SHOPPING AROUND | Lamp shades are not something I shop for often, but when I do, I find myself frustrated by the poor selection and quality out there. My particular peeve is shades with plastic backing, which not only becomes brittle and cracks over time but also looks so, well, plastic. Read more
THE TURN ON: Cards and paper from Linda & Harriet, the Brooklyn-based stationer known for it’s chic modern designs with a vintage twist, are not as easy to come by as they used to be. Its delightful stationery used to be available online and at specialty stores everywhere but in May 2010, it changed gears to focus on just a few key products, such as its popular annual calendar (it features a postcard in the back to cut out and send when the month is over) and limited edition monthly projects.
WHAT’S THE DEAL: For a limited time only, Linda & Harriet have opened up an online outlet, where fans like us can shop for its letterpressed greetings and note cards. Even better, everything in its outlet is marked up to 80% off.
WHY WE’RE EXCITED: Greeting cards for $1.50 each (or a pack of five for $6) and boxes of six note cards for $5 – you can’t find cheaper at the dollar store! We’ve picked up several boxes of note cards, which will make for lovely hostess gifts and we’re also stocking up on birthday greetings and thank you cards. With June graduations just around the corner, we’re throwing in some congratulations cards too.
HOW LONG WILL THE PLEASURE LAST: just one more week – the outlet closes on March 31st.
WHERE’S THE F SPOT!: online at lindaandharriet.com —Natasha Muslih
DO IT YOURSELF | So this is what it feels like to be taken to the cleaners. For the tidy sum of $17.25, I had a beloved blouse ruined by the professionals. It came home from the dry cleaners with an unusually strong chemical smell that no amount of airing out seemed to diminish—it was enough to finally make me try a home dry cleaning product. Read more
BE PREPARED | Though it looks almost identical to an image we saw on the Internet of the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked and tumbled Christchurch in New Zealand recently, the picture shown here was taken just 200 miles south of Vancouver in Nisqually, Washington. It shows the destruction caused in 2001 when a quake with a magnitude of 6.8 ripped through this tiny community south of Seattle, sending tremors hundreds of miles in every direction. Read more
WORK THE SYSTEM | Has this ever happened to you? Your favourite performer or sporting event is coming to town and you want to make sure you get great seats the second they’re up for grabs. You know that buying tickets in person at a Ticketmaster location or over the telephone will not be faster than purchasing them online, so on the day they become available, you access your Ticketmaster account and begin refreshing your computer screen repeatedly in the minutes leading up to their release, pouncing like a tiger on its prey when the Find Tickets button goes live. Even with your lightening quick reflexes, every ticket is gone in a matter of minutes, and not one of them sold to you.
What can you do to ensure this will never happen again? One thing would be to try to buy tickets before they go on sale to the general public. For that you will most likely need a presale password or code. Read more
AFFECT YOUR CAUSE | Last month, when popstar Adam Lambert asked his then 860,000 Twitter followers to help him raise $290,000 in under two weeks for his current favourite cause Charity: Water, even his own father expressed skepticism. But fans, in a testament to Lambert’s power to mobilize the troops, crashed the charity’s website on the last day to donate, and Lambert wound up just $10,000 shy of his goal.
Last week Lambert tweeted fans to visit kickstarter.com and check out his pal guitarist Monte Pittman’s campaign to raise funds for a self-published album. That shoutout helped Pittman surpass his financial goal in less than a day.
Both Lambert and Pittman were tapping into the power of crowdfunding—Lambert for charity, Pittman for working capital—and you can tap into it too, to support a personal cause or a creative project of your own. Read more
MONEY SPENT WISELY | Buying a pre-owned car in the U.S. is not the sizzling topic it was in 2007 when the price of relatively new used cars was much higher this side of the border (I’m told Canadian dealers have made an effort in the past few years to mitigate the disparity). Still, the Canadian dollar is at par right now and could go higher, while the U.S. economy remains in a slump. One can only imagine that a larger than average number of U.S. car owners are defaulting on payments, and that lots of auto dealerships are staring at overstock—circumstances that could work to the advantage of Canadians car shopping down south. Read more
SHOPPING AROUND | Last week we ran a story on down sweaters and discovered that some of the best-value models come from the cheap-chic Japanese fashion house Uniqlo, which does not ship to Canada. Uniqlo will, however, take orders for anything in its online catalogue over the telephone from the store in Manhattan and send it to any address in the U.S for a flat rate.
This got us thinking about how we might use the services of any of the parcel-receiving companies that operate just over the border in Blaine, Washington. We contacted four of them—Automated Mailing Services, Mail Boxes International, Pacific Mail and Parcel, and Security Mail Services—and found out the process is simple. Read more
SHOPPING AROUND | When Apple TV relaunched last fall, I rushed out and got one and hooked it up to my television with an HDMI cable so I could gain easy, seamless access to Netflix and whatever other premium—a.k.a. paid for—audio/video content ITunes can persuade me to purchase from their online emporium. Now I’m wondering whether a Boxee Box would have been the smarter buy.
SAVE 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