Churning For...

Hello Dear Reader,

About 2 months ago, I signed up for a Chase Card with a $200 sign up bonus. After spending the required money in regular bills, the question is, what now? I have the money in bonus points on my Chase account. If I was the Jones's, I'd probably use it to pay a down on a couch set, or maybe buy a single fancy rim for my gas guzzling SUV. What should I do though?

I've thought of a couple options:

That would have been nice!

1. Use it for regular budget items. This would go to food, or some essential monthly expense. I wouldn't feel the rush of something shiny, but the $200 it frees up would then need a decision. Maybe I could put it toward an IRA. It isn't a lot of money, but it is something. An added bonus is this could get drawn into our money tree with an unusual pattern signifying it was creatively earned.
2. Buy a freezer. Our chest freeze has been getting full. Maybe I should buy another one and name it Chase.
3. Buy a bike rack. This is the one my wife wants. It would probably cost $150 leaving $50 for something minor like gardening supplies.

Not relevant picture...but it is Lego!!

We almost bought a bike rack at Sports Chalet (first day of sale...not the day of the posting). My wife found the one that a previous salesman said was good. It was $170, and the closing discount is...wait for it...10%!! Wow what a deal! I'm being sarcastic...I told the wife I was unimpressed that a store going out of business couldn't squeeze more discount than 10%, especially since that meant it couldn't be returned to any Sports Chalet store. This brings me to my conclusion. I am so cheap, that even with money basically given to me, I can't bring myself to buy something slightly on sale.

The last option is the wife's sanity fund. We have been married 5 years and she has been wanting a weekend away since our last one was 4 or so months ago. We wouldn't normally need this except for the two year old. This is a good problem to have. I don't have the answer yet. Whatever we decide, I'll need the wife's buy in.

Garden Time!

My kiddo made this experience even more fun!

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The wife and I decided to make this a non standard day. Today, we used the free wood we picked up a month or so ago to construct a garden box. The dimensions of the box were about 6' x 3' x 8", cut by a handsaw. It took 2 trips to Home Depot (we also went to Costco on one of the trips).

The slide inspector is here!

In the first picture, I nailed the former closet boards together, placed cardboard underneath the boards, and then we put much soil (the most expensive part) into the bed. I left two bags of soil with the top one arching off the bottom one. My little girl decided this was a very fun slide. She began sliding down and giggling. The second pictures shows the angle better.

Making progress, but not quite done yet!

Once we had the soil in the bed, it was time to plant the transplants and seeds. This is where my wife's ability to not destroy delicate things on contact came into play, as well as her planning. The first thing we did was separate the large clump of Walla Walla onions. The roots were intertwined with each other and needed some tender loving care to help them be viable. We placed Marigolds in the corners of the box to help keep the wrong types of bugs away. Then, we put in the Zucchini and potatoes. Finally, we added the carrot seeds. Once this was done, we called it a night for this box!

I will post an update on this shortly.

Valentines Day For $19.49

The wife and I managed to score babysitting from family for Valentine's day. So, instead of having food at the house with a kiddo helping us keep the romance down, or at a noisy restaurant with a kiddo helping us keep the romance down, we went to Olive Garden and then Cold Stones. We don't typically go to restaurants, let alone 2, on a holiday. However, with this babysitting happening the wife and I felt we were really due for a night out.

Olive Garden is one of our favorite restaurants for a couple of reasons. It is usually quiet. There is no TV blaring telling you stuff you need to buy, or a game you need to watch. The wife and I love this. By the way, I'm getting no funding from Olive Garden for this blog post.

So here is the breakdown:

• We weren't starving when we got to Olive Garden, this helped us not order giant plates becoming leftovers. 
• Olive Garden serves bread forever. It's like Red Robin's bottomless fries. So, we snacked on the bread while we waited for our other food.
• We sampled a glass of wine for free.
• We split their lasagna special for $12.99. This included unlimited soup or salad for 1 person (we only had 1 refill. I ate one bowl, the wife ate the other. If you get excessive with this splitting this they charge you).
• The lasagna order included chicken marsala ravioli and fettuccini alfredo.

This totaled to $14.03 after tax. The wife and I liked our service so we tipped 20%+. We will do this sometimes if we split and the server is nice to us. In this case, they served two different plates with half of each of the three entrees, so there was no awkward sharing. 

This brought the total to $17.00. 

I had promised the wife Cold Stones Creamery ice cream, so we went there next. The wife ordered a little known kid size ice cream with Oreos. It is small, at about 1 scoop of ice cream + topping. However, it came out to $2.49 bringing our total to $19.49.

I paid for these items with my new credit card, which will give me a $200 reward after spending $500 within 3 months. 

Also, just eating a moderate amount of food helped us not be in food coma the entire night.