Hello, Good Luck, and Good Buy

Hello. This has been a week of good luck and good buys.

After I had three articles printed in this week's Gainesville Times newspaper, I immediately started thinking: what next? And, as luck would have it, my editor had 2 new assignments for me. If you add that to the one she is holding (the one I already wrote about Gainesville Middle School) and the other one I am working on (about the movies), that means I'll have a minimum of four more articles coming in the next month. That is good luck, fun to do, and also a little extra money coming in for groceries.

Speaking of groceries, we are trying food from from Angel Food Ministries (http://www.angelfoodministries.org). I had ordered it on the 7th (pay day) and it was delivered yesterday to a local church for pick-up.

I signed in and then these very nice people gave me the following: 2 pounds of ground beef, 3 pounds of steak, 3 pounds of pork chops, vegetables, desert (moon pies :-), 3 pounds of nuggets, 2 pounds sausage, Salisbury steak, pasta, sauce, 2 dozen eggs, 2 pounds rice, 6 pounds of potatoes, 6 pounds of seafood (including shrimp, snow crabs, and stuffed crab), and 5 lbs of gluten-free breaded meat.

How much, you ask? $120. Now that is a good buy. And the shrimp is delicious. I will let you know about the steak tonight. It is enough food to last us at least a few weeks and it cost almost half of what it would in the store. But wait, there is more.

My sister was in town visiting us on the way to Hilton Head. She brought 5 of her kids with her, plus my nephew's girlfriend. I was planning on cooking them my seafood from Angel Food, but my sister and her kids were craving Chick-fil-A. She said she planned on treating us.

I felt bad having her pay for all six of us. However, luck intervened and she only ended up needing to pay for two of our kids' food.

Why?

Because when the nice folks of Angel Food Ministries finished loading up my cart with food, they handed me an envelope full of coupons for Chick-fil-A! I had 4 free meals! What a nice touch. Two Christian organizations like Angel Food and Chick-fil-A working together to help families out.

My husband and I ran into some good buys this week at a very surprising place: The Mall! Yes, I know--it is shocking. Me, who abhors the mall, went there with my husband on a date. He loves to go, so I figured what the heck. So we hit the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax and decided to "window shop." But when we stopped at Champs to look at shoes--good buys surrounded us. First, there was the sweatshirts. Nice sweatshirts with zippers--regularly $30--for five bucks! We bought two, one for my oldest son and one for my husband. Next, there was polo shirts. Regularly $25, on sale for $3.99! We bought 2.

The final good luck I had happened thanks to my husband. Even though we get the Gainesville Times delivered to our house, I wanted more copies. So, he brought me home six more copies of the newspaper so I could have extra articles to save and send to my friends and family. In addition to this being sweet...it also gave me some good deals. Because each paper had a coupon insert! Now, instead of having one coupon for a free, yes free, coffee drink at Dunkin Donuts - I have seven! Coffee anyone?

We that is my week in a nutshell. Hello, good luck, and good buy--or good-bye actually, at least for now. My recessionary tale will continue on Thursday.