Cheap date

I've never been a girl with expensive taste, expecting to go to a high class restaurant so I can order the most expensive entree. Still going out to any typical restaurant would result in a bill at least $20. If you go once a week that's $80 a month and $960/year! Even just going out for coffee would be a minimum of $6/week and $312/year... and that'd be just coffee, no coffee house treats, and who can do that?

Once a week Kevin and I set aside a night for our date night. Lately they have consisted of staying home and just hanging out, playing games, or watching movies. While there's nothing wrong with that, and it saves money, it's nice to get out once in awhile. So tonight we head out to Barnes and Nobles, got a pumpkin spice latte, green tea latte, and a pumpkin cupcake and went home with 3 books for a grand total of... **drum roll please*... $2.07! Not bad for a cheap date night out! All thanks to the printable coupons for free drinks at BnN! And the books? We stopped by the library across from the mall :-) Gotta love that place!

Free Taco at Taco Bell!

Thanks to our good ole Phils don't forget to get your free taco today!!!!!
I've never eaten there, and don't plan to start now, but hey free is always good right?

Goodwill

So I posted a few weeks ago about how I had some fun finds at yard sales! Well yesterday we swung by Goodwill just for fun. I've heard some of the guys at work rave about the the one down 202, so we stopped by on our way home from Delaware. Here are my finds...for a total of $13!

I got 2 turtlenecks, one from The Limited, the other Ann Taylor, one was silk! I also bought a scarf just because it looked just fun. My last find was an uber cute Kate Spade purse. I figured since I cleaned out my closet getting rid of a total of 11 winter-ish shirts, I can 'splurge' and buy 2 new one :-)

All in the Family

I love learning new information about mi familiar! It's been common knowledge that my dad has enjoyed photography. He has an older SLR and ever since we were small he has been into taking lots of photos. On top of that, one could even say that he's borderline obsessed with editing old photos of the family and trying to preserve the history. Which I think is awesome. Maybe that's where I indirectly picked up...Ever since I've had a camera I've taken tons, and tons of pictures of anything and everything (just asks my girls sometime about our Miami trip!). Recently Kevin and I purchased a digital SLR so we can step up our photography! Well in light of that when we were at my parents house the other week my Dad showed me this:

Apparently my grandfather was the one who had a talent for photography. I guess I never put it together that we had tons of old photographs (and video) of my dad and his siblings and cousins and everyone actually back when they were young! I should have taken a picture of it all closed up since it has it's own 'built in box'. It compacts and is actually rather small for being how old it is. It is copyrighted 1928! It almost reminds me of the big professional cameras that you sometimes see on a movie based in the 1800's where the guy has to duck his head under the black sheet and squeeze the trigger. I think it looks like a more miniture version. Still very sweet! If you click on the image below to enlarge it, you can see all the little details, like the switch on the front that lets you change the apenture! Being a photographer back then must have been a lot more challenging than now. Not only do we have new technology and most use digital, so they have instant results, but when you look through the lens on one of these you have to remember that the actual picture will be lower! It's not what you see is what you get...it's what below what you see is what you get. Crazy! I just think it's awesome to have sometime (a hobby) that has been in the family for generations! I guess I really am a Crnkovich!

Me, us, or society?

Here's something I've wonder about for a long time. In the past week I've had my plans canceled by 3 different people on 3 different occasions! Normally I'm not that cool and make that many plans in a week, but hey sometimes that's just the way it works. Now I'm not blaming these girls, by any means and at least they had the descent to let me know ahead of time, and we've rescheduled. It's something that has happened to me more times than I can count in the past few years. Is it just me? Do people feel my friendship is disposable and they can just not show or back out any time something better comes up? Is it our age group and people just lack commitment? Or just society where we over book ourselves all the time and then realize that we just can't do it all?

Maybe I'm just over sensitive because I got spoiled living with my best friends in college and always having them there. Now that we all live close to an hour away from each other and are all married or in serious relationships it's def different. Maybe I just have high expectations for people. Or maybe it's just God reminding me that we can't put our trust in people, only in him :-)

High Society

These past few weekend Kev and I have be busy culturing ourselves :-) 2 weeks ago we attended the musical "Suessical" at the Swarthmore Players Club in Media. It was a blast to watch a childhood fave on the stage! The actors/actresses ranged in age from elementary school through retirees.
Obviously I can't use flash during the performance, so the pictures aren't nearly as clear as I'd like them to be.

All the who's were dressed in yellow:


And here's Jojo's crazy imagination bathtub/under the sea scene:


And a little bit of everyone!


Then this past weekend we traveled to my hometown of Lancaster to see my Aunt's art show. Pictures of course aren't allowed and I wish they were, because there was one painting in the gallery next to my aunt's that I absolutely loved for some crazy reason.

Here's a pic out the window of one of the gallery's at the oh-so-famous Fulton Opera House! Too bad the reflections showed in the window.


One of the corner's in my aunt's gallery:


My blacked out uncle, cousin, and friend. With more of my aunt's paintings in the background:


And the busiest I've ever seen the streets of Lancaster at night! Total blur though since I was walking the other way...but you get the point :-)

I've never been to a gallery opening and had a blast! Free food and wine are always a plus too! I love have Lancaster city has this thing called First Friday, the 1st Friday of every month were most of the galleries, and some restaurants and other places are opened to the public! I think I want to go back...even if I don't know anyone.
So let's see what learning/growing experience we can acquire this coming weekend!

Yard Saling!!!

So basically since the time I was born (well if you want to be technical, even before I was born) I've gone yard saling. Quick side note, I never realized that 'saling' isn't really a word because I've always said it, but never wrote it out...oh well. Anyways, prolly half my toys when I was little was from yard sales, and when I got my first apartment I load up on yard sale finds! It's so fun. The thrill of waking up early and heading out with mom in the often cool, gray morning, wondering what treasures we may find. With all the sweet things that I have found over the years, never had I ever been able to MAKE money off shopping at a yard sale...until today!


This weekend Kevin and I headed up to Lancaster Friday night to see an art show (more on that later) and my mom was talking to my youngest brother about some yard sales close to our house on Saturday since he was in need of some silverware and dishes for his cabin. I heard the word sale and was hooked! We didn't follow true yard sale fashion, but by 8:30 we were out the door and on our way! A few stops and some tough, and some not so tough, decisions later we were on our way home with a full car :-) One place we stopped had an awesome bishop bench that I really was in love with and if we had a house totally would have bought! My mom was close to buy a fuze ball table for like $10 but a quick call to my dad shot that down :-( We did make out very well, she bought a whole bag of silverware (at least 12 forks/knives/spoon each) for only $2 for my bro. And 15 never-been-used juice glasses for herself for only $1.50!

So here's what I found:


2 white crates for $.25 a piece, identical to a black one that we bought for $9 from Office Depot earlier week that we can now return :-)


A white fan for Kevin since we don't have ceiling fans for only $3

And my fave...
These totally adorable glass canisters for a total of $2! I love the antiqueish look with the labels!!!
That brings my total to $5.50...but when we return the black crate we just bought, we will have saved 4 bucks! Freakin awesome I know!

Boring?

So I've come to the realization that over the past few months my life has become rather, umm, dull. We don't have any pets, or kids to keep us busy. I don't have a fun job where things are always going on and different...I could blog about the crazy conversations that the warehouse boys had, but most wouldn't be appropriate for most readers! I no longer do Young Life, or The BACC... so I've decided need a new hobby/activity to keep me busy. I get rather ADD at times so we'll see how it works. The last time I had a bunch of time on my hands was Christmas break of my sophmore year of college and I learned to crochet. I even started this really cool afghan... key word is started! It's prolly only 1/2 way done...maybe I should work on that!

We were on an extremely tight bugdet for our wedding (we can proudly say we did the whole thing for under $10k) so to save money our photographer gave us a CD with all the pics and we had to edit and print them ourselves. Well once again another project I'd start and not finish. So I've been working little by little over the past year to clean them up. I think I finally have enough to start working on a scrapbook and I can't wait! I've only made one scrapbook before and it was of my life for my parents as their wedding gift.

Here's one of my fave before and after pics:



The sun was in our eyes, and that building in the background is an eyes soar so....

I decided to just take them out!


A little photoshopping and I ended up with this. I might say that I think it turned out rather well for being one of my first times messing with it!