New kicks.

Ella is walking more nowadays than she's crawling, by far. It's funny how things just *click* with babies, and once they pick something up, how fast they latch on to it.

Since she's among the bipeds now, we decided it was time to get her a pair of shoes that were functional, not just cute to look at -- although there's nothing wrong with a cute pair of shoes. So we headed over to Stride Rite this afternoon, and came home with these sassy new pink-and-white tennies.

She was not a particular fan of the process, though. Much like I did when I was a baby, she screamed when she had her feet measured, and again when the salesman put the shoes on her. I, on the other hand, wanted to cry when I paid for them, especially knowing she'll only wear them 3-4 months.

Oh, well. You only get one pair of feet, so you better take good care of them.

Costume success!

We finally got Ella's Halloween costume today! I'd been looking for awhile, and maybe it's just the age/size she's at, but I was wholly uninspired by the bulk of what was out there. There were a couple that Jon and I both were "Eh, that's pretty cute" on, but not really crazy about. And you know my non-crafty self isn't going to make one. Please.

Anyway, we found one today that we both really liked, and (bonus!) I was able to get it for 65% off...woohoo!

I haven't tried it on her yet, but I feel like it's going to be really cute.

No telling what it is until the day, though...you'll have to wait!

This is how I know I'm old.

Jon and I had tickets to see Death Cab For Cutie in Davidson this past Thursday. We had decided awhile ago that we'd just stay the night down there and go to Ikea and the outlets the next day.

We left earlier than expected on Thursday, so we had a good deal of time to kill before the show. We decided to go ahead to the outlets then, and check into our hotel before driving up to Davidson.

We never made it past the hotel.

Sad, huh?

We talked about it, and decided that since we had an evening alone, we wanted to spend it together rather than jostling with a bunch of kids in a hot arena not being able to talk to each other.

So yeah, I'm old. Well, we both are.

On the upside, though, we got a lot of cute clothes for Ella for next winter and picked up some household stuff at Ikea (which was a MADHOUSE, even after being open for 2 months and going there on a weekday).

New obsession: Etsy

I've ordered a couple of things from Etsy in the past, but I've just recently started browsing through their kids' stuff.

Oh dear. There is so much cute stuff, it should be a crime.

Check out these lovely jingle balls, this awesome hockey shirt, and this *precious* retro swimsuit!

So much adorable, *handmade* stuff!

The wierdness of Amazon

So last week, I placed an order with Amazon for 5 things -- 3 cases of baby food (they were having a great sale on Earth's Best...I think it's actually on through the end of the month), a teether for Ella (see previous post), and a salt cellar. An odd assortment of items, but that's neither here nor there.

I selected for the Super Saver shipping because I'm cheap like that, and we didn't really need anything that quickly. When you pick that particular shipping option, it tells you that your items might be shipped separately as they become available. OK, fine.

A few days go by, and I get an email that the teether and the salt cellar shipped. Great.

Next day, another email that tells me one case of the baby food shipped. Alrighty.

Day three, a third email telling me that the other 2 baby foods are on the way. Fine.

Cut to yesterday morning. I'm working in the office, and the dogs go nuts at the front door. I figure one of the packages is there. Lo and behold, two of them are there.

A couple of hours later, I'm back in the office again, and I hear a tremendous THUD outside. Dogs go nuts again. I go check, thinking it couldn't possibly be the 3rd box, especially having made such a noise. There it was. (When I opened it, I was actually surprised that none of the jars were broken, as it sounded like the UPS man had thrown it at the porch from the street.)

So I ordered 5 things at the same time, got 3 emails on 3 different days that the items were shipping in 3 separate boxes, and yet all 3 arrive on the same day.

As an aside to Amazon, the AirPaks don't work really well when they're not inflated. Just sayin'.

Thanks, Fresh Market!

Jon and I went to The Fresh Market last night to pick up some stuffed chicken breasts to take over to mom and dad's for dinner. While we were there, we decided to go ahead and get the standing rib roast that they had on sale which we wanted to have for Christmas dinner.

They had a plain roast, and a seasoned one, and we opted for the seasoned. The butcher took it out put the whole thing on the scale -- over $50 worth of meat, WAY too much for us. Jon asked him if he was able to cut it down any, and he said, no, that they weren't supposed to cut down the seasoned roasts. No problem, we said we'd pick out something else.

While we were trying to decide what to get instead, the butcher came over to me and asked me how much of the roast we were wanting to get. I had no idea, so I called Jon over and asked him. He told the butcher we were looking for just a couple of ribs -- maybe 2-2.5 pounds. So the butcher told us he would cut down one of the unseasoned roasts for us, which was awesome...and after he did that, he seasoned the whole thing for us!

So we came away with a seasoned roast like we wanted, with a sane amount of meat for 2 people, and we wound up still getting it on sale!

Great customer service, Fresh Market!

Too good to be true...

That's what the car seat deal was. Last night, I got the following email from target.com:

"Greetings from Target.com.

Due to an unexpected error, the following item(s) you have ordered
were incorrectly priced at the time of your order.

Britax Marathon Convertible Car Seat - Granite

We're sorry, but we are unable to offer this item for the incorrect
price. The correct price is $279.99. We have canceled your order for
this item. If you would like to order this item at the correct price,
please visit Target.com to check for availability.

Despite our best efforts, a small number of items on our site are
occasionally mis-priced. We do, however, verify prices as part of our
shipping procedures. If we discover that an item's correct price is
higher than our stated price, we will either contact you for
instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of
the cancellation. This pricing policy is posted in the Help section
on Target.com.

Again, we're sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused
you. Thank you for being our valued guest.


Sincerely,

Guest Service Department
Target.com
http://www.target.com"


What's really crappy, though, is that apparently some people are getting their orders filled, and others -- like me -- are not.

Boooo Target.

Smokin' deal on Britax Marathon carseat!

Thanks to a post on the message board I frequent, I found out that target.com has the Britax Marathon on sale for an AMAZING $42.99! This seat normally retails for around $300, so this is a GREAT deal.

Britax is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to car seat safety, and in fact, we had already bought Ella's big-girl car seat, a Britax Roundabout, a couple of months ago. By some odd coincidence, I actually kept the receipt (usually I shred them straightaway), so it will be going back to Babies R Us for a nice refund.

If you need a car seat, or know someone who does, don't let this deal get away!

Oh also, if you're not fond of the granite color, they have a cowprint available for $59.99. And shipping is free too!

ETA: Apparently, amazon.com is honoring this price as well! Don't know about the free shipping with them, though.

CVS Success!

I'll admit it -- I'm a half-assed CVSer. I try to be really diligent, but I just am not organized enough to be really on top of my game like a lot of people out there.

Today, though, I felt like I rocked it.

Here's what I got:
-3 12-packs of Pepsi products
-1 bottle of Palmolive
-2 bottles of Garnier Fructis shampoo
-1 tube of Crest Pro-Health toothpaste
-2 Sure deodorants
-1 bottle Neutrogena shampoo

My total before taxes was $33.35 (everything was on sale to begin with as well). I had $25.24 in coupons.

So with taxes, I paid $9.10, a savings of about 75%, which is great in and of itself.

But here's where it gets nuts. I got BACK $13.49 in Extra Care Bucks (free money!), as well as another $11 in product-specfic coupons.

Essentially, I *made* $15.39 today. The two people behind the counter said they had never seen a receipt as long as mine print out before, haha. (It was about 5"8' long. Yes, I measured it. Yes, I'm a dork.)

Not bad work when you can get it :)

Why I love outlet shopping.

Jon and I went down to Concord Mills yesterday and bought a crapload of clothes for E.

We came home with:
-5 onesies
-3 pajamas
-2 pair jeans
-2 pair stretchy pants
-1 hoodie
-3 dresses
-2 short/top sets

Had we paid regular price for all this stuff, it would have been over $227 before taxes. Instead, we paid just over $113. Woohoo! Right at 50% savings. Everything was on sale except the hoodie, but really, we couldn't leave the store without it.

A lot of the clothes are for down the road some, but I'm pretty sure she's not going to care if she's wearing last year's fashions or not :)

We also bought a couple of books and a Melissa and Doug stacking set.

Save a little money on baby stuff

If you're needing to order some baby stuff (or even stuff for yourselves, Moms), new customers @ diapers.com can save $10 off a $50 order, as well as get free shipping. Use the code AFFL10 at checkout.

I ordered a couple of extra diaps yesterday, along with some Burt's Bees Body Wash/Shampoo and Dusting Powder.

Offer expires 12/31/08.

CVS success!

So I just did my first CVS deal where I actually *made* money :D

They had a deal where you spend $10 on Febreze stuff, you get $5 back in ECBs. I had a coupon for BOGO on these plug-in smell good things, so I bought 2, got 1 free. Then, I got some Softsoap body wash and I had a coupon for $1.00 off that...and I got back an ECB for the full price, which was $4.99.

So overall, I bought just over $22 worth of stuff. I paid $8.52, but then I got BACK $9.99 in coupons! So I actually profited $1.47 on the whole thing!

AND even better is that bodywash has a limit of 5... so I can take my $4.99 coupon and just apply it to another one, get another coupon, and so on till I max out!

More on CVS...

OK, I *think* I'm working this CVS thing out in my head.

This week, for instance, they have Oral-B toothbrushes for $4.99 each, limit 2. When you buy them, you get ECBs back for $4.99 each. So basically, I could take my $9.00 in coupons I got yesterday, pay like $1-something out of pocket, get the toothbrushes, which we'll need eventually, and then have $9.98 in rewards coupons.

This is starting to click a little. I think I have to get in the mindset of not buying everything all in one trip, perhaps.

My attempt at CVSing

Inspired by Erika (and also by trying to save some money before the baby gets here), before I went out shopping today, I went online to cvs.com to take a look at their weekly flier for things that I was already planning to get at the grocery store or things that I could stock up on, like toiletries. I found a few things that were either on sale or allowed you to earn Extra Bucks (coupons for dollars off your next trip).

For my first attempt, I think I did OK.

I bought 4 12-packs of Coke products for $11 ($2.75 each, marginally cheaper than at Harris Teeter), 2 boxes of cereal @ 2/$5, 2 8-pks of Irish Spring for Jon @ $5.79 each, and 1 bottle each of Garnier shampoo and conditioner for me @ $2.99 each. Aside from the soaps, everything was on sale to begin with, and I lucked into a $1 off coupon on one of the Cokes. I also signed up for emails from CVS, and when I did that, they sent me a coupon for $4 off $20. So right off the bat, with everything on sale and the coupons I had, I saved $20.04 (about 40% savings). Then on top of that, I got coupons for next time totaling $9, from buying the soaps and the shampoos.

Is this good? I still spent about $30, so I'm not sure if I'm on track or not here.

I finished up the rest of my grocery shopping at the HT afterwards, where just by using my VIC card, I saved over $20. I didn't have any coupons for stuff there, though. The majority of stuff I bought there WAS on sale... I checked their flier online as well before I went.

Find of the week

Jon and I were out and about running errands today, and we decided to take a look and see if we could find any good deals on consignment baby clothes. I found a few little polo shirt-onesies (that are probably meant for a boy, but I sure will slap 'em on a little girl). Jon, on the other hand, hit the jackpot with a precious little shirt that is all about HOCKEY! It's got sticks, skates, pucks, and even the Stanley Cup! Awesome. Made in British Columbia :D

It'll have to be tucked away for a few years till the kid can wear it (probably not till they're at least 3 or so), but there was no way we were leaving and not buying it, haha.

I'll have to post a pic later when I'm not too lazy to get out the camera.

A perfectly lovely Saturday.

I met Sara for lunch in Durham today. We went to PF Chang's, which was delicious as always. Afterwards, we went over and poked around at the mall for a little while. I went to Macy's and managed to find another sweater like the one I shrunk to Barbie proportions in the dryer...and it was on sale, so woohoo!

The Hurricanes won tonight, after getting off to a sluggish start. My man Rod Brind'Amour had 2 goals :)

All in all, a very nice Saturday. And I still have one more day to sleep late. Woo!

More Mutsy!

I've been doing a good deal of looking at baby paraphernalia lately. You gotta have a good stroller, and I have to say, Mutsy strollers look awesome. They come in great colors and have tons of easy-to-interchange parts. They're very modern-looking, which I'm always a sucker for. Take one for a test-drive at your local store! :)

SWAG -- Stuff We All Get

So thanks to the ladies over on the scrapping boards I go to, I had heard that Target had a bunch of "The Office" goodies in the Dollar Spot. Jon and I had to go there last night to get a birthday gift, so I raided the Dollar Spot. I didn't get everything they had (Jon wouldn't let me, hehe), but I got a lot of goodies.

What you see there are 8 ink pens (when you click, they have various quotes that rotate around), 2 mouse (note) pads, 8 magnets, and Dwight-head stress ball. We did a draft on the magnets so it was fair as far as who got which ones :) Yeah, we're big dorks.

We met Jay and Janet for lunch today

at PF Changs. They had been there before, but we hadn't, and for a chain, we were pretty impressed. I didn't know it was family style, but that was kind of fun, since we all got to try what everyone else ordered. Not a great place for low-carb, but delicious nonetheless.

We did some planning for the beach while we were there, and made up a list of stuff that Jon and I would pick up at Costco before we went.

When we came out, we saw that a Sur La Table has opened up at Friendly Center... oh, the excitement! We're kitchen store dorks (Jon more than me), and we went to one of these for the first time in Seattle. I had no idea we were getting one. We went in and ogled, but didn't buy anything (this time). They had some precious polka-dotted ice cream bowls that I'd like to pick up.

Fresh indeed.

Jon and I went and checked out the new Fresh Market tonight. The new location is really nice...almost as big as a regular grocery store. We didn't have too much time, as we went in just about 15 minutes before closing, but man, I wish we could afford to shop there all the time. So much organic stuff, and their flowers are just GORGEOUS. We'll have to go back when we can spend more time (and more money).