Spring Shoe Sale

As was mentioned far and wide in blog world last week, Spring was having a huge online shoe clearance. I don't think I have ever purchased anything from Spring, but with free shipping, cheap prices, and an excellent return policy I decided it was worth a shot.

I picked out four pair of shoes for fun and a couple of bags that I am hoping will be great for the beach/pool during our trip to Punta Cana next month. The issue I had was picking shoe sizes. I wear a 9.5 - 10 depending on the shoes, but I was worried that Spring would have a bit smaller sizing since they are owned by the same company that owns Aldo. I often have trouble with Aldo sizes being smaller, so I opted to chose size 11 for most of these new shoes. This of course has bitten me in the behind. Four pairs of shoes and only one pair fit. C'est la vie. I'm going to return the others and maybe try to get one pair of them in a size 10...I didn't love all three enough to bother reordering.

The bags haven't arrived yet, but one was shipped yesterday and the other today so hopefully when they do arrive I will like them both. Same bag, different patterns. I will wait until these arrive to make sure I don't have to make two trips to the mall for returns.

Oh, I should mention that all of this.... four shoes & two bags.... was only $100.

Shopping with the girls

As most of you have probably read either on my other blog or on Angie's blog, there was some girl time spent on Saturday that involved two of my favorite corporate obsessions (yes I know I have issues!)...lululemon and Starbucks.

Thanks to my girl Tiffaney's lovely birthday gift I had a lulu gift card burning a whole in my purse, so I was excited to go in and find something new. I had picked out a warm-up jacket online, but in reality it wasn't as cute or as long as I thought. That was OK though because they have these new to/from jackets that were really quite cute, long and less sporty so I can wear it for many more occasions. :)

This is the Full Medal Jacket. Cute, right?

I particularly love the high collar, the dual layer long sleeve cuffs, and the length...my tushy always gets cold. :)

I also finally got a new BPA-free water bottle. Yaaieee for chemical-free drinking at the gym! I like the new bottle design...all covered with lulu affirmations (such as "friends are more important than money." nice.)

Shopping Online

OK, so maybe I don't know the tricks yet. I thought doing a little cross-border internet shopping might be fun for a couple of Christmas gifties. Nothing super exciting, but things I can't buy here....

Specifically...Bath & Body Works and Sephora.

Annoying.

First, I tried Bath & Body Works because when I was in the store in Vegas I couldn't find the Exotic Coconut soaps and lotions. The sales girl told me it was probably a "classic" fragrance...meaning that not all of the stores carry it, but it would probably still be available online. I should note that she knew I was from Canada.

So today I go trotting through the website, find the soap and a few other things for good gifties, and even qualify for a cool sample set of a bunch of their products. Only to realize that when I went to checkout, they don't deliver to Canada. Did I mention annoying? I surfed around the site and even though they have stores in Canada now (only Ontario and Alberta) they still only ship from their US warehouse and don't do international. Argh.

But, no big deal, I'll just try Sephora instead. Another place we don't have here or back on the island so it would still make a nice hard-to-get-on-their-own gift. Not as good a selection in the price-range I'm looking at, but I still found a couple of appropriate things that would do just as well as the BBW stuff would have, both on sale for $5 off. Added the things to my cart, qualified for some free samples and free shipping ($5.95 for shipping on orders under $50). Until checkout....yup, switch to Canadian checkout and sure they deliver but now it's $9.95 unless you have a minimum of $120...PLUS the sale prices on the items I chose are now gone. So now it's not worth it....$20 extra on $50 worth of stuff. As DBF would say, this is my unimpressed face.

So back to square one and in-store shopping...which is fine but I was looking forward to bringing gifts that those people may never have gotten on their own at home.

So what's the big deal about online shopping?

My Computer is Freaking Me Out

I think my poor computer is trying to tell me something. I've been talking about buying a new desktop computer lately because of the physical grief working on a laptop is causing me. It's about six months earlier than I'd planned (this one will be three years old in February) but for the sake of my body, I think it's time to suck it up and get it done.

I'm sure my computer agrees because yesterday it gave me the scare of a lifetime when it crashed and seemingly lost all of my documents and such. OMG...I thought my heart actually stopped. Especially because I've been a slacker in the maintenance department and it's been at least a month since I backed up (probably longer). Not only bad for my photos and personal stuff, but particularly bad for the work situation. Bad me.

Anyway, I let it run it's blue screen of self-correction while I was out last night and when I got home it seemed to have at least recovered all of the documents and settings...phew! I think the reason it showed nothing when it crashed and rebooted earlier was because I cancelled the blue screen file checker. But even when it seemed OK it wasn't. It wouldn't detect any wireless networks (in addition to ours, I can usually see about 10 others in the neighborhood) and it was moving really slow.

So I shut down and restarted again, and it launched the blue screen checker again so I let it run again. It moved sooooooooooooooooooo slow but I was determined to let it run. I watched a movie and it was barely at 50% after almost two hours, so I decided to just let it run overnight and see what happened.

Woke up this morning and all seems well again, so maybe the blue screen found another file to correct while I was sleeping. Who knows? But now that I'm safe for the moment, I'll be running this baby up to my office for a full-on backup!

And I guess I'll be stopping at Future Shop while I'm out today to start pricing and planning for that new computer....just in case.

Its not quite the same as shoe shopping...

Who knew how fun it would be to buy a new lawn mower?!!

We had a crappy little lawn mower. Brand new last year, but mind you it was in the clearance area at Home Depot and DBF got it for $20. It is missing the power handle...the piece you hold on to to keep it running. So we have to remove the spark plug wire to turn it off. No big deal if it was actually a GOOD mower, but it's sadly not.

I used it for the first time here in Halifax a couple of weeks ago. DBF has been mowing the lawn most of the time we've been here and although he mentioned it was a bit of a pain in the ass he hadn't really said much else. Well, I'm here to tell you it SUCKS!!! I used it all last Summer at our old place and because the lawn was flat and didn't grow tooooo fast it was fine. But here we have a very sloped portion in our yard, and the lower portion grows like crazy. The first time I used it, it was constantly clogged and it created not one, but two embarassingly huge smoke clouds when I ran it on too much of an angle. (I say embarassing because it was so bad my neighbor came over to make sure I wasn't on fire!)

Anyway, I used it once more a week later and that sealed the deal. No bag on it was the final straw. I hate raking when I don't have to. It's fine to leave the clippings when they are nice and light, or to mulch them back in at the beginning of the season, but right now we need to bag the clippings.

So, after checking out prices for a couple of weeks...I noticed a nice one show up in the Home Depot flyer. The only other mower I had seen that I was considering prior to this was $269...but it was a brand I hadn't heard of. This new sale one was a Cub Cadet...so a good brand...and was $279. I went in, chatted with the guy, figured out that it was a way nicer mower, so bought it.

Woo! Gotta love being on a mission and just going for it without dicking around.

Came home, set it up, oiled it up, gassed it up, and gave it an inaugural run with the bag on our front yard. So freaking awesome!! It's not self-propelled, but it is light and nicely powerful so it runs like a dream.

OK, and to be just a bit girly...it's super cute and yellow!! (and DBF will still like it because it's manly and has all the functions he asked for)

Sadly it's Monday

I want another long weekend! Waaaa! The weather is gorgeous...so sunny and warm, but with a light breeze today...perfect! Supposed to get up to 28 degrees today...and maybe 31 tomorrow. Hopefully this stays now for a while. We've decided to go camping this coming weekend no matter what the weather predictions are. (It was supposed to be rainy and crappy this past Saturday according to the news all week, so we didn't go camping...and of course it ended up being beautiful out.)


On Sunday DBF had our neighbor over to watch F1, so I opted to do some shopping. I had decided to head back over to MicMac Mall to check out the Jacob lingerie store I saw there last weekend for some much needed new undies and a neutral bra....but on the way I decided to stop at our Old Navy for some tank tops (I realized while getting dressed that I only have one or two truly presentable tank tops). Well, Old Navy looked like a bomb had been dropped....I truly have never seen a store that messy or picked over. I lasted about two minutes before I dropped the one thing I had picked up and walked right out.


So off over the bridge I went to Dartmouth. As luck would have it there is another Old Navy at the mall, so I popped in there and thankfully it was clean and organized. Found four cute new tanks, two nighties and some blue shorts. :) Then up to Jacob where I got my undies and two new bras because they were on sale (I think La Senza has now seen the last of me...this was a way better find!). Also got some cocoa butter and scrub from the Body Shop for softening up my Summer feeties.

Then, while window shopping, I stopped into Aldo, mostly just looking, but well you know how it goes.... found a pair of gold strappy sandals that I really liked but of course they didn't have in my size (they rarely have 10s or 11s). So the salesguy recommends that I can just have them ordered in and delivered to my house....say what?! Yup, basically like ordering online, only since he does all the work he still gets the sale...fine with me. He was very helpful and deserves the commission, it didn't cost anything extra, and if they don't fit or I don't like them I can just return them to the store. This could get dangerous. :)


I also stopped and looked at some beds because we need one for our spare room. We don't want anything expensive, but I'm not looking at the $399 ones because they are too crappy. Anyway, long story short was that the particular store I went in did have a set that I liked and it was only $30 over my max, but the guy was a schmuck so I think I'll keep looking. Sort of a nice guy, but I could tell he was bullshitting me and I hate that.


Picked up some groceries on the way home and had BBQ'd steaks and corn on the cob for dinner. So yum! After dinner we went for a walk around the neighborhood, then a drive to the video store. Picked up In Bruge...don't do it, it was supposed to be good and quirky, but it was more weird and boring...and also the first disk of the first season of Mad Men. Watched one episode and so far, so good...but it's no HBO show. :)

Growed Up Bedroom

And just for fun, here is the new bed set and curtains I picked up for our bedroom. Our old duvet cover was looking pretty "dorm room" and that big beautiful window nearly blinds us to death when the sun shines in the morning, so we needed some upgrading. :) (The duvet is reversable, so I might switch it to brown side up for Autumn...)

I'm still on the lookout for a good, matching bedskirt (because no one wants to see the ugly-ass boxspring!) and we need some things to hang on the wall above the bed and above the long dresser that is opposite the foot of the bed. I have my eyes open for new lamps too, but those are pretty much the last priority since there really isn't anything wrong with the ones we have now.

I am also getting rid of the big TV. It was never in the bedroom in the past and only made it's way in there when we moved in here because we were waiting a couple of days for the new TV downstairs. Somehow it has not made it's way back out of the room and we seem to be doing a lot of extra in-bed watching of CSI re-runs. Not good! (I will probably replace it with our little TV because it is nice to have an alternative TV to watch if one of us is watching something downstairs that the other person doesn't like...but we'll see!)

On the list is also a FULL SIZE, lovely framed mirror. Winners and HomeSense have tons of them right now and there is perfect space for it on the wall beside the long dresser. With both of us being so tall it will be nice to have a bigass mirror to see our whole selves in. (The full length mirror we've been using is old and crappy, so it can happily go to the garage sale pile.)

Yaiiee for the growed-up bedroom! haha!

BOGO Crazy

The one good thing about the fact that there are only two major grocery chains here, is that the sales are usually pretty good and competitive. I've started making sure to get the flyers on Fridays when they come out so I can plan my weekly grocery lists and meal plans. The first few times I shopped here, I didn't have the flyers and I would end up buying something and then find it significantly cheaper at the other store...annoying! Now, that still happens on some non-sale items but I'm slowly figuring out which of my regular grocery items should be purchased at which store. Like, usually Sobey's has grapes on sale, but never Campbell's soup. SuperStore is way cheaper for milk and when they have a price drop it's usually permanent (Kashi cereal for example!).

This week though, Sobey's has a Buy One Get One promotion going on, so I stocked up on things I wouldn't normally have on hand. Bits n Bites, Ritz Crisps, navel oranges, an extra bag of gala apples. Plus I wound up with enough tinfoil, Press n Seal, and paper towel to last a few months.

Of course, non of my usual items are on that promotion, so I'll be adjusting the meal plans for the next week to make up for the BOGO budget busting. Oh well!

The Shopping Begins!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! I just ordered our first piece of new furniture!!

I ordered this TV stand from Costco online. It will be delivered within 7-10 days. How convenient!

Our new huge-ass 50" plasma TV is being delivered the day after we get our house, so our old TV stand just isn't gonna cut it. Too bad, because I actually really like the old one...but yaaieeeee for newer, cooler stuff!!