A penny saved and a cookie earned.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  I like a good bargain.  And by like, I mean love, seriously adore and fully appreciate.  I am a chronic bargain shopper.  I dye my own hair.  My poor children are dressed almost entirely in consignment store clothing.  A startling percentage of furniture in our home was procured via Craigslist.  My car is seven years old and I may never get rid of it because it's paid off and WHY have a monthly car payment when you could just keep your silly old car that runs just fine thankyouverymuch.

This addiction to a good bargain occasionally creates friction with hubby and I because he is, well, not a bargain shopper.  The man loves to spend money.  They say opposites attract, and we are a good case study.  I suppose it all goes back to the hunter vs. gatherer discussion of men and women.  Hubby prefers to identify his prey, purchase it, and take it home.  I prefer to look at the options at three different stores.  Then I research pricing on the internet, read online product reviews, talk to at least six friends that own the same product and generally mull over the purchase for anywhere between, say...one week, or up to two years.  It's a blessing and a curse really.  The blessing is I usually pay less than my friends for just about everything.  The curse is that my friends now have an iPhone 5 and I'm still trying to decide if it is cost effective to upgrade from my flip phone.  Kidding.  Kind of. 

Anyway.  Here's my most recent local freebie discovery.  There is a lovely little bakery that just opened up right near my office.  (And by just opened up, I mean it probably opened over a year ago, it took me six months to hear about it and another three months to have an occasion where I felt like splurging on going out to lunch)  J. Nicolay Bakery offers a variety of cookies, pastries, bagels and a small lunch menu.  Well, they also have my number.  Because if you text in your lunch order, they give you a FREE cookie.  Completely free!  Did you catch that?  No cost cookies.  This is no little sample-sized freebie either.  It's the real deal.  Fresh baked, real ingredients and the cookies are approximately as big as my head. 

Doesn't that look scrumptious??  It was scrumptious.  But don't take my word for it.  Text in your lunch order and find out for yourself. 

Or, if you're lucky, maybe you have a co-worker like mine that is "kind of" on a diet, but needs a convenient, quick lunch, and she'll want a sandwich from J Nicolay but a cookie would just be too much, so she will GIVE you her free cookie.  And that, friends, is the joy for today. 

All I had to do was let her borrow my phone to send in her order, because she is also a bargain lover.  And her phone doesn't have a text plan.