Macy's Shopping Trip 7/28

On Saturday, we had to make an emergency trip down to Silverdale because the guy from Seattle was out of nicotine patches and Miss KnowItAll was out of Elizabeth Arden's Blue Grass perfume.  I've mentioned before that if you are trying to give up smoking the best deal on patches is the Target brand, but still it's going to set you back $60 a month.  If you smoke a pack and a half per day as the guy did, it would cost close to $360 per month!! so $60 seems like a screaming deal to me.  Quitting smoking is a hard gig, but getting off the patches doesn't look like a picnic, either.

As far as the Blue Grass is concerned, Elizabeth Arden hit the daily double today, so the only way to get a deal on your favorite department store perfume is the daily double.  The way I work this deal is stock up on my favorite, which is Estee Lauder Youth Dew, and get free shipping.  You can also work this deal through Macy's, Nordstrom, etc., any of the department stores when they hit the daily double on ebates.

Anyway, while I was picking up the Blue Grass at Macy's I thought I would wander over and see if the Ralph Lauren shorts had come down to a decent price.  You do remember that I didn't notice that I had pollen from the above pictured offender on my favorite pink shorts and washed and dried them without pretreating them, thus ruining them.  I wear shorts all summer and really like this brand but they go for $65!! a pair, so I wait.  Last time I checked, they were 20% off.  On Saturday, they were 50% off, so with my coupons, I ended up paying $22 each for two pair of Ralph Laurens, which seems to me to be a more sane price.

I took a few snaps of some of my favorite plants in my flower beds and I thought you would like to see them.  My flower beds are an ongoing work in progress and now that I'm retired, I have big ideas with a small budget.  The first picture is my hydrangea, which was given to me by my mom 15 years ago.  It was a particularly nice one, sometimes having different colored flowers, until some idiot decided to prune it when I was having problems with my health, so I didn't notice it.  I'm here to tell you that it has taken a long time to get it back from shock land.

I've fallen in love with barberries.  You know, the parking strip plant.  There are so many varieties and I think that they are beautiful and add a lot of interest.  Here are a couple of mine:

This one is a lime green hardy fuchsia.  I had to replace it three times before it finally lived through a winter and took hold.  It is just starting to bloom:

And the last one is a sedum which is also starting to bloom.  We always think "Autumn Joy" when we hear sedum, but I found out that the sedum family is quite large.  This one is a mounding ground cover which is beginning to spread in its second year:

Notice the itty bitty Shasta Daisy in the background.  He's gonna take off and be just what I need to set off all the other beauties.  It never ends with the dividing and moving.


Errata:

The Costco coupons end on the 5th, not the 15th as MMP stated earlier.  Sorry.  I do try to be accurate.


Food Waste Update:

Is this disgusting or what??  I knew these were in there but I haven't been cooking soups and stews lately.  I was going to roast the carrots with potatoes from the garden on Saturday and this is what I found.  Gross!!  What a waste.  Those were expensive organic carrots.

Cha Ching:  $3.00


Reminder:

The drawing for the $30 Macy's Gift Card is midnight tomorrow (the 31st) so get those comments in.  I'm very excited and can't wait to see who wins.