My Favorite Shopping Sites For Clothes

In response to last week's post about my recent shopping habits, my college roomie, Melissa left a comment asking where I do my online shopping. Since I aim to please the readers around here, I’m going to give you a list of my favorite online shopping sites.

Boden – I have been a lover of all things Boden for about eight years or so. Their clothes are really well made and will last you a really long time which is why I don’t mind spending a little extra when I buy clothes from here. I bought a few things from the spring line that I loved. I had to send one shirt back for a smaller size and that ended up being quite a debacle because they sent it to my parents’ house instead of mine (long story) but once I finally got the shirt in the right size, I loved it.

I haven’t had as much luck with the summer line. The dress I mentioned in my last post will be returned to Boden, but I did end up with some great camis which I desperately needed. I have another dress on the way from them and hope it’s a better fit. Boden is out of England so sometimes your shipments will be from England and sometimes from the States depending on where their stock is located. Boden usually has free shipping and free returns if you order a certain amount which is one of the reasons I don’t mind returning things from them because all I have to do is stick the label on the package and walk to my mailbox – super convenient!

Right now if you go to Boden through Ebates, you will get 10% cash back! Remember I told you about Ebates here and here. Awesome!

Land’s End – I get Land’s End catalogs in the mail and will order form them occasionally. Their clothes also hold up really well and they often have classic styles which is more what I like rather than what is trendy. I recently ordered a slip on cotton dress and a couple of shirts from there. I loved them all and didn’t have to make any returns. So, I’m not sure what their return policy is.

By the way, if you are shopping for a new swimsuit this season, I have found that the Land’s End swimsuits are by far the best ones around. I’ve had four or five and loved every one. The quality is good and they fit beautifully!

Right now if you go to Land’s End through Ebates, you can get 6% cash back.

L.L. Bean – I’m an L.L. Bean lover from way back. Again, their clothes are really classic, and you can wear them year after year without fear of them not being in style. I ordered the shorts I mentioned in my last post from L.L. Bean and other than them being a little tight through the belly area, I loved them. I mean, it’s not Bean’s fault that I love Mexican food! The L.L. Bean orders come with a return label, but it’s for UPS and so you have to first find a UPS drop off location and if you use the label, they will charge you or dock your refund $6.50. I just go to the post office instead of using the pre-paid label. L.L. Bean has recently changed their policy so that everything ships free – no minimum order! Awesome!

Right now if you go to L.L. Bean through Ebates, you can get 2% cash back.

Eshakti – I have only ordered one thing from here, a dress, last year, but I love the dress and ordered another dress just this week. This company offers reasonably priced shipping charges and right now, free shipping for orders over $100 (not me). You can shop the overstock stuff for 35% off, and once you sign up for their emails they will send you a discount code once a month. Also, when you first sign up, you can get $20 off your first order. If the item doesn’t fit, you can return it for your money back, an exchange or a gift card for the price of your item plus another 20% - in other words, if you got he gift card option and paid $50 for your item then you would get a gift card for $60.

Those are the main online shopping sites I visit. I recently bought a couple of pairs of jeans at Gap online and loved both of those – they don’t carry the big booty size in the stores.

For shoes, I often check out 6pm before anywhere else because they usually have awesome deals and I have gotten some really great buys from there.

I hope some of these shopping tips helped. Remember to sign up for Ebates here and then when you are ready to shop go to Ebates first and then click on the name of the store where you want to shop. Ebates will take you directly to the store’s site, and you will earn money back on your purchases, which is how I ended up with $12.34 as mentioned in this post.

Happy Shopping!

Nat’s Couponing Tips – Part Two

Today, we will continue our discussion on couponing. I hope yesterday’s post was helpful to some of you. I wanted to share with you some of the best ways to find coupons and also provide you some links to a few web sites that will help you in your quest to get more band for your buck.

The keys I use to finding coupons are as follows:

1. Buy a Sunday paper. The majority of coupons are going to be in the Sunday paper. I have a friend at work who I swap coupons with. I cut out what I want from my paper and give her what I don’t take and she does the same. I get The Huntsville Times weekend subscription which is $8 a month; I’m sure Sunday only is a little cheaper. It’s worth it to me just to get the coupons.
2. Look online – go to this site and also Red Plum, SmartSource, All You, Target as well as individual company web sites. If you see an item on sale search for a coupon.
3. Send an email to your favorite companies – It never hurts to compliment someone, even companies. I have written to companies telling them how awesome I think their products are and have received coupons for free items in return for sending a nice email.
4. Buy coupons on eBay – I have one seller that I buy from about once a month or so. She lives in Florida and often has great coupons that are not available to me. Her seller name is maumabear and her listing is usually for 100 Grocery only coupons.
5. Use a clipping service. There are a lot of clipping services out there that sell coupons for specific items. They usually cut them from the newspaper and sell them for a low price. I have never used one of these services but a lot of people do.
6. Look for coupons in the store – seasonal coupon booklets are often available as well as coupons that pull out of the blinkie machines and coupons that come from tear pads.
7. Trade with your friends and family.
8. Pick up coupons at food shows, cooking classes, and other events.
9. Take advantage of rebates. Whether it’s money back or coupon booklets from the company, rebates are a great way to aid in saving money.

As far as finding out about great deals, I am going to list the sites I follow regularly. Most of these sites I visit on a daily basis to see what kind of great deals they have uncovered. A lot of them I will visit multiple times throughout the day just to make sure I don’t miss any great deals that may quickly disappear.

The first group of sites are general money saving tip sites and have been extremely helpful to me.

Money Saving Madness – this site is devoted to all sorts of money saving tips. She posts about available coupons, sales, deal sites, etc.

Southern Savers – this is actually how I determine my grocery list for the week. She posts each of the stores sale items and coupon match-ups and you can make a printable list. It is the best site I’ve found as far as helping me at the grocery store. She also lists various specials and deals throughout the day. This is one of the most helpful sites I have found.

Birmingham Bargain Mom – this is primarily for Alabama readers as her deals primarily pertain to the Birmingham and Huntsville areas.

Simply CVS – I wasn’t much of a CVS shopper until I found this site. This site takes each week’s sale paper and will show you multiple options as to how to get a lot of items for little money using coupons, and CVS’ Extra Care Bucks.

Hey It’s Free – I love to get stuff in the mail. Hey It’s Free posts about all the free samples, magazine subscriptions, etc. that you can find out on the World Wide Web. I have gotten tons of free magazine subscriptions by following this site.

The second group of sites I want to share with you are sites that offer daily deals. These sites can really help you save money when dining out, out for a night on the town, etc.

Swagbucks – This isn’t really a daily deal site, but this is a search engine that you can use to earn “Swagbucks”. Swagbucks can then be spend in the swag store for all sorts of items from gift cards to video games. Last year around Christmas, I had saved enough Swagbucks to purchase $25 worth of Amazon gift cards which I used to buy a Christmas present or two. Basically I earned an Amazon gift card just for searching the internet. Money Saving Madness (mentioned above) often has a lot of Swagbuck tips throughout the day.

Groupon – Every day Groupon offers a deal of the day and you can sign up for email notices for your city (this is a great time to have one of those junk email accounts I mentioned yesterday. Some recent Groupon examples are $6 for $12 at Lawler’s BBQ, $15 for $30 of product at Bath and Body Works, $10 for $20 Barnes and Nobel Gift Card.

Living Social – Similar to Groupon, Living Social also offers discounts at local restaurants and venues. Recent examples are $12 for $25 at Another Broken Egg Café, $9 for two movie tickets purchased through Fandango, $24 for $60 ticket to the Huntsville Symphony, $10 for $20 Amazon gift card. P.S. If you sign up through this link you should receive a $5 credit.


*Side note – if you use Swagbucks, you can click on the “Daily Deals” tab on the left side of the page and the Groupon and Living Social deals will appear. If you purchase through the Swagbucks link, not only are you getting a great deal, but you will also earn various denominations of Swagbucks. For example, the deal for Another Broken Egg Café earned me 315 Swagbucks, just 135 short of a $5 Amazon gift card.

Baby Steals – If you are the mother of a little one or need to buy a baby shower gift, check out baby steals. They have a new deal every day starting at 10:00 a.m. Central time. These deals go quick so be sure to check it out early.

GroopDealz is a new deal site I’ve come across and it has a lot of handmade items for a discounted price. I haven’t bought anything from this site yet, but there have been some cute things listed here.

Ebates – This is an awesome way to earn some money. If you are like me then you probably buy a lot of items online. Ebates is a great way to earn money back on those purchases. All you do is sign up for an account, then each time you shop online go first to Ebates and then find the store you will be shopping at, click the link and it will take you to that store. When you make your purchase, a certain percentage will be added to your Ebates account and when you reach a certain amount, you can ash it in! How easy is that?
I think that’s all the information I have for you today. If you happen to sign up for any of the deal sites mentioned above, I would be most appreciative if you went through the link provided here in this post. I get credits for referring friends and after all, I am about maximizing my dollar, isn’t that what the whole point of this post was about?

Thanks for reading and I truly hope these tips were helpful and that you will soon be on your way to maximizing your own dollar and saving lots of money! Have a great weekend!!

Nat’s Couponing Tips – Part One

Wow, I think yesterday’s post stirred a fire in a lot of your bellies! I guess that’s a good thing. I wanted to address some of the things that were brought up in the comments section of the post. This is going to be a two part post because I wrote WAY too much. I hope it comes across well and that it will help some of you out.

As I mentioned yesterday, I use coupons all the time. I get made fun of sometimes (in a fun, joking way) because I seem to always have a coupon on hand for a product or restaurant or what have you. It’s rare that I don’t have a coupon for something when I need it. Having said that, one of the main reasons I never talk much about couponing here on this site is because there are so many great sites devoted to couponing and I actually use those sites to aid me in my quest for the lowest possible price. So, today, I wanted to reply to your comments from yesterday and also share my favorite money saving web sites with you so that you too may be able to start saving some money! It really adds up people, you would be surprised. Even my dad has started using coupons and I think he has also been impressed with the savings he has seen.

I will be the first to admit that couponing can be very time consuming if you do it right. However, if you are a TV junkie like me, then you can always cut coupons while watching TV, or if you are at the ballpark at your kids’ game, take your coupons there and cut them out or work on your grocery list. If you don’t get car sick, you can work on them while riding in the car while your husband is driving (for those of you that have husbands). You get the picture. There are lots of ways that you can multi-task and cut coupons so that it doesn’t have to take up so much of your time. When it comes to making a grocery list, focus on items that are on sale and plan your weekly menu around those items. It will save you a lot of time and money.

So, without further ado, let’s get started…

Mary was the first to comment and she said this, “Amen, sister! And, since we're complaining...I don't like having to submit my name, address or email address to get a coupon. I don't want or need a bunch of junk mail or spam from a company that I might be trying for the first time. I will have to add that I don't use coupons as much as I used to since my boys have gotten older.” In a later comment, Melissa suggested, “I have a tip for when a site requires your email address to get a coupon or other offer (I hate having to do that too!!)...set up a separate email account just for 'junk' mail. When you need to enter an email address for a site that you don't want to get spam from, just give them that junk account address, and you won't have to be bothered with it when checking your regular email. Hope this is helpful :)”

This is also exactly what I do. I actually have three “junk” email addresses that I use so that I can optimize the number of deals I get. A lot of “deal sites” will allow you to have an account per email address and a lot of times you can get a credit for signing up at certain times. For example, this past Christmas, I used three different emails addresses to set-up three different accounts for a deal site. Each account I set up was given a $20 credit. In return, I ended up buying a lunch container, and two Melissa and Doug toys for a grand total of less than $5 (including shipping!). If I had paid full price, it would have been well over $75 for these items.

In addition to signing up for credits at various “deal sites”, you can also use these “junk” email addresses when signing up for coupons on company web sites. That way, you don’t have to deal with all the junk mail and spam that comes as a result of signing up for a coupon. I have found this method to work out very nicely. About once a week I will log on to my ‘junk” accounts and check out the coupon offers (if there are any) and clean out the inbox. Also, a lot of companies (like Procter and Gamble) will offer samples and special coupons on a monthly or quarterly basis but you have to have an account with them to get the samples or coupons. A ‘junk” email account is good for this situation as well.

Melissa also commented, “Hey Nat!! Great topic!! Was I that lady in front of you who spent $150 and used no coupons?!? HA! Just kidding. I would LOVE to learn how to maximize the use of coupons. I NEVER use them, but would love to. I rarely find coupons for things I want/need to buy during that particular week. And, we usually spend about $150/week. Any advice you could pass along would be great...especially for a working mom who does not have much time to plan out my grocery list/coupon usage. Help!!”

I think this is a problem that a lot of people have regarding using or not using coupons. If you are like me, then you are probably very brand loyal; sometimes, however when using coupons, we have to put our loyalties aside and just go for the best deal. As a result of being brand loyal, we sometimes won’t cut out coupons for products that we normally don’t buy. This is a lesson I had to learn myself – cut out and save all coupons, not just those you think you will use. The more coupons you keep around, the more likely you will have what you need come grocery store time.

Another way to maximize the use of your coupons is to use them when an item is on sale and also when your store doubles. I shop at Publix every week. It’s pretty much the only place I shop these days. I occasionally will buy some things at Target, especially on the week that I pick up my prescriptions; but rare and I mean really rare is the occasion that I stop by Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is a trap. You will often see things that are strategically placed and you will think, “what a deal”, and throw it in to your basket. The next thing you know, you are spending $200 and wondering how in the heck that happened. This seems to happen every time I’m at Wal-Mart so I’ve stopped going there except on the rare occasion when I need to pick up one or two things that they may not have at Publix or Target or if I need to get something on the way to work (there’s a Wal-Mart close to where I work). Wal-Mart also has a terrible coupon policy and the cashiers usually look at you like you’re the devil when you try to use a coupon there so I generally avoid Wal-Mart and I’ve been pleasantly pleased with my shopping experiences since I’ve stopped going there.

As I mentioned, I love Publix, and here’s why. Publix doubles coupons up to 50 cents (i.e. 50 cents becomes $1, 35 cents becomes 70 cents, etc). Publix takes competitors coupons. Publix often has store coupons, or Publix coupons. You can use one store, one competitor and one manufacturer coupon per item. Now, it’s not often that you will have all three, but many times, I will have a competitor and manufacturer coupon. Each Publix is different as to which competitor coupons they will take. For example, the Publix in Hampton Cove will take Earth Fare coupons, but the Publix on Whitesburg does not. So, be sure and ask at customer service before you start on your shopping venture. I like to buy the “Enjoy The City” coupon books that the schools sell because those books usually have a $5 off $50 or more at Star Market. I always spend more than $50 a week on groceries before coupons; so, each time I go to Publix, I automatically know I’m going to save $5 by presenting a Star Market coupon as a competitor coupon. Melissa, I know you live in Nashville, but I’m sure the schools there sell these books or something like them and I’m sure your Publix takes competitor coupons as well. Stacking coupons is a great way to get items for next to nothing or even free.

Publix also has Advantage Deals flyers that come out about once a month. There is a green flyer (for personal and health items) and a yellow flyer (for grocery items). Each flyer runs for a three week period and contains additional coupons and sale items.

I can’t speak for other stores, but I’m sure there are good deals there too. I’m not a fan of Kroger, but I think they double coupons as well (maybe only on certain days?).

I think this is enough about coupons for one day, how about you? Hopefully some of this information was helpful or at least a little insightful. I tried to find a good breaking point in all that I’ve written and this is the place where it seemed most suitable to stop. Tomorrow I will provide you some tips on where to find coupons and also share with you some of my favorite web sites.

Questions Answered and What’s Up Next

It was another busy weekend for me, only this time I actually had a moment or two to relax a little as well instead of constantly being on the go, which was a much welcome relief. Stay tuned for posts on all the activities.

Friday night I was out at Sparkman once again and this time I had a room in the press box all to myself. The game was really good, won in the last six seconds of play on a field goal by Buckhorn. Since I’ve already reviewed the concession stand at Sparkman, there will be no review this week. I hope you aren’t too disappointed. I once again had a cheeseburger and some popcorn, and brought my own Diet Coke (they have Pepsi at Sparkman, remember?

This leads me to answering some of the questions you have posted in the comments section over the last couple of days. Yes, Alison I have a love for Diet Coke beyond measure. I take it you missed the Ode to Diet Coke post. It was written a long time ago before you were a reader. So, perhaps you will go back and take a look at it. To answer your question, when I am at a restaurant and they have Pepsi products, I drink water. Nothing satisfies like a Diet Coke, Alison, nothing! By the way, sorry for previously putting two “Ls” in your name; only today did I realize there is only one!

To answer Kimberly’s questions: 1) Yes, that was Kim Davis. Later this week I will have a photo of her from Mayfair’s trunk-or-treat. You won’t want to miss it. 2) You can find the stats about your blog by clicking on “stats” from your dashboard or it will be one of the tabs when you are in the posting screen.

Sorry to those of you who were bored by my answering questions, but I want to make sure everyone stays informed and I can only communicate with Kimberly through hidden messages and answer sessions like this because I don’t have an email address for her. Thanks for your patience.

Later today (fingers crossed) I should have a review of the new Shutterfly holiday cards; so, check back later for that. Also up this week: Mayfair’s Fall Festival and Trunk-Or-Treat, A review of Sam and Greg’s pizza, Yoga by the River, and a recap of tonight’s Ladies’ Night Out costume party! Hope you’ll stop back by. Have a good week.

Your Questions About P's Drunk Driving Answered

There were a couple of questions posted in the comments section of the post about P and her drunk driving self slamming in to my car last Saturday night. So, I thought I would answer them here in case some of you don’t check or read the comments.

1. What are the red plastic looking things under the car? They are pieces of P’s tail light from her Honda. From what I understand, her car is a lot worse off than mine. Apparently her back bumper is dented in and has a lot of turquoise paint on it and I guess she has a busted tail light as well. I haven’t actually seen her car; this is what I heard from Jeff and the police. But I know the red tail lights are hers because there is some turquoise paint on one piece and it says Honda on it which is what her car is.

2. What would you do without Jeff??? I don’t know! Ya’ll Jeff is the best neighbor ever! We trade food, music (just this week I burned some CDs for him that he asked for), he alerts me to any suspicious activity at my house (like when Erika comes by in a black SUV to drop off Harry Potter books), and it is really enjoyable to talk to him. He is a very interesting character and he also knows all the neighborhood gossip. As Jackie said, I hit the jackpot with him as a neighbor.

3. How old is P? I don’t know her exact age, but via Jeff, she is in her 50s – clearly of an age to know better than to be out drinking and driving.

Completely off the subject, but I thought Kimberly would like to know – this week’s game is at Hazel Green. I’ll be taking my own chair, but will have a concession stand review for you next week.