Your Thoughts on Gift Cards

Are you like me and have a whole slew of gift cards that have not been used, or do you like to use them as they come in? How do you feel about receiving gift cards as a gift? Are there types of gift cards you prefer over others?

Gift cards are a double-edged sword to me. On the one hand, I appreciate having some spending money to use. On the other hand, I feel guilty when I don't use them.

I have a bunch of GC for a variety of merchants. I have restaurant cards, bookstore cards, multi-purpose online vendor cards, fabric/craft store cards, clothing store cards, thrift store cards, specialty store cards, everything I could imagine. I don't have personal spending money aside from the ad revenue on this site (which covers my cell phone service each month), so I do really appreciate when someone gives me a gift card. Gift cards give me the freedom to spend some money without actually spending money.

Do you keep all of your gift cards in one spot? How do you track digital gift cards?

I keep all of my plastic cards corralled together and I go through them periodically to see if I could pay for an experience or needed item without having to take money out of the family budget. Digital gift cards complicate my GC storage system. The best I've been able to do is keep a list in the notepad on my laptop. But I try to prioritize using the digital cards before the plastic ones, so I don't forget to use them.

Are you practical with gift card use or do you see them as an opportunity for a splurge?

I tend to be practical with my gift card use, but do splurge a little. For experiences or items that others might ordinarily pay out of pocket, I use one of my gift cards. An example, back in 2019, my husband and I took our grown kids out to lunch for a joint celebration of my husband's and my birthdays (1 week apart). We used a gift card to a restaurant given to me as a birthday gift by my stepmom a couple of years prior to cover the cost of all of our meals and the tip. This was a splurge in the sense that we ate in a restaurant when I could have cooked a meal for the family. But we were also very practical and chose to order from a special lunch menu that had lower-priced items, so the GC would cover the entire meal. Another example, we were needing kitchen dish cloths and individual-sized microwaveable dishes. I used a thrift store gift card from my husband Christmas 2019 to purchase those items. Sometimes my use of gift cards falls in between a splurge and practical, such as last week. One daughter had given me a gift card to Five Guys (burger joint) for Christmas 2021. I had asked for time with my daughters as my gift. So my daughter gave me this gift card and she and my other daughter came with me to Five Guys for a lunch out. It's sort of a splurge, as I wouldn't ordinarily buy a meal out. Yet, I'm still practical with the spending. I asked for a cup for water and skipped the fries, just bought the burger so there would be some $$ left on the card for another time.

What do you do when there are just pennies left on a card? Do you try to find something extremely inexpensive? Is using all of each gift card important to you?

I currently have a gift card to an ice cream place that has less than 50 cents on it. It's one of those pricey ice cream shops, so I'd need to spend several dollars just to use those cents. I'm not sure what I'll do with that small balance.

Have you ever sold or regifted a gift card you couldn't use? If you've resold one, what website did you use?

I've looked into selling gift cards, but haven't chosen that route, yet. You lose some of the value and, well, that just bothers me. I have regifted a gift card, though. I received one that I didn't think I would use, but knew my husband would. So I gave it to him as part of his birthday gift one year. I told him it was regifted, but he didn't mind. 

What's been your most appreciated gift card? What kind of gift card would you most want to receive in the future?

I've specifically asked for certain gift cards in the past, based on what I needed at the moment. I have 2 most appreciated gift cards from recent years, one to a thrift store and the other to a grocery store. And I asked for both of these. A thrift store because I like to get a new top or jacket from time to time, or add to kitchen items. And I like that whatever I buy at a thrift store, it won't cost very much. With the grocery store gift card, I wanted to be able to buy myself foods that I specifically wanted without feeling guilty about the added cost.

I think if I had to choose a specific gift card that I would really appreciate receiving in the future, it would be something that would help with vacation costs, like a hotel chain gift card. Our vacations are few and far between. A gift card to a hotel chain that was within our budget would push us to actually plan and take a vacation.

Do you have any other thoughts on gift cards, either receiving or giving?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the Week of Labor Day Holiday

I've been feeling very tired the last month or two. Over the weekend, I asked my family members to take on some of my smaller tasks, so I could focus on my main ones. One such task was organizing the kitchen fridge. One daughter went through every container in there, freezing some items, combining same and similar items into a single container, asking family members to eat up their own leftovers, and throwing away a few spoiled foods. She also put foods that should be used up in everyday meals soon in one spot and suggested a plan for using those foods. I didn't take a before photo, but here's the after. It is such an improvement!

This same daughter will be picking vegetables for our lunches each day, too.

My other daughter agreed to bake desserts for us. She picked the blackberries and made a pie for us on Wednesday. This daughter has also said she'll bake cookies for us each week.

My husband has volunteered to clean up the kitchen in the mornings after breakfast for me and tidy up the deck and patio periodically. All of these changes have been making my week a lot less stressful. I was wearing myself out trying to fit everything in each day, Since the changes, I've had more time to make jam, syrup, and blackberry juice, as well as dig all of the garlic, start winter salad seeds, organize all of my saved seeds for next year, and put together all of the food for our Labor Day cook-out.

This year's garlic -- I hope it lasts 9 or 10 months.
I'll be replanting about 70 cloves in October for next year's harvest.

Friday

We actually didn't have a family dinner this night. I was feeling under the weather, so I went to bed early.

Saturday

bean and garden vegetable soup

scratch biscuits

fresh blackberries

Sunday

refried beans

sautéed kale

homemade flour tortillas

fresh blackberries

I was able to use all of this produce in our cook-out on Monday

Monday Cook-out

We invited our son and daughter-in-law over for the afternoon and evening. The two of them picked a couple of quarts of fresh blackberries to take home with them. We cooked out over our patio fire ring and enjoyed conversation and a star-filled sky.

I used what I could from our garden and foraged produce, as my son and daughter-in-law don't have a garden. I like to share the extra good fresh stuff with them when we can. I didn't have chocolate bars for making s'mores, so I melted chocolate chips with a bit of shortening and made semi-sweet chocolate patties on a sheet of foil, then hardened in the fridge for a couple of hours. The blackberry lemonade is juiced blackberries combined with homemade lemonade (bottled lemon juice, sugar, water).

hot dogs in homemade buns

rosemary, garlic, Parmesan and olive oil mashed potatoes

tomato, basil, cucumber, mozzarella salad

kale, apple, celery, raisin, pecan salad

blackberry lemonade

s'mores

Tuesday

ground beef, zucchini, green bean, garlic, onion sauté, served over

brown rice

fresh figs

tomato salad

Wednesday

baked beans (using up 2 almost empty ketchup bottles and some flat cola)

watermelon rind pickles

garden green beans

pasta, garden vegetable and mozzarella salad (using up some cooked pasta)

blackberry pie

Thursday

black-eyed pea, vegetable and hot dog soup

scratch cornbread

tomato and cucumber salad

leftover blackberry pie

the last serving of apple crisp baked with apples that had been knocked off the tree

I baked a double batch of hot dog buns, 2 loaves of sandwich bread, a small batch of blueberry muffins using the last of the garden blueberries, and this apple crisp to use as breakfast 2 days this week. Our breakfasts have consisted of homemade yogurt, blackberries, fresh apples, apple crisp, eggs, toast, biscuits, blueberry muffins, milk, coffee, tea, and juice. I salvaged enough fallen apples over the past month to trim bruises, then chop and fill 3 gallon sized bags of apple pieces to use in crisps this fall. I know many people eat apple crisp as a dessert. In our house, apple crisp is breakfast fare for late summer or early fall mornings. Our lunches used produce from the garden plus bread, cheese, peanut butter, raisins, eggs, rice, and blackberry lemonade.

We are now harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, zucchini and patty pan squash, green beans (pole, mainly, but a few bush beans too), lettuce, kale, carrots, spinach, nasturtiums, radish greens, garlic, blackberries, apples, figs, blueberries (the tail end), and rhubarb. When I pick celery, we use the entire rib, leaves and stem both. If I only need the stem for a salad, I save the leaves to use in something else, like soup. And I'm only cutting one rib at a time, not the whole plant like what you would buy in the store. I'm hoping to get more celery overall this way. 11 of my celery seedlings made it to the plant stage, and of those 11, only 6 really grew well.  

I hope all of your meals hit the spot this past week. What was on your menu? Do you like crisps and cobblers as breakfast foods, or are they strictly desserts in your household? It's beginning to feel a bit like fall here -- cooler mornings and the aroma of apples baking in my kitchen. Is it feeling like fall there yet?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!