So… I’m not a big Valentine’s Day person. Actually, I’m kind of anti-Valentine’s Day. In my humble opinion (yes, this is a bit of a glass half empty opinion), if you are only treating me nice because it is Valentine’s Day then we have big problems. Not that I am the type of person who says that “every day should be Valentine’s Day”.. I am just a bit more realistic about life and relationships. You have good days and you have bad days and hopefully the good days out-weigh the bad. That said, my hubby and I decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day by giving ourselves a frugal challenge. We wanted to see how little we could spend on our evening out. We also planned on documenting the evening. I have to say, I was a bit of a “pill” last night so I am glad my hubby put up with me. Looking back, though, we had a great night and ended up not being frugal at all thanks to the darn flowers below…
So the day started out with me receiving a beautiful floral arrangement from FTD. I don’t know if you remember but I posted about the FTD/Groupon debacle yesterday. Unbeknownst to me, my hubby ended up ordering me flowers from FTD even thought they were pricey. Can I emphasize pricey?!? We are working on getting our money back from FTD (or at least a portion credited back) because of the debacle. But, in the meantime, Jeff spent $20.00 on the FTD Groupon and then an additional… oh my gosh I hate to have to be honest about this.. he got royally taken advantage of.. $31.33.. The flowers are so beautiful though – they smell amazing. I just can’t say they are $51.33 worth of flowers because they are not…. He could have done so much better going to Publix.. I bet he could have gotten me at least 2 and a half dozen roses at that price! So far, we were not doing well with having a frugal Valentine’s Day!!
So for dinner, we went to The Lime which is a Tapas restaurant in South Tampa close to Hyde Park. (We love the Hyde Park area.) They had great food and on Mondays they have a $2.00 mini burrito special which we thoroughly enjoyed. We used a $25.00 Groupon certificate which I spent $12.00 on. We did a great job of staying in budget so after the $25.00 worth of food that we purchased, we only had to pay tip which was an additional $5.00 out of pocket. So, for $17.00 we were able to pay for our food and tip. Not bad!
After dinner, we had grand plans of using a Groupon for City Street Sweets candy store in Hyde Park. (Have I mentioned I love Groupon?) The problem, however, was that we didn’t account for the candy store being closed before 9 pm! So, no candy for us. (Not like we needed the calories considering what we enjoyed for dessert…)
We ended our gorging at ColdStone Creamery. YUM. Our favorite icecream mixture is called “Cookie Don’t You Want Some.” But we switch it up. We get cake batter ice cream with caramel sauce, chocolate sauce, cookie dough and reese peanut butter cup. Amazingly delicious. We shared a medium sized ice cream and as you can see from the picture, we made sure to eat every last drop. And the best part? We spent $0.00. We had a gift card given to us by a friend. 🙂
Our Valentine’s Day evening ended at our local Redbox. We had high hopes for the end of our evening – going to see a movie in the theater, taking a walk through Hyde Park, walking along Bayshore, etc etc. Truthfully, though, we are a bit boring and for us watching a movie at home without falling asleep is a big deal. So, we took advantage of the FREE Redbox Code I posted about and rented a movie. We rented The Social Network. Have any of you seen it? We really liked it – it kept our attention from start to finish! And, of course the best part was that the rental was FREE! 🙂
So to sum up our supposed frugal Valentine’s Day Challenge we gave ourselves:
Purchased FTD Groupon: $20.00
$$ Spent on FTD order after using Groupon: $31.33 – UGH
Purchased The Lime Restaurant Groupon: $12.00
$$ Spent on The Lime after using Groupon: $5.00
$$ Spent on Coldstone:$0.00 thanks to a gift card – woohoo!
$$ Spent on a Redbox Rental: $0.00 thanks to the code BEMINE
Total Spent: $68.33 – yup – we bombed our challenge – but we had fun and sometimes, it is okay to splurge right?
I hope all of you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day – whether you celebrate it with enthusiasm or a bit of resistance like myself. 😉 And, most of all, I hope you were a bit more frugal than we were!
Thanks for coming to Addicted to Saving! Here’s a little bit about me so you can know who’s behind all these posts!
My name is Liza and I began my money-saving journey in the Spring of 2009 as a way to stretch a limited household income. I had lost my job and my hubby was self-employed. I launched Addicted to Saving in November of 2009 and it has grown by leaps and bounds. Since then, my hubby and I have struggled with the ups and downs of two failed adoptions and are now LOVING being parents to our little man Asher who we brought home from Ethiopia in August of 2013. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to help you save money. My goal is that you will have FUN and become empowered to save more and more money each week..
Glad you guys had fun! I’m all for saving a buck…but sometimes you gotta let loose and just have fun. I figure I’m saving a fortune so if we want to splurge a few times a year I’ve learned to just enjoy it 🙂
p.s. INSISTED no candy, flowers, or cards this year…but I did use a coupon for KOHL’s and my hubby got me some silver hoops that we go a great deal on 🙂
Even though you were trying to be frugal it sounds like a nice evening. Personally I would rather go a relaxing dinner and then come w/ my honey and cuddle up on the couch watching a movie. To me that is better than some fancy dinner or night on the town. I guess I am more of homebody. I live in the Tampa and actually work in the Hyde Park area- one of these I’ll have to try the Lime. It was nice to see you didn’t have complaints so t hat gives more reason to try it out. Glad you have a great Valentines Day. We will be celebrating ours this coming sunday- my honey had to work this past weekend and on Monday.
So glad you had a great time! Jeff and you deserve it!
Love it! We got engaged in September so I made it clear I didn’t need anything for Valentine’s Day and he said the same since he’s doing a fishing tournament at Mayport in a few weeks. So he ended up being off work Saturday and Sunday (rare, he’s a chef) – and we spent the weekend deep cleaning the house. Then Sunday night I was exhausted (and we hadn’t touched the bathrooms yet more than the sink/toilet) and he Soft Scrubbed the tub (my one OCD – must be done before EVERY bath)and poured bubbles, lit candles and poured me a glass of wine. Then he came in and gave me a foot rub while I was soaking! I stopped at Wags yesterday and got him the world’s perfect card (amazing considering it was 7 p.m. on VDay) and some Twizzlers (on sale 3 for $4 and you get a $3 coupon to use toward Easter candy). It was by far our best VDay – just early and longer lol.
OMG that’s you?! 😀 You’re so pretty!
ANYWAY! Creepy moment over, lol.
I love this! It’s a cute little story with PICTURES 😀 True, yall bombed, BUT…it’s amazing y’all manage to do that for less than 100…afte rall, there ARE people who spend 9875983765948679759135 dollars at some 5 star restraunt and….yeah.
😀 Enjoyed reading this!
You did great! My brother and sister in law have a tradition they go to the store and pick out card they would buy for each other and exchange them in store (without writting in them of course) and then put them back. That is pretty frugal and I can’t get them to start couponing,lol.
My husband and I have been in a store and picked the perfect card for eachother and after we each read them we put them back too! LOL!
We went to MIMIS for there $24.99 Valentine special. So we got a appitizer, 2 meals, and a dessert. We are also trying to save money since my hubby is jobless right now :{ I messed up though when I ordered a glass of wine thinking it would be no more then $5.00 but the glass of wine was $12.00 and it was only half full!!!!
Liza
I am so glad that you both had so much fun….
This story is so cute…and very creative…
Thanks for sharing,
Millie
Thanks so much for sharing your story. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it made me chuckle!!
Tracy
Glad to see that you & Jeff had a fun night out… I think the same way that you do about Valentine’s Day. I mean, do you NEED a stupid holiday to give you an excuse to do something special for your loved one? Whatever, I’ll still enjoy a night out with must my husband. He bought me some beautiful, overpriced tulips from 1800flowers.com (yikes! but they are gorgeous!) and we did buy a ridiculously expensive meal (he got a better deal by buying the gift cards at Costco beforehand), and then went out to a movie and got a huge Diet Coke (all free b/c we used a gift card from Christmas). And our babysitting was free too. Not great, but we haven’t been on a dinner AND movie date in over 4 years. We loved every second of it! 🙂
Hope you get that credit. My husband and I stopped doing any buying years ago (we have been a couple for 36 years this coming weekend). Usually he just cooks me a very nice meal.
This year we decided to spent it with our grandchildren. I had purchased two Eversave coupons for our local bowling alley – each coupon was $19 and I had a $10 credit so total was $28 – each coupon was good for 2 games, 2 shoe rentals and one large on topping pizza….we have three grandchild and my husband played.
We brought juice boxes (of course gotten at Publix when B1G1 and four coupons) and pink cupcakes that I made, all with ingredients from my panty.
I am guessing (because I don’t remember the cost of each baking item) was under $35 and the five of us had a blast for two hours.
Liza…first of all I like your hair curled!!!
Second of all…I spent $0 on valentines….I didn’t even get my boys valentines. A girl I watch in the am before school brought me chocolates, and I avoided everything about valentines day…I even wore BROWN to work 🙂 At work, the kids threw a party and we watched the history of Valentines day….Now that was the most enjoyable…
I was glad to see all the valentines vomit all over the stores gone the next day 🙂
I am such a scrooge…
I LOVE THIS POST, btw~!!
You are AWESOME!!!