I’m going to be in Phoenix for about a week starting midday Feb. 16. Although my daughter and I have several jaunts planned, we’re also interested in having a blogger and/or reader meet-up.
Anybody interested?
It would almost certainly take place after the workday ends at 5 p.m. or so, although we’d certain push it further if other folks work later. We know that several other PF bloggers live in Phoenix, but are there other writers, too? And would readers be interested in hanging out with us?
If you’re ordering any holiday gifts from Amazon, this week’s giveaway will boost your budget somewhat.
Specifically: I’m giving away a $10 Amazon gift card, and doing so earlier than usual to allow for on-time shipping. The drawing will be on Saturday evening instead of Tuesday evening.
Rather than mail the card I’ll simply e-mail the code for the scrip. Those with Amazon Prime memberships could order gifts as late as Monday and have them delivered in time for wrapping on Christmas Eve.
(That is, if the requested items are in stock, you procrastinator.)
Wise Bread recently posted an article called “What can I do with the gift cards I don’t want?” Sounds like a flawed premise, right? Who wouldn’t want a gift card?
Not so, according to writer Holly Johnson.
“You might end up with a gift card to a store or restaurant you unquestionably dislike,” she says.
“Even worse, you might get an inexpensive gift card to a place where nothing is cheap — like a $10 gift card to a restaurant where entrees start at $19.”
She suggested half a dozen ways to deal. I’ll see her those six, and raise her another seven.
Fun fact: During the holiday season, the lowest price for toys is about 10 days before Christmas.
Funner fact: You can get a $50 head start on your toy-buying (or anything-else-buying) if you win this week’s giveaway.
The Swagbucks rewards site has offered to award one lucky reader his or her choice of a $50 e-gift card from the Rewards Store. It’s quite the lineup of cards for restaurants, electronics emporia, retaurants, entertainment and other categories (including my personal favorite, Amazon).
This giveaway is a little different: You must be a member of Swagbucks and earn at least 50 points between now and 7 p.m. PST Friday, Dec. 5. Instead of entering up to five different ways, leave one comment with your Swagbucks user name.
Some people think Black Friday is fading away. Me, I think it’s simply spreading out.
Gray Thursday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are on the way whether you like it or not — and you can bet that Saturday and Sunday will have their own forms of deal-mongering, too.
Don’t want to shop on Thanksgiving or Black Friday? Prefer to buy locally? Do what works for you. But this week’s giveaway is designed to provide a little help for shoppers of all stripes, plus a little entertainment afterwards.
Up for grabs are:
Those of you who actually enter the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes [hand goes up] may remember the $5,000 bonus award you could get if the PCH team ever showed up at your front door.
You were supposed to look at the camera and say something like, “I just won a gazillion dollars in the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes! Now I know it’s real!”
Why someone who’d just won a gazillion dollars would be compos mentis enough to remember to say that – and why he’d even care about an extra five grand – was never explained to my satisfaction. That won’t stop me from pirating the slogan, however:
“Last month I won a $100 Amazon card from the Ally Bank Tweetchat! Now I know it’s real!”
(Yeah, that’s some teeny print. But if you click on the screenshot you’ll see my Twitter handle, @DLFreedman, as one of the winners.)
I already knew it was real, because a Surviving and Thriving reader wrote to tell me she’d won a card. That made me happy.
You may already be a winner!
It would also make me happy if one (or two!) of you guys won the Amazon scrip at tomorrow’s Ally Bank Tweetchat. Certainly it’s a topic to which we can all relate: “Developing enviable saving habits.”
It’s that odd time of the year: Sometimes chilly and sometimes balmy. Even here in Anchorage we’re feeling mood-swingy with regard to the weather: in the 40s and raining sideways one day, sunny and in the low 60s another day.
So what do we want: hot chocolate or fancy iced tea?
Whatever it is, I’m buying the next round. This week’s giveaway is $10 worth of Starbucks gift cards.
We’re in the middle of a project to turn a giant three-sided building into a smaller shed, a greenhouse and a deck. When I say “we,” it’s the royal we. DF and one of his sons are doing most of the work.
He’s reusing wood from the original structure plus some boards another DIYer had given him. DF also found a great deal on paint at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and an even better deal at the “free” section of the city landfill.
Yet certain purchases — cedar boards for the deck and something called Suntuf clear PC roof panels for the greenhouse — can’t be scrounged. The roof panels are on sale at Home Depot but even so cost almost $25 a pop.
The final tally will be about $750, a figure that made us both gasp – and sent me straight to GiftCardGranny.com, an aggregator site for discounted gift cards.
Within three minutes I’d determined the best deal and ordered it. Total savings: $107.30. Wish I could earn at that rate every day.
I must have been one of the nerdiest kids in Cumberland County, NJ, because I looked forward to the first day of school.
The first hint was the mid-August appearance of school supplies at Woolworth’s, Mr. Big, Diskay and other stores in the small city closest to our rural township. While the other kids shrieked and grabbed their throats in despair, I secretly loved the sight of all that notebook paper waiting to be filled with words.
Back when the Earth was still cooling, “school supplies” mostly meant a blue three-ring binder (but only if last year’s was completely kaput), yellow No. 2 pencils (no pens until at least fifth grade), wide-ruled paper and maybe, if you were lucky, a big pink eraser. We made bookcovers out of brown grocery bags. Only the teacher had crayons and Magic Markers.
If eight-year-old me had seen the box of school supplies Staples shipped last week, the sensory overload might have put me in the emergency room.
A composition book with a leaf-and-ladybug design in pale pink and orange. Refillable mechanical pencils made just for small children, i.e., with “break-resistant” lead. Two-pocket folders with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle motifs. A clipboard with an oh-so-cuuute of a beagle puppy. 
Three-by-five-inch lined journals in bright florals and random, boldly colored patterns. Erasers that look like lipsticks, complete to the plastic top — and in patterns that match the journals. Pencils in patterns that match both the erasers and the journals, and a Spongebob Squarepants pencil sharpener to ready them for writing.
Want some of this for yourself? Or anything else Staples sells? Enter this week’s giveaway.
Today is Thrift Shop Day, and the Savers/Value Village folks say we’re all about saving the Benjamins. The company’s new survey revealed that 47 percent of U.S. residents shop at la segunda, and more than one-third of us say they shop secondhand more often now than they did three years ago.
Is it the economy? Or is it that more and more people are realizing how much fun it can be to prospect for marked-down items, some of which you won’t find anywhere else?
Well, 52 percent of those surveyed say “it feels like a treasure hunt” and 35 percent love finding “truly unique” items. If you’re a retro-fashionista, secondhand stores are the place to find vintage shoulder-pad suits, cargo pants or the perfect bridesmaid’s dress to wear to the prom or (with appropriate attitude) to a wedding.