All About Kimberly

Sailing Along the Life of Single Parenthood

Tag Archives: Mystery Shopping

Shopping with Your Kids

Most of the time I don’t mind shopping with Cameron. She doesn’t ask for much, and it’s actually fun looking at what catches her eyes.  One of the most interesting places we’ve been lately is our local home improvement store.  I needed to pick up some things for the house that were going wrong and it was so funny to watch Cameron.  She wants her own bathroom so bad (yes, she’s all girl!) so while I’m looking for the best deals to fix all the mess going wrong lately, she’s wondering around the bathroom section building her dream bathroom.

Of course she picked a huge bathtub with jacuzi that she could pretty much swim in. Then she went down the aisle looking at all the sinks and picked out one of the totally modern sinks that don’t even look like sinks to me.

She’s now even more determined that she “needs” her own bathroom.  What am I going to do? She’s only 8!  Yikes!

Cyber Monday Sales Begin

As I’m surfing the web for good deals this morning and checking my email, I’ve seen that many Cyber Monday sales are beginning now.  I thought…after I looked at the first few, “Hey, I should sale these with my readers.”  If you are like me, I won’t be able to take advantage of any Cyber Monday sales tomorrow until later in the afternoon because I’ll be working, but today I’m able to make some purchases.  I’m almost done with my shopping, but there are still a few people left on my list.  (I hate shopping on a budget….LOL)  Here are some of the stores who are running sales today and/or tomorrow that you might want to check out.

Note: All bold words are clickable.

So far I’ve browsed the Circuit City ads. They had some great deals on MP3 players and cameras.  There were lots of others, but these were what I noticed the most of.  Also they have some of the higher priced video games with an offer for a $10 gift card back with purchase.

Sears starts their sales at 9pm tonight.  I’m anxious to see those as I always love Sears products.

A really fun gift is one share of stock from One Share.  They will frame the stock and make it really neat as a gift. I did this for several friends a couple years ago and I’m thinking that I’ll purchase a few each month this year as they run specials and then present them to everyone for Christmas next year. They have a huge selection so you can find something that would fit everyone’s personality. They also offer a great presentation for kids to explain what the gift is.  Right now you can save 33% from the transfer fees by going through the link above and using code fee33 and if you want to have them frame the stock, tomorrow (Monday) frames will be 50% off.

GameStop is a store I’m watching closely as there are still a couple games I’m wanting to add to our collection and I just found out two family members who will be receiving a Wii and I’d love to help them get started with their game collection.

eToys is offering free shipping on a ton of their toys. If you are looking for a specific hard to find toy for a little one in your life, eToys may be a great place to start.

It may seem odd, but I’m excited about the sale being offered by Omaha Steaks too.  They’ll have steaks for $2.49 a steak for the entire day Monday.  I’ll be sending these to a couple of the men on my list and maybe to our house too.

Sephora has some good sales going on (makeup makes great stocking stuffers) and free shipping for orders over $25…It’s so easy to spend $25 dollars (and I have a gift certificiate for $15 off of $30 so I’m heading over to do some spending now). For the free shipping go through the link above and use SHIP25 as a code.

Kmart had some pretty good online savings Thanksgiving day so I’m really anxious to see their CyberMonday sales.  I know they’ll have a Christmas tree at 25% off, 50% off sterling silver jewelry, 25% off maternity clothing, 40% off Levi Strauss, 20% off Hannah Montana guitars, and 40% off holiday dresses.  They’ll also offer free shipping on order over $29 on December 1st, 8th, and 15th.

Lakeside Collection is a store where I find unique gifts throughout the year. They’ve not released what they’ll have, but I am hearing that they’ll have a collection of items at 50% off for Monday only.  If you’ve never shopped through them, check them out.  You might be surprised at how many gifts you can find.

Another store that you may be interested in is Shutterfly.  Shutterfly is a photo developing and gifts webstore. One of the best deals they are having in honor of Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale is that if you buy one photo calendar, you can get additional ones at 50% off.  If you are looking for an original gift for grandparents, aunts, and/or uncles, a photo calendar with all the little ones’ pictures is a gift that will be treasured for more than the year that they use it. If you’ve never used Shutterfly, go through here to get 50 free prints and an 11×14 collage, 

Overstock is a vendor that I’m sometimes really excited with their prices and sometimes somewhat disappointed, but they are always worth checking out and I did receive an email from them that there will be some great Cyber Monday sales so if you have time, go check them out. The link above will get you 5% discount sidewide and free shipping (excludes books, movies, music and games).

Batteries.com is my favorite place to stock up on batteries and goodness knows we ALWAYS need a ton of batteries after Christmas.  They too are having a great sale this weekend.

Get 15% off your entire order at Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Disney Shopping has a great sale going on today that I’ve already taken advantage of. Today is the last day which means tomorrow we are very likely to see some really good ones.

Have you ever shopped at Drugstore.com? They are one of my favorite stores. One day I hope to do almost all of my shopping online thanks to stores like Drugstore.com where I can buy the necessitites of life.  They have some great sales going on this weekend.  I’ve picked up a few things including a board game that I didn’t find on sale anywhere else that was on Cameron’s list.

eCost is a new vendor for me.  This was my first purchase from them, but they have some really good prices and some REALLY good sales.

If you’ll be able to shop Monday, check out Macy’s.  They are advertising some great Cyber Monday sales.

I did some shopping in their store Friday, and I’ll be watching closely for their sales Monday. Who? Staples.  I have always loved just browsing the aisles at Staples. There was a time when we browsed so much that many of the salespeople knew my daughter by name.

 

**I’ll continue to update this page as I find more deals.

Digital Photo Frames & A Contest

I actually purchased a couple digital frames as gifts during black Friday sales this weekend and now I have found the Got a Wish Sweeepstakes from CEIVA and been given the chance to tell you about it.  It’s such a cute contest.  First you upload a picture of yourself and you sit on Santa’s lap.  Check out my video:

Isn’t that cool?  It’s not a real current picture, but I haven’t had a current alone picture taken in FOREVER!  It was so neat that they actually put my picture on the CEIVA frame wasn’t it?  Why would you do it? Not only do you get to check out the many features of the CEIVA frame, but you are entered for a chance to win $500.  A winner is selected every day so your odds are better than in most contests.  What would you purchase with the $500 if you won?

The rules of the contest are:
- must be 18 years of age to enter sweepstakes
- photo must be of the submitter
- photo must not contain inappropriate content, copyrighted image
-must be a resident of the United States and/or Washington D.C.

After entering, you’ll be given the chance to buy a CEIVA frame at a pretty good price for such a high quality frame. (It’s a $100 discount!!)

Head over to the contest and check it out.  And be sure to share your video with some of the special people in your life so they’ll know just what you want.

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MomDot Party Day 8

I’ve already written and posted this post, but something happened this morning so here’s try 2.  :)

Today’s topic is one that I’m looking forward to – not necessarily this post, but the actual action:

Do you shop on Black Friday? What time do you start? Do you finish all your shopping on that day? What’s the best deal you have found? What’s your shopping strategy?

I LOVE Black Friday shopping.  I’ve been all over the web (there are several Black Friday sites) finding all the sites I can about what will be on sale where and actually have most of my plans for next Friday mapped out already.

Shopping on the day after Thanksgiving is a tradition for our family.  My grandmother, my mother and I all go and do some major bargain shopping.  The plans begin early.  Like I mentioned, I’ve already gathered most of the ads and forwarded them no to my mom and grandmother.  We’ve got our lists ready.  We compare items we know we want at each store to know who has the best deal.

Next Thursday (Thanksgiving) we will go back through the acutal sale papers to make sure that the sales I’m finding on the Black Friday websites are true and develop a final plan.  We will split up the stores so that we can be at all of them when they open. For whatever stores I’m going to, I’ll have my list, my mom’s, and my grandmother’s.  Sometimes Dad puts some items on the list, but he won’t dare brave the crowds.

Friday morning we’ll wake up WAY TOO early and head over to the neighboring town that actually has stores to shop at.  We’ll travel in a caravan so that we can go too different stores and have plenty of room for all of our purchases.  We’ll use our cell phones and each hit a different area of town and buy as many items on each of our lists as possible.

Around 9:30 or 10:00 we tend to have wrapped up our early bird shopping, and we all meet at Ihop for a late breakfast to share what we did successfully buy and what we missed.  Then sometimes we will go browse the mall or stores that have sales that day, but not early morning be there at store opening sales and then head home to divide up our purchases and take them to our respective homes to wrap them.

Making My Wishlist

As Christmas approaches, I’m starting to receive the requests for wish lists for myself and Cameron for Christmas so I spent a little time this morning browsing the Internet and trying to decide what to put on our lists.  There are several Wii games that we are wanting as a family that I want to put on the list (but then I don’t because if no one is buying them, I want to).  I’ve been going through luggage almost every trip we make lately.  It seems like one piece of a set gets ruined each time we hit an airport. I’ve not been buying cheap luggage, but I haven’t been buying the most expensive either so I think I may put a nice set of luggage on my list like maybe some Rimowa luggage as I’ve heard that is really durable.  Overall though, I’m hoping for a new TV because if I don’t get it, I’m going to buy one myself after Christmas.   Cameron could use a new DVD player. Her DVD player is getting to where it doesn’t open half the time and you have to coax it out.  Except for that, she wants a laptop (both girls do), but unless I find a really super deal, that won’t happen.  Oh well, off to do some more online browsing….what’s on your list this year?