Now I show my true colours

So I have this thing with vouchers and sales. I get such a kick out of a good bargain.

In Belgium, we only have sales twice a year. There are actual laws against having sales any other time. So, obviously, for a sales junky, these are the good kind of headrush days. Now, I've been looking for a raincoat for ever. Or at least a couple of years. Today, I got this one:


I know - white. What do I think I am? Paris Hilton? Trust me - it looked better than the dark blue one.

I thought I got a nice bargain, getting it for 15 euros, down from 40.


However, this was from Zara, which is not known for its 40 euro coats, so I thought I would peel the label back, and look what I found:


Did you see that? 99 euros? That's an 85 percent reduction! I am not joking if I say that gave me such an adrenaline kick, I've been high all night. Which was useful, because I was kind of tired and then it was date night, so I ended up delightful company in spite of spending all day shopping. No, really.

I'm giving you another example. I'm thinking by now anyone who was going to run for the hills because of this post is long gone. Yesterday, I had seven vouchers for the supermarket, and I managed to completely bamboozle the checkout girl. I have a picture:


("Bon" means "voucher".) So you see that 4 euros off and the 400 loyalty points? Both on one pack of dishwasher tablets. Both vouchers totally told me they were not to be used with anything else, but I went for it anyway and the girl never saw it. The best part? It was a large pack of dishwasher tablets, which said 30% extra free, so I got 117 tablets for the price of 3.85 euros. And! The voucher gave 7 (SEVEN) extra packs of Pixar cards for my son. Yeah, I know!

(Sad aside: I'm feeling kinda guilty for robbing the supermarket. Catholic guilt kicking in, I suppose. Not all that guilty, though.

Second sad aside: vouchers on dishwasher tablets are my downfall. Babes calculated it last night, and we now have enough dishwasher tablets to last us six years.)

You know, I may say I'm all about the bargain, but really it's because I'm ever so slightly an anal person. Case in point: last night, May was over to make invitations for her birthday party, and I spent about half an hour of that time filing my son's Pixar cards in numerical order, and (and!) making labels, with my label maker (I kid you not), to organize his Pixar card holding folder. This kind of thing totally does it for me. Another picture, just because it's you:


The upside of this lovely character trait of mine is that I have the patience to spend hours getting May's invitations to look like this on the computer:





(I don't know why that first picture keeps coming out blurred. Apparently, I'm not quite anal enough to try to fix that three times.)