Old Navy Sample Share - Tees and Tanks

Through the website Crowdtap, every so often I get the chance to try out free stuff from my favorite place to buy clothes - Old Navy! The best part about these opportunities, called Sample Shares, are that I get to take a friend along for free stuff, too! In the past, my friend Tamera and I have gotten to try out a free summer outfit and even these awesome winter coats. I've also gotten (but not blogged about) skinny jeans. Other shares have included fitness gear and dresses.

This time, though, the Sample Share was for Old Navy's new tees and tanks. I was super excited about this one because, well, pretty much my whole dresser is full of Old Navy basics like these. The coupons were good for two tops (any combo of tees and tanks) with the eligible product numbers listed on the coupons and the letter that came with them.

Those little product numbers were awfully tricky. Yes, they were on the price tags on every item, but they were awfully small (I circled it in red using MS Paint so that you could see it!). After hunting around the store for a while, we were able to locate most - but not all! - of the eligible shirts.

The ones that were the most appealing to us were the Soft Vintage tees, which come in both crew neck and v-neck styles. We really liked the impressive array of colors and, true to their name, these tees are really soft!

Unfortunately, the tees are also really thin. It quickly became clear to both of us that Old Navy's goal is to get everyone who comes in to buy a "top" part of an outfit to actually buy two shirts to fulfill the same need.

Without even trying to get a photo of how thin the shirts were, you can tell from Tamera holding up this tee that they're pretty thin - definitely not the sort of thing that you'd be comfortable wearing to the office *without* another layer underneath! (Look how well it matched the little yellow bubbles on her skirt, though, without even trying! Too cute!). She went with the crew neck vintage tee in a very pretty shade of blue, and I got a dark purple one.

The other top we both ended up getting was the Jersey-Stretch Tank. Made out of a thicker sort of material than Old Navy tanks usually are, these are clearly the shirts that Old Navy intends for us to wear under their new, super-thin tees. They're also very soft, but the thing I liked most about mine is the length!

The purple long sleeve I'm wearing in this picture isn't short on me or anything - it comes down to my hips, easily - but the tank is much longer, which makes it much more appealing for layering than most of the other Old Navy tanks that I've purchased in the past. The cute teal color that I got doesn't seem to be available on their website anymore, but your local store may carry it. ;)

Of course, nothing free ever comes without a catch, right? Old Navy hadn't gotten the coupons correctly entered into their system by the time T and I went for our tees - when the cashiers scanned the coupons, they came up as being for free dresses, even though the tees we were getting were definitely ones that were listed on the coupons! Thankfully the staff was able to override the coupon and give us the tees for free anyway - always great customer service when I take these coupons to the Old Navy here in Chico, CA :) 

Overall I definitely had fun with this sample share! It was a bit disappointing that, during the Crowdtap discussion, Old Navy asked us for our opinions on a larger variety of shirts than we were actually able to purchase with the coupons - I was really looking forward to checking out the new Fitted Racerback Tanks, which look like they'd be great for the gym but at a much lower price than Old Navy's activewear line.

Thank you, Old Navy and Crowdtap, for the chance to score free gear! :)

Hoarding...I mean Stashing

Okay so I've gotten a little carried away lately, hoarding stashing fabric. I'm a grown-up, so Christmas presents to myself are completely justified, right?

 

 All either red-tags or remnants from Joann

 

 With a gift card I got from work, I went a little crazy on Amazon. The Little Apples I already had, but I got some Hometown, Circa 1934, Sherbet Pips, Pezzy Prints, and some So Sophie.

Not really stashing, but these squares were from a swap - I look forward to using them for a billboard quilt for our guest bedroom that says "ENJOY YOUR STAY!"

More Joann fabric.

Some Joann fabric, as well as some Michael Miller prints - a yard each of It's a Girl Thing, Bloom Zoology and The Brady Bunch, Jan Turquoise - and a couple charm packs of Reunion.

Okay, yup, maybe a little overboard. But I've got a lot of projects in my head!

How was YOUR fabric Christmas??? :)

Christmas shopping

So my lovely aunt, whose stash I raided back in August? She's a FIEND for the FatQuarterShop.com. Has a ton of their quilt kits, all kinds of stuff from them. She SO generously offered to gift me something designer from them for Christmas.

I've never had designer fabric before, so of course I've been picky about what I'd consider.

And then I fell in love...with Outfoxed.

Borrowed from FQS, found here

I love the foxes. And especially the little hedgehogs. I adore all three colorways, and definitely their names - "outwitted," "outsmarted," and "outplayed." So clever! This is the same gal who gave us 1001 Peeps - also adorable, but it doesn't include these amazing hedgehogs, so...not that.

I've already got a project in mind - a lap quilt for me to use for work. Because some things have to be just me. And I picture myself embroidering it with the words "outwitted," "outsmarted," and "outplayed," because, um, those are great things to remind ourselves of while sitting at the desks we don't like dreaming about the sewing rooms that are our shelters.

Am I right??

Happy Saturday

This Saturday was pretty eventful - another shift at Butte Humane - three hours of washing and drying a TON of laundry, cleaning litter pans, and, since unfortunately their dishwasher is broken, doing dishes by hand, too. I was so busy that even though I was at the cat center, I didn't see a single cat! LOL! This guy's really cute though, so here's a gratuitous cat photo:

I've never SEEN a cat like this before! Amazing? Yes.

Before that, though, one of my coworkers - the same one who laid our kitchen tile floor - which looks like this:

Wrench wasn't sure about this new floor at first - but she definitely loves sleeping on it, now!

It's a black and white checkerboard floor with lovely black grout - so it doesn't look dirty! Hah! Love this floor. The tile store actually didn't have solid black and white tiles, but it's close enough. :)

Anyway, our bedroom used to have a terrible sliding glass door in it. We think that the people were originally planning on building a deck off the bedroom...but never did, so it was just a big single-pane stupid waste of heat. Hah.

No more sliding glass door...now a normal, new construction, dual pane window is there, instead!

I don't have that many great "before" pictures of our house...probably because the house was SO terrible. Seriously, who does something like this:

That's right. Tile, EVERYWHERE, except on the floor where it belongs. The window to the left, as well as the window facing the same direction in the living room, were surrounded by that terrible green and gray checkerboard style tile. The tile served as baseboard around the bottom of hte dining room (I'd forgotten about that!).

Oh wait, and there's more tile - around the pass-through from the kitchen to the dining room. And that red stuff, to the right of the stove (let's not get into the terrible placement of THAT!) - that's more of hte same tile, SPRAY PAINTED.

Okay now I've gotten completely off track remembering how terrible the tile was! There's MORE of the tile, in a different pattern, on the wall facing the dining room. There are also beams that run across the living room and dining room ceilings (one in each room) - each was also covered in the tile, which had been half-spray painted white, too...but only the green squares? I don't know.

Anyway, enough with the terrible tile. Ralph came, the door's mostly replaced with a window, and in a month or so, provided it isn't raining yet, he will replace the other window in the room with a proper dual-pane window, too.

I got a bunch of sewing done - a little quilting on a gift quilt, and yes, started ANOTHER project? Oye. I'm never going to finish anything. Oh, and I sewed two really big pieces of flannel together that will serve as the back for a top I've already made. Oh, ANDDDDD I also went to Joann, again, with Dianna, because she dragged me out of the house to look at yarn.

Tomorrow? Visiting with a friend, perhaps, and probably finishing this season of True Blood, so no spoilers, people! :P

Hopefully your weekend's just as productively busy as mine!! :)

Swap!

I volunteered at my local Humane Society for the first time this morning, and when I got home, my kitties were pretty jealous. Mostly it was hot today, though, so Wrench just chilled all day. :)

Anyway...I love getting mail - I belong to PaperBackSwap.com, so I get books pretty often. I do a bunch of shopping online, through Amazon or wherever else, so the mail's not the boring stack of bills my parents always receive.

This past week I decided to join up with the fall colors swap being hosted over at Bolo Heads. I drew tan as my color, so off to Joann I went today to acquire these:

I think I stretched the definition of tan a little bit - and the tan remnant I got actually has ducks all over it - I think I might fussy cut it so that the ducks are actually in the squares I send.

Of course, no trip is complete without a stop at the remnant rack - I love the aqua-and-pink and the Celtic-feeling pattern, too. And basic black-and-white check, which I think I might make into something for our kitchen, which has a black-and-white checkerboard floor. :)

Okay, really, I promise I won't go to Joann again for a while. (Yeah, right.)

Safeway Savings, July 2011

Grocery shopping is finished for the month, so here's the monthly recap again - because I enjoy boring my readers, of course.

$216.25 spent - down from the last two months, thanks to fewer BBQs - and when we did have them, we were able to get better deals on meat since they were on clearance.

$160.31 saved - or 42.57%. Not bad! I had one trip, for corn, where we saved 75.85%, but there were a few bummers in there, too.

So far, over the past four months, my grocery shopping tactics have saved us $630.60 dollars - or 3/4 of a mortgage payment! It doesn't seem like much each individual trip, but adding it up like that is amazing.

The thing I learned this week is that it's much better to go grocery shopping late in the evening. The store's less crowded, as it's after kids' bedtimes, but also for this important, money saving reason. Around 9PM, the meat/seafood departments are closed - which means THAT is the time of day that they're putting out the last of the "prepared" meat items - like the DELISH hamburger patties w/ bacon and cheddar cheese mixed in. Mmm. 50% off if you buy them late in the day!

I know I could do "better" at my grocery shopping if I were more diligent about looking for coupons - I'm pretty happy with the savings, though, given that I DON'T put much effort into it - maybe 10 minutes a WEEK.

I enjoy doing this, because I'm lame, so you get to bear with me.

Last month Jeff and I spent $236.86 on groceries and achieved a savings percentage of 39.05%.

This month, thanks in large part to the great "buy eight of these certain groups of items, which includes lots of things you use and stock up on, then get an additional $0.50 off of each individual item" sale that Safeway had in the middle of the month...

We spent $256.84, but saved $210.20, for a savings percentage of 45.01%!! Hooray!

This brings our three months savings total to...

$470.29!!!

That's the equivalent of me working an extra...three and a half work days.

That's a lot. :)

Safeway Savings

This was my first month of keeping track of how much we spend on groceries and how much we "save" by using coupons and Safeway's Just-4-U program.

Spent: $212.02
"Saved": $108.34
Retail value of groceries: $320.36

Percent saved: 33.82%!

I'm definitely happier to have paid $212 for our groceries - including my birthday party! - instead of $320. I think I can do better than 34%, though. One of my coworkers brings me the coupons from her newspaper every week - I was super happy to have scored a $2 jar of Nutella last week, because it was on sale at Safeway and I had a $1 coupon from her.

Imaginary rule day 1: mission accomplished!

I know you were dying to hear about it - yes, I did RIDE to Joann's today! It's 6.9 miles on my bike round trip - I realized last night that the not-quite-5-miles route would NOT be a good idea at rush hour, as it was roughly the same way I and a couple thousand other people would have gone to drive there. The traffic along the way on the route I did take wasn't too bad, and overall it was a decent ride.

So what'd I get?

Some remnants, of course...

Some cute little girly fabric (just a foot)...

And this ADORABLE Halloween fabric that I've been eye-ing for weeeeeks now. Red tag fabric was 50% off again today, so I had to snag...the rest of it. The gal at the cut counter was super nice and gave me a yard at remnant price, making it even cheaper! Huzzah! Now I just have to find something to do with it...

That's a total of 2.555 yards of fabric for $6.43, AND I got a good workout out of it, too :)

Imaginary rules

I'm all about control. I'm one of those folks who's likely to say "No, I'll just do it, you won't do it right" (unless it involves power tools, then the hubby can do as he sees fit!).

So I make up imaginary rules for myself. Imaginary, because there's no one who really cares about whether or not I follow them, and because I rarely write them down. The new rule I've come up with is:

No shopping at Joann's unless I've ridden my bike there, or if Dianna's along.

Now, no one's going to hold me to this but me, of course, because who cares how (or if!) I get to Joann's? I guess it makes me feel like I'm in control of something that briefly seemed a little out of control...like my remnant buying habit.

We'll see how it goes. 

Do you do this, readers? Make silly rules for yourself, I mean??

Book shopping

So, I rarely buy new books for myself. When I do, I make sure to shop online at Barnes and Noble - and always to spend more than $25 to get their free shipping. I also make sure to go to the website through one of my credit card account pages, so that I can get the bonus cash back.

Today, I bought the next George R.R. Martin book:

 

Regular price: $35

Pre-order price: $18.81

I also got Stalking Irish Madness, which looks interesting:

Regular price: $24

Clearance price: $4.48

And I picked up the newest A.J. Jacobs book. The first two were great, I'm hoping this one's good, too:

Regular price: $25

Clearance price: $5.38

Total: $29.96, including tax

Free shipping! 

Plus 10% back on my credit card means only $26.97 for all three HARDCOVER books, which would have cost $90.93! - a savings of almost $64!

Oh no, it's a girl

So I have a coworker who's having a baby. Well, his fiance is. Anyway, I found out yesterday that they're having a girl.

This is a disaster!

Not because he's not happy about it, or anything like that... but because I've managed to develop quite the stash of fabric for a blanket for a baby boy. I have almost nothing girly!

And the last thing I need is an excuse to go to Joann's...

Confession

So according to my to-do list, I had vowed not to buy any more fabric.

Oops.

This weekend, Joann's is having a big President's day sale, where Simplicity patterns are 5 for $5. My friend Dianna had a bunch of patterns listed on her blog that she was looking for, so I messaged her, and off we went to Joann's!

This trip will mark my first attempts at trying to make things with patterns. I picked up a few different patterns for bags, 2357 and 3822. I got one of "accessories," which has purses, satchel-style bags, and a clutch.

The fourth and fifth patterns I'm more excited by. 2822 contains patterns to make organizers and bag-type doodads for wheelchairs, walkers, and strollers. The envelope the pattern comes in makes them look so drab! Blacks, navy blues, maybe some tan for trim - how boring!! Jenn over at South of Sheridan's inspired me to make things that are way more girly - I'm thinking cute floral prints, bright happy pinks and purples, and so forth!

The fifth pattern, 4127, is cute tops for summer - maybe by the time the warm weather's here to stay, I'll have gotten up the nerve to WEAR something I made!

And, of course, since I was at Joann's, I had to look at the remnants. It simply cannot be helped. I was good this time, though - I bought two pieces, one full yard, one mostly a yard, of basic white fabrics that can be used for anything and thus are must-haves...right??

The best part of the trip? The receipt!