The Blonde Diaries

I hate the word “budget” because I have negative connotations associated with the word. Budgeting sounds too much like you are being cut off or you aren’t allowed to do anything or have anything extra. One way to get around that is to cash in your points earned from credit cards, rebates, or reward programs and buy yourself gift cards. With my upcoming trip to New York, I am doing just that. I recently visited my Capital One card which I only use for international travel, and found that I had enough points earned to cash out for $45 in Macy’s gift cards.  Since the Macy’s in New York is huge, I am hoping the gift cards can find me something special there. I have my fingers crossed for an after Labor Day sale on either True Religion Jeans or Marc Jacobs handbags. One can only hope and dream right? If not it will be ok. I have no doubt that I can find something in a store that is supposedly 16 blocks long and how ever many stories high to splurge with my gift cards. Has anyone been to the store recently? Any pointers or tips that I should know before I step in?

Even before the economy tanked, I loved finding a “steal of a deal”. It is almost like a game to me. How much can I save on something that I want/need by searching the internet and applying coupon codes. Surprisingly enough, I can save quite a bit. Today I had a deal just like that. I was participating in a Sunshine Rewards forum contest – all you had to do was visit Buy.com and find one deal to share with everyone else in the group and you could win $5.  Not too shabby for not having to buy anything.

So while I was browsing the site, I found a Kodak Digital Camcorder that retails for $149.99 but today it was $65.99. More than 50% off! I have been in the market for a new palm sized camcorder to take on vacation after my other cheap one died and this is just perfect.  It has removable memory cards so you can add more and it takes 2 regular sized AA batteries. So in a bind, it is easy to pick up new batteries or an extra memory card on the go.  I went ahead and added a 3 year warranty for just $20 in case anything happens to it but fingers crossed nothing will.

Mike and I are trying to make small lifestyle changes and one that we are trying out this month is the preplanned menu. Basically at the end of June, I sat down with a calendar and planned out all of our dinners for July. Then I printed the calendar and made a grocery list for each week for those recipes.  I did this in hopes that we could add variety to our diets, we could save money at the grocery store, and we could save money and calories by eating in rather than out. So far it is working beautifully.

For my recipes, I pulled out my 3 Hungry-Girl cookbooks, my slow cooker cookbook, and my Holly Clegg Cajun Lite cookbook. Talk about a great variety of meals!  My favorite so far has been my quick and tasty recipes from the Hungry-Girl cookbooks. If you have been hesitant to try her recipes I highly recommend them and encourage you to do so. If you have no idea on who Hungry-Girl is you are missing out and should check out her website to learn more. She shares recipes, favorite foods, grocery lists, etc on her website and through her daily emails. I am super excited because she announced this week in her newsletter that she will be having her own show on Cook TV beginning in January 2011. I can’t wait to see what she cooks up and the weight watcher points that go with it.

Had you offered me lamb 2 years ago I would have ran away. I just couldn’t imagine eating poor little Lamb Chop though it is only a sock puppet. Curiosity got the best of me though and I haven’t looked back since. I just love lamb as it is very similar to beef but so much more tender. Unfortunately, most restaurants charge $30 or more for an entree. Not very affordable if you want to enjoy it on a regular basis. :’(

This week that changed. My mother was in town and we went to meet her friend for lunch at Fadi’s Mediterranean Buffet here in Houston and it was lamb day (no lamb on Thursdays and Saturdays)! What makes it even sweeter is that it is an option on the 1 meat, 1 side plate so I had a huge plate filled with lentil salad (yum!) and then lamb shank with more vegetables all for under $10. I was not planning on gorging myself on lamb and vegetables but I did and oh it was so good.

I think this is going to quickly become a Sunday afternoon destination for Mike and myself after we hit the gym and the treadmill. Even though there are lots of veggies, the gravy, the pitas, and the hummus will tack on calories fast and lord knows I don’t need any more calories in my life unless I decide to try out the Mediterranean diet which might not be a bad idea if I can eat fabulous foods like this day in and day out.

I am so excited that Starbucks is offering a “create your own” frappuccino option. I have always wanted to customize my frappuccino just like people are able to do with every other drink option. I haven’t tried this new method of ordering at Starbucks because of budget restrictions, but I am sitting at my company’s office today and not at a client site so I might run across the street this afternoon to Starbucks (with a gift card of course!) and give it a go.

Starbucks has a special website just for these new frappuccinos. You can got to frappuccino.com and test out the different options you can choose when ordering a frappuccino now. They have it set up where you can connect to Facebook, Twitter or Myspace to spread the word. One thing that isn’t in plain sight is that if you create a custom frappuccino, you can print off a coupon for $1 off your drink! So Starbucks addicts, get over to this website, create your drink, and print off that coupon.