Lif'e's way of working out things for us.

This summer we had to restain our deck. Yes, we have the dreadful wooden decks that needs maintenance. That means stripping, cleaning and staining. I'm getting to be an expert as this is my 3rd deck maintenance. The hardest part is the stripping and stop thinking of the other type!!! We changed the brand of stain and hopefully it will last us abit long. I wish we could get the engineered wood which requires no maintenance but they cost a BOMB. $25/plank and we would need 25 of them. Way too much money for my liking considering I paid $3500 for this deck when we had this house built.

This is our 4th year in this house and finally we got a patio set. Yes, and its has been a long wait. I can finally plan to have my charcoal steambot now. Even to get to buy this set has been a journey itself. Being a One Income Family, we do have to be stingy. We were at Lowes and found they only had 1 wrought iron table left and it was the display unit. I liked Lowe's wrought iron table as it was a 48" while others like Menards had only 42". I had to grab the last one and it was $60. We asked if it was still available and yes it was. The guy helped us check out the table. It was abit shaky and he told us that we just had to tighten it. I asked if there was a special on this Table and he said NO. Darn, I had to pay full price .. then we found it was missing a cap that covers the screw and I gingerly asked if I could get a discount of missing parts. He then gave me 10% discount, hey.. if you never ask you never know. God helps those who helps themselves. hahahaha

We bought the table on a Saturday and the next day came the Sunday Ads... Aiya!!! 20% discount on all outdoor furniture. I quickly told my hubby, " Lets go and see if we can get another 10% off". He reluctantly said OK.. We went and to our surprise the lady gave us 20% off.. that meant we paid only 70% of the actual price of the table... yahoo!!!!!!

While we were there, hubby walked over to the wrought iron chairs. They were on sale now for $23 instead of $45. I was tempted to get it but I somehow got the feeling hubby was reluctant. He walked over the those damn plastic white chairs and said "Lets get this". I was so pissed as it would cost us the price of 1 wrought iron chair to get 4 plastic chairs. I told him its a waste of money. So he walked off ... sigh... no chairs.. Now what am I going to sit on????

For 2 days, I didn't want to talk much to him. Merajuk !!! He would drag out our IKEA chairs to sit outside the few times the kids wanted to eat out.

2 weeks ago, I was at Lowe's again, this time to get some bulbs. I walked by the lawn furniture and to my amazement, there were chairs for sale. These chairs were pretty and I didn't bother drooling over them as they cost $63 each. They had wicker back while the table's complementary chairs was all wrought iron and simple looking. Guess how much were these expensive chairs now???? Freaking $15.88 !!!! Yes... and I called up my hubby to ask him to calculate how much in total it would cost including sales tax. It came up to $67.65 and I quickly bought them.

If you think that's the end of the story... its not.. the freaky part to this story is that when I went to pay, I told the cashier I was going to pay cash but when I peeped into my wallet, I knew I had at least $60 but wasn't sure and changed my mind and took out my debit card. Opps.. the girl had rang bill as cash and she needed her manager to authorize some thing.. that was when I decided to dig into my wallet. There 3 of us stood waiting to see if I had enough cash... and I did. I left Lowes with not even 1 cent in my wallet. I had an exact amount of $67.65

When I came home, I was recollecting the whole thing about this patio set and realize I was meant to have this set. And I was meant to have it at a cheaper price eventhough I was suppose to buy an slightly more expensive set, I ended up with a very very good buy. And to have the same amount of money in my wallet as I'm suppose to pay for this item... Somehow its just a lawn set but something out there is working for me.

We have since had quite a number of dinners and lunches outside in our nice patio set and soon we will have our steamboat.

By the way, I did go back to Lowe's the next day after buying the chair to return the bulb. All the chairs were gone. They had at least 50 of them and they were sold out. I'm glad I grabbed mine when I did.