This catchall category covers general services (eg drycleaning, etc.), electronics, office services and supplies, pets and transportation.

Cheap Sheet - A. Nelson

Get All Of YVR’s Daily Deals In One Place

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Too many online deals flooding your inbox can be more annoying than helpful. Here’s a way to manage them.

Cheap Sheet - A. NelsonSAVE TIME + MONEY | Do you suffer from inundation saturation? Have you signed up for and subjected yourself to a tsunami of daily deals, subdeals and dedicated emails that now rip through your inbox like winter waves along the beaches near Tofino? On the surface, social shopping websites are a great idea. After all, what can be wrong with receiving a daily email inviting you to save 50 to 90 percent on amazing local merchandise or services? The problem is that social shopping behemoth Groupon, the granddaddy of social shopping sites, has spawned legions of worthy contenders, all of them now delivering awesome deals every day. Just keeping up with the Lower Mainland’s dozen or more daily deal offerings can feel like part-time job. Read more

Santa Picture

Shooting Santa: A Print Photo Has its Place

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In this age of age of digital photos displayed in electronic flip frames, a print photograph taken as part of a tradition definitely has its place.

Santa PictureHOLIDAY SHOTS| My longtime friend Elyse is an incurable romantic who still lives in the big, old house she grew up in surrounded by furnishings that belonged to her mother (who had exquisite taste), and interesting, idiosyncratic things she and her husband, Ben, have acquired over the years.

While both Elyse and Ben have careers that distract them, they are determined to stay focused on family at Christmas, making time for (at least a few) rituals that result in strong memories that contribute to their family’s story. For as long as I have known them, one of the things they do every year is take silly Santa pictures, and I love visiting their house over the holidays to see them set out in individual frames, their three kids, who are now young adults, looking progressively more sheepish as the years go by posing on some random department-store Santa’s knee—and then finally reaching an age where you can see in their pictures that they have embraced the tradition and find the experience kitschy good fun. Read more

Kraft Paper Christmas Wrap

Make Your Own Kraft Paper Gift Wrap

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Simple white kraft paper offers infinite wrapping possibilities. Here are three to get you started.

Kraft Paper Christmas WrapWhite kraft paper, the kind that comes in big rolls from art supply stores, is the perfect blank canvas to use for wrapping  gifts. I like it plain, dressed up with beautiful ribbon topped off with greenery such as sprigs of holly or bits of twig. I also like it decorated in the ways I’ve shown here. Read more

Promo Code Button

Hello Promo: How To Work The Promo Code

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Two of the sweetest words on the Internet are Promo and Code. Here’s how to make this web-shopping tool work for you.

Promo Code ButtonSHOP SMART | If Santa didn’t have elves working furiously in his workshop, he’d be wise to buy all his gifts online.  No crowded malls, no parking traffic, no stress – in fact, if I didn’t know any better, he probably does this already.  And you probably do too. But did you know that besides saving time, you can also save money? All you need is a neat little thing called a promo code.

Chances are you’ve seen it before: that small box at the bottom of the checkout page where you can “enter promo code here”.  I burned through a lot of plastic before it occurred to me to figure out how to get one.  After all, you can find anything online, why not a promo code. Read more

Christmas Wrap - 123rf

4 Sources For Big Rolls Of Great Holiday Gift-Wrap

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When buying holiday gift-wrapping paper, go big or go home.

Christmas Wrap - 123rfSAVE MONEY + TIME | The most cost-effective time to buy Christmas wrap and ribbon is in January when it’s discounted by half or more. Almost as good is to buy it now in large and luxurious rolls. Not only is there a cost savings when you buy big, but there’s also the peace of mind from knowing you have enough paper no matter what shape or how large the gift. This year I’m going for stylish big-bulk rolls, and also for tough. I want paper that can stand up to peeking, paper that’s not bible-tissue wuss-wrap that tears at the slightest tug.

4 Great Local Sources For Big-Bulk Wrap Read more

Party Planning Made Easy: Try A Work-Back Schedule

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So much to do. So little time. Treat Christmas like a business and use a work-back schedule—you could find the season more enjoyable.

SAVE ON STRESS | Time to Hall out ye-old workback schedule If you’re like me, one month from now, December 12 to be exact, you will start to panic and pour on the holiday steam. You’ll shop madly, bake badly, decorate like a maniac and begin, finally, to think about the design for your custom Christmas card, kicking yourself as you do every year for not having jumped on it earlier. So much to be done in so little time and all of it accomplished in the evenings.

Christmas will never be as carefree for adults as it is for kids—we have too much work to do behind the scenes—but this year I’m going corporate and using a simplified version of a “work-back schedule” to get everything done in an unhurried, orderly and more enjoyable manner. Read more

Leather Boots - C. Phaisalakani

How To Save Your Damaged Soles

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Here’s a great place in Vancouver to resurrect your downtrodden footwear.

Leanter BootsDARE TO REPAIR | Wellies are the footwear of choice in Vancouver, but I also like luscious leather boots—fashion forward over a pair of skinny jeans or under a sexy skirt. I thought I was safe taking mine on a trip to NYC, but after a sudden downpour found myself wading through giant lakes that formed at the clogged storm drains at every intersection.

Undone and unglued, my beautiful leather boots were unwearable. A curmudgeonly cobbler on the West Side (who shall remain nameless) chided me for splashing around in puddles in my “cheap boots” and advised me to throw them in the bin. Undeterred, I hobbled over to Both Feet on Main Street. The hip young man there took them in hand, and, $15 and one week later, they were good as new. Read more

Safety Razor - George Giannakos

Just Say No To The Multi-Blade Shave

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Talk about spending dumb—gentlemen, stop the insanity by saying no to the multiple-blade shave.

Safety Razor - George GiannakosSPEND SMART | George Giannakos is 24 years old and has been shaving with a safety razor for almost five years. He learned how to shave using a multiple-blade system, but when his dad brought home a steel safety razor with a single, double-edge blade, the very one pictured here, and began using it routinely, it wasn’t long before George and two of his three brothers slipped into the groove. Now, five years on, two of the initial three and their father continue to shave with safety razors and see no advantage in returning to a multi-blade world gone mad. Read more

Used University Textbooks - C. Phaisalakani

17 Ways To Save On Textbooks

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Hey, post-secondary students, Belinda Bruce has found 17 ways to save on schoolbooks this fall.

Used University Textbooks - C. PhaisalakaniCHEAPER IS BETTER | Buying textbooks at the campus bookstore is so old school. Post- secondary education is costly enough without forking over a premium for course materials. With the average full-time student spending between $900 and $1,200 a year on textbooks, it’s easy to understand why alternatives to the campus bookstore are cropping up everywhere. Read more

Large Black Chalkboard - C. Phaisalakani

With Chalkboards, Bigger Is Almost Always Better

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When it comes to having a blackboard in your life, it’s best to go big or go home.

Large Black Chalkboard - C. Phaisalakani

 

MONEY WELL SPENT | One of the best things we did the first time we renovated our house, when my now teenage son was small, was to put a gigantic black chalkboard on one wall in our dining area. We had to order it from a company in Ontario that supplies visual presentation products to schools because we couldn’t find anything locally that was the four-by-eight-foot size we wanted. The board was surprisingly inexpensive, but crating and shipping it nearly doubled the cost. And the cost doubled again when we ditched the anodized aluminum trim kit that can be purchased with the unit in favour of a custom-fitted natural wood picture frame we thought would look better with our hardwood floors and furniture. In the end, I think we paid around $800 for the whole thing, which isn’t dirt cheap but certainly less expensive than a framed artwork of comparable size. Read more