christine-murphy dot net

I’ve been seeing the commercial for CouponSuzy.com a zillion times per day.  So I decided to check it out, even though I’m not a big coupon user.  Also, a lot of stores in my area will not take internet coupons.  One store, Market Basket, claimed it was a Massachusetts state law, but I’m not sure of that.  I do know that Shaw’s will take internet coupons, but as far as I know, only those from their own website.

Use of the CouponSuzy site is free, but before you can print anything, you have to download and install some special printing software, which is also free.  This software is compatible with both Windows and Mac computers.

You can search for coupons by category, and even find local coupons, if there are any in your area.  There is also a section that has coupon codes for many popular internet stores, such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, etc.

But the grocery coupons are all for brand name items, just as the commercial advertises.  If you insist on only using brand-name products, you can see some savings here.  But honestly, we go in for store brands for most stuff, and they are still often cheaper than the name brand, even with a coupon. Always compare costs before you buy anything!

Still, it’s worth checking out – I did see a Sears Optical coupon for two pairs of glasses for $99.  And even factoring in the cost of paper and printer ink, this is probably cheaper than buying the Sunday papers for coupons.  They have a much larger selection, and you do not waste ink and paper because you only print the coupons you select.  So if you don’t need  that ab workout video that’s $2 off, for example, it will not get printed.

Here’s the commercial that is airing now:

I finally broke down and bought one.  In case you haven’t heard, the Kindle (friend’s affiliate link) has come down in price, from $259 to $189.  I had decided that when it dropped down below $200, I’d buy one.  Well, now it IS under $200, and I ordered one, I got it yesterday.  I could have had it a few days sooner, because they offer FREE 2-day shipping for the Kindle…however, to take advantage of this, you can’t have it shipped to a P.O. box.  I’d rather be safe than sorry, as I can’t really get packages and mail at home, and sometimes even having stuff sent to Mike’s work is a pain.  So I went for the regular free Super-Saver shipping so I could have it sent USPS to the P.O. box.

So far, I love it.  With my crappy eyesight, it is actually much easier to read than a paper book.  There is the option of increasing the font sizes if needed, but the default is easy enough for me to read.  Also, it can save money.  Often, the Kindle editions of books are cheaper than the paper versions (but not always).  They have a HUGE collection of free and almost-free books, as well, I’ve already started taking advantage of a lot of those.  Don’t spend money on the classics, because many of these titles are FREE.  I picked up a Wizard of Oz series, and a collection that has most of the Anne of Green Gables books (why it doesn’t have “Anne of Windy Poplars” and “Anne of Ingleside” is beyond me, but I’ll keep looking for those.

A lot of the free books are junky Harlequin Romances, but hey, they are FREE!  Sometimes you just want something light and mindless to read, so just download one of those, read it, and you can always delete it if you want to in order to make space for more books.  As it is, the Kindle holds well over a thousand books, but you can also store all your books online at Amazon, even if you delete them from the device, you can get then back whenever you want them.

Amazon also has a larger Kindle, the DX, and they have a new model of that coming out soon.  But frankly, I prefer the smaller one, as it even fits into my little Red Sox purse.  It’s great to have this to carry everywhere, so you are never short of reading material in even the most boring waiting rooms.  Why do doctor’s office waiting rooms only have BORING magazines and crap?  The DX does have more space for more books, but it’s also about as big as the Apple iPad, too big for me to carry everywhere.

Most importantly, there is the fact that we have so many paper books, that we’re running out of space to store them.  One of these days, something might happen, we might need some emergency assistance, and the responders will have to trip over piles and piles of books to get in here!

I’ll let you know more about how I like it as I use it more!

I bought this vacuum cleaner from Buy.com a couple of months ago, where it was on sale for under $40.00.  I needed to buy SOMETHING, otherwise Mike would have cleaned out our life savings by buying an expensive Dyson for me for our 10th wedding anniversary.  And that would have been our LAST anniversary.  I hate vacuuming and it would break my heart to have thrown away hundreds of dollars on a vacuum, no matter how good it proclaims to be.  But our old Hoover Wind Tunnel was dying, and we had to get SOMETHING.  So when I saw this, I ordered it, just to keep Mike from spending our baseball and beer money on a boring vacuum cleaner.

Honestly, I don’t like this thing much.  First of all, it was a royal pain in the butt to put together.  usually I am good at assembling stuff, but I threw up my hands and gave up.  I made Mike put it together, somehow, he got it figured out.  Although it can be used as a regular vacuum, a hand-vac, and a portable canister vac, taking it apart and putting it back together is such a pain, that I decided that I’d just leave it as a regular vac.

And as such, I don’t like it.  The floor nozzle flops around too much and doesn’t stay flat on the floor, therefore, it it hard to use, hard to get it to suck up the dirt.  In regular vac mode, it is more likely to suck any door hangers off the doorknobs than suck up anything on the floor! The dust cup is easy enough to empty, and the suction is good, I just found it harder than I expected to steer this thing around.

It works much better in hand-vac mode, with the smaller pet hair nozzle thingy that comes with it.  So it wasn’t a total waste of money.  I decided to keep it as a hand vac, as it does do a good job of cleaning cat hair off furniture.

The Shark products do get good reviews consistently, so after I saw an infomercial for the Shark Navigator, a larger vacuum that doesn’t look so friggin’ weird, I did a little research to see what others thought of it.  It got consistently good reviews, as I said, and I decided to buy one today from QVC.  They’re having a special, today only, where everything they sell is on Easy-Pay, so I went with that.

So we’ll see how that works out!

How many times have you been out eating someplace, only to spill food on your clothing?  You know that if you do not do something to remove the stain right away, it will set in, and then you may never be able to get the stain out.  If the garment is an expensive one, this can be almost as annoying and frustrating as a case of eczema.

As someone who goes to a lot of baseball games, this happens to me a lot.  I’m eating a hot dog or a slice of pizza, and maybe someone bumps into me as they are trying to get past me to get out of the row.  Or maybe a great play happens, and it causes me to get all excited and maybe drop my hot dog, or squeeze it too tight and cause ketchup or mustard to leak.

Well, ever since I’ve been carrying a Tide To Go Instant Stain Remover pen in my bag, no more permanently stained and ruined clothes!

According to the manufacturer, this works best on fresh food stains, not so much on blood, grass, or other non-food stains.  It’s simple to use.  Here are the instructions for use, from the Tide website:

* 1. Remove excess residue from the stain.
* 2. Press the tip onto the stain several times to release some stain remover solution onto the stain.
* 3. Rub tip gently across the stain to remove it. When necessary, add more liquid and continue rubbing gently.
* 4. Important: If treated area will be exposed to direct sunlight, wipe with a damp cloth or napkin to remove excess solution left on fabric.
* For tough stains, place a paper towel under the stain while treating or wipe excess liquid or residue away with a damp paper towel, or reapply as necessary.

This stuff WORKS! I’ve saved many a beloved baseball T-shirt from the rag pile because of this. More importantly, I’ve saved both of my authentic jerseys, the ones just like the players wear. These jerseys are EXPENSIVE, and to ruin one with stains that will never come out would break my heart.

A single Tide To Go pen retails for  about three bucks…a very small price to pay to save beloved and/or expensive clothes from ruin.  They are also available in multi-packs of various sizes for less per pen, so everyone in the family can have their own, and you could also keep one in your desk at work.

Tide is offering a $1.00 off coupon for this product.  Go to this page to request one.  They’ll mail it to you, which is good, because some stores will not accept internet coupons.

Give it a try…IT WORKS!

LOLMart Shirts is an offshoot of the very popular website, I Can Has Cheezburger, as well as other sites in the Cheezburger Network.  The idea is simple – every two days or so, they post a new T-shirt for sale.  The T-shirt is always a cartoony version of a LOLcat or other image on one of the Cheezburger sites.  Example:  I HAS A FLAVOR.

They call it the Shirt of the Day, but in reality, they are available for 48 hours, a little longer over the weekend.  If you want the Shirt of the Day, you must purchase it before the time is up.  Once the time is up, the orders are counted, and the shirts are custom-printed in the correct sizes for each order, and shipped out.  It usually takes about two weeks for your shirt to arrive, but if there is a delay in production, they will email you to let you know.

The shirts are are of nice quality and reasonably priced…just $15, with free shipping in the United States.  These shirts do run a bit small, so order up if you like them to be more loose-fitting.  Not good for heavily pregnant women, even the largest size, men’s 2XL, might not fit.  If you see a shirt you like, order it now, but you’ll have to wait until you aren’t needing the prenatal vitamins before it’ll fit you.

Yes, I repeat…if you see a shirt you like, order it before the time is up, because it will be gone and may never be available again.  Every so often, they do a “Best Of…” week, where shirts that get the most votes to be brought back are, well, brought back.  For example, so many people clamored for the return of this Dr. Tinycat shirt, that they did bring it back.  I’m glad, because I did miss it the first time around, but now I have one.  You can go to the page of any discontinued shirt, and vote to have it brought back.  Look at the Dr. Tinycat page to see what I mean.

LOLMart Shirts accepts PayPal and all major credit cards.  If you are a fan of the Cheezburger sites, go and take a look!