Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Archives for April 2008

Dealighted helps you find the best deals online

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coupons-deals-bargains.gif I don’t know if you do this, but whenever Chris and I go shopping we always try to find the best deal. Especially if it’s a costly item. Whether you’re living from paycheck to paycheck or have a fat savings account it just makes sense to make your money go as far as it can, doesn’t it?

I have to admit that most of the purchases that my husband and I make are in grocery stores, pet stores and retail stores. We have increased our online shopping over the last couple of years, but the majority of our spending is done in person.

One of the reasons that we’ve started to increase our online shopping is because it’s convenient. Heck, I can shop in my PJ’s at 1 a.m. if I want! I suppose I could head out to the local 24 hour Walmart and do the same, but I think I’d end up more than a little embarrassed.

Other than convenience, I like shopping online because I can often find better prices at online stores. Let’s face it, online stores don’t have the overhead that retail stores do so they can afford to offer items at lower prices.

Sounds good doesn’t it?

Now if you want to be a real Savvy shopper you should check out Dealighted.com. The site indexes deals posted by people on sites like slickdeals, fatwallet and several other popular deal sites. Once the posted deals are indexed the Dealighted engine goes through them and figures out which deals are hot.

So when you’ve decided to you want to shop for an item online you can simply go to Dealighted and type the item you’re interested in into the search box at the top of the page and the results page will listed the best deals for that item. No more searching through site after site to find the best prices. Dealighted.com does it all for you.

For example, if you wanted to shop for a new pair of shoes you’d type the term Shoes in the search box and the result page would bring up the current list of shoe deals. You could also narrow down your search by searching for a specific type or brand of product such as Nike Running Shoes.

Perhaps you’re interested in purchasing a new digital camera? The Canon EOS 400D is a great camera for someone that wants to step up their photography by starting out with an entry level digital SLR. Just click on compare prices and search through the directory for your camera or click on one of the handy icons near the top of each page that show some of the hottest items being searched for at Dealighted.com.

The icons to the top right of each page are for those interested in checking out camera, HDTV’s, iPods, Laptops and Camrecorders. If that’s what you’re interested in purchasing just click the icon of your choice and you’ll be able to quickly find the hottest deals!

I like the site because you can just visit the main page regularly to see what the newest hot deals are, so even if you don’t have a specific product in mind you can keep an eye out for great deals and perhaps find something that you or your family needs right on the front page.

Dealighted.com also has a daily freebie offers section. You can get to it simply by searching for Free or by clicking on the link Free Stuff that’s directly under the search box.

There’s hundreds of free items to browse through. Some of the listings are of the buy one get on free type and others are offers for one free product or a sample item.

Likewise if you’d prefer to shop for items and have them shipped free of charge you can do a search for free shipping and all the deals that also offer free shipping will come up on the results page. I’m sure you could narrow your search by typing in a product name and free shipping as well.

Actually there are many ways to search for great deals on items. You could click on a tag in the Deal Search Cloud, click on the Only Hot Deals button, look through the deal forum threads, search for deals by specific deal forums or use the search boxes. I love sites that let you navigate or search for what you want in several ways as I’m sure each visitor to the site will have their own particular preference.

It looks like Dealighted.com has their own forum as well. There aren’t very many messages there yet as it looks like it might have just opened up recently, but you could take a look there for deals or perhaps even post your own finds if you’d like to share.

I think anyone who shops online occasionally would be smart to bookmark this site and check it out the next time they’re searching for a great deal. It’s all about saving money.

Oh and if you do visit Dealighted.com be sure to check out their deals by email newsletter. You’ll never miss a great deal if you subscribe!

Why I ‘otter …

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Wordless Wednesday

family huddle

Aw, a family huddle or maybe it’s a cuddle. Hard to tell, but it sure is cute!

We had otters at our cottage. They lived in and swam in the creek beside our cottage. I’d often see one to three swimming around but I never saw them gathered together like this. That would be a sight to see.

As the butter churns – what it’s like to move from the big city to a rural farm

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asthebutterchurns.gif

If you’ve ever thought of ditching the big city and trying to live a more peaceful life in the country then you must read As The Butter Churns. It’s an entertaining eye opener.

Basically, As the Butter Churns, is the story of a family who moves from Los Angeles to a rural farm in Washington. Big Change!

Reading the Begin at the Beginning page it sounds like Denise and Tom had it made in Los Angeles. She had an idelic job in the advertising field. The philosophy at her last job was:

If you had to work from home because your child was sick or you had to come in late because there was a school assembly then you had to stay home or come in late.

Unfortunately for Denise that company closed. She interviewed for new jobs in the advertising field, but she soon realized that her youngest son would end up in day care and she’d be working long hours. That’s when the idea of becoming a school teacher came to her. Within a week she was enrolled in a course that would allow her to become a teacher in one year.

Denise sounds like the kind of teacher that you remember fondly when you’re an adult. Each year she and her students make historic films. That’s right, the kids get to act in movies! How cool is that?

Parents also loved the idea of what she was doing – with her husbands help. Tom’s an artist and he helps with the costumes and sets. So they decided to create a History Camp for kids called Forte Flashback. From what I gather it’s meant to give kids a taste of colonial times.

Now I haven’t figured out exactly how they came to move to Washington State. Obviously changes were in the work with Denise’s career and the idea of Forte Flashback. It sounds like they were living in a lovely home in L.A.. Like us, they’d done a lot of Do it Yourself reno jobs around the home to make the home their own and it sounds like they had a fabulous garden with over 100 rose bushes and lots of trees. However maintaining that home seems to have gotten expensive. Perhaps all combined caused them to move out of the big city.

Now the family is on a journey. Oh what a journey it is!

The story of a city girl from Los Angeles who quits her job, packs her bags and moves her family to a rural farm in Washington to start Fort Flashback, an American History camp for kids. Things don’t go exactly as planned. Find out if Denise ever gets funding, if she eventually catches the oxen as they run down the road or if ten-year-old Henry forgets to wear his shoes to school – again. Will Grandpa Horn leave everything to play jazz on the streets of Paris? Find out at As The Butter Churns.

Denise was a copywriter in the advertising field, so of course her posts are well written and entertaining.

She talks about day to day life on the farm and what’s happening with her, her husband Tom, their now 10 year old son Henry, her colorful jazz musician father, her sister Lisa, brother-in-law Chris, and their two girls Quinn 11, Phoebe 6, and all of their combined pets and farm animals. After describing the gang Denise says “We’re like the Osmonds, but we drink and we’re Catholic.”

Denise started her blog in June of 2007 when they moved from California to Washington. July finds the family getting settled and contemplating purchasing cows for the farm.

The posts are regular, pretty much daily as far as I can see, and they make for a good read. I think I might add this blog to my daily reading list so I can keep track of what’s happening with this interesting family … oh and their cows like good ‘ol Abe here:

abe1.jpg

Hopefully Denise doesn’t mind that I’m using one of her photos. Abe is just too cute in this one. Sounds like he’s a character too.

I grew up in a big city, but we had a cottage on our old family farm land that we went most weekends, plus we also had a farm in the middle of the city that I visited regularly just to see the baby cows, so reading this blog takes me back a bit to the things I liked about country life and perhaps what could have been if I didn’t end up moving to an even bigger city.

As I said at the start, if you’ve ever contemplated moving from the city to the country you should read this blog to see what it’s really like!

Our puppy Midnight experienced thunder for the first time

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Well it finally had to happen. Today we are having our first real thunderstorms since we brought Midnight, our black Lab, into our home.

We’ve been curious as to whether she’d be one of those dogs that were afraid of thunder or not. I guess we kind of have an answer now.

Early this morning at maybe 6 a.m. there was a crash of thunder outside. I was up and so was Midnight as she’d begged to be let out of her crate. When the thunder rolled above she just stopped what she was doing, her ears went down and she ran to where she thought the noise had come.

Now all the puppy training books and sites say not to coddle your puppy when they seem frightened of something so I just stood where I was and talked to her about the thunder. Like she understood me. Uh huh.

There wasn’t any more thunder so we just went back to what we were doing, but she seemed a bit subdued.

We had some more thunder at 2:45 pm today too.

It’s a warmish day here in Toronto so I’ve got the windows and doors open. Unfortunately our enclosed back porch has one of those sheet plastic roofs (can you say gaudy?). The nice thing about it is that you can really hear the rain coming down when it falls. Every drop.

Midnight heard her first real rain on that roof earlier today too. I think it frightened her more than this mornings thunder! She was running all over the main floor to figure out what the sound was, barking and looking a little worried.

Again I stood in place and tried to reassure her by acting normal and not looking worried or stressed myself. I shut the back door and that lessened the sound of the rain. After she started calming down we heard thunder again, and again she acted like she was frightened by the big sound.

I decided to give her a cookie hoping that the thunder would sound again as I was feeding her, her favorite food. Apparently giving a puppy something they really like when they are frightened, like a treat, helps calm their fears and makes them associate good things with things that once frightened them.

It seems were only having a one thunder at a time kind of day. The sound makes her nervous, but I think that if I stay calm and work with her when she hears thunder again she won’t end up being a dog that’s terrified of the sound.

I certainly hope she doesn’t end up being afraid of it as we get an awful lot of thunderstorms here during the summer.

Is your dog afraid of thunder?

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