A few frugal things

We've been on vacation for several weeks, so there's often not much frugal to report. But, we have had a few wins.

• We our rebuilding our own deck, vs paying $12k for someone else to do it. Our vacation house is on the coast (a few blocks off of the ocean) & there is more maintenance required than on an inland property. There is still cost associated with doing it on our own (we drove a car here to bring supplies, have to buy all of the materials/a few tools we didn't previously own, etc), but the savings should be around $10K. 
• I used our Home Depot gift cards I bought with a special offer (I received $90 in Starbucks gift cards for buying $300 in Home Depot gift cards at the grocery store a month or so back) to pay for some of the deck supplies.
• I used a Starbucks gift card (see above) to treat my sister/friend a few times on our girls trip. 
• I bought the boys new shoes at the Nike outlet in Oregon. Our kids have three pair of shoes at any given time: running shoes, slides/flip flops, & soccer cleats. The running shoes wear out quickly. We bought 3 pair for each, in additional sizes. This is how we've handled shoe purchases in prior years, and it's worked out well. By making the purchase in Oregon, we also avoided sales tax, which was a nice additional bonus.
• I've made use of fridge leftovers from our girls trip (we had nachos) & turned most ingredients into two dinners of tacos. 
• Other than our water park adventure with the kids, most activities have been inexpensive or free. It's hard to find time to do much else anyway with the deck project! Oh, and we've been watching lots of World Cup soccer!

That's about it from my side. We'll drive home on Thursday - our first time tackling a drive of that distance with the kids. Fingers crossed! What about you? Have you had any frugal wins lately?