This post is brought to you by Savings.com. Savings.com is a monster site! I’ve been exploring on there for over an hour and I’m nowhere near finished! They have some very cool features there! 

I love shopping online and I absolutely love online coupons, savings, coupon codes, you name it! So I was excited to get to check out this site and tell you all about it.  The first thing, the very first thing, that I noticed …was the logo! I really, really like their logo and the connecting/continuing background.  The text is like one connected string and in various places the string makes different pictures after the word.  You can see it here a little bit, but, you’ll have to go to the site to see what I mean about the groovy pictures that are connected to it. Love the look and feel of it, though.

A major plus is that there are tons and tons and tons of retailers and their accompanying discounts and/or coupons listed.  That should definitely be said.  But there are many other things, also, that really made me like this site, the first of which is the community and the way that Savings.com embraces the community.

Once you join the site, which is super easy to do – they have social networking profiles available for members, in which you can fill out your bio, add a link to your own site, write a blog on the site, and it will also keep track of any coupons you voted for, comments you’ve made, any deals that you have submitted – and more!

They also have a very active blog for the main site, that super active members can contribute to.  And they are on Twitter and Facebook and have their links right on the homepage.  And there is a newsletter that you can sign up for so that you don’t miss any deals! And there are tons of helpful articles on the site!  It really is a great site!

Ok, so I went shopping around to see what I could find that I needed and let me tell you what! I need a new camera. In a bad way, in fact, it’s so bad that some friends have nicknamed me “1972” just in reference to the camera I’ve been using!!  It’s my husband’s digital camera from 2002 – it. is. horrible.  Now, to be fair, I do have a nicer camera, but, less than a year after having it – it went kablooey.  Kodak thinks they can fix it for about $100, but, I’m doggoned tired of Kodak software not working with Windows software! That’s right – Kodak gives you .mov files and Windows Movie Maker does not work with .mov files. What a pain!

So I started out looking at Sony ecoupons and I found some interesting discounts and coupons.  Once you find one you want to check out, you click the link and it takes you directly to sony and OMG! ya’ll! I found the coooooolest camera. And just go ahead and guess what it’s called! OMG!!! It’s called the “bloggie”!! I’m not even kidding you – this things looks so awesome!! It takes video and stills and the viewfinder flips around so that when you’re self-recording, as we bloggers tend to do – you can make sure and get yourself in the shot! I seriously think I might NEEEEED this camera! Coolio!

Now see? See how much fun looking through online coupons can be? I don’t know about you, but, I’m pumped!

Here’s a quick video from Savings.com explaining the process a little bit more!

Even though I’m still not a ‘real’ hippie and I never will be, for various reasons – now I’m closer to the genu-ine article! LOL! I’ve finally made a purchase at my very most favorite online clothing shop! I bought a skirt from Soul-Flower.com!

I absolutely love it! I really wanted to buy a tshirt and a purse and a backpack and some stickers and a tapestry, too. But hey, I’m not made of money! I’ve definitely got the other items in my wish list. And you wouldn’t even guess what! They’ve added two new skirts just since I bought this one that I really, really like! Well, one of them is knee length, though. And I don’t think I’m ready for a knee-length skirt. You never know, in a few months I might be.

I’ve hit another plateau in my weight-loss journey, but, I’ve hit several through the course of the year, so I’m not letting it freak me out. I know that, eventually, I will get past it.

One of the main reasons I hadn’t bought anything from Soul-Flower yet was that I didn’t fit into any of their cool hippie threads.

Well, when I very first found them, they did have a plus-size section. It didn’t have a whole lot in it, but, at the time I didn’t have the money to spend. Then when I did have some extra dough, they had taken that section away. I guess they just didn’t get enough business to keep it up. Which is funny, because, there are so many ‘fat hippie’ jokes. Or ‘fat vegetarian’ jokes. Hmm…

Oh well, now I not only fit in their clothes (YEA!!!) but, my awesome new patchwork skirt is actually way too big for me. Too funny! So if the next size down fits me, according to them I’m already a 12-14 – I like the sound of that!

Women’s clothing is so funny that way, though – I am a whole size different between Lee’s and Levi’s right now. And let’s just say that Lee’s are my favorite jeans right now! So there – Levi’s are in the doghouse – LOL!

Ok, I need to stop blabbing and let you see the durn video already, but, in the video I promised to tell you the name of the skirt – it is the Cali Q Patch Cargo Skirt.

P.S. And a little birdy told me that they’re working on the new Soul-Flower catalog, too! I can’t wait to see it!

This time of the year feels like a long, drawn-out Christmas or something – we have so many gift-buying occasions in this family from April through July – it’s not even funny! Right now my focus is on Father’s Day and what to get for my father and my husband. I had decided on a box of brownies for my father, from this wonderful company in Huntsville, AL – since that’s what I got my mom. And the kids and I had decided on this cool thermometer for the grill for Mark. And then the kids changed their mind on the thermometer, and just today I’m thinking maybe I’ll do something different for my dad. Heh. I guess we gotta make things difficult! 😉

And I’m getting all of these emails – No Shipping for Father’s Day, 20% Off for Father’s Day, etc, etc… I was thinking, however, that I might look at clothing stores. I don’t know – Mark and my dad are probably two of the, no – they definitely are – the hardest people for me to shop for. Actually, I think my dad has gotten a lot easier – hmm, that’s weird – but, Mark is still a tough one.

There is a very helpful guide for buying men’s clothing online at ShopWiki. It’s almost like taking a guy with you into a store to help you pick something out for another guy. And it’s all divided up by categories, with a little helpful tidbit about each category underneath it, like this one:

Sunglasses can make you look really cool, or really dorky.

Haha! I love that – that they’re not all stuffy. It really does make it seem like someone is there helping you shop!

Mark is completely obsessed with watches right now, more specifically, watches that wind themselves. That might definitely be an option – although, I might be nervous picking one out, because, he is so picky. See? There’s that ‘hard to shop for’ thing, rearing its ugly head, gnashing its terrible teeth! I am sure, though, that if it was a gift from the kids and myself, he would love it, even if he does like to pick out his own watches.

My dad used to love these pageboy hats, and I always thought he looked so good in them. I wonder if he’d be interested in them again. I am having trouble finding any brown ones, though, and I know that would be the color he’d want – anywhere from brown to tan, probably.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do for either of them…it’s kind of fun shopping for them, though. Hey – how’d that happen? LOL Maybe it’s all the funny commentary on the ShopWiki site. Anyway, I’m not quite decided yet, and I’m not exactly sure how much I’m going to have to spend. So I’ll just keep looking around. There’s so much information on ShopWiki that I could look for days and not see it all.

If you’re searching for Father’s Day gifts, too – good luck with your search! Onward! Shop!

Check these out – I think the kids would absolutely love these funky sunglasess!They are shutter sunglasses, which are totally weird, but, I just bet the kids would dig ’em! And then add to it that the darn things glow! Yep – the kids would love them! I found them at ReplicaSunglasses4U.com, a site that sells all kinds of sunglasses, that are moderately priced, but, can be compared to some very nice, rather expensive brands. They also sell Wholesale Sunglasses.

I found a pair of gorgeous pink sunglasses (even the lenses!) that make me want to start wearing contacts again, so that I could buy those for myself! Who knows, though, my light skin tone might not look good in those – that could very well be a pair for a very tanned lady.

But there are so many oodles and oodles of glasses on their site, that I could surely find some for myself, if I did go back to contacts. The kids are in high school now, though, and have expressed interest in ‘cool shades’ recently. Shawn even begged a girl to let him wear hers the other day. It was during the school day, so I wasn’t there – I hope they weren’t all girly. Ha!

Man, they’ve got all kinds of cool sunglasses – the kids section is awesome, as is the novelty section! They even have hologram ones! And – guess what? I wouldn’t even have to switch back to contacts – they have some ‘fit over sunglasses’ that would go over my glasses! That would be cool! I had some that came with my glasses – the little clip-on things, but, I didn’t like them very much. It would be so much easier to just have a completely separate pair that fits right over my glasses!

Very cool!

I recently had the opportunity to try a new chocolate delight from the Ferrero Chocolate people. It is the company’s first dark chocolate treat and it is called Ferrero Rondnoir.

It had to have been the most interesting chocolate candy I’ve ever tried. What made it so interesting? The layers! Layers and layers of different tastes and textures. It was so delicious.

Let me see if I can get this straight – first you have the little tiny pieces of chocolate on the outside, then comes the wafer, after that is my favorite part – the soft, creamy chocolate – and in the very middle is a regular piece of yummy dark, delicious chocolate! It was so yummy!

You can read all about it here: Ferrero Chocolate. First click on ‘Ferrero Rondnoir’ and then, to see all of the delectable layers, click on ‘Experience Rondnoir’.

And a really cool thing about the company is that they’ve paired up with Share Our Strength in the Share Something Sweet project. They are working to end child hunger in the United States, and you can help to support them by going to their site, and send a personalized snow globe e-card to someone you love! I sent one to my mother, who was really impressed that the chocolate company was working to end hunger! We both think that rocks!

I really would love to have this Christmas angel fleece blanket! It is so cute, that I think that I would use it all year, just like I do my angel tree topper. Mark got me the prettiest angel to go on top of my Christmas tree last year, and she is so pretty that I could not bear to put her away in a box to live in the garage for a whole year! I wish that these fleece blankets would be a bit bigger, though. It seems that most of them are 60 inches. Well, it would be a good one for Sammie – or I could hang it on the wall for a sweet decoration. If you’d like to see the shop this comes from, just click here.

We’ve discovered lots of really neat things out here in our new town. One of the things that thorougly interested Mark, my knife-addicted man, is Bear Cutlery. He has been so excited to have a knife manufacturer so close to us – and I, of course, have been so nervous. I tell you, if there is one thing that man can spend money on – it’s knives! Eeks! We may be living in a box under a bridge – filled with knives – before too long! The tidbit about that business that I found so interesting, was that Swiss Army actually bought Bear Cutlery at one point, but, one of the original owners of Bear Cutlery, recently bought it back from Swiss Army. I would love to know the details of how that all went down. I think it’s time for me to go on a Google journey – I can spend half a day tracking stuff like that down! The internet has turned us all into private investigators, huh? 😉