The Good, The Bad, and The Even Worse.

I pride myself on my shopping skills. I consider myself a die hard shopper. I love to find good deals. I love shopping Baby Gap clearance, and using coupons on top of the clearance price, and paying less than people pay for walmart clothes. I bought Nicholas' entire school clothes wardrobe including 6 shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, 3 pairs of pants and a backpack, all brand new, and all name brand for $35! I am one of those women who get up at an unearthly hour the day after Thanksgiving to stand in freezing cold lines hours before they open to get incredible deals on Christmas presents. But even a seasoned pro such as myself, has a bad day occasionally.

The Good: Bath and Body Works Warm Milk and Honey Pillow Mist.

There is something almost not right about how well this stuff works. I have to admit I was skeptical. I've never believed much of aromatherapy claims, but since I had a coupon to get it for free, I gave it a try. I have trouble falling asleep at least 3-4 nights a week, but ever since I have started spraying this pillow mist on our sheets at night, it's only a matter of minutes before I'm out. I use it on my boys beds too, and they fall asleep faster. My only problem now is that I'm addicted to it, and I don't have another free coupon, so I'll have to pay for the next one. But honestly this one is worth every penny. *Note: this one is not the popular Lavender and Chamomile spray, it is a new one with cinnamon and cloves.

The Bad: Nick's new birthday bike.


I figured that If we bought him a bike at Toys R Us, it would be better quality than one at Walmart. After looking at all the bikes we got him this very cool looking one made by Dynacraft. Not even 2 months later the crankshaft broke. Nick hardly even rode the bike! JUNK! After reading the online customer reviews (something we should have done before we bought it) I found out that this seems to be a brand wide problem because all the bikes made by Dynacraft had reviews saying the crankshaft broke within weeks of purchase. When I returned it to Toys R Us they would only let me trade it for a new one, which I refused because I didn't want the same problem, so they said that I could trade it for a different one, but the problem with that was that to get a bike that wasn't made by dynacraft, I would have had to pay $40 more! That's like buying a whole new bike. Finally after a lot of haggling they gave me in-store credit for the price of the bike. Luckily for us the same day all this happened someone from church emailed and said that they were giving away some boys bikes. We lucked out and got Nick a free "new" bike! I guess we can use our Toys R Us store credit for Christmas presents or something?

The Even Worse: Chefmate Electric Can Opener.




I don't know why but lately we have had very bad luck with can openers. This is our 3rd one in 3 months! The first one was a cheapest of cheap hand operated one from target. I think I paid $2 for it. It worked OK for for a few months, but quickly got rusted and became unusable. So I decided to splurge a little and bought a nicer more deluxe looking one at walmart for $4. Not even a month later the cutting gears somehow warped and it is completely unusable. With such bad luck, Sam and I thought that maybe we ought to try out an electric one, hoping they would be better. Unwilling to spend $25 on a top of the line item that did the same thing as a $2 one, I went with a $10 electric can opener at Target. I can't tell you how bad this thing is. I have had the most ridiculous time getting it to work. It takes several minutes to get it to line up properly, and then it sits and makes weird noises like it's trying to work, but can't, and then when you are about to curse at it and throw it out the window, it starts to work. My only hope is that it will somehow break quickly so I will have an excuse to get a new one. So the question is... Does anyone out there have a can opener they recommend?