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Tricia's Musings

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

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You are here: Home / Archives for Shopping

Time to start Christmas shopping … I think

November 28, 2008 by Tricia

If I’m feeling well enough tomorrow Chris and I were thinking about officially starting our holiday shopping.

We still aren’t sure what kind of gifts we’re going to buy all the kids in the family! Perhaps tomorrow outing will just be a trip out to get some ideas. Most of the kids, nephews and nieces, are teens and I think those are the hardest people to buy for each year!

I had mentioned in another post that I was thinking of getting some of them newly released movies and or gift certificates to their favorite stores, but if you have any ideas for gifts for teens I’d love to hear them. Especially gifts that don’t break the budget! I haven’t been making much money lately so we don’t have much to spare to buy gifts this year.

My only brother that lives in the area has invited us over to his house for an early Christmas get together next weekend. His wife, my sister, her twins and their girlfriend and boyfriend, and my brothers daughter, her husband and their new baby will be there. It’s just a small gathering, but one that we try to do each year.

My brothers and sister and I usually don’t exchange gifts anymore. As I said in an earlier post we decided a while back just to buy gifts for the kids. This year I might get my brother a gift though. I found some fantastic silk ties and I know how much he loves his ties. So I might surprise him with a small gift. The gift would be a thank you for the Tom Cochrane and Red Rider concert passes that he got us in the summer.

Have you started shopping for the holidays yet? I’ll bet that some of you started today consider that it’s Black Friday! Did you put yourself on a budget this year? Cut down on the number of gifts that you’re going to buy?

I always find Christmas the most expensive time of the year. I’m still trying to figure out how we are going to manage to buy all the gifts we need to purchase this year on almost no money.





Filed Under: Family, Gifts, Items to Try, Money, Shopping Tagged With: brother, budget, christmas, christmas_shopping, DVDs, Family, get_together, Gifts, gift_certificates, holidays, Money, Movies, nephews, nieces, Party, Shopping, sister, teens

Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals!

November 27, 2008 by Tricia

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends and readers! I hope that you are enjoying this day and are having a great meal! I’m sure many of you are stuffed full of turkey! (mmmm Turkey!)

I got an email last night from eCost and they are having some amazing Black Friday sales! I mean, how would you like to get a Nintendo Wii for only $99? See what I mean by amazing deals? That Wii would make a great Christmas gift wouldn’t it, and at that price it wouldn’t break your budget either!

Here’s what the eCOST newsletter said:

Shop eCOST.com for outrageous Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers. eCost has one Nintendo Wii available at $99 on Black Friday between 2AM EST to 4AM EST. On Cyber Monday the Navigon 2100 will be available at $29*, Look for the Outrageous Deal Icon to get that Deal in Bargain Countdown.

*Please note that the Nintendo Wii ($99) and Navigon ($29) are available in limited quantity.

Oh and don’t think that you have to live in the US to take advantage of these amazing deals. eCOST ships worldwide!

Here are some direct links to some of eCost’s Outrageous bargains!

eCOST.com Holiday Gift Guide- Ideas to help you get the right gift at the lowest prices
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Hot Deals

Nextar 7″ Digital Photo Frame – Black ( N7-202 ) $29 (Save $60)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Samsung T220 22″ Widescreen LCD Monitor ( LS22TWHSUV/ZA ) $189.99 (Save $50)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Westinghouse 26″ LCD HDTV w/DVD and Dual HDMI ( SK-26H590D ) $299 (Save $80)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Telesteps 12.5ft Telescoping Ladder – ( 1205 ) $79. (Save $170)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Navigon 5100 GPS Navigator w/ FREE Real-Time Traffic (10000130) $89 (Save $70)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

HP Evo D510 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 Desktop PC ( 470057-015 ) $149 (Save 50%)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Black Friday Deals. Outrageous offers! iPod for $45
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Cyber Monday Deals. Outrageous Offers! GPS for $49
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Platinum Premium: Get Free Shipping on next 4 orders & exclusive offers
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Ongoing Offers:

Rebate Center eCost: Search Hundreds of Rebates by Manufacturer Name or Product Category

Bargain Countdown eCost: Limited Time offers at rock bottom prices
Dates: Ongoing. Items change hourly

Free Shipping eCost: Free Shipping and Exclusive Offers with Platinum Premium Membership
Dates: Ongoing Promotion

I don’t think I’ve ever put so many sales links in one post before … but they just have some great deals. I couldn’t help it! Besides, wouldn’t you rather shop online rather than staying up all night waiting outside a store waiting for it to open in the morning to get at all those big sales. I mean, you can shop and get bargains while in the comfort of your home. Forget the crowds!

Filed Under: Coupons and deals, Gifts, Shopping Tagged With: bargain, bargain_countdown, black_Friday, Black_friday_deals, budget, christmas_shopping, crowds, Cyber_Monday, Cyber_Monday_deals, deals, digital_photo_frame, eCOST, free_shipping, gift_guide, gift_ideas, GPS, GPS_navigator, hot_deals, ipod, lowest_prices, nextar, nintendo_wii Navigon_2100, nintendo_Wii_99_dollars, outrageous_deal, rebates, rock_bottom_prices, sale, sales, Samsung, Samsung_widescreen_lcd_monitor, Shopping, shop_online, super_sale, telescoping_ladder, telesteps, Westinghouse_LCD_HDTV, worldwide

Gift ideas for teens?

November 24, 2008 by Tricia

After I wrote that post about wanting to get started on my Christmas shopping early this year, Chris and I had a little talk about what we’re going to do for Christmas this year – present wise, I mean.

Over the last few years our families on both sides have pretty much agreed not to exchange presents between the adults. Why? Well, everyone has children (except us) and we’re all established in our homes. We don’t really need presents. Oh they’re nice, but when you already have most everything you need or want you don’t really need to get Christmas presents.

So for the last few years we’ve all just been getting presents, for the most part, for the kids in the family. That’s still a lot of gifts to get! Between Chris and I we have 17 nephews and nieces, plus two on my side have kids of their own so add three more to the list (oh and add our two god-children as well!) If we were also buying for each of the adults individually we could add another 20 gifts to the Christmas list that we’d need to buy! So I guess we cut it in half … but it’s still a lot of gifts to buy.

Most of our nephews and nieces are in their teens and I find teens the hardest to buy for each year. Most of them don’t really need anything in particular. I mean they all have iPods, game players, closets full of clothes … so what do you get for a teen that already has everything?

As I said earlier I’m keeping my open for anything that’s on sale that might make a good gift. I think for at least half of the kids I’m leaning towards getting newly released DVD’s, music CD’s, and perhaps some popular games. I just need to find out what they already have (what games and game players, dvds and music) and what others are planning on getting them so they don’t end up getting two or more of something.

I spent some time this evening looking at the DVD section at Buy.com. There are a lot of great movies that have just been released on DVD and there’s a section there where you can pre-order DVDs that will soon be released like The Dark Knight , Mama Mia, Indiana Jones the Kingdom Crystal Skull, Step Brothers and many other movies. I figure that if I order some movies that are only being released at the end of November or in early December there’ll be little chance that the kids I get them for will already have these movies.

Of course, for some of the kids I might just buy them gift certificates. I’m fairly sure some of the teenage girls might like a gift certificate for one of their favorite clothing stores.

So do you have teens on your shopping list? If so, what kinds of things are you thinking of getting them?

Filed Under: Entertainment, Family, Gifts, Items to Try, Movies, Music, Shopping, Television, Video Tagged With: Buy.com, buying, christmas, Christmas_gifts, deal, DVD, dvd_section, Games, game_console, game_players, Gifts, gifts_for_teens, gift_certificate, gift_ideas, ideas, kids, Movies, Music, Nephew, Niece, Shopping

Shopping for the holidays and sticking to a budget

November 24, 2008 by Tricia

Does it seem like time is flying by faster than normal or is it just me? This month has gone by so quickly I can hardly believe that we’re near the end of November already. Before we know it Christmas will be here!

I often procrastinate when it comes to doing my Christmas shopping. This year I’m determined to get it all done before the 24th! I hope I can do it! I mean, I have a history of doing ALL of my Christmas shopping on the 24th! LOL So to get it done well before that date it’s going to be a challenge.

Another challenge this year will be finding quality gifts, yet spending as little as possible. No, I’m not cheap. I generally give nice gifts, however, this year we have virtually no spare cash.

We don’t have Black Friday here in Canada, so I can’t count on a major sales day before Christmas to help me keep my gift budget low, so my plan is to keep a close eye on Online stores and watch for items I’m interested in to go on sale.

Online stores like Buy.com often offer Free Shipping on select items or items in certain categories, so if I do end up doing some of my shopping online I’ll be watching out for free shipping deals as that will also save quite a bit of money.

I’ve also bookmarked buy.com’s Holiday Superstore and I’ve been checking it every couple of days to see if they have any deals on items that I might want to give to friends or relatives as gifts. A lot of the items in that section are not only on sale for great prices, but they also come with free shipping as well! Now that’s a deal.

Have you already started shopping for the holidays? Are you watching your gift budget carefully this year?

Filed Under: Coupons and deals, Family, Finance, Gifts, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Shopping Tagged With: bargain, budget, Buy.com, christmas, Christmas_gifts, deals, free_shipping, Gifts, gift_ideas, holidays, holiday_superstore, no_extra_money, sale, Shopping, Weekly_deals

I have dumb roses

November 2, 2008 by Tricia

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My roses and other garden plants must be quite dumb.

It’s getting colder and colder here in Toronto, yet my garden is still very much alive. Smart plants would have shut down and begun to go dormant by now …. but no, not my roses! Some of my other plants seems to be on the dumb side too.

Along with several other roses, my Compte de Chambord is still putting out lovely rose buds. Oh and they smell heavenly! Compte de Chambord has a beautiful old rose perfume scent and as I said, the roses and rose buds are still full of their lovely scent.

Compte De Chambord rose bud
Compte de Chambord rose bud

I took this photo last weekend. It was quite windy so I had to hold the rose stem while taking the picture, but the leaves and other plants near it were blowing in the wind, hence the interesting blurred effect in the background.

Even my Lavender has started to bloom again … I have no idea why. It’s not like I’m out there watering, amending soil or putting my secret sauce (Alfalfa Tea) on my plants. I’m not doing a thing to my garden .. yet it’s thriving.

Here’s a single Lavender bloom …

Lavender bloom
Lavender bloom

And here’s one of my Lavender plants, blooming (a little bit) and looking terribly healthy for this time of year.

Lavender blooming in October?
Healthy blooming Lavender plant - October

Is your garden asleep for the winter or is it still struggling to perform as if it were summer?

Filed Under: Canada, Gardening, Green Thumb Sunday, Home and Lifestyle, Photography, Recreation, Shopping, Toronto, Tricia's Garden, Web and Technology Tagged With: autumn, cold_weather, dormant, dumb_roses, flowers, garden, Green_Thumb_Sunday, GTS, lavender, lavender_blooming, October, rose, rose_bud, windy, winter

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