Calling all procrastinators

So I was shopping around on the Coupon Chief Web site today, laughing about all the last minute Valentine's Day deals they have going right now. But I can't laugh too hard, because it's not like I've done any of MY Valentine's Day shopping yet. Whoops.

But Valentine's Day is like the one time that you're allowd to procrastinate, because who wants week-old droopy flowers? I'm sure my mom with much prefer the shiny fresh ones that I will be picking up for her tomorrow.

But if you're the kind of person that buys actual gifts for Valentine's Day, you should check out these Target coupons because Target rocks and has the best stuff ever. It's probably where I will be picking up a card for my husband. (At this point in our debt-paying existence, I really shouldn't get anything more than that.)

But if we were in a good place financially, do you know who'd be getting Valentine's Day love? BEN!!! You should see the awesome Children's Place coupons and the adorable stuff they have. Simply adorable.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone

Learning heaven

I found this store downtown today with a ton of stuff for kids. It's almost a toy store, but more like a learning store. It had art supplies and books and puzzles and toys, but only good ones. Lots of Melissa and Doug stuff. I think it was like a homeschooling supply store or something I don't know. All I know is that Ben sat and played with a wooden Thomas the Train set for like 20 minutes without getting into trouble while I shopped and drooled all over everything. He also found a little wooden tool/peg set thing that he played nicely with.

I finally chose my purchase, a pack of three books about numbers with a dry erase marker, crayons and stickers all included. It also has a cd with more stuff to color. I guess you put it in the computer and then print out more coloring book pages. That's pretty awesome for $10. We were happy campers.

And the sticker book was a huge hit! We spent about 25 minutes putting stickers in the book this afternoon. And if you know my son, you know that anything that causes him to sit still and do one thing for that long is a miraculous invention.

How many cars do we need anyway?

I was so excited to move back to Puget Sound where there is nice public transportation and lots of city type things within walking distance. But then my mom offered to let me use Joe's car while we lived here, and I have to admit, now I'm kind of spoiled by being a SAHM with my own car.

I know that it makes no financial sense for us to be a two-car family once we don't live here anymore. But it doesn't stop me from browsing the internet, looking at Car Prices, wondering how horrible a person I am for wanting a family car when we don't even know how many kids we will be having yet.

I mean sure, if there are three, then I can see that we would need one. But only two? And a gas guzzler? Not a good plan. But its so NICE having so much room in my vehicle for the dog and groceries and stuff. Oh well.

The big V debate

My husband goes back and forth on his opinion of the big V day. Sometimes he thinks its a capitalistic evil trick designed to make men look bad. Other times, he's disgruntled because he thinks that he should be allowed to do sweet things for me whenever he wants, and doesn't need a special day with "expectations" surrounding it. But other years, things are good between us and he's feeling laid back and romantic. Then I get stuff.

Chocolate, flowers, dinner, a movie, a massage, whatever he can think of. He sometimes gets original things, like a painting for the wall, but most of the time, I think he understands that a cheesy holiday equals cheesy things, like these pink gifts. Would I buy any of these things for myself? No way! But if he came home with something like this for me on V-day, would I be happy? You betcha! With our history, I'm happy for his thoughtfulness. Besides, everybody likes pink stuff at least one day out of the year. ;-)

Cute specs

My sister-in-law used to work for a glasses store, and she had this amazing knack for looking at a person for a few seconds and then pulling a pair of frames off of the shelf that looked perfect on them. She was paid on commission and was very good at her job, because everyone left happy. One day, just for fun, I had her do it for me, even though I don't wear glasses. Sure enough, I looked super cute! But because she worked for a big box store, the frames all had high prices. This is great for people who have insurance that will buy them a new pair of glasses every X number of years no matter what they cost, but a lot of people have to pay something out of pocket and would benefit more to shop on a budget.

If I ever end up needing glasses (which is starting to look more and more likely as each day goes by) I would have her help me pick out some frames and then try to find similar ones at an online store.

This Great Discovery: www.ZenniOptical.com has a lot of different choices, but I thought these ones were kind of cute. If I ever get around to getting my eyes checked again, I'm sure I'll end up with something like this. That is, if my sister-in-law approves. :-)

Support your local artists

I am getting so frustrated with the rat race and commercialism and manufactured Made In China products. Learning to knit has really put me in touch with the amount of love you can put into a handmade item. When something is made by a person, it's not only more honest, its one-of-a-kind. I would really like to do more of our holiday shopping at places like the St. Augustine Artwalk, where arts and crafts are sold by the people who made them and are just trying to make a living doing the thing that they love to do. These are the kind of people who need our support this Christmas, not the big box stores of the world.

I think the fact that this town has a First Friday Weekend Art Walk every month is absolutely awesome. Around here, the most I can hope for is to hit a few of the holiday bazaars while they last. We as a nation really need to start supporting locally made things. If I were in Florida, you better believe I'd be at this event. The only thing I love more than pretty artwork is pretty original artwork. :-)

Deal or no deal

Stephen had this brilliant idea that we should shop around for a good deal on a laptop this morning since we were already in civilization for Thanksgiving. He wanted to get up early and shop with the crazy people! Dude — there many reasons why that is not a good idea. Here are a few of them.

1. My mom would have to be in charge of watching sleeping Ben, and they'd be on opposite ends of her ginormous house with no monitor. So realistically, one of them would have to wake up and move. Neither of them would really be thrilled about this.

2. I am working tonight until 1:30 a.m. Getting up at 4 and staying up until 1 equals death.

3. I am really hoping to either get a laptop for Christmas, or at least use the money we get to buy one in January. I do not want to buy it on credit unless its a really good deal.


So as a compromise, we decided to go window shopping for laptops with my mom and Ben at about 10 a.m. We figured most of the sales last until noon or 1 p.m. Well, we didn't find anything under $600 and I know I can get one online for $500 easily, and maybe even $450. That's the lowest advertised price that I've seen. Anyway, we gave up and went home. I had to work at 3 p.m. so we wanted to leave my mom's house by 12:30, just in case we hit traffic. (And we did! Everything was fine until the last 10 minuts of the trip, which ended up taking about 45 minutes!!!!) So we arrived in town exactly at 3 p.m., and they just dropped me off here. About 20 minutes later, Stephen called me ranting and raving about something.

Apparently, our local Staples had laptops on sale for $350 until 10 a.m. Here! Not in Kent.

He was mucho frustrated :-(

Bed from heaven

When I was pregnant, I admit that it was nice to have a massage therapist for a husband. But what I really wanted was a new bed. Our mattress was ancient and sagged in the middle. I used a body pillow from like week 10 and on, but it wasn't enough. By the time I was about six months along, my back ached more and more each and every day, no matter what my husband did to fix it. We decided that we would use my birthday money to get ourselves a new mattress.

While shopping, we had a chance to lay down on lots of different kinds of mattresses, but we both agreed that we liked the tempurpedic mattresses the best. Sadly, they were WAY out of our price range (we've pretty much always struggled to make ends meet, even then) so we went with a regular mattress with a memory foam topper. It was very awesome — a huge improvement from what our bed was before. But sometimes, I still wonder how blissfully happy we'd be now if we'd gotten the tempurpedic mattress. Seriously, it was like laying on a cloud.

These boots were made for splashing

I insisted on celebrating last night, even though it would make more sense to celebrate making money by not spending it, that isn't how I work. So we went out to dinner at Happy Teriyaki and then did a little shopping. It was mostly necessary shopping though, I swear! We got more pull-up ("Carrots still there, bunnies on 'em") diapers and a really cheap movie. (Seriously, this is what Ben says to differentiate between the pull-ups and the old baby diapers. Unless he uses one and then it's "Carrots all gone, bunnies on 'em") We also got him some new shoes to replace the ones we ruined. I know, poor people should not ruin their child's only pair of shoes, but we didn't do it on purpose!

We'd gone for a walk in the rain the other day and managed to get all the way to the school (they have a covered play area that both the kid and the dog really appreciate visiting when it's raining) and most of the way home with no incidents when Ben took off running and started stomping in a puddle. His shoes were soaked all the way through, but we still had to go grocery shopping that day. Since they are his only shoes, our options were: Go another day, bring him without shoes, have one of us stay home with him and the other go alone, or try to dry out the shoes. We chose option 4, try to dry out the shoes. We propped them up by the heater vent and turned it up full-blast. Well, the shoes were dry in about 15 minutes but the little liner things in the soles shrunk up and fell out. (They were $10 shoes from Payless. Why spend a lot on shoes he's just going to outgrow?) Well, we'd only had them for a few months and they were still a little big on him ... so we were very sad. Stephen said we'd just make do and have him wear them anyway, making sure that he always has socks on (he hates socks and usually doesn't wear them). This worked OK I guess, but I just feel like a bad person. They can't be comforatable with no cushion under his feet. If I'm bringing in all this extra money that we weren't even counting on, surely we can afford a new pair of shoes for our son.

So we shopped around and I didn't really like anything that we saw. Everything was either ugly or expensive. Some pairs were both! So we headed back to Payless. (It wasn't THEIR fault that the first pair fell apart, you know?) We tried three pairs on him, the $10 pair were kinda cute, but wouldn't really go with very many of his outfits. The second pair, $17, were pretty cute, and actually looked a lot like the pair we were replacing. We were just about to get them when I saw a pair of brown boots — also $17 on sale. The giant sign on them said "WATERPROOF" and I heard the cheesy little "Hallelujah" chorus in my head. Brilliant! All children's shoes should be waterproof.

We bought them and he wore them out of the store. He wasn't thrilled, because they are heavy and clunky and slow him down quite a bit. Plus, he likes to take his shoes off in the car and he was extra grumpy that he couldn't kick these off. (They are tie shoes, but have a secret zipper on the inside for easy on and off for parents. Again, I restate that these are awesome shoes!) So when I got up this morning, I was happy to see that it had rained last night. We'll be sure to go for an afternoon walk today and I'll show him that it's OK to jump in the puddles now because new boots protect our feet. After that, I bet he'll take to them just fine.

Strollin along

When Ben was a little baby, I believed in baby-wearing with all my heart. I alternated between two slings and a front pack whenever we went out. I tried to keep him as close to me as possible because he used to cry if he thought he was being ignored. We got the best use out of our baby carriers when he was about 8 to 15 months old. But the older he got, the more he objected to being carried. Plus, he was getting heavy! So my husband dragged out our old stroller one day when we were planning to go for a walk, and I thought, “This will never last. He’ll be begging to get out in a few minutes.” Well, that walk lasted for more than an hour and that’s when we knew that he was finally old enough and secure enough to just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Of course, that doesn’t mean its that easy on us parents though. The stroller is a hand-me-down and the steering is atrocious. It’s awkward to push and really bulky to store, even when it is folded up. I would have replaced it, except that I figured that one stroller was as good as another.

Boy did I have no idea. Talk about being on the edge of trendy! This company Mutsy, has created a truly innovative new stroller design. They convert from a bassinet style to a car seat holder to an upright stroller for an older child. They almost look like a luggage cart with a baby seat attached. The style seems like it’s right out of a futurist movie like “I Robot.”

I really like the college navy and the college khaki (whether they are implying that its for college student moms or college-bound babes, I’m not quite sure, but they are still really stylish.)

You have got to be kidding me

This is just not OK.

Date rape drug found in children’s toy

I know we’re having money problems. And the shiny made-in-China stuff at Mal-Wart sure can look tempting. But I am just not OK with the industry regulations right now. I am this close to limiting Ben’s new toys to solid pieces of American wood, carved and sanded by myself or my husband only. We’ll do it in our own house and make them into cute shapes like teddy bears and trains. That’s a toy right? I’m sure kids got along fine before brightly colored plastics and battery-operated light-up things were invented.

I mean, a choking hazard is one thing, and if these kids swallowed small toys that were meant for older kids and choked on them, I could maybe see blaming the parents a little more. You know, like the toys have an age on the outside of the package for a reason. You don’t sue the bleach company if your kid drinks bleach and dies you know? It’s bleach, it’s SUPOSSED to be toxic.

But when toys for kids of any age contain the date rape drug and kids who eat the toy go into a coma? There is something majorly wrong with our world. It’s almost like someone is doing this on purpose. And seriously, I don’t care how much you hate Amercia, you just don’t target children. You just don’t. And if its not on purpose, but just people being lazy and trying to cut costs to drive up profit margins? Well, shame on them. They certainly won’t be making any more profits now, huh?

Holidays hit us hard

The AP has moved a wire story about how to cut your budget around the holidays that I pored over with much enthusiasm, until I realized that it was filled with useful tips like, give to charity throughout the year instead of a bunch at the holidays and limit your outings to just one or two special plays like "The Nutcracker." Hmm.

The only tip on there that I considered useful for lower/middle class us was try making more holiday gifts this year and offer to see a friend and go out for lunch and a movie instead of swapping gifts, as your time is more precious than stuff anyway. I totally agree with the sentiment of this idea, but in my book, lunch and a movie is still quite expensive.

We most certainly won't be spending that much on any one person on our list. It's so huge that we're trying to keep it between $5-10 per person, but it's getting hard. I've spent $15 on my mom, and I still feel bad because I'd love to be able to afford to get her more. There's a DVD out there that I know she'd love ...

I'm floored!

I am so impressed with iFLOOR for offering a $1,000,000 warranty to protect customers who have had problems with their flooring and were told that the warrenty didn't apply because they purchased the flooring online! I would be so mad if something happened to our brand new bamboo floor and we were told our warrenty didn't apply. We did not get our floor online, but I do get a lot of other things there. It's scary to think that a big purchase would be excluded because of where you shop. It's the exact same floor, you know? This press release explains how iFLOOR is going out of their way to protect their customers. Good for them!



iFLOOR, America's largest online flooring retailer, today announced a $1,000,000 limited warranty designed to protect its customers from predatory manufacturer policies that exclude warranty coverage from online purchases.

The policy, which goes into effect immediately, offers up to one million dollars of coverage in the event that a customer's warranty claim is denied specifically because they made their purchase online. It is complimentary for every iFLOOR customer, and protects the buyer under the same terms as the original product warranty.

iFLOOR, Inc. CEO, Steve Simonson, came up with the program to combat "scare tactics" used by manufacturers of hardwood floors and laminate flooring. "Their idea is to discourage you from buying at a discount!" wrote Simonson in his blog "It's About Flooring". "This is not right! You deserve to save money! So we're going to take care of this problem once and for all."

And it would appear that federal law is on his side. Section 108 of the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Act, states that, "In general, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty."

Under iFLOOR's new warranty, a key provision allows for iFLOOR to "seek justice" on behalf of the customer in the event of legal action. According to Simonson, "I'm putting iFLOOR's money where my mouth is."

About iFLOOR, Inc. *Since 1998, iFLOOR.com has been the leading online and retail flooring company, with 36 local retail stores nationwide offering more than 70,000 products, including hardwood floors, laminate flooring, bamboo flooring and cork floors. iFLOOR.com is the largest online flooring retailer according to Internet Retailer Magazine, and was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in the United States for the past three years. Committed to quality customer service, superior selection and friendly expert advice, iFLOOR.com enables customers to buy flooring both online and in its retail stores at a substantial savings over traditional retailers. For more information about iFLOOR, please visit www.iFLOOR.com.

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Uptown Saturday nights

I am so jealous of this awesome event in downtown St. Augustine, Fla. It's called Uptown Saturday night and its always on the last Saturday of the month. That means one just went by on Oct. 27 and there will be another on Nov. 24. It runs from 5 to 9 p.m., its totally free to go,(even parking is free!) and they have all sort of nifty entertainment like shopping, live music, book signings and more.

The thing that caught my attention the most was the fact that many shops will hold an open house with wine tastings and refreshments. You seriously cannot tear me away from free food. I would also love to look around at the St. Augustine shopping because I have such a soft spot in my heart for antiques. My husband and I fell in love with an antique bud vase in Ellensburg a few years ago and I absolutely had to have it, never mind the price. (For some reason, I haven't been allowed to look in antique shops since then.) But not all antiques are expensive, and even the ones that are pricey are worth it, because by buying things that already exist, you're helping keep down the amount of new crappy, made-in-China junk that is shipped out to big box stores every day. If we stopped consuming so much, they'd have to stop supplying so much, you know?

I think that Uptown Saturday nights is a brilliant way to revitalize a downtown that needs a boost, or to just bring even more attention to one that's already thriving. Really, all you would need to get something like this going is the participation of the shop owners. And what shop owner isn't interested in attracting more business to their store? Once you have a big event going on, and everyone's talking about it, people start to remember that the downtown shops are there, even during the weekdays. My town could really learn a thing or two from St. Augustine.

Letting the baby drive

After we went out to breakfast this morning for my birthday (paid for by very generous friends, yay!) we weren't sure what to do with ourselves. It was 9 a.m. on a Saturday and we were already out, dressed and fed. Nothing here is really open that early, so Stephen decided to offer to let Ben choose what we would do. He asked him if he wanted to go home or on a drive.

He picked drive. And then, just for fun, we went ahead and let him choose where we'd go. Not like, "where do you want to go?" but like, every time we came to an intersection, we'd say "left, right or straight?" and he'd pick. And amazingly, in a slightly, but actually not very roundabout way, he started heading the car straight for the mall! Ha ha ha. We warned him that the mall doesn't open until 10 a.m. on Saturday, but that we would look just to be sure. (That way, we weren't the bad guys by saying "no") and sure enough, Penny's was having a special early bird promotion. Every thing in the store was super on sale. We got holiday gifts for my mom and his mom, and still had $10 left to spend to get a $10 off coupon. So basically, we were shopping for free at that point. Stephen found the clearance rack in his section and picked out three really nice polo type shirts that were on sale for $2.97. These were $30 shirts!!! Not like he needs shirts, but we got three nice ones for free, so hey, who can argue?

Next we went out into the mall, (it was 10 a.m. by now) and were planning on letting Ben do what he wanted, but then we saw that the liquidation store had closed for good and was putting shopping carts out front of their leftover merchandise, marked FREE.

Holy crap! We got lightbulbs, several books, some clothes, an Easter basket for Ben and some kale seeds for next spring. Actually, we got more than that but I don't remember it all. A Halloween mask, I think. Anyway, our Penny's receipt said we saved $150 and who knows how much all the free liquidation store stuff was worth. All because we decided to let Ben drive. :-)

Check out these deals!

I am really excited about this new site I found with a ton of Online Coupon Codes. They have hundreds of merchants, they update on a daily basis, and they are really easy to navigate. There are coupons from quite a few respectable companies that I haven't seen on any of the other sites. You should check out some of these BabyUniverse coupons and Gap coupons.

Considering this is the first year I have a paypal account and I now have the inside scoop on how to save money by shopping online, I'll be surprised if I even set foot in a big box store this holiday season. I'm glad too! When you shop online, you don't have to listen to nauseating Christmas carols on repeat. Plus, you can do it in your pajamas :-)

Tool solutions

Every single time my husband works on a project around the house, he leaves his tool box out and our toddler gets into it. He pulls out nails and hammers and screws and the power drill and whatever else he can get his baby hands on. Then he runs off with it, hiding screws who knows where, so that later I'll be sure to step on one with bare feet. Ouch. I've been telling him that he needs to put the tool box back right away, but he never does. I know it's heavy, and that he goes nuts if he puts it back and then 10 minutes later finds something else that needs to be fixed, but this has got to stop.

I was browsing this Web site that features gifts for him and saw that they sell tool carts which would be perfect for our situation. That way, the tools would be not only high up, but also on wheels, so it would be easier to put them away. What a great idea!

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Holiday wish list

About five years ago, money was tight and so my husband and I agreed not to spend more than $10 on each other for the holidays. It was one of my favorite years ever because we got a chance to really be creative. To get my idea, I paid attention to what he complained about more than anything else. It didn't take a genius to realize that he was pretty miserable about how cold it was in our Bellingham apartment. So since I had an Old Navy coupon, I got him a pair of pajama pants. They were $9.99 and therefore I didn't break any rules. (We hadn't discussed tax!) He was absolutely thrilled. They were the first pair of pajama pants he'd ever owned (no joke) and I just got him to get rid of them a few months ago. Due to being worn all the time, they had a few hundred holes in them. He's gotten other pairs since then, but those first ones were always his favorite.

Well, the holidays are racing up on us again, and of course, money is still tight, but I really want to get something for Ben. He will be 2 by the time Christmas and Hanukkah roll around and I believe he will be old enough to appreciate a gift from his parents. (Last year, we figured everyone else got him so much stuff we didn't really need to get him anything.) But since it will most likely be on video as well, I am wanting to get him something meaningful, something he'll remember. I am leaning toward just using these Petsmart coupon codes to get him a goldfish, because I know that is something that's pretty affordable and he will really love. My only concern is do I get a cheap one and replace it every time it goes belly up in the bowl, or do I get a more hardy, but less interesting Beta? Stephen is leaning toward a regular goldfish because Ben likes them a lot and they move around constantly, which is much more exciting for a toddler than a fish that just kind of sits there.

Regardless, I know that wherever I do my shopping this year, there's a ton of ways I can save money online by shopping with coupon codes. This is one of my favorite sites, because they are constantly adding more coupons from stores I shop at anyway. And plus, when you do your shopping online, you avoid lines and crappy customer service by over-worked and under-paid employees.

A head start

After writing about holiday shopping yesterday, I got to thinking. The holidays hit us so hard financially because we have to pay for like 25+ presents all in one month. And every January, I tell myself, "that's it. I'm starting my shopping super early this year. Surely we can afford two presents per month. We'll just work them into our budget and then we won't go broke."

And then of course, its November before I realize that yes, the holidays are the same time this year that they are every year, and we haven't done any shopping yet and we'd better get started. So then we have the time crunch problem too. The later in the season it gets, the more likely we are to just grab something stupid or lame or OUT OF OUR PRICE RANGE, because there's just not enough time left to keep looking.

Add all of this in with the fact that a liquidation store at our mall is going out of business (we're sad, cause we love it there) I decided that we should do some holiday shopping today. Yes, in September. So now, we've spent about $50 and we have about 1/3 to 1/2 of our shopping done. I am so totally not kidding. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could spend my Black Friday wrapping instead of shopping? Horray for not procrastinating!

Pingo phone home

I've had my cell phone for about four years now, and have been land-line free for about two of them. It definitely works well with our lifestyle. There's just no reason to pay $30 a month for a landline when we can make all of the calls we need to on our cells, and they don't even charge for long distance. The only problem we've run into is that you can't make international call on a cell phone. At least not without paying like $5 a minute or something horrible like that.

So, when we've had to make international calls (usually to Canada, but once or twice to France and Australia as well) we've gone out and purchased international calling cards. Previously, I bought them at grocery stores, as I didn't really know where else to get them. But I just found out about Pingo, which has some great deals on all sorts of calling cards.

One of the things I thought was really generous of them is that they are offering a special discount for my readers! They are already selling their $25 calling card for just $17, but if you guys are interested in buying a Pingo card, just follow the links and put in the code ppp3 for and extra $3 off. That means you can get a $25 card for just $14. Plus, Pingo is going to give you five hours for free just for signing up. That's a lot of talk time. They don't have any hidden fees, and their rates are quite competitive. They do charge $1 per month to maintain your account, but if you talk on the phone like I do, you'll still be saving money.

Even if you don't know anyone in another country, you can get a long distance phone card for your home phone. Or, keep one in your wallet for an emergency. If you ever end up stuck somewhere without your cell (or the battery is dead) you will have a way to call home or maybe a tow truck. :-)

Seems like a great present for a teenager. Then you don't have to worry about "I would have called, I swear, but couldn't get any reception on my cell!"