Frugal Creativity

Has anyone priced coasters lately??? Since we bought new tables throughout the house we thought it would be a good time to invest in coasters. Holy cow! The average price for 4 coasters is about $8 - from what I could tell. Yeah, there is no way I am going to spend that much money on coasters that's a couple of meals for my family. When we were looking at some coasters at Hobby Lobby I had one of those lightbulb moments. We knew we'd need about 8 or 9 coasters, right? (4 for the dining room, 4 for the coffee table, and possibly 1 or 2 for the end table) So if we bought the plain-Jane coasters at Hobby Lobby it would be $16 plus tax. I grabbed my husband and we left the store and went to Lowes. On the mile drive to Lowes I told my husband about my idea. Why couldn't we just use tiles as coasters? We could easily purchase the little rubber pieces to adhere underneath to protect our tables. We looked through the tile section and found exactly what we were looking for. A package of 9 (how perfect is that!) slate tiles - our tv console has decorative slate tiles in it - it was meant to be. And the price was perfect - $4.62 for all 9!! With the purchase of the rubber pieces our purchase was less than $10. Honestly - we like them better than any of the coasters we saw. (FYI - wouldn't these coasters be a wonderful present for someone who just bought new furniture or a new house? Simply make 4 of them, stack them, and tie a beatiful wide ribbon around them!)

I tell ya, Lady Luck was on our side this weekend! We did find a message center at Hobby Lobby that we liked. It was originally $60, but was on sale for 50% off. On the way to the register we noticed some of the wood on one corner was coming up - an easy repair. I asked to speak to the manager and he gave as an additional 16% off - so our total for the message board was just a few cents over $21.

After Hobby Lobby we went to Target. We have been looking for a clock for the kitchen for a few weeks and the only one we could find that we liked was at Target for $40. We decided to bite the bullet and just get it. Lucky for us the clock rang up at $30 - a savings of $10.

Our total savings for the day were as follows:

coasters - saved at least $6

message board - saved $39

clock - saved $10

Total savings: $55!!!!