Ashley 1 Black Friday 0

So let me tell you I did my fair share of black friday shopping there was to be done. Hubby and I rolled our butts out of bed at the 3:00am and found some fabulous deals

Here is what we bought:

Front Loading Washer and Dryer $588 for the pair

Elliptical Machine I think it was around $450.00

32inch flat screen tv $250.00

After we were done shopping at 5:00am Ron and I went back home and went to bed!! Great deals though, and we're getting some awesome rebates so for about $1000.00 we got a bunch of great stuff!

When you hit rock bottom there is no where to go but up

Sorry I haven't written in a while

Life has been extremely... well lets tell it like it is... AWFUL at the Danforth household!

Hubby and I woke up Monday morning to the sounds of a waterfall, (sounds beautiful right?)Well.. that waterfall was coming from our water heater which in turn was creating an indoor pool in our finished basement. So we immediately had to haul out all of our furniture on to the lawn (this includes 3 ton of pellets, a lot of storage, and 3 couches... among other pieces of large furniture) So we have had two days of non stop clean up and dealing with plumbers, insurance, and service master.

On top of all of this my Uncle Richard passed away suddenly this morning. My heart goes out to my poor aunt and cousins.

So that is why I love the saying from my mother: "When you hit rock bottom there is really no where to go but up"

Thrifting Question For All....

So I had a nice weekend. I spent some time with the Conway gals on Friday night, went thrifting with my mother Saturday morning, and spent some time with our friends having cocktails on Saturday night.

For some reason talk of my thrifting adventures came up a lot this weekend. A lot of our close friends read my blog and im always excited to share my finds and strategies.

A talk of thrifting ethics came up and I began pondering these questions:

• When you receive many items for free from stores (whether it be from cash back, or register rewards, or coupons & Sales) should you donate these items to charity ? (for instance I have many tubes of free toothpaste under my sink, and I understand that an individual does not need to have 5 tubes of toothpaste at one time, but you can always use toothpaste).

• Should people who are fortunate enough to be able to buy brand new clothes shop at rummage sales or thrift stores? Or should thrift stores and rummage sales be only for people who cannot afford to buy new clothing for themselves and their family?

I've been thinking a lot about these conversations this weekend, but I would like to know what do you think?

Side Note: Hubby and I are extremely lucky to have such wonderful friends who are able to discuss diverse points of view on so many topics.

Free Stuff In My Mailbox

I came home to a sweet surprise in our mailbox today. I love getting things other than bills and junk mail.

In my mail I found these free items:

• A FULL SIZED box of Betty Crocker Au Gratin potatoes with .50 off coupon
• Free any color panty coupon from Victoria Secret with no purchase necessary. (Im not a believer of credit cards but the Victoria Secret Credit Card has some awesome deals)
• Free Barenaked granola bar with 1.00 off coupon

*Many of these deals were found on Frugal Focus.com

More Dump Finds!

The dump has been crazy lately. Every time I go im found moving around a bunch of people whether it be at the dump store, the wood pile, leaf pile etc... My great find though that I did get my hands on before another lady was this stack of brand new greeting cards. This stack had everything from get well to happy birthday. This was perfect, and they all had the correct envelopes with them!

Shoes are a girls best friend

Our town has a new thrift store its called It's My Girlfriends. It is a very cute boutiquey looking store with some great stuff. I went in last weekend. I didn't have great luck in the clothing section but I did find some great shoes. These ladies had some great Ann Klein shoes in just my size! They were leather shoes and barely worn. I rarely shell out $15.00 for a pair of used shoes but since my mall episode (see previous blogs) I was happy to find something that i liked, was comfortable and stylish.

The bakery has a thirft store!

So hubby and I eat alot of bread products ( a low carb diet is not in our vocabulary). We both are irritated by the price of bread and rolls these days. Well... a few months ago we stumbled upon the Country Kitchen Bread Thrift Store. This store is only open a few days a week and has breads that their due date is only 5-7 days out (perfectly fine for two carbohydrate addicts). Well Ron and got a package of rolls and a loaf of bread for $2.00. Now that's $2.00 total not seperately. The prices on the bread and rolls were originally $3.29 and $3.79 for a total of $7.08. We saved $5.08 going to the bread thrift store where the sell the exact same products for less than half of the original price!! Amazing!

Halloween

So hubby and I went to a great halloween party hosted by our friends the Hellers on Saturday night. We won 2nd place in the funniest costume category with these costumes.....

Can you tell what we are..........

Im a gold digger and he is old money bags... This is even funnier if you knew us and our personalities... (Our friends kept saying Ron looked like George Bush with the baby powder in his hair ;) )

The mall is not all it's cracked up to be

Sooo every once in a while I decide to go to the mall and say to myself im going to spend some money and buy some "nice" clothes for work. Well let me tell you... I went to the Fox Run Mall with hubby last weekend and even with all the money in the world I would not have bought anything. None of the "in" fashions looked good on me (I swear leggings went out in the 80s for a reason) and everything was extremely overpriced ($65.00 for a cotton sweater.... with 3/4 length sleeves.. come on..) So feeling down and out I went to my favorite church thrift store and low and behold I found a ton of items for $6.00 that fit great

• Brand new wool green sweater vest from the limited
• Purple button down shirt from New York and Co.
• Gray long sleeve cotton shirt from old navy
• Blue long sleeve hooded cotton shirt from Gap
• And an ugly printed shirt from a boutique with all the tags on it (im going to sell it on ebay)
• Not pictured but also in the six dollars was a glass container that went in my bathroom to hold cotton balls.
• Also not pictured but in the $6.00 were black super cute steve madden flats but soo not my size (They were a 10 im a 6) so i passed them off to my friend amanda (who im trying to turn into a thrifter!)

So the mall is not all its cracked up to be!