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Five Tips For Returning Store Purchases

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What you need to know about taking purchases that don’t work out back to the store where you got them.

Woman shopping

 

SHOPPING SMART | It takes me a long time to make up my mind about buying something so I have always tended to take things home, think about them and then return them once I’m sure they’re not right for me. I do this even more since I started shopping at stores such as T.J. Maxx  and Winners where there may be only one of something so it’s best to grab it while you can.

Here’s what I’ve learned about returning merchandise back to the store where you bought it. Read more

Prize Winning Ribbon-Shutte

Is Consumer Choice Award A Gimmick?

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A sloppy house-cleaning job by The Maids prompted a look at the Consumer Choice Award, a marketing-driven awards program.

Prize Winning Ribbon-Shutte

 

CONSUMER BE AWARE | With company coming over the holidays, I did what I do every year and gave myself an early Christmas present by hiring a cleaning service to power scrub my house. In the past, I’ve used Molly Maid, but this year I waited too late to book them and wound up looking for an alternative on the Internet, which is how I discovered The Maids. Read more

Bluelounge CableBox mini

Untangle Cords And Cables With Bluelounge

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If you have a tangle of power bars and cords threatening to overtake your work area, Bluelounge could solve your problem.

Bluelounge CableBox mini

 

PROBLEM SOLVED | I don’t make New Year’s resolutions unless they’re the Babylonian variety (CLICK HERE  for our story on this). That said, this year on J 01 I did make a plan to put an end to the chaos of cords, surge-protected power bars and mutant dust bunnies that reigns under my desk. I wanted this task completed by J 31, and I’m happy to report I’ve put the issue to bed and it’s only mid-January. Read more

Super White Teeth

How To Use Baking Soda To Whiten Teeth

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Baking soda will definitely whiten your teeth. Here’s how to use it properly.

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CHEAP & EFFECTIVE | There’s no question that brushing with ordinary baking soda will remove surface stains from your teeth and contribute to a pearly white smile. Toothpaste manufacturers know this, which is why some of them have taken a page from 19th- and early 20th-century history books—when paste made from hydrogen peroxide combined with baking soda was a common agent for cleaning and destaining teeth—and included baking soda as an active ingredient in their product.

With baking soda’s proven track record, it’s no wonder people are curious about using it by itself as an inexpensive alternative to bleaching trays to whiten their teeth, though many worry that its abrasive properties will strip the enamel from their teeth. Read more

Pear Place Cards by Brendan Power - Martin Tessler

Make Our Favourite 3 Place Card Holders

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These three easy-to-make holiday place cards are going to charm your guests.

Pinecone Place Cards- Project WeddingCREATIVE SOLUTIONS | While place cards can seem a little silly for intimate dinner parties, they make perfect sense when you’re hosting a long-table meal and want to deliberately mix and match up your guests, or you’re doing a sit-down meal with multiple tables and desire a semblance of order.

Here are our three current favourite easy-to-make place card holders, all suited perfectly to this holiday season. Read more

Plain Kraft Wrap With A Wire Bow

5 Top Kraft Paper Xmas Gift Wrapping Ideas

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Plain Kraft Wrap With A Wire BowTHE CREATIVE SOLUTION | Inexpensive white or brown kraft paper, the kind that comes in big rolls from art supply stores, is the perfect blank canvas to use for wrapping holiday gifts. Here are 5 ways to make it look special. Read more

Shopping On The Tablet - iStock

Go With What You Know—And Other Rules For Shopping Cyber Monday Week

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Shopping online for extreme deals during Cyber Monday Week is not without pitfalls. Here’s what you need to know before going in deep for cheap goods.Shopping On The Tablet - iStock

 

BUYER BEWARE | What seems sweet on the surface, can be bitter underneath. The internet is at all times crawling with scammers, but they’re out in full force during Cyber Monday Week (like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is no longer a 24-hour blowout) when online shoppers are apt to let their guard down. Here’s what we know about cyber shopping this week. Read more

Design Sponge No-Buy Guide -M Pessaris

Here’s The Best Way To Do Black Friday Week

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Here are 11 good reasons to avoid BLACK FRIDAY and 10 no-buy gifts to pull together with all your new free time

While we would never say no to getting a great deal, we do think that unless you are in the market for something specific and you know for sure that it will be on sale at a shockingly low price, shopping on Black Friday weekend can be a colossal waste of money and time. Read more

By Nature Design

Studio Sessions At The Eastside Culture Crawl

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Doing the Eastside Culture Crawl, Vancouver’s longest-standing open studio event, calls for getting strategic.

By Nature Design

 

SHOPPING AROUND | With 427 artists showing their artworks and wares at 82 different locations, it’s hard to know how to attack Vancouver’s 15th annual Eastside Culture Crawl, which starts November 16 at 5 p.m. and continues through Sunday.

If you’re like me, there’s no way you have more than an afternoon to spare gallivanting around these studios so you’ll need to get strategic. Read more

The Ideal Way To Store Your Magazines

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Finally, a systematic way to keep magazines together yet separate in an attractive {and unobtrusive} arrangement.

 

THE CREATIVE SOLUTION | When you have large numbers of magazines, quick reference is not always easy. The standard way to keep periodicals organized is to store them in magazine file boxes, but these containers, which are often made of flimsy cardboard, hold only a minimal number of copies. As your magazine collection grows, so does your need for file boxes, which can end up looking like an unattractive, mashed-up mess when you can’t find more to match the style you started out with.

Faced with this very problem awhile back, I came up with a flexible yet consistent-looking way to sort and store my favourite mags. Read more