Don’t get me wrong here, when I buy items – I like to buy them when they’re on sale and if I was to purchase any technology or need anything, today would be the day that I’d buy something. But come on, just last Friday was “Black Friday”, which brought hundreds of thousands of shoppers out of their homes (or perhaps online) to shop for the best and latest deals and two days later they continue the trend with another big shopping day.

And we’re going for it – on Saturday, I had $125 worth of Marks Work Wearhouse gift certificates as well as a $10 off coupon, it just so happened that they were also having a 20% off everything in the store that day as well. As Sheldon would say, “Bazinga”.

I headed to the store around 10AM and after I walked in I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a lineup in any retail store as long as the one there, the line was almost from the front doors, to the back door – I wish I was exageratting.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait that long to get the good deals so I left – I then went to my favorite clothing store (Value Village) and purchased 2 pairs of jeans & 4 pairs of pants for around $35.

Even more unfortunate for me, I headed back to Marks around 8:30PM with Liz and unfortunately for me – spent another $110 (on TOP of the gift certificates) – but did end up with a lot of great clothes. Perfect.

So their trick worked on me for sure! Now that it’s Cyber Monday though – I really have to stay away from the online deals like the $99 Nook E-Reader which I’ve been eying for while.

Right now they’ve launched a new website and have coupons to save you over $160 in things that you most likely have to buy or usually buy anyhow, so go sign up!

The website is: P&G BrandSaver

They have all kinds of different items which I know I use (love the Old Spice ones!)

Action Pacs or Regular Dish Doap?

Since it’s somewhat related to some of the coupons up there, I figured I’d mention this. Lately I’ve been noticing that my dishes.. specifically the cutlery, has been coming out of the dishwasher very much less than stellar in the ‘clean’ category. I’ve been using the gel pacs or the action pacs or whatever the heck they call them nowadays for as long as I can remember. So the other day we were in at Walmart and we had a “buy 2 get $5.00 off” coupon for anything P&G so we decided we’d try the old fashioned Cascade detergent.

Well I may be going permanently back to the detergent if todays dishwasher results have anything to say about it.. the dishes are sparkling!! I’m very impressed and will likely post something a little bit more thorough once I get a few more cycles to confirm that it is indeed working better. I tell ya though, the stainless steel was sparkling brighter than one of those SWISS LEGEND Men’s Eograph Stainless Steel watches which are absolutely beautiful.

Why do I want one now then? Well, for one.. the deal on it is pretty sweet! It’s on sale for $249.99 at Shoppers Drug Mart and I just happen to have enough Optimum points to get another $75 off of that. Another reason that I think I want one i the portability for when I’m blogging or on the road. That said, I have to ask myself, “Am I on the road that much?” or “Am I away from a computer that often?”.. the answer is “nope!”.

So today I went as far as asking the cashier about the computer, played around with it, checked out the specs – and like a good little frugal shopper – I left the store without said computer.

I think the reason that I find it so intriguing is that I can use my $75 from Shoppers to buy the silly thing! Sure it’ll cost me $175+ taxes but come on.. that’s pretty cheap for a netbook isn’t it??

*sigh* I will try to resist.

There is also the sad fact that most netbooks.. well.. suck! They are under-powered as compared to even the most inexpensive laptop, they have a tiny screen (less than that of an iPad) and depending on which battery you get (the one at Shoppers is only a 3-cell which is pathetic) – you could get in trouble there too!

I guess I’ll perhaps put the $175 I would have spent towards a netbook in my and Liz’s iPhone fund which I wrote about before when I was having this “spending urge”. I think that I may go with that option.

I think it may be a lot easier if I spent more time catching up on the shows I love so much like Entourage (you can get the latest season 5 on DVD from buy.com right now for $23.49) and stop thinking about ways to spend money. After all, I don’t need anything – and I still have debt…

Ok, this was a good self-motivating blog post – I now no longer want to spend that money. *Phew*

Old Navy will give you 30% off your entire purchase if you wear something red, or that says ‘Canada’ or has a maple leaf. Only available this weekend, from January 29-31.

That’s a pretty good deal considering the best Old Navy Weekly coupons are normally 20-25% off and $50 off $100 (which are difficult to get).

I just took a peek at my paystub and started deducting the bills that I have to pay for the month.. wow. Talk about a kick in the junk. Good thing we have a lot of leftover food in the fridge cuz I’ll see you next paycheque! All told I think I have just over $100 to spend the next two weeks.. BOO!! I guess that’s motivation to sell some stuff on UsedPei or Kijii.

The sad part about it, is that being online and at a computer working all day, I get to check out every good sale that comes up online and sometimes these darn things seem soo tempting! Today for example, I took a look at buy.com’s weekly sale and they’ve got 4 gigs of memory (RAM) which is the maximum Windows will recognize (unless you’re running 64bit version) on for $81.99. That would be a MAJOR upgrade to anyone’s computer for sure.. but BAH! I gotta stop looking at that stuff.

I guess I’ll have to start watching a lot of movies and touching up a lot of pictures which I had planned on doing anyhow instead of heading out on the town on the weekends or mid-week shopping. But now that I think about it, that seems very do-able.. after all, I have to be around while my boy recovers from his surgery. .and I have lots of wine, and movies.. what else do I need?

Ok, I should be good for a long, long time. I now have what I would like to believe as the perfect home movie theatre setup.

I followed the following guide almost to the letter and created my own silent XBMC (Xbox Media Center) on a small Nettop computer which I was only able to get from the states at the price I wanted which was $199, not even on sale at Best Buy.

I won’t re-invent of paste the instructions for the XBMC computer as you can read all about it if you click on this link here. What I can tell you is that if you plan on doing this and don’t have anyone going to the US or anyway to get your hands on the AcerRevo nettop, then someone just posted ANOTHER guide to creating a Boxxee (sort of like XBMC) setup with a computer available in Canada which also has a DVD/ROM which would be nice. I’m lucky in that I have an external USB DVD-RW which I personally use downstairs to do any DVD or CD watching.

If you don’t feel like going through all this hassle, and just want to have a great media player which you can just plug in a hard drive and go, I just noticed at buy.com that they have a bundle of a 500gig Mybook drive and a WDTVlive on for $139.99 USD. I can’t imagine that bundle is available here just yet – but it’s worth noting that this is the price that you can get them for now… unreal!

I have been watching quite a bit of TV and Movies lately, but I can’t really see that as such a bad thing as it’s really too crappy to do anything outside, and I already put up my lights and stuff!  Sweet! Anyone else done decorating like  we are?

I’m happy to report that I have started my Christmas shopping, and that between both Liz and I we do have a lot of people that we’ve completed shopping for, however unfortunately I have to say that it doesn’t look like I’ll be completed on November 25th as I was originally planning.

That’s ok though, I had a great weekend of playing some cards, some hockey, and most importantly.. two photo shoots which I had a great time doing on Sunday. Pictures of those shoots I hope to have up soon on my Facebook page.

Oh, we also went to dinner and a movie with Liz’s sister and her Boyfriend last night as well.. we went to see the movie ‘The Blind Side‘. I loved it! Liz and I watched the trailer a few months ago and couldn’t wait to see it, now that we have.. it really was a great movie, very inspiring.

As far as the shopping goes, I still have my list and watching some sale items online. It still seems that every time I buy something nowadays, something similar (but not identical so I can take it back) goes on sale online for cheaper. This week I noticed on the Buy.com’s Weekly Deals that they have a bundle of a hard drive AND the media player on for $149.99. Now mind you I haven’t read or heard anything about the Asus Media Player.. but still.. great deal to get all your movies that you downloaded off your computer bogging up space and onto a portable hard drive so you can watch em on your HDTV.

I’ve got a bunch of topics this week which I want to write about, but finding time to do them could be an issue so hopefully I’ll be back soon with a little bit of a writeup.

Happy Monday Everyone!