Hit the FREE jackpot tonight!

Tonight the theme was FREE!!!  It goes well with our pending skunk bill.  For those of you that don't know, we have a family of skunks that has taken up residence in our backyard.  We called this guy that does trapping and control and he came out to set traps tonight.  Hopefully we'll have good news to report that something is captured tonight!  There are 4 traps - we'll see if 4 get filled.  After we met with the skunk man, we went out to use some coupons - and it paid off big time.  Sometimes a picture says it all... so let's start with that:

Paid $5.30 for $43 worth of stuff!

Here's how we got all of this for $5.30!!!
Pier One had a coupon on Monday through facebook: "like them" and get a coupon for $10 off of a $10 purchase.  I had 3 of them and they expired today.  We went to 2 pier one stores.  At the first store I bought 1 paper lantern light kit.  Original price $10, we got it for free.  The second store we got another light kit and this cute little bird desk clock.  The light kit was $10 again, so we got that for free and the bird clock was $15 originally - $10 coupon + 30 cents tax means we paid $5.30 for all 3 items.  I got the light kits for something we're planning on doing in the baby's room with lanterns.  Not sure how it's going to work out quite yet, but these were free so it's worth a try.  That post will come once we start getting his room set up.

Then we headed over to the home depot store to look for a paint color to match the blue paint in our bathroom.  We had a bit of a painter's tape mishap the other night (that picture is below).  Ryan had taped off the light fixture when he was painting it white for me.  The fixture was this hideous brown color originally and the white makes it look so much better.  Before and afters coming in the next week on the bathroom... promise!  Anyway, when he peeled off the tape, it showed about 8 layers of disgusting paint underneath it.  We could see all types of colors, but the base color is this LOVELY (I'm joking people) gold color.  Shimmer and all.  No wonder there isn't a wall or trim piece in our house where the paint doesn't chip.  His exact words were "See!  Projects lead to more PROJECTS".  I agreed though and felt horrible.  The thought of asking him to repaint one more room (I'm out of commission with the baby and all, although my painting skills in general keep me off this task) was just wrong.  Then I remembered... I HAVE COUPONS! 

Grrrr... old house from 1902 with 1900 layers of paint!

About a week ago, I printed 4 coupons for $2 off a Glidden Paint tester off of coupons.com.  We had used Glidden paint to paint my closet and were pleased with the outcome and coverage.  My hope was we could find a blue close enough to match where the tape peeled off the paint so we didn't have to repaint the entire bathroom.  Again, we did NOT pick this blue color - it is what we had when we moved in.  We're just doing our best to make it work so we don't have to paint another room on top of the 20+ coats that are already there.  I guess if the bathroom is still blue in the upcoming before and afters, you'll know that this tester paint blue worked for us!  The paint testers at Home Depot were 1.97 each.  We bought 4 and used 4 $2 off coupons.  They adjusted the coupons down for us so we walked out of there with 4 of them for free!  We got 2 blue for the bathroom, 1 white for some of the trim in the house and 1 yellow for touch ups in the closet if I ding it up with shoes and what not (it will happen - guaranteed).

All in all - an almost free night with a savings of 88% : )