I enjoy saving money. (See my list of favorite things.) I also enjoy Vegas. This could be a conflict of interests, but not if you go with Dan.
While browsing the different hotel options in Vegas for the 4th of July, we had sticker-shock. Most of the rooms doubled in price because of the 4th of July and because of 7-7-07. We couldn’t even Priceline a cheap rate. We could have gotten The Golden Nugget for $100 a night…I don’t think I’ve ever stepped foot into The Golden Nugget. I am a Vegas hotel snob. If it doesn’t have an outlandish theme, I don’t want to even bother.
Anyway, just when we had resigned ourselves to spending $130 a night for the cheapest room at MGM (yeesh!) Dan managed to find some super duper promo code online.

$70 a night. Boo-yah!

My husband’s money saving ways make me happy.

I have this chair in “Smoke Blue.” The cushion is a powdery blue color, which complements the deep chocolate brown wood wonderfully.

I am in love with this chair. I don’t think I go a single day without sitting in it. I am now planning on redecorating the office to match my chair. If you have any blue and brown items that you would be willing to donate to a good cause (my happiness,) let me know. I can give you a receipt for your donation.

Anyway, my chair is a few months old now. It is slowly getting covered in cat hair and crumbs. Apparently, I am a messy eater. I am trying to come up with a brilliant way to clean my chair. A method that does not involve me dragging it out of the room to the drycleaners-the cushion is bulky. I tried using my handy little vaccuum that I registered for during the wedding (against Dan’s wishes.) It just left my chair with weird streaks in the grain of the fabric. And I still had crumbs in the grooves.

I am taking this as a sign that I should buy a new chair cushion. Possibly one the same color, but wouldn’t this green one look amazing?! Potentially a conflict with my blue and brown theme though. I’ll have to think about it.

Dan plays World of Warcraft. If you’re in the know, it’s called WOW. Aren’t you impressed with my geekish knowledge? WOW and I have a love/hate relationship. I’m glad Dan has a hobby. I’m glad there’s something for him to do while I’m crafting or reading or sobbing at melodramatic tv shows. But it sucks him into a vortex that seems impossible to pull him from. Unless I become a WOW player, which I won’t do.

On the other side of this story, there are certain stores I am not allowed to go into unsupervised. Joann’s is number one, but only because I go crazy and convince myself that everything is on sale so in reality, I am saving money. The next ones are any scrapbook stores of any kind. Mostly because I see some cool demo and convince myself that I am the next chalking/embossing/stamp-kissing extraordinaire and that I need to purchase all materials immediately so as to perfect my craft.

Today, after we picked up Dan’s car (see “The Kia gods are angry” blog,) I was allowed to go to both Joann’s and Scrapbooks Etc by myself. Dan had a raid scheduled for 3:30 and wanted me to not be cranky when it came to be 7pm and he was still playing his game. He figured he could “tire me out like a puppy or a little kid” by letting me shop by myself. I agreed to this bribe.

Smartest thing I ever did. I met one of my scrabooking idols. And when I kissed butt and told her that I have always dreamed of starting a craft business, she told me to follow my dreams. And then she gave me 20% off the product of hers that I was buying. I think I might have drooled on her shoe a little…