summer deals around the house.

Well, now that it's been a month since my last post, I figured it was time to provide an update on life around the Bergman house. Rob and I were just sitting on the couch tonight after coming inside from watering our garden and our flowers, and I looked at him and said: "I really do have the best life." And I mean that. Things are just really good for us right now. We are so thankful for our love, our home, our flower garden, our veggie garden, our air conditioning, our jobs, the chance that we both get to be in school this year, and our God who has given us all of these things and so much more.

We're also really thankful for all the awesome deals that we've gotten lately!

Something that we've really wanted to do since we bought our house 9 months ago (wow!) is re-side our garage. When we bought the house the garage had nasty brown colored, aluminum siding that needed to go. But, as we started to get quotes on the cost for residing the garage, we were blown away by how expensive it was going to be. And then it happened. One Saturday morning Rob was browsing Craigslist (a favorite pastime of ours) and he found 650 sq. ft. of white vinyl siding - exactly what we wanted for the garage - for $200! If we had bought that much siding from LOWE'S it would have cost us close to $1,000. To top it off, while I was in Chicago last week, Rob took all of the old aluminum siding off the garage and brought it to the scrap metal yard and got $158 for it! We basically equaled out our costs. Can you say AWESOME?!

Rob's mom and dad came down this past weekend to help Rob put the new siding on (while I recovered from a week-long mission trip in Chicago with our middle school youth group - post to come later on that).

Underneath the nasty brown aluminum siding was even nastier green wood siding.

Doesn't it look great?! It gives the house a much cleaner look. It's amazing what a difference it made. Now, the only funny thing is that when the garage door is down, the garage door looks really dirty and old next to the new white siding. I'm still trying to figure out a creative (cheap) way to fix that small problem!

Rob and I were planning to finish the siding last night - Rob and his parents finished everything but the backside of the garage and the front peak above the porch - but, due to the crazy heat wave we've been having in West Michigan (a low of 78 degrees tonight!), we decided that maybe physical labor outside wasn't the best idea. So, we went to Meijer instead. I don't even remember why. Oh, to get allergy pills for me. But, we walked away with so much more than allergy pills. Oh yes, so much more...for so little cost.

1st Meijer Deal of the Night:

Katie Brown is one of my favorite designers that sells products at Meijer. She creates such cool, rustic looking stuff for around the house - inside and out. The first Katie Brown deal we found was a candle holder that we are planning to hang on our front porch. Can you see it in the picture? Isn't it cool?!

Original Price: $20.00 - Save 75% - Sale Price: $5.00

2nd Meijer Deal of the Night:

This year I planted some gladiolus bulbs around our house. They've just start to bloom and they are beautiful! I'll post pictures soon. I only planted 20 bulbs in various locations this year and I knew as soon as they started to bloom that I wanted to plant more for next year. Enter the second deal of the night - 70 gladiolus bulbs! 

Original Price: $9.99 - Save 60% - Sale Price: $3.99

And finally, the 3rd Meijer Deal of the Night:

Another Katie Brown deal! I've had my eye on this blanket/throw for a long time but it cost $25.00 and I couldn't justify it because I don't need it for anything. But then, there we were, walking down the center aisle past all the clearance items and I saw it. The blanket that I had been eyeing for so long was on the clearance rack! And you won't believe what we paid for it...

Original Price: $24.99 - Save 90% - Sale Price: $2.49 (yes, you read that right!)

Usually when Rob and I leave Meijer, our favorite thing to do is look at our receipt to see how much we saved. It's like a game we play when we do our grocery shopping, trying to find sale items so that we save as much as possible. Well, when we walked out of Meijer last night, Rob looked at me and said: "Babe, we just robbed that store." 

So there you have it. A brief update on our life and a look at the crazy deals we've found lately - from vinyl siding for our garage to beautiful flowers for our yard and a blanket that I've been wanting forever. What fun!

Later this week I'll be posting an update on my mission trip from last week. I spent the week in Chicago with 18 middle school students and 7 other leaders and saw God work in big ways that I can't wait to share with you!