Painting

I am always in search of a great deal on things that we use regularly. We finally decided that after living in our house for three years with horrible paint on the walls, and knowing we will be here a few more years, we would re-paint. (By horrible I mean that if you touch the walls it leaves a black mark or when my kids were younger and rested their faces on the windowsill waiting for daddy to come home, the paint would come off on their mouths.) The only problem is that our house is 3200 square feet and paint is extremely costly. We have tried all the paint brands and found that usually no matter what the paint manufacturers claim, they all take numerous coats of paint. A typical gallon of paint is at least $22 and most are considerably more expensive. We really like the Kilz brand of paint that Wal Mart carries and the coverage is good compared to some other brands, so that is what we have been using. It still adds up. Then I saw in the Fred Meyer advertisement that they carry paint for closer to $15 a gallon. A few weeks ago they were offering $3 off per gallon. What a great deal. We went in and picked all the colors we wanted to paint and bought it while it was on sale. We ended up with eleven gallons I think. At check out they told us that there is an additional discount of 10% off if you buy multiple gallons at once. I cannot remember for sure now but I think you only had to buy five. It did not all have to be the same color. We ended up getting each of our gallons for around $10 a gallon!! That is such a great deal and the paint is awesome. I thought for that cheap we would have to do extra coats but it has covered better than any paint we have used. I had to do two coats on a few walls, especially if there was already an existing color on the wall, but on some walls I only did one coat and it looks great. In my dining room I had used paint from Home Depot and I used one coat of tinted primer that they recommended plus three coats of the paint. We did about half that wall and ran out, so we had the paint color matched at Fred Meyer and I did the top half of the wall with that. It took two coats, without primer! So, next time you need to paint you should definitely check out your local Fred Meyer.

Inexpensive Dinner Idea

We rarely buy boxed anything, but there was a $1 sale on boxed Pasta Roni so I bought a box of the shells with white cheddar. I wanted a really quick meal one night and remembered that PastaRoni's website has a really cool dinner wizard where you select a bunch of ingredients that you have on hand and they give you some meal ideas. I use this even if I don't have their pasta or rice, just to get ideas. So it spit out a meal of tuna noodle casserole, which I changed some of the ingredients to, and ended up with a great dinner that was very cheap. $1 for the pasta and seasonings, plus $1 for the can of tuna fish, plus about $0.50 for the peas. The boys loved the meal and ate a good portion. I do not claim this meal is the healthiest, so if that is what you are looking for, bypass this recipe. I am still undecided about the health effects of tuna fish. It is something I do not touch while pregnant and we only eat it very few times throughout the year when I am not. But, if you are looking for a super quick and easy recipe, that tastes great, this would be it.