Friday, November 8, 2013

5 on Friday - Online Shopping, Great Deals and More!

Doing a new link up this week -- 5 on Friday with the Good Life Blog, so here goes:

{ONE} So last night as I was on my "run", I attempted to do 3/1 intervals. I wasn't really in the mood to run, but figured I needed to burn some calories, log some miles, and get rid of a headache. Surprisingly the headache went away kind of quickly (may have been the Excedrin I took, but I'd like to think the fresh air helped). After about the first 3 minutes, I didn't really FEEL like running, just wasn't in the mood. But since I was already dressed and out there (and not on a treadmill where it's easy to just hop off) I figured I might as well walk a few miles. So I changed up my intervals to 1/3's meaning I just walked all my running intervals (3 minutes) and ran the walking intervals (1 minute). During my walking intervals, I decided to do some online shopping (this is why I walk so slow, because I'm playing on my phone lol). I ordered two new pairs of shoes from DSW. One pair of sweater boots (that I'll probably hardly get to wear in good ol' Florida - have I mentioned it's still in the low 80's most days this week!!) and a pair of purple flats. I LOVE sweater boots! So comfy! All my flats are black (or gray/silver) and I've been on the hunt for a colored pair. I had bought a pair of red ones from Target and realized I didn't have much to match with them so I returned them. I wear a ton more purple so I'm excited for them to come in. I completed my transaction once I got home. I used up some DSW giftcards I had in my wallet (leftover from two birthdays ago, whoops!) plus my DSW "birthday" $5 coupon plus their free shipping and $10/off promotion codes - so for my two shoes I only ended up paying $61.58! Plus, I logged into my Chase Freedom Rewards before placing the order and through their Ultimate Rewards Mall I get an extra 6 pts per $1 spent + 1% on all purchases (essentially ~$4.31) back by using my credit card! I'd say that's a pretty sweet deal :) 




Continuing with great deals, had another great online shopping experience. We have been looking for a new TV for our home gym that we've created and wanted a 32" TV. We found one we wanted on bestbuy.com for $229.99 -- well the good little shopper that I am, I had to compare to Amazon to see if they were cheaper... they weren't. They actually had the SAME TV listed for $347.99, crazy to see it was such a good deal at Best Buy. But I wasn't convinced to go to Best Buy just yet. I decided to contact Amazon and see if they would price match and apparently found out they have a special "Low Price TV Guarantee Program" - meaning they'd refund me the difference of the TV after I placed the order and it shipped since Best Buy is one of the approved retailers they price match with. I wanted to be SURE this TV/order would qualify, so I got them to approve it as a pre-order. So now we got the same TV, less taxes (saved me $14.95 right there) PLUS amazon.com happens to be one of the quarterly bonus categories on my Chase Freedom card so we'll get an additional 5% cash back which is $17.40 in addition to my normal 1% ($3.48) back I get on all purchases (not sure if they'll take away the portion of 5% + 1% after amazon refunds me the $118 difference, but even so I'll still get a total of $11.50 + $2.30 back) I know this isn't THAT much money we're talking here, but I get such a rush out of saving money and it all adds up! Between those two orders I'm getting over $20 back in cash back rewards) Which I have NEVER carried a balance on a credit card, so I never pay any interest/fees, so all the money I get back from rewards program is actual "free money". I love getting paid to use their credit cards :)

{TWO} Apparently Disqus (what I'm using for people to leave comments) doesn't notify me when people leave comments. Which, considering how few I get, I like to at least acknowledge and reply to. I just realized I had comments from a week ago on several postings! Sorry for the late reply. I'm going to look in the settings and see if there is an email notification option, and if not, I will just keep an eye out on my Disqus account to see who has left comments!

{THREE} I also got two great deals on subscription box services this week too! Thanks to Jen @ Ramblings of a Suburban Mom (if you can't tell, I read all her posts and get a lot of good deals from her) for posting the deals the other day. On plumdistrict.com - which is similar to a Groupon/Living Social type site (I had heard of this site before, but I never subscribed or went to look at it, man, I was missing out!) they are offering a one month subscription for $12 (regularly $24.95)  to Bluum plus there was a coupon code for 20% off (PD_BOXTOPS) making the order only $9.60 for a $24.95 value. (reminder to self: need to make sure to cancel after the first month, unless I like it and maybe I'll keep it!) Then they also had an insanely awesome Citrus Lane deal - $40 for a 3 month subscription ($75 value) or $75 for a 6 month subscription ($125 value) to Citrus Lane plus you could use the 20% off making the deals $32 for 3 months or $60 for 6 months -- which is awesome to essentially pay $10/month for something that is normally $25/month! (By the way, this is for NEW subscribers only!)

{FOUR} We've officially been in our new house over a year now! This year FLEW bye! Today, I'll be having some items fixed/looked at as part of our one year walk through. After this, any issues we have, we'll have to deal with ourselves. It's been kind of nice having a "maintenance man" these last 12 months. Although, I'm sure the builder HATES me by now, in theory if everything was "good" from the beginning, we wouldn't need to talk to him any longer, but I know it's normal to have some issues with new construction homes. Regardless, I LOVE our home and our neighborhood and going through the building process was definitely something we both really enjoyed! Seems so long ago that we took these pictures:





{FIVE} we have the final count for EM's 1st birthday party next weekend (assuming no last minute cancellations! It's still going to be HUGE (We have 60 Adults and 24 Kids marked as coming)  - but much smaller than the original list we sent out. I won't lie, planning for a party this size gives me anxiety but my wonderful MIL is going to help with most of the food prep, and hubby is always great with helping prepare stuff as well so I'm sure it'll all be fine. Not like EM will have any memory of this anyways (besides pictures), but I still want it to be a good time for all that attend!


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1 comment:

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