Tag: "Shopping"

Get Some Healthy Ideas from Stop & Shop

I live near a Stop & Shop. For almost ten years it has not been my primary grocery store, but rather the grocery store I ran in to if I needed something at the last minute. With RB having been looking for a job for a while I have been trying to shop smarter, less often and more efficiently. After hearing about some changes to the store from Mom Central, I decided to pop in and check it out. Not having been in my nearby Stop & Shop for a little over a month, I was surprised when I recently went in and discovered they’d redone the store and were going with a new look and were even getting rid of the old colors and going with new ones – yellow, purple and green.

One of the new things you’ll see on shelves throughout Stop & Shop stores is the “Healthy Ideas” symbol. The symbol is there to call your attention to products that fit well into a healthy lifestyle. The Healthy Ideas symbol is a result of research by physicians and dietary experts. The selection of the foods that bear the label was based USDA and FDA standards defining healthy, the USDA Food Pyramid and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Some of the things that were taken into consideration were the amounts of fat, sodium, fiber, whole grains, calcium and minerals.

I think it’s great that a grocery store is offering a time saving way to help busy shoppers find healthy products. The Stop & Shop website has a lot of helpful information as well. There’s a recipe section full of tasty sounding dishes that teaches shoppers how to make simple swaps, or changes, to familiar recipes to make them healthier. My favorite thing about the recipes, besides the fact that they’re simple, is that you can add ingredients to a printable shopping list right on their site.

My son has Celiac Disease and requires a gluten free diet. It can be very time consuming to read through every ingredient on a label, as a result I often stick to the same foods and the same dishes over and over again because it’s just easier. The Living Well area of the Stop & Shop website has a food allergen sectionthat contains a list of all of the gluten free products that Stop & Shop makes. I can’t tell you what an awesome and welcome resource this is.

Jan 31, 2009 | 0 comments | View Post

Bargain hunting? Check TJ Maxx and Marshall’s

I finished my Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve, with the exception of two gifts. Money, and the lack thereof, is a huge issue in my house this year as it is in many others. I think it’s going to be a long uphill road that we all travel before it gets better. I’ve been trying hard every day to spend less and spend smarter, and that especially applied to Christmas shopping. I had received $25 gift cards for both TJ Maxx and Marshalls and was hoping to be able to put them both to good use. Apprehensive about finding gifts for everyone in time for Christmas, I made my way out to the stores.

I went to Marshalls first. Even though the store is located only a couple of miles away and is in my town, I haven’t been there in about five years. On a couple of occasions in the past hubby had bought some jeans and/or sneakers for himself and told me the prices were decent. I was surprised by how many different kinds of things Marshalls carried. There was a lot of clothing - mens, womens, childrens and babies. I’d say the store was more than half clothing, although it also carried toys, perfumes and colognes, housewares, bedding and linens, shoes and bags. They even had a seasonal department containing Christmas and Hannukah decorations and gifts! I’d been thinking about getting a baby carrier (the kind you wear) for my sister in law. I’d seen them sold in other stores for almost $40 and Marshalls had them for $15.99. I saw nice Cross pens on sale for $9.99. My Dad loves a nice, quality pen so I knew I couldn’t go wrong there. I was surprised at how many brand names I saw in Marshalls. I was even more surprised at how much you could save on some of the items. The only part of my trip that I wasn’t thrilled about was that the store I went to was laid out in a giant square and I had to go around it a couple of times in order to find everything.

Next I went to TJ Maxx, a couple of miles in the other direction in the next town over. I thought the TJ Maxx appeared quite a bit more organized. TJ Maxx contained a similar mix of products to Marshalls but seemed to have more in the way of housewares and bath and body products. I could have easily spent my money in the housewares department but it wasn’t me I needed to shop for. I found a really nice selection of small gift items that were just right for those non-family member gifts that many people buy as gifts for people like teachers, bus drivers, professionals, etc. I’d been debating getting a nice bag for my brother’s girlfriend. I found a Liz Claiborne bag for $17.99 that I’d seen selling in an online store for almost $50.

According to a recent Roper Survey, nearly half (45 percent) of the shoppers surveyed plan to spend less on gifts this year. The Debt Diva, Clarky Davis, suggests the biggest way to make your money go further is to shop at offprice retailers such as TJ Maxx and Marshalls. I have three tips to offer. The most important is to know your budget and stick to it. Also, know your prices before buying. If you do your price comparisons and research before buying you’ll know if a sale price is a good price. Lastly, shop as early as possible. It means less stress because you’re buying at a leisurely pace and it will save you money. An excellent time to start shopping for next year is right now, as in today.

I’d actually thought that TJ Maxx and Marshalls were just stores that bought leftovers from other stores. I found out that their merchandise is all first quality merchandise that can be found in other stores. Their prices are low because the buyers can buy as needed or ahead and aren’t locked in to a specific purchasing volume. Their stock constantly changes, with most stores receiving multiple shipments each week. If you’re looking to find a bargain for yourself or as a gift for someone else, take a look in TJ Maxx or Marshalls. You might be surprised at what you find.

Dec 27, 2008 | 3 comments | View Post

Mom Central Holiday Gift Guide and giveaway

As a full time working Mom I don’t have as much free time as I’d like. That isn’t usually an issue except when it comes to shopping for holiday gifts. I don’t have the days and weeks necessary to visit a lot of stores and look at gifts in order to decide which ones are good and which ones are bad. I like to give gifts with thought and that will be useful and appreciated, but it’s tough to do that if you haven’t seen what’s available. That’s why the Mom Central Holiday Gift Guide is a great idea for busy women like me.

The terrific women at Mom Central have compiled hundreds of great gift ideas for this holiday season. Every product in it has been evaluated and chosen with the challenge of finding a good gift in mind. The gift guide is broken down into categories for him, her, baby/toddler, kids, tweens, teens and pets. I love the way the categories are represented by the colorful wrapped gift boxes. Each category contains products that cost under $50, under $100 and over $100, so there’s something in there for every budget. Each product in the guide includes the suggested age for use, the price and a review.

Mom Central is hosting a huge holiday giveaway to celebrate the launch of their first annual gift guide. They’re giving out great prizes in multiple daily drawings. To enter all you need to do is fill out the Mom Central Testing Panel registration. (As a proud member of their testing panel I can tell you two things for certain. The first is that these are terrific women to work with. The second is that product testing is a lot of fun.) After registering, log in to Mom Central and leave a comment on the post. That’s all you need to do to be eligible to win. If you like you can earn even more entries by Twittering or emailing friends about the giveaway and then leaving a second comment. Easy stuff!

If you’re not finished shopping be sure to check out the Mom Central Holiday Gift Guide for some gift ideas. Be sure to enter the giveaway while you’re there!

Dec 09, 2008 | 10 comments | View Post

Getting a jump on the holidays

Today I heard from a coworker that over the next couple of weeks some of the local retailers will be offering secret sales with 2008 Black Friday type bargains. I think it’s terrific, particularly if the stores won’t be mobbed and crazy like they are on Black Friday. I don’t usually go to the stores on the day after Thanksgiving because they’re just too crazy for me. I always take the day off and take my Mom up North to the cemetery to visit my Grandma and then go out to lunch. Do you brave the stores?

Nov 07, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post

My trip to 6th Avenue

After sleeping in this morning, I went out to go to the grocery store and to get a new phone. We have two phones in our house. The cordless in the bedroom stopped working weeks ago. The cordless in the living room has been acting funny for a while, not holding a charge and some of the numbers in the caller id don’t appear. So I went to 6th Ave Electronics because they had a decent price on a phone I wanted. I’d never been to a 6th Ave store. I went in and I didn’t see the model I wanted behind the counter so I asked the man behind it. I had neglected to bring the model number with me so I told him what manufacturer it was and what features it had. His eyes glazed over and told me they were all pretty much the same. When I told him I did not want a built in answering machine he told me I could turn it off. I told him that I specifically wanted some of the features in the phone I was asking about. He went to the company website and invited me to look for it there myself. I found it and he put my name into the computer and told me to go to the cashier. I went to the cashier and paid for the phone. The cashier told me to step to the next counter. The next counter was five feet away and there was noone there. I stepped over to it and after five minutes the cashier came over and asked me for my receipt. (It was at this moment that I felt like I was Ben Stiller in the airport at the counter in Meet The Fockers.) I gave her my receipt and she handed me my phone, which was over by the counter where I’d just paid. I was not impressed and won’t be rushing back.