• We got up this morning and went to The Home Depot Kids Workshop to build the Message Center project. The kids enjoyed this immensely. It was something they would actually use, and they built it themselves. The best part is that it’s free and the kids all learned something.
• Our basil plants are on overdrive and have produced far more basil than one family could ever use. I dropped off a grocery bag full of basil to a friend who enjoys it as much as we do. It was the equivalent of about $50.00 worth of fresh basil if it were purchased from the grocery store.
• My printer is on the fritz so we stopped at the library to print two coupons that I planned on using at Kohl’s later in the day. The cost was $.30 to print the coupons, but I would be saving far more than the cost of printing them.
• After our morning errands, we returned home for lunch. My husband cooked lunch on our makeshift grill. Lunch was made from a package of two large Honeysuckle White turkey breasts that were purchased with a coupon received for complimenting the company’s product, and broccoli that was purchased on sale for less than $1.00. The total cost of our lunch was less than $5.00. We brined the turkey breasts in a salt and sugar solution and then seasoned them with Goya Adobo (green bottle w/ cumin) for a subtle Spanish flavor. We squeezed lime over the meat after it was finished cooking and served it with steamed broccoli.
• After our son took a nap, we then went to Kohl’s department store to purchase a school outfit or two for our twelve year old twin girls. We used a $5 coupon that we received when we agreed to sign up for email notifications from Kohl’s, and we also received a 15% email discount because of the same email notifications. The combination of these two discounts saved us over $16 on a purchase of around $92.00 with sales tax.
• Target was in the same area and we needed to purchase cat litter. While there we picked up a couple of school supplies and I was able to purchase five boxes of Hefty One Zip bags (22ct) for about $.10 each since they were on markdown plus I had a coupon. While in Target, my husband noticed that the Ghiradelli Bittersweet chocolate chips we use in our chocolate chip cookie recipe (from Cooks Illustrated) were on sale for $0.40 less than Wal-Mart sells them.
• We went to Starbucks to finish our family evening. For the 5 of us, the total spent at Starbucks was $14.46. However, we felt so good about the day that such a purchase didn’t make us feel bad at all. On our way out, we were able to bring home three huge bags of Starbucks coffee grounds (free for the taking) for our new compost pile.
• After returning home and settling in for the evening, my husband “prepped” a breakfast casserole with ingredients that totaled well under the $5.00 mark. We’ll store this in the refrigerator overnight and then bake it on Sunday morning. The eggs were purchased on sale for $.48, the breakfast sausage was purchased for $.25 on sale with a coupon, and the Orowheat Whole Wheat bread was purchased from our day-old discount bread store for $1.09 a loaf. He used dried thyme from our garden.

When we returned home and reflected on the day and how nice it was, we realized that we had a “good day” in the business sense but really didn’t go out of our way to save money. The money we saved was the result of our lifestyle over a period of time and we were pretty much on autopilot all day long.