Want Not

I feel like I’m emerging from a thick fog; the week of being on vacation and then the following week of being sick (of course) have made my reentry into the real world a bit, ah, difficult. I think I’m finally back, though. Maybe. Let me finish this cup of coffee….

Hit any awesome deals while I’ve been trying to get my bearings? My Allure Box came this weekend, and although I’m sometimes a little disappointed, I think this was a really good one. (Note to self: Hide Stila lipglosses from grabby tween.)

Yesterday I had a rare day of alone time with no immediate looming deadlines, so I went thrifting. I’d hoped to find something fabulous for me, but that’s not how the day went. Alas. However, for about $20 I picked up a couple pairs of shorts and four pairs of uniform pants for my kids (including a tags-on brand new pair of $100 corduroys from J. Crew!), so it’s hard to complain.

What’s your greatest recent deal, my pretties?

Check it out—Want Not got a face lift. I don’t want to brag but ohmygosh don’t you love it? I am deeply indebted to the team at LEAP Design for their hard work and patience in getting this going.

Just a few things to mention:

1) While the site was updating, the team didn’t realize I had an automatic Twitter feeder, and consequently it automatically tweeted, oh, about 200 links to various things. Sorry about that. Hopefully you weren’t online when it happened. (But a few of you were, and tweeted all “Dude, what’s going on??” and I couldn’t answer you because… Twitter cut me off because I looked like a spambot. Whoops.) It’s all fixed now.

2) There is now a central repository of Want Not-affiliated stores for your perusing and shopping pleasure… located under the Shop Pretty tab, of course. Hovering over a store’s graphic gives you the link and any applicable coupon codes. You can search an alphabetical listing or browse by category. As this is the really big (read: non-cosmetic) change to the site, I’m particularly wanting feedback on how that works for you, if you like it, etc.

3) I know posting was light while we were getting this up and running. Thank you for your patience. I hope it was worth the wait!

We haven’t had an open thread to share our best finds, lately, and frankly I love it when you tell me about the great bargains you scored. (Because the only thing better than that great deal is the admiration of your fellow shoppers, afterward.)

Here, I’ll start: I was dropping off some outgrown clothing at our local kids’ consignment store, this past weekend, and everything in the store was half off for Easter. Naturally I decided to do a bit of shopping, and I found a few things for the kids at great prices. Then I wandered over to the “Juniors” section and found a brand new summer dress from J. Crew in my size. (Okay, it’s nice to be small enough for this sort of thing, but here I insert my standard disclaimer about how grown women shouldn’t wear clothing actually meant for teens. This dress wasn’t, but just a general caution about how dressing too young actually makes you look older.) I flipped over the tag to discover it was marked at $20, which meant it would be $10. I was in a hurry and someone was in the fitting room… and I didn’t need it… but it was really cute and $10 for a J. Crew dress? Okay, I had to chance it.

But when I got up to the register, it turned out that the dress was actually on clearance. It wasn’t $10; it was $1. When I finally tried it on at home I discovered that it fits perfectly. Woo!

Your turn—what was your greatest find of late?

For those of you who may have been on the fence about this deal on a Kotex starter kit I posted about a week ago, I wanted to let you know that we received ours (that was fast!) and it comes with a $1 off coupon, so for a net cost of $2 I think it was probably worth it. The little pouch is very cute.

And the booklet labeled “OMG… Your First Period” is a great conversation starter if you want your daughter to laugh hysterically while you try to be hip and talk in acronyms. (“OMG, I think, like, you’ve got some PMS. TTFN!”) (Okay, maybe it’s just us.)

I seriously do not remember menstruation being this amusing when I was a kid. Kids today, man. They’ve got it too easy.

For those who’ve been asking: The very best deal I’ve gotten in a while.

It’s been a while since we did a brag post; what’s the best deal you’ve gotten lately?

Yesterday I was surfing through the Saturday deals and decided that as much as I pink puffy heart my Lands’ End swimsuit, I should probably snap up a second one to get through the summer. And I wanted a cover-up for the pool, too. So I went looking and found some tankini separates I liked (on sale) as well as a simple cover-up (on clearance). The total was $71 plus another $10 or so for shipping, which isn’t bad for what I was getting, but do you think I was going to pay that?

I had the free shipping code, so that took care of that.

Then I went and redeemed $40 of my Discover Cashback Rewards (what I usually refer to as “play money”) for a $50 Lands’ End gift certificate. Total out-of-pocket cost for me for $106 worth of merchandise (from a store that guarantees it forever), delivered: $21.

It was a very good Saturday.

The nice folks over at Real Simple asked me if I’d help them out with a piece about gift-giving this holiday season, so I did.

Now I feel all Martha-like. Except with a much messier house.

Some of you have been kind enough to drop me a note to let me know you saw me on the local news yesterday, and a couple of others have mailed to ask where the clip can be seen.

Here it is!

Many thanks to 11Alive news and to Valerie Hoff for taking the time to come check out my little corner of the web!

Here’s a little shout-out to my local peeps: Tomorrow morning (October 30th, 2008), tune in to hear my chat with Kevin and Taylor of 104.7 The Fish at 8:10. Why? Thrifty Thursday, of course!

We’re talking Christmas shopping, Amazon Prime, the importance of a gift closet, and I swear to you that I told them they were pretty, but for some reason that part got edited out. I wonder why.

Many thanks to the kind folks at The Fish for having me, and I hope some of you will be able to tune in for the segment. (Alternatively, it looks like they offer live streaming on the web site, though I’m having trouble getting it to work at the moment….)