons to use. What a waste of money if you never actually use the deal!

90% of the time, Jay and I frequent the place we buy the deal for. If we are already using the product, or love the restaurant than why wouldn’t we take advantage of a good deal?!?!?

While we tend do buy deals to places you would normally frequent, we also buy the occasional Groupon or Living social deal to try a new restaurant for date night (and put it on our calendar). Or, we buy deals to attractions we have on our list of things to do in DC, like the Newseum.

On days that I plan to go out with friends, I always check out the Instant Deals through Living social. Just this weekend, I scored a $25 for $40 deal to Joe Theismann’s where we planned to watch the Preakness. After tip, tax and a few drinks, we only saved about $8, but that is $8 more than if we hadn’t found the deal. Plus, we already planned to meet at Theismann’s!

The other really great things about Living social’s instant deals is if you do not redeem them within the designated window, they reimburse you!!

(Source)

This week, we also scored a deal through Daily Candy for $6 tickets to Bridesmaids. I loved this movie. LOVED. I am so glad Lauren suggested the movie for our meet-up on Sunday. And, while it was nice to save the money on the movies, I would have been fine paying full price. This is another great example of a date we had previously planned, but scored a sweet deal but from a new source Daily Candy (no pun intended).

(Source)

For those of you who would like to partake in $6 movie tickets to Bridesmaids, go visit Daily Candy now. This deal is available until Monday, May 30, so go get it!!

Lastly, I will leave you with my brother, Jim’s, movie review of Bridesmaids. I agree with some of his points about the movie. Parts of it did drag on and some characters were way over-exaggerated, but I laughed a lot and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Have you seen Bridesmaids? What did you think?

Do you have a Groupon, Living social, Daily Candy policy? What other sites have you found great deal through?

Budgeting and Shopping for Clothes

As I mentioned in a post appropriately called “Spend Spend Spend”, I put $50 towards clothing each month. Some months I spend it, some months I do not and so I save it for a fun afternoon shopping with friends.

This is my third summer in the working world. My first summer I spent some money building a work wardrobe, but last summer I really cut back on spending due to moving and a plethora of weekend vacations. As the weather warms, I find my summer wardrobe could use a face-lift, so you can imagine how excited I was to go shopping with my girlfriends last weekend.

One cannot take shopping with my girlfriends lightly since we go prepared, very prepared. The Friday before we went I started to receive e-mails about coupons. My friend Lauren found coupons to almost every store on our list!! It was incredible and saved us a lot of money!!!

Our first stop was Nordstrom Rack, where I bought two dresses and a pair of shoes.

The dress on the left and the shoes are multi functional for work and summer dates, while the dress on the right is intended for fanciers nights out and a trip to Vegas we’re planning for later this year.

Unfortunately, we did not have any coupons to the Rack, but I still saved a fortune ($93.03 on the black dress and $63.03 on the green print dress). Additionally, I saved $50.05 on the metallic BCBG shoes. You know the last time I owned designer shoes?!?!?! If you guessed never then you are right.

My total savings for Nordstrom Rack came to $206.11.

Now, on to the Gap Outlet on King Street. I probably bought way too much at this store, but it was so hard not to with some of the deals I got.

I think I did pretty well considering I bought 9 items for just under $100 but saved $107.17. Plus, only one item that I bought would not be acceptable at work. Can you guess which one?

The best deal in that store was either the Navy Summer Cardigan for $10.70 (originally $34.99) or the Khaki Pencil Skirt $13.20 (originally 36.99). I was also pretty excited to pick up the bronze sequin skirt for $5.59. It will be great for going out in DC this summer but at the same time was not a big investment.

We combined Gap Outlet pricing, with a sale and a buy 2 get one free coupon for massive savings. When shopping for clothes, you almost have to turn on your grocery store attitude and use your double coupons when and where you can!

Our final destination was Old Navy. Here we also had some coupons burning holes in our pockets, but as you can imagine at this point we were tired. We lost our one friend, Courtney, after the Gap Outlet, so Lauren and I headed to Old Navy with the quick in-and-out shopping mind set.

Considering, we were pretty much done for the day, I think we did pretty well. This is the one store where I bought more clothes for play than anything else. Though I bet I could get away with my new Bermuda shorts on a casual Friday…

At Old Navy, I took advantage of two coupons. One was $10 off $50 and the other for 50% off one item. Because I was using two different coupons, I had to be rung-up twice. Most cashiers are pretty understanding and do not have a problem processing transactions this way, so don’t fret if you come in with multiple coupons. I think the $30.97 was worth it!

Wow, that was exhausting!!! I hope you learned a little something from my shopping adventure. In the end, I spent about $275 for 17 items (an average of $16 an item) and saved $344.25. Not too shabby if I say so myself!

How do you budget for clothing?

Are you a bargain hunter like me (please share your secrets)?

We found our coupons for this shopping adventure by googling our favorite stores. You can also get coupons e-mailed to your inbox from stores like Gap, Gap Outlet, Old Navy and more. Since I live so close to a Gap Outlet, I signed up for their periodic e-mails so I know when is a good time to go shop!

For all my shopping related coupons, I set up label rules in my Gmail-box. This allows me to quickly pin-point which e-mails are shopping coupons. If I am shopping soon I will pay more attention to these e-mails. If not, I simply click on the “coupons” label and delete all e-mails before moving on.

Kanlaya Thai Cuisine

Saturday evening, Jay and I decided to have a Groupon/ Living Social date night.

We started the evening at Kanlaya Thai Cuisine in Chinatown. A few months ago my boss saw this Groupon pop-up and recommended it to me. Jay and I find that Groupon/ Living Social is a great way to explore new restaurants on date night while staying within our budget.

As soon as we sat down, we knew that this was a great pre-movie restaurant. It is located around the corner from the Chinatown movie theatre and has very reasonable menu prices. In fact, we had trouble using the entire $40 value we had on our Groupon.

Jay was able to order a beer (he could have had 2) and we had the Golden Triangle appetizer. Honestly, I found this appetizer a little flavor-less. It was a simply crispy fried tofu, served w/ crushed peanuts and sweet dipping sauce. The sweet dipping sauce saved the dish.

For dinner, I had Tofu with mixed Vegetable Pad King (ginger, onions, scallions and mushrooms in light bean sauce). As you can tell from the picture I dug right in. It was soo tasty, that I had to remind myself to stop and take a picture before cleaning my plate. This delicious and filling meal was only $10.

Meanwhile, Jay opted for the Beef Pad Thai (Rice noodles with spiced tofu, egg, bean sprouts, scallions and peanuts). He loved it and also found it very filling. I had a quick bite of his and was very glad for my menu choice. But in the end, he was happy and that is all that matters. His meal came in it the perfect price of $12.

(Source)

After dinner we saw Water for Elephants. Jay choose Sucker Punch with our last Fandango Living Social coupon, so I got to choose the movie. I was very tempted to make him see Disney’s Prom, but alas I was a nice fiancé and took him to Water for Elephants. He was nice enough to acknowledge that for a chick flick he was entertained. I also liked the movie, but I didn’t love it. Maybe I am getting old, but I thought there was way too much violence!!!

Have you see Water for Elephants? What did you think?

What restaurants have you discovered through Groupon or Living Social? Tell me the good, bad and ugly!

The Newseum and a Fast One

Today, Jay, Mary, Travis and I went the the Newseum to redeem our Groupons.

Mary and I can't remember what we bought the tickets for, but whatever it was, it was definitely less than $21.95!!! We all enjoyed our visit but agreed that it was not worth $21.95. I think this is another great example of how DC Tourists need to do their research before visiting the city! But, then again, this is one of the few DC museums that does cost money!

Some of my favorite exhibits included the Berlin Wall because my mom lived in West Germany during the 1960's.

You can tell which side of the wall faced East versus West based on its color. The cement wall that faced the East was painted white so that the citizens who tried to escape at night could be seen. The side of the wall that faced West were graffiti-ed in protest. To graffiti, the artists had to defy both East and West Police, as the wall was on East Germany soil.

Another favorite was the 911 exhibit. Did you know only one journalist was killed in 911, and he was a photographer. The eerie part was that when they found his digital camera, they could retrieve his photos. Can you imagine seeing what your loved one saw moments before their death?

There was a great visiting exhibit on "The King".

A powerful exhibit on how the press portrayed Hurricane Katrina.

Did you know that two local newspapers covered the hurricane? One never stopped printing and provided the only news available to the region. Reporters were often put in the situation to save lives before reporting the news!

The Newseum even covered stories that hit too close to home.

The museum also provided a great view of the Capitol.
And great architecture!

And, an interactive flair!

When we arrived home, Jay and went to Trader Joe's to pick up a few items for this week. Thankfully, due to our big shop last weekend, this trip was quick, inexpensive and fruitful. While we didn't need the necessities, we spent less and picked up a few fun items for nights when we just don't feel like cooking!

One of my favorites being TJ's Meatless Meatballs. A favorite in my family once my older brother decided to be a vegetarian. I pulled a fast one on Jay by buying them, preparing them and then not informing him of the meals true ingredients until after he consumed them.

Thankfully, he was pleasantly surprised! He even admitted that he couldn't tell!!! I think we found a new meat-less staple!!

Have you ever pulled a fast one on your significant other? How did it turn out for you?

Oh, and THANK YOU to my photographer of the DAY Jay!