Style: Use Coupon Codes for Online Shopping

If the surfing you do today is more on the web than on the waves, try these coupon codes for smokin' hot deals:

1. Kohl's: Take 15% off everything with coupon STACK15.
2. Ann Taylor: Extra 40% off Sale Styles with code EXTRA40.
3. Sears: Get $20 off orders of $200 or more with coupon code FIREWORKS.
4. The Body Shop: Get $10 off orders of $40 or more with coupon code 10OFF.
5. Coldwater Creek: Receive $20 off orders of $80 or more with coupon AFLC628.
6. Sierra Trading Post: Save 20% off your order with code ALVJUNE1.
7. Crate and Barrel: Get 15% off all outdoor furniture purchases.
8. Finish Line: Take $10 off orders of $60 or more with coupon code GAN2011.
9. HP: Get $30 off orders of $150 or more with code SAVE30HP.
10. Shoes.com: Take 20% off your order with code SECRET20.

This great info today comes from our friends at www.CouponSherpa.com, which is one of four websites operating under the brand name www.TheFrugals.com and is dedicated to helping consumers save money and live more frugally. Other members of The Frugals family include GiftCardGranny.com, MrFreeStuff.com and MrsSweepstakes.com.

The 40licious Bride: Part V

I see a pattern here, and apologies to those of you who are completely uninterested in reading about our upcoming nuptials. There's just so much I am noticing since I took so long to get here!

Today I shopped for the undergarments that will go with my dress. The dress is a strapless tiered number in a mermaid silhouette made of taffeta, and the worst wardrobe calamity I can imagine is akin to my 10th grade homecoming outfit that mostly involved my hiking up the top the whole time. I can't tell you even who I went with. But that was about the last time I went strapless.

So I'm in Macy's and paying for my bustier and some undies and the total came to $66.66. The clerk looked at me in horror. "Do you want to add something to change the price? You don't want bad luck for your wedding," she said.
"No thanks," I said, "It's four digits, not three, it should be fine."
She paused a moment and punched some numbers into the register.
"I took $1 off. It's $65.56 now. Have a beautiful wedding."

Even people I don't know are looking out for me, and that is exactly the magic of being engaged.

The 40licious Bride: Part II

I'm a very practical person, which is handy, because I am also a very environmentally conscious person. Most of the stuff I have has been either gifted, found, traded, or ThriftScored.

We're trying to be as sustainable as possible with our wedding. For the most part, that's easy. We've chosen a local caterer who uses fresh seasonal foods that don't have to be hauled in from far away places like Chile. The wine is from the very terra on which we will marry. The plates and napkins were foraged from Goodwill -- they're beautiful and Holly can use them again for other weddings. All flowers are beautiful and I don't care what they are, as long as they're seasonal and will last two days. I was forced to compromise a little on the dress though. I tried on dresses my friends offered to lend and they weren't quite right. I scoured Craigslist and jeez, there's a reason people are trying to get rid of some of those dresses: think Laura Ingalls Wilder Prom from Hell. I found one I loved, it was a great deal, and they sent my order off to some third-world country where I'm sure there's a tiny child stitching the flower on the ribbon right this very second.

Like any self-respecting 40licious woman who has taken the scenic route to her first wedding, I am feeling a great deal of deservedness. The other day I had an hour to kill on Melrose. So I thought I'd skip into my favorite shoe store, John Fluevog. He's one of those designers who upends my rational thought around money and resources.

And then I saw them. The most beautiful shoes in the world. The shoes I must have in order to be perfect as I walk down a grassy path through an apple orchard to my groom. They're a light suede. They are uncomfortably expensive. And I might get horse poop on them.

No matter. In the lifelong pursuit of beauty and truth, and this is just a small victory.

Nesting Frenzy

Here's what the equasion seems to be:

Informed about better-than-expected tax refund + news about great trip to Japan for 10 days + anticipating a child in the home + madly in love with boyfriend = INTENSE NESTING FRENZY

On my way to yoga tonight, I thought I'd buy Steve a sweater for Valentine's Day to introduce the prospect of possibly, maybe, providing a companion garment to the one he wears. All. The. Time.

But of course I had to make a detour into Anthropologie, because I have been invited on a trip to Japan for 10 days to taste sake and miso, and it is cold there, and clearly none of my current wardrobe will do. This is a store that switches my brain into French Bohemian mode and gives me all kinds of lifestyle fantasies, such as serving mint juleps to my guests in pink-washed glasses from Czechoslovakia, or having books on obscure cultural subjects on my coffee table, or hanging embroidered dish towels on fanciful ceramic knobs in the kitchen, or paying $238 for a sweater.

But tonight I found the happiest shower curtain ever on sale. And a couple knobs. And then I went on the hunt for coordinating towels and floor mat. And another curtain for the shower window because for the past five years, anyone who happens to walk by can get a pretty good idea through the frosted glass if it's a man or woman taking a shower. And a pot scrubber that looks like a flower. I don't know why that was so appealing.

And I will paint my bathroom this weekend and make it a cozy and scrumptious nest, which will perhaps give all who use it lifestyle fantasies.

I never made it to yoga. And maybe Steve doesn't even want a new sweater.

Spring Brings

New things.

A fresh take, a new chance for resolutions, for a clean slate, a shining plate.

I have a giant new bed. It is huge. It takes up most of my room. It spans time zones and languages and carbon dating and fault lines. It makes me feel like I am in a hotel, in transit, in someone else's fresh new life.

This morning I woke up, lying across it, horizontally. As if sleeping has given me license to take a new perspective, direction, inflection.

Spring has sprung.

Some Things Are Better Left Undone

Dear World Market,

I currently have, in my possession, an exotic chocolate bar from your fine establishment, which I frequent with great regularity to purchase below-market wine, Indian-patterned table linens, thoughtful gift items, Asian-themed paper lanterns, distressed espresso-finished office furniture, and my Myers natural cleaning solution. I especially love the wide variety of sauces, spices, treats and teas you procure from around the globe. I will admit to being adventurous when it comes to culinary pursuits. I love chocolate and pretzels, chocolate and fruit, chocolate and -- really, almost anything. I nearly developed a combo obsessive-compulsive/eating disorder from your spectacular dark chocolate and sea salt bar. One time I even ate a worm as part of a newspaper story on a guy who ate live worms for their enzymatic properties. (It was gross. It tasted like pine.)

However.

However.

I am writing today about your confection that involves dark chocolate and chipotle chiles. Perhaps it is my karma because it's not exactly mine -- I'd purchased it for someone else. But it was there, in my cabinet. I'd returned from a movie, hungry, and had been slightly off-kilter all day. So I thought I'd perhaps taste-test it.

Oh. My God.

Have you, yourself, tasted this? Or did you outsource it to a third-world country, using a Web-based translation program to discern the notes?

Imagine licking an ashtray from a cheap Reno motel.

Imagine inhaling the vapors of the underwear from Alaskan fishermen at sea for six weeks without showers.

Imagine whatever it is that makes you most prone to retching, concentrated, ground into a fine powder, and mixed into some perfectly innocent dark chocolate.

This was worse.

So, my dear friends at World Market, I beseech you to take this off your shelves. Or just rename it "Dark Chocolate and Ass."

Thank you for your kind attention.

Love,

Vanessa

PS -- to the friend whose chocolate I violated, you're welcome.

Tonight I wish I had a big declaration to make. I wish I could say I've given it all up to move to Montana and open a junk store. A small town, perhaps, where recycling is encouraged, and they need just my brand of savoir faire for a cafe-slash-artspace that I will open. Also, you could buy the stuff in the cafe if you wanted, like the cup or the table.

But I don't have that tonight. I am not getting married. I am not pregnant. I am not going to get my masters' degree, and I am not even going to freak on the Haagen Dazs in the freezer. I'm living my little life, in little glendale. Which has become Big Glendale over the weekend, with the introduction of the Americana at Brand, a high-end shopping mecca that has made our depressing, dusty main drag a kind of Vegasdisney. Suddenly there are shrubs and grass and a pond and a Kiehl's. And an 18plex theater.

My first thought upon sighting this was, "Wow, maybe if people buy more crap it will make our Salvation Army better."

Here's to trickling down.