Lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer...

Oh what a fabulous summer we've had in Maine this year. After a few years of rainy, cold summers this year is fabulous and we're taking full advantage of it!

We've had boat time on the lake, walks at the ocean, visits from relatives, weddings, family reunions and more! Here's a taste of our fabulous summer so far.

I hope you've all been enjoying your summer as well!

100. Try 5 local restaurants

Pat and I love to go out to eat, but we always seem to go to the same places over and over. In an effort to try new places, I wanted to set a goal to try 5 new local places, which was accomplished quite quickly!

Pat and I met my very good friend Erica and her boyfriend Jamie here for dinner one night. It was a great meal with great company! I've been wanting to get back there, pulled pork is one of my all-time favorite meals.

This is a new sandwich shop that opened in Portland. I had heard good things and their food was quite good, but I felt that it was overpriced. I'm not interested in paying over $10 for a sandwich (pulled pork again).

Gauchos was a very interesting dining experience. The first thing is that it's on the first floor of my office building, so I've known about this restaurant for a long time. It's not your normal steakhouse, that's for sure. You get constant table-side service with all different kinds of meat. I found it quite enjoyable. It's not a place to go for a quick bite to eat, you must be willing to relax and spend your evening there. I think this place would also be great to go to with another couple. The salad bar is also fabulous. We'd go back, but definitely with a gift certificate from restaurant.com. Kind of helps with the fixed $29.95 per person price.

MAINESTREET GRILL

Not the best webpage to copy logos from. This is a new-ish restaurant in Standish (a town not really known for it's restaurants). I was pleasantly surprised with our meal there in a renovated old house. It's cute - a bunch of little rooms, it feels like private dining.

We love going out for breakfast and there's not much better than a breakfast buffet. Not too shabby, definitely worth going to again (although I may wait until the summer people leave the area).

So that's a piece of what we've been up to lately. We're still trying to make progress on my 101 things to do list and blogging about them really helps!

Bad Blogger!!

I am a bad, bad blogger. In my defense, I have absolutely nothing to write about. Aside from playing a lot of Rock Band 2 these days (awesome birthday gift) and learning about my new Nikon D5000 (LOVE) I haven't been doing a heck of a lot.

So, in the effort of getting *something* up here, here's a quick list of books I've read since I last updated about them.

61. Visit the Maine Wildlife Park

Last Sunday was a gorgeous spring day and one of the rare weekend days Pat and I have had off together. We wanted to do something close to home that we hadn't done together before so we headed over to the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray.

Since my Nikon D5000 hasn't arrived yet, we stopped by to pick up Dad's in hopes of getting some fun animal shots. Although it was difficult through the fences, I think I got some fun pictures.

Savings Update

I haven't done a savings update post in a while, but I'm still shopping and saving like crazy! Since January 14th we've spent $809 in groceries and household items and we've saved $1,227. I have gotten multiple items for free as well as made money on them. I had some great ones today!

I saw on broke207 about a Vaseline Sheer Infusion money maker at Shaw's. Side note...'broke207' cracks me up because aren't we all broke in the 207? For those of you that don't know, 207 is the area code for Maine. All of Maine.

Anyway, back to the money maker. For some reason, Shaw's had Sheer Infusion on sale for $2.49. When I saw that in the blog I was shocked because I had just seen it at Walgreens for $5.99. Anyway, I had SIX coupons for $3.75 off that were expiring today. With the prospect of making $1.25 on each of these I had to make a trip to Shaw's. Luckily there's one about a mile from my house.

I wasn't disappointed! In order not to have overage I bought a couple other sale items and got all the stuff below for $2.05. Savings of $45.50!


I also had a coupon for $1 off the Red Baron by the Slice so I ended up getting those for only $1.99. I've never had them before, but it was cheap enough to try once.

I also got some great deals at Walgreens. I had a lot of Register Rewards to spend ($15) so the total below is a little skewed by that. I spent $5.63 and saved $31.22.





I love when I find things on clearance that I have coupons for. The Dial soap was on clearance for $0.50 and I had a coupon for $0.35 off. I'd say $0.15 for two bars of soap is pretty good. The Infusium leave in treatment and Bic razors were free after coupons and the EOS shaving cream was free after Register Rewards.

I was also out of face cream and I love love love the Neutrogena cream so even though I didn't have any coupons, I didn't want to buy anything else since I always end up hating it. I also bought some mixed nuts because I plan on attempting to make baklava soon.

So all of that for $5.63 out of pocket was pretty good. I also got a $3 Register Reward so that's net $2.63 for all that. The face cream alone is $9.99...gotta love having a lot of Register Rewards!

We have a closet in our house that is all stuff I've gotten free or super cheap. I was even able to put together a pretty good "grab bag" full of stuff for Mom for Mother's Day today. (Yes, she knows it was all free...she was glad!)

This couponing and sale shopping has really changed the way I see sales and shopping. I am really happy with all the savings and having a 'stocked' house.

Book Update

So obviously I've been doing a lot of reading and I've gotten too far behind in my blogging when I tried to give each book its own post. Luckily there are a million reviews out there on most of these books, so I don't really have a lot to add.

The one most people probably haven't heard of is the first one, Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler. As I mentioned a few posts ago I really enjoy her writing style and the stories she tells. Saint Maybe is a fascinating story of family obligations, the choices we make and the consequences of them.

For most of the rest, they've all been turned into movies that I plan on seeing. Like most people I know, I like to read the book first. Now I can get caught up on some really great movies!

92. The Beach Club

I feel like all I've been doing lately is posting about the books I've read. Well...at least I'm posting about something.

Soon I should have some new cake ball pictures. I have been asked to make some for a birthday party coming up soon and I want to get some new pictures for some advertisements.

I've really been enjoying visiting the library lately. I have (somewhat) expanded the books I'm interested in, so that's always a good thing.

This book was a pure impulse while I was at the library. I knew I wanted to take out another book, but couldn't find one. I saw the cover of this book and was intrigued...it just looked good. This was a good case of judging a book by its cover. I really enjoyed this story.

I'm not sure if it's because I worked at a summer resort for a few years, or because we're on the cusp of summer, but this was a fun read. The characters were interesting and "real" enough and when I closed the book I found myself wondering what would happen in their lives.

My husband makes fun of me because I get SO involved in my books. The characters become so real to me, especially in a well written novel. There are times when he'll come into a room and I'll be sobbing or smiling based on what I'm reading. Please tell me I'm not alone - he thinks I'm crazy!