Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



You are here: Home / Archives for Shopping / Services

Free or premium business cards and other print products 25% off with promotional code

by

A few days ago I was introduced to a site where you can purchase quality custom-printed products such as business cards, letterhead, postcards, personal and greeting cards, checks, envelopes, labels and more.

The site is called GigglePrint and as you can see it has a long list of products that would come in handy for everyone from a small business owner, an entrepreneur or to a person who simply wants personalized stationary to use for the family newsletter.

GigglePrint would have come in really handy for me when I had my own small business. I used to be a trade jeweler and naturally I needed items such as business cards to promote my business. I also needed a variety of rubber stamps for my invoices. Did I mention that you can have rubber stamps made at Giggleprint?

Not only does GigglePrint offer a selection of pre-designed premium business cards, stationary, note cards, invitations, announcements, gift tags and other accessories, but you can also choose to custom design any of these items simply by uploading an image to the site to be used on the product of your choice.

Items such as their premium business cards start off at the price of 250 cards for $19.99.

GigglePrint also has a selection of free products. You can create and customize free business cards, free personal checks and free business checks. What better way to try out a service than to start out with free products and then perhaps select one of their high quality premium items on your next order?

Considering that I’m pretty much a full time blogger these days and I’d also like to promote my photography I picked out one of their free business card designs and began creating a card for one of my sites.

Unfortunately I soon discovered that GigglePrint only delivers to locations within the United States. Hopefully they’ll think about expanding their delivery locations to areas within North America such as Canada as I’m sure they would gain a number of new customers.

If I had been able to order my free business cards I would have only had to pay for shipping.

The site is easy to use. Just navigate through their product menu to find the item your interested in and then follow the directions in order to customize your business card, check, stationary or other product. You can choose the type of font you’d like to use on many of the premium products and as I said before you can personalize their products by adding your business logo, a digital photo or another type of image to your custom item.

If you’re interested in promoting your business or need personalized stationary, letterhead or even invitations take a moment to visit the site. I’d love to hear if you liked the selection and if you found it easy to customize the item you decided to order.

Oh and right now GigglePrint is having a special. If you use this source code GPWF80 when you make an order you’ll get 25% off the price! That 25% off is for all products on the site. Sounds like a great deal to me!





I never realized how many services carpet cleaners offered

by

On Saturday we got a chance to meet our new neighbors. You might remember that I mentioned them in one of my recent posts? We didn’t talk long as they were busy doing some work on their new house. They don’t plan on moving in until the first of July or so.

I don’t think that they plan to knock out walls like we did on our second day in our home, but they did say they were painting and redoing some of their floors.

While we were talking the new lady of the house, C, asked me if I could recommend a carpet cleaning company in the area. Our home is all hardwood floors so we haven’t used a local carpet cleaner however when we lived in our apartment we did have our carpets professionally cleaned a few times.

The first time we used a carpet cleaners services we had them do a very thorough cleaning of our carpets. My husband had used our area rug previously in his dorm room and it had a lot of stains on it.

A good carpet cleaner will not only offer a dry vacuum, but they’ll also offer spot removal, power scrubbing and steam extraction. Some companies even go so far as to offer a finishing service where they will fluff the carpets and even place pads under furniture to decrease the wear and tear on the carpet.

I also inquired if the carpet cleaning service that I used offered upholstery cleaning and they did, so I had them remove some stains on our loveseats. The material on the loveseats was a combination of silk and cotton or silk and rayon. I can’t remember the exact mix, but it was a delicate fabric. I was very pleased with how nice the loveseats looked when they were done. The loveseats were like new again. That stained area rug looked pretty good too.

Some carpet cleaners also offer pet odor control, carpet repair, area and oriental rug cleaning, drapery cleaning and fabric protection. Of course, most of the companies that provide residential services also offer commercial carpet cleaning too.

A few companies even offer tile and grout cleaning. Now that’s a great service to offer. I don’t know what your bathroom looks like, but we have really old tiles in our upstairs washroom and the grout looks terrible. Even though I don’t have carpets I might call in a carpet cleaner to have my drapes and grout cleaned!

I didn’t have any carpet cleaning companies to recommend to our new neighbors as I’d forgotten the name of the company that I’d used so long ago. As you can probably tell, I went online to look up some carpet cleaners in the Toronto area and that’s when I found out about all the different services that are available at some of the companies. After I did some research I was happy to pass on a few company names to our neighbors.

One thing I did learn as I looked for a carpet cleaner was that some offer Internet Specials. By this I mean you can get coupons or Internet discounts if you visit their web page prior to booking their service. So if you happen to be thinking of having your carpets, upholstery or drapes cleaned in the near future don’t forget to do an internet search and see if you can get a discount. You might as well save some money if you can.

Dealighted helps you find the best deals online

by

coupons-deals-bargains.gif I don’t know if you do this, but whenever Chris and I go shopping we always try to find the best deal. Especially if it’s a costly item. Whether you’re living from paycheck to paycheck or have a fat savings account it just makes sense to make your money go as far as it can, doesn’t it?

I have to admit that most of the purchases that my husband and I make are in grocery stores, pet stores and retail stores. We have increased our online shopping over the last couple of years, but the majority of our spending is done in person.

One of the reasons that we’ve started to increase our online shopping is because it’s convenient. Heck, I can shop in my PJ’s at 1 a.m. if I want! I suppose I could head out to the local 24 hour Walmart and do the same, but I think I’d end up more than a little embarrassed.

Other than convenience, I like shopping online because I can often find better prices at online stores. Let’s face it, online stores don’t have the overhead that retail stores do so they can afford to offer items at lower prices.

Sounds good doesn’t it?

Now if you want to be a real Savvy shopper you should check out Dealighted.com. The site indexes deals posted by people on sites like slickdeals, fatwallet and several other popular deal sites. Once the posted deals are indexed the Dealighted engine goes through them and figures out which deals are hot.

So when you’ve decided to you want to shop for an item online you can simply go to Dealighted and type the item you’re interested in into the search box at the top of the page and the results page will listed the best deals for that item. No more searching through site after site to find the best prices. Dealighted.com does it all for you.

For example, if you wanted to shop for a new pair of shoes you’d type the term Shoes in the search box and the result page would bring up the current list of shoe deals. You could also narrow down your search by searching for a specific type or brand of product such as Nike Running Shoes.

Perhaps you’re interested in purchasing a new digital camera? The Canon EOS 400D is a great camera for someone that wants to step up their photography by starting out with an entry level digital SLR. Just click on compare prices and search through the directory for your camera or click on one of the handy icons near the top of each page that show some of the hottest items being searched for at Dealighted.com.

The icons to the top right of each page are for those interested in checking out camera, HDTV’s, iPods, Laptops and Camrecorders. If that’s what you’re interested in purchasing just click the icon of your choice and you’ll be able to quickly find the hottest deals!

I like the site because you can just visit the main page regularly to see what the newest hot deals are, so even if you don’t have a specific product in mind you can keep an eye out for great deals and perhaps find something that you or your family needs right on the front page.

Dealighted.com also has a daily freebie offers section. You can get to it simply by searching for Free or by clicking on the link Free Stuff that’s directly under the search box.

There’s hundreds of free items to browse through. Some of the listings are of the buy one get on free type and others are offers for one free product or a sample item.

Likewise if you’d prefer to shop for items and have them shipped free of charge you can do a search for free shipping and all the deals that also offer free shipping will come up on the results page. I’m sure you could narrow your search by typing in a product name and free shipping as well.

Actually there are many ways to search for great deals on items. You could click on a tag in the Deal Search Cloud, click on the Only Hot Deals button, look through the deal forum threads, search for deals by specific deal forums or use the search boxes. I love sites that let you navigate or search for what you want in several ways as I’m sure each visitor to the site will have their own particular preference.

It looks like Dealighted.com has their own forum as well. There aren’t very many messages there yet as it looks like it might have just opened up recently, but you could take a look there for deals or perhaps even post your own finds if you’d like to share.

I think anyone who shops online occasionally would be smart to bookmark this site and check it out the next time they’re searching for a great deal. It’s all about saving money.

Oh and if you do visit Dealighted.com be sure to check out their deals by email newsletter. You’ll never miss a great deal if you subscribe!

Getting ready to open your pool? learn more about chemical free pool systems

by

Now that spring has arrived I’m sure many of you have taken some time to enjoy the nice weather. Perhaps the weather’s nice enough in some areas that you’re even starting to think about how you’ll enjoy your summer?

We don’t have a pool. Heck, with our small yard we don’t even have room for a pond. However, some of our friends have pools and they are already starting to talk about preparing their pool for the upcoming hot days of summer.

Do you already have a pool? Perhaps your big landscaping project this year will be the addition of a pool or spa? If so, I’m envious!

If you already have a pool or if you’ve been thinking of installing a pool have you thought about what kind of treatment you will use to maintain the pools water quality?

I know if we were lucky enough to have a pool I’d want to try to use an environmentally friendly pool treatment system. You see, we have an organic garden. We don’t use any chemicals on our land to get rid of pests or to fertilize our plants, so it only makes sense that we’d try to maintain a pool or pond with the same chemical free standards.

If you’re interested in learning more about environmentally friendly pool treatments you should visit Ecosmartepool.com. They specialize in chlorine free pools and spas.

I think everyone knows that Chlorine treated pool systems aren’t the best. Certainly chlorine isn’t very good for the environment.

Now you might be thinking that salt water pools are a safe alternative? I know I did before I read some of the articles at Ecosmartepool.com.

Salt water pools actually use chlorine generators to keep the water clean. Chlorine generators can make it easier to maintain your pool, but they require a lot of maintenance and one type of Chlorine generator makes a byproduct that is messy and not easily disposed.

Wouldn’t it be much better overall if you could use a system that was 100% chemical free?

EcoSmarte specializes in chlorine, salt water and hazardous chemical free pool systems, spa systems, and pond systems. They also carry EcoSmart filter glass media which is used for pool treatment systems.

The EcoSmarte pool systems use natural oxygen to maintain clean pool water. There systems are easier to use than chlorine based systems and safer than ozone. The natural oxygen system is also much more effective than bromine or bacquacil.

The people behind EcoSmarte believe in protecting the environment and are in fact against Salt water and chlorine based pool systems. They even donate 5% of their profits to environmental charities.

You’ll save money by using the EcoSmarte pool system too. Think about it. You won’t be purchasing chemicals regularly to maintain your pool system. Plus, the EcoSmarte pool system is energy efficient. It costs less than $1 a month to operate.

With all of those benefits it’s certainly worth considering isn’t it?

EcoSmarte offers a 60 day satisfaction guarantee and a 5 year warranty on all purchases. Visit their site to compare their pool treatment system to several other types of treatment systems, then if you’re interested in learning more about their product you can contact them for more information and a product brochure and a free quote.

Going on Vacation? This site has great flight and hotel deals

by

You know how I keep saying that I need a vacation after this horrible winter we’ve had? Well, it was suggested that I take a look at an internet travel website called Cfares. So I did, and I was quite pleased with what I saw.

At Cfares you can find the best rates for airline tickets, hotels or combo fight and hotel packages.

We really enjoyed our trip to Las Vegas last Autumn and we’ve both said that we’d like to go back to Vegas again soon so we can have a better look around and do more things than we did on our last visit. So I decided to check flight prices to Vegas in April.

Cfares cross checks prices with major online travel agencies, wholesalers and airlines to find the best deals. When I did my search for flights to Las Vegas from Toronto I was pleased to see that I had at least a couple of hundred choices come up. The prices were quite reasonable too.

Actually the prices were much lower than the ones I was offered for my November trip so not being sure if there is a regular price difference for those traveling in April versus November, I also did a search for flight prices in November. As I thought there must be a difference because the November flight prices were about $50 to $75 higher than the April prices that I had just been offered.

One thing that I liked about the site is that once it comes up with flight prices for you many of the result tabs also allow you to check for flight and hotel combination packages too. So just by clicking a button you can see some great deals that include hotel stays as well.

If anything there are perhaps too many results! Of course I was just testing the site out as I don’t know when we might be able to take a few days or a weeks vacation. If I was seriously searching for the best deal I’m certain I’d be very pleased with the amount of flight deal results I got as I’d be searching the best prices.

You can also use the site to search for the best hotel prices too.

I’m certain that Chris and I will go on a trip within the next month or two so I’ll be bookmarking this site. If you’re planning a trip you should bookmark the site too, I’m sure it will come in handy!

Meta

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday