Archive for October 15, 2011
How a Hungry Girl Spent $50 on Apples and Strawberries
Since I am nine months pregnant and can no longer easily reach my toes I decided to take advantage of spa week and headed to my local Red Door Spa for a 60 minute Spiced Eden Pedicure complete with pressure point massage and warm paraffin treatment. Every year I receive a gift card to the spa for my birthday or Christmas and I always do my best to wait until spa week to redeem it. A typical pedicure costs $75, so scheduling around spa week saves me at least $25 a visit.
I’m not sure if this visit seemed particularly wonderful because I haven’t had a pedicure in nearly a year or because I’m pregnant, but either way I wish I could experience this luxury every week because it was absolutely decadent!
The only problem with spa week is that everyone else in the state has the same goal of saving money on spa treatments, which means appointments book fast and it’s difficult to find the perfect date and time to sneak in for a visit. After reviewing the list of possibilities with a lovely receptionist I settled on a 1 o’clock appointment.
What I did not realize is that I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep the night before that appointment. I moved from the bed, to the recliner and ultimately to the couch. By the time I finally fell asleep the sun had long since risen. I decided I had no where to go and no particular place to be until 1 o’clock so I let myself sleep the mid-day away. I woke up at noon, rushed into the shower and immediately drove to the spa so I wouldn’t be late for my appointment.
Well, as anyone who has ever been pregnant knows, it’s not a wise idea for a woman in her third trimester to skip breakfast and lunch. I grabbed a piece of bread to munch on in the car, but in essence I was without food until my appointment ended at nearly 2:30.
Strangely enough I didn’t feel particularly hungry, but as I stepped inside Balducci’s, (a high-end grocery store), just after my treatment I found myself craving fruit and pastries. The pastries, (I purchased two), cost over $2.00 each. The organic strawberries nearly $5. Add to that a delicious chicken curry salad, one box of tangerines, one container of blueberries, a couple of onions, a large bag of apples and a couple of red peppers and somehow I was $50 in the hole.
I couldn’t believe how much I’d spent on a small bag of food, but surprisingly I didn’t even look at the receipt. By the time I got back to my car I was absolutely starving. I opened the container of curried chicken salad and ate it right from my front seat! It was followed shortly thereafter by a chocolate croissant.
This costly little venture is the very reason I typically don’t allow myself to walk into a grocery store with a raging appetite. I know that I cannot resist the temptations around me when I’m hungry, but surprisingly enough I quickly forgave myself for this particular indiscretion. In this case, I figured a) I’m very pregnant and b) everything other than the chocolate croissants were good for me. Actually, in retrospect, I would’ve felt much worse spending just $5 on greasy takeout.
Will We Finally Send Out Holiday Cards This Year?
Every year since my husband and I first got married we’ve talked about mailing holiday cards to our friends and family. Yet, somehow, despite the best intentions, we’ve failed to accomplish this task.
We’ve come up with every excuse under the sun, but the truth of the matter is that my husband is always behind the camera and rarely in front of it. In fact, if you look through the thousands of pictures in our collection I bet you’d find my husband’s face less in less than one hundred. Since we can never seem to find a photo that includes both of us, we tend to skip mailing out cards all together.
But this year we can’t have any excuses. This year the holiday gift card drought must come to an end! We are expecting our first child in roughly two weeks and I cannot wait for my husband to capture his or her first Christmas!
I started getting excited about the idea as I was poking around the Internet in search of baby announcements. Since we don’t know the gender of our little one I narrowed down the options, but haven’t picked the final theme. I received a promotion code for free announcements when I registered at Babies-R-Us and I can’t wait to use it!
With the baby announcements nearly checked off my to-do list I turned my attention to holiday cards. I was already poking around Shutterfly’s website in search of adorable baby designs and couldn’t resist browsing through the Christmas cards and holiday cards I found there.
I love the idea of creating a card with a couple of different photographs and absolutely love the design pictured below. “Blessed” is the perfect definition for me. I feel so fortunate at this time in my life that no other card could represent my feelings better.
Do you typically send out cards during the holidays? If you are a blogger and want a chance at 25 free cards this holiday season register here: http://goo.gl/DDw7Q. If you’ve never sent out cards before the notion of ‘free’ cards might just provide you with the incentive to do so this year!
