Macy's & JCrew Sale

At Macy's use this code to get 25% off and Free shipping through May 3rd: MACYSFRIEND

At JCrew use this code to get 20% on all sale items, plus free shipping on orders $150 or more through April 30th: EXTRA20

Here's a few cute things I saw on their website:

For her:


For him:


For little girls:


(I really wish they made this for adults, I want one.)

Throwing back to older traditions...on the internet?

When the time came to pick out invitations for my wedding I had so many ideas of how I wanted them to look. I really wanted something with color, something a little edgy and modern, yet with an earthy bohemian twist. While I loved my invitations, I got vetoed on many of those ideas because, as Nick bluntly put it, "I'm not a woman, and those are lame." I came to realize that picking out invitations is hard because you are generally stuck with the options they give you, and trying to fit the whole vision of you as a couple and the style of your wedding is almost impossible unless you have them custom made, which runs big big bucks.

Shortly after we were married I read an article in the NYTimes about Paperless Post, a business started out by a pair of young professional siblings who wanted to find a more stylish alternative to websites like Evite or Facebook when inviting people to an event. Yet, it would also be so stylish that you can save money on invitations for more formal affairs like Engagement Parties or Corporate events. Should all of your guests own or work with a computer (which most people under the age of 60 do), you can invite them to your event online.

While the invitations are not free, they are very low cost in comparison to real ones. For 100 invites to our wedding we paid about $600 (which was cheap). On Paperless post everything is paid with "stamps." For a basic invitation, if you buy 300 stamps, they will run you .05 a piece. That ends up being $5 for 100 invites. If you want to add photos, or envelope linings, and other things the cost will go up, but it's still pennies on the dollar.

Creating the invitation is easy. If you are not creatively inclined they will give you tons of design options with examples, a word template to work off of, and suggestions for font, color, size, and layout. If you are computer savy and you want to customize every detail of the invite you can do that as well. Managing the invites is just as easy. They will tell you if someone has opened the invite, what they have RSVP'd (with their optional message), and keep a running tally of "yes's" and "no's." In addition, if an email does not work or if someone is taking a long time to respond, they'll let you know that too.

You can have something more formal:


Or something more casual:


There are images and templates for every occasion you can think of, and there also options for Save the Dates and Thank You cards.

I've used Paperless Post only once (most of my parties are last minute, and really aren't parties as much as they are get togethers), but I loved the system. If I had more people to invite over and more time to entertain, I would use it for every event I host. I like the idea of having something pretty to send out and the ability to be more formal. It keeps certain traditions alive from older and long gone generations without breaking the bank or wasting paper. Now if only you could do this with personal calling cards!

Maybe I'll have to have another one of these, just so I have an excuse to make up another invite.


Interested in signing up? Click here.

Saks Sale

Sorry the last two sales haven't been at stores that are truly affordable (I get newsletters from every store ever, so I'm just posting them as I get them), but I figured that someone out there may be interested.

This sale is for Saks Fifth Avenue good through tomorrow:

Free Shipping on orders over $200: SFASHIP
20% off on orders over $100 (10% on beauty products): FRIEND3

Sale at Bloomingdales

I got an email yesterday saying that Bloomingdale's is having a huge sale. It ends today so if you want to get some high end stuff for cheap, shop now!

When you spend $250-499 you get 25% off and when you spend over $500 you get 30% off.

Code for $25 off your purchase of $100 or more: XK0QU129M7P5

Not your Grandma's Thrift Shop

Before I start today's entry, a word about the updating schedule of the blog. I know I've been all over the place for starters with updating 3 times a day or not at all. I just wanted to get a few things up and running so the blog didn't look so stark before I went public with it. Starting this week I'm going to be on a more regular posting schedule. Every Tuesdays and Fridays I will always have an entry up. Chances are those entries will probably be more structured around a theme. But in between if there's a really good sale going on I'll post about it since sales are obviously a time sensitive thing.

Alrighty, on to today's entry!

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When I was in college I used to shop at the huge Salvation Army on the other side of town. I'd pick up lots of little boy t-shirts (like Superman and Tiger Scouts) and little girl sweaters from the 80s (complete with big flowers and purple hearts knitted into them) as well as anything that screamed 70s (I still have and LOVE my vintage puffy ski vest that I got for $7). I'd go every few weeks when I'd saved up about $20 of the money my mother would send me every month (Binghamton was a pretty cheap place to live which was great for my parents' wallet, but bad for mine because I'd get about $75 to spend on food and fun stuff for the month and it was near impossible to find a job) and I'm browse the long racks hoping to find a gem amongst the old lady crap most people dropped off. Tuesdays everything was 50% off, so I'd usually go then and stock up on other things too like old Nancy Drew books or vinyl. I always felt so...well...thrifty picking up stuff. But then I graduated and there isn't a single decent thrift store around where I live. And obviously now that I'm an adult with a real job with other adults, I can't get away with wearing little kid clothes to work.

Then last July I visited my best friend, Katrina, in Oakland, California to check out some graduate programs out there. It was the first time I had ever visited the San Francisco Bay area, but I was already pretty dead set on it being a top location that I wanted to move to for school. I asked her to show me around the different neighborhoods and take me to things that were outside so I could enjoy the great weather. In the process of doing that she took me to a couple of really cool second hand/sample sale stores and I must admit, I went a little overboard picking up quite a few things (actually now that I think about it I don't think I've done that much shopping since then). But at the end of the weekend, I only spent about $100 and ended up walking away with a lot of stuff.

The first place we visited (and my favorite of the two) was Jeremy's. Jeremy's gets their clothes from stores (either overstock, damaged pieces, display pieces, or customer returns). So everything is new, just a season or more older. I saw a lot of stuff from Anthropologie, J Crew, and other name designers. The store was not wicked cheap, but still cheaper than buying things full priced. I got a shirt and a cardigan from J Crew and I think I spent $50 total on both. There's two locations, one in San Francisco and one in Berkeley. Needless to say, I'll be frequenting Jeremy's when we move on to California...or on second thought, avoiding like the plague.

The second place we visited was Crossroads Trading Company. Crossroads has locations all over the country, and is basically a consignment shop. In our case, the locations were located near colleges, and a lot of students would come by and drop off their gently worn clothes (from the Gap to vintage to designer things) and sell them to the store to clean out their closets. There was also some things that were overstock products as well, but most of those things I'd never heard of the brands. In any event, almost everything was dirt cheap (rarely was there an item for over $10 unless it was designer) and the things were all in good condition. It wasn't like going to a thrift shop where everything smells of mold and dust, so you don't need to worry about spending a fortune in dry cleaning. I bought a new thermal and a used shirt dress and cardigan for $25.

When I asked Katrina about the places we visited for this entry, she also told me about another store that's very similar to Crossroads called Buffalo Exchange. I've never been there, but they are all over the country, there's a couple in the NY Metro area including Brooklyn and Soho. Also in Brooklyn is Beacon's Closet. My friends Jen and Lexie have been telling me about this places for years and I've never gotten my butt in gear to go. Perhaps I'm subconsciously avoiding it because I've heard of all the awesome things they have there and I don't want to go overboard spending money? Knowing me, that's probably the case.