Category: Consumer culture

Stroller shopping

It seems mildly ridiculous to me that I have three strollers and yet am shopping for another. Who knew before kids that you actually need more than one kind of stroller?

The old Graco that came with my first travel system back in 2002 is finally falling to pieces after two and a half boys, and I have to replace it. I also have a Maclaren Triumph that I got on serious clearance, and my very indulgent but well-used Chariot running stroller circa 2002. The Maclaren is great for travelling as it’s light as air and folds up small, but it doesn’t look terribly comfortable and you can’t lie down it down flat. The Chariot is wonderful for snow with its big bicycle wheels, but is a pain in the arse to fold and unfold and cram into the car.

I need want something decent to replace the Graco: a good-sized, durable, easy-to-use stroller that I can use every day to walk the boys to school and still cram it into the van to tote it around town with us. I don’t want to spend a fortune and am amenable to used, so I’m just scoping out what’s available out there. What you kind of stroller do you have, what do you love and what do you hate about yours? What do you covet in a stroller?

My wishlist is fairly short: I’d like a snack-tray with cupholder for Lucas; a seat where he can sit upright and lie more or less flat; a nice basket for storage; and, most important of all, a cupholder for me. Lightweight is good as is compact, but not my primary concern. I’d like to come in under $200 new, which seems a bit unlikely unless I go with one of the fancy-ass umbrella types, and I’ve pretty much got that covered with the Maclaren. I’ve been eyeballing everything from a Zooper (I saw a Zooper Waltz second hand for a song and have e-mailed the seller) to a Peg Perego Aria to a good old Evenflo.

Talk stroller to me, baby!

Schlage lock blog tour

In the five years we’ve lived in this house, I’ve been locked out maybe half a dozen times, most notably in the second trimester of pregnancy with a full bladder. That’s why, when the nice folks at Schlage offered a free electronic keypad door lock to test out as part of a blog tour, I jumped on it. Punch a code instead of fumble for keys? I’m all over that!

Here’s how the Schlage people describe the lock:

The keypad allows access via a four-digit code that can be customized so members of your family, guests, nannies, and service providers can all access your home using different codes. Each code (up to 19 on each lock) can be easily set up for a new person or deactivated if you no longer want someone to have access to your house. No more keeping track of spare keys, sending your children to school with a key around their necks, or changing the entire lock if you have a flame out with a nanny. Schlage Electronic Keypad Locks also provide relief from the rare occasions when you are locked out of the house or your child arrives home unexpectedly – without you there.


I love the concept, and since I changed the deadbolt myself when we bought this house, I thought I’d have no trouble installing it. The day the new electronic keypad lock arrived, I asked Beloved to take care of Lucas so I could install it. It only took me a moment or two to remove the old deadbolt, and then I realized that the new lock wouldn’t fit on our door. To make it fit, I’d have to make the deadbolt hole bigger. They provide easy instructions on how to get this done with the help of your local hardware store, but that’s where I lost interest. I’d love to have the fancy new electronic keypad lock on the door, but we just don’t have enough time right now to be taking apart the front door. If I wasn’t living my life in stolen 15 minute segments away from the baby, I probably would have gone ahead with it.

But then I felt bad. The nice Schlage people sent me this really nice lock set, and one of these days I’m actually going to install it. Just not right now. I briefly debated blogging as if I had installed it, but I would have felt bad about that. Suffice to say that it really is a nice lock and a great idea. I’ve wanted one of these for some time, and can’t believe that I was lucky enough to get a free sample and can’t make enough free time to actually install it. The antique brass finish matches perfectly with our existing door handle, and I really think this would be simpler than stashing spare keys with friends and family members and ferreting them away in secret hiding places that I inevitably forget the moment I need one.

And now my to-do list includes enlarging the deadbolt hole in the door. I’m sure I’ll get around to it one of these days.

(Disclosure: Mom Central offered a free sample lock and a $20 Amazon gift certificate for being part of the Schlage lock blog tour. I’m not sure they got their money’s worth out of me, and I apologize for that. Blogging with three boys seems three times more challenging than blogging with just two did!)

Kids’ music: a review in three parts

Thanks to the quirks of Canada Post and Amazon, I received three new CDs in the mail one day this week. (Can we pause for a minute here and reflect that the idea of buying CDs has become vaguely anachronistic, while I clearly remember not only when the technology debuted but was an adult when I capitulated to the death of vinyl and bought my first CD. And now that technology is on the way out. Crap I’m old. But that’s not what this post is about. Shake it off.)

Ahem, yes. CDs. I had signed on to be part of a MotherTalk review of a new kids’ CD and DVD called, rather uninspiredly, That Baby CD and That Baby DVD. My spot on the blog tour was last Saturday, but the package didn’t make it across the border until this week. While waiting and checking my mailbox daily last week, I happened to catch the Barenaked Ladies on Regis and whassername (I swear, it was only on because I had been listening to Canada AM while I nursed the baby!) performing a song from their new kids’ CD, and Simon loved it so much that he was singing along by the second chorus. I knew I had an unused Amazon gift certificate from a previous MotherTalk review, so I used it to buy the new Barenaked CD and Amazon nicely suggested I might like the CD For the Kids to go along with it. I’d been meaning to check that one out for ages, so with two clicks they were both on the way. All three arrived on the same day this week.

The MotherTalk tour for That Baby CD and DVD is officially closed, but since they were nice enough to send me the free stuff, I’ll say a few things about them. I loved the fact that the CD was packed up to look like a 45 RPM record. Very cute! And the musical selections were nice enough. Imagine a few rock “classics” crunched up and folky-ized, so they come out sounding like folky muzak. (‘Classics’ is in quotation marks because the songs generally stuck me as lesser-known B-side tracks by artists like Springsteen, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon.) Benign enough, and pleasant background music, but not really to my taste. I have a minor issue with the idea that kids’ music should be dumbed down to pander to kids. The DVD is the CD with accompanying videos, a kind of a cross between the old Sesame Street and Baby Einstein. Meh. It was okay, and I’m happy to have it to play for Lucas (in between Sponge Bob and the Wiggles) but I honestly can’t recommend that you rush out and buy it. It’s nice to have, but I’m glad it was free, yanno?

The next CD was For the Kids. This is much better. It’s an inversion of the previous formula — kids’ music redone by popular artists to give it some life. Sarah Mclachlan does a cover of The Rainbow Connection that will go into regular rotation on my iPod, along with Raine Maida and Chantal Kreviazuk doing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I will enjoy listening to this one.

But the best, by a country mile, was the Barenaked Ladies new CD for kids, Snack Time. At the risk of tangentizing this post to death, I must admit that I am an old skool BNL fan. The first indie bootleg cassette (CASSETTE, people!) I ever owned was a copy of their pre-Gordon indie album, back in 1989 or so. They feel like old friends to me, and so I have a considerable affection-laden bias toward them. When I heard that they were doing an album for kids, I had an inkling it would be a lot of fun. I was right.

I love it.

It’s BNL at their best – silly, whimsical, clever and playful. The music has real energy behind it, which is something that the first CD in this review was lacking. Aside from the musicality, though, it’s the lyrics that make these songs endearing. A few of my favourite tidbits:

  • From ‘789’, based on the old joke, why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ‘ate’ nine: “Once upon a time in our solar system / We couldn’t make due without 9 / But Pluto’s not a planet now / So 8 will do fine.”
  • From the punny ‘Raisins’: “When I make mistakes / I use a lot of salt / Because salt makes m’steaks taste great.”
  • And from the patter woven into the Crazy Alphabet Song, which features almost an entire alphabet of silent letter words: “Ancient Chinese river, eh? My guitar player, some hotshot…” (You have to be of a certain vintage to recognize that one. Truly, where do they come up with this stuff? Priceless!)

I also learned that Geddy Lee and I both favour BBQ chips as a snack.

I first popped this CD into the player in the van when I had to run an afternoon errand with Simon and Lucas while Tristan was at school. By the time I was on my way home, both boys were asleep, the sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky, and I had most of a warm Tim Horton’s coffee with me. I spent the best part of a blissful hour driving loops through the countryside, delaying our return home so I could continue to listen to more of this delightful CD.

This CD may in fact be the thing that helps keep us sane on our planned 20+ hours in the car later this month when we set off across the province on a road trip to see family in Windsor. And hey, I just noticed when I was putting in the links for this post, you can download 789 and watch the video on the BNL website, and they’ll be on CBC kids on Monday to perform songs from the album. Kewl!

Second-hand show and tell

Andrea over in the fishbowl is hosting a little second-hand show and tell carnival. (She’s endlessly creative and clever, that one!) She often blogs about the cool stuff she finds, either in second-hand stores or even on the street, and she’s invited us to play along:

The goal here is to open more people to the idea of shopping second-hand, to showcase what kind of stuff is out there, but also remind people to donate their goods instead of pitching them in the garbage.

I love the fact that people are getting more and more into curbside recycling of goods, not by dumping them into the blue or black recycle boxes but by simply leaving stuff at the end of the driveway with a “free” sign on it. Just last Sunday on the way to swimming lessons, we picked up a perfectly lovely soccer/hockey net for the boys, which I was planning on buying this summer anyway, that was left with a computer monitor by the curb. Sadly, the monitor was still there the next day in the pouring rain and I’m sure is now sitting in a landfill somewhere, but the soccer net will have many years of use with its adopted family.

Other goodies I’ve scored from the curbside include a set of hockey skates, a bookcase, and an electric lawnmower. (What a picture I was that day, pushing Tristan and Simon in the double stroller while holding the dog’s leash with one hand, while dragging the lawnmower behind me with the other. A lot of work, but FREE! And that perfectly good lawnmower lasted us a good two or three years, if you didn’t mind the duct tape residue on your hands every time you cut the grass.)

That’s not my second-hand show and tell, though.

In thinking about what I wanted to blog about, I realized that we’ve hardly bought any new baby gear for Lucas. Of course, we already have a lot of stuff from the big boys, but after two babies’ worth of wear, a lot of stuff was starting to wear out. The only major things we’ve bought new were a bouncy-chair-toddler-rocker because the original one wouldn’t vibrate, and a fancy Maclaren stroller I got on clearance at Toys R Us because the old umbrella stroller was nasty and the bulky one that came with our original travel system was starting to look a little worse for wear as well. But we’ve been given or loaned a swing, a pack’n’play, a sling, and an infant car seat.

Which brings me, by way of the dairy and the dell, to the thing I wanted to blog about for second-hand show and tell.

My friend Candice and I are often on the same wavelength. She and my mom are the ones who, when the phone rings, I already know it’s them. Candice loaned me a lot of baby stuff when Tristan was born, including an exersaucer, a pack’n’play and one of those high-end MEC baby backpack carriers, all of which enjoyed liberal use by both Tristan and Simon. Then she had the audacity to go and have another baby when I was pregnant with Lucas, thus reclaiming a good chunk of our baby gear. Most of it I was able to beg, borrow or steal to replace from other friends and relatives, but I was really bummed about the loss of the MEC baby backpack.

About a month ago, I was in a local consignment shop buying splash pants for the big boys when I happened to notice they had a baby backpack in perfect condition for sale at about half the retail value. I was thrilled and snapped it up. The saleslady said they had just put it out, and the woman who was selling it had used it only once and hated it, so it really was in brand-new condition.

I got home and picked up the phone to tell Candice about my score, and heard the broken dial tone that indicates a waiting message. It was, ironically, Candice. She was calling to tell me that she was in Boomerang Kids, another consignment shop across town, and that they had a MEC baby backpack for sale. It was the exact same model, even the exact same colour, as the one I had just bought around the corner. “If you call them right away and tell them I referred you, they’ll hold it for you while you come down and get it. They’re so rare and so popular, it won’t last.” The selling price was even identical to I’d paid for mine. The time of her call was within about 10 minutes of when I was buying the one I’d found. Weird. I haven’t seen one in stores before or since.

I was going to add more to this post by going on about the glory of garage sales – both hosting them and trawling them as a family expedition – but Lucas is growing tired of swinging in the borrowed swing. And now that I think about it, since it’s the first weekend of May, there may in fact be a few garage-salers willing to brave the risk of rain today.

Do you recycle your stuff? What’s your best second-hand score?

The diaper debate

We’ve talked about circumcision and strollers, breast and bottle, slings and baby carriers. So far, though, I’ve avoided the cloth versus disposable diaper question because for me, it was never really a question. I’ve always used the disposables, and thought I always would. I’ve always suspected that even from an environmental perspective, the disposables weren’t as evil as they are made out to be. This past week, the NY Times called it a draw:

The heated debate over the environmental costs of diapers, a roughly $5 billion business, goes something like this: on one hand, the 25 billion or so disposable diapers used per year in this country are bad because they are made with petroleum-based plastics, account for more than 250,000 trees being cut down and make up some 3.5 million tons of landfill waste that won’t decompose for decades. Cotton diapers, on the other hand, now enjoying a resurgence in popularity, cost less over the long run but require vast amounts of energy from the production of cotton, the washing and the distribution. Environmental and industry groups brandishing rival stats and studies have effectively declared a draw. Even an outspoken group like the Natural Resources Defense Council declines to take a trenchant position (“six of one and a half dozen of the other,” a spokeswoman says).

I’ve always found disposables plenty convenient, and my mother swears that the cloth ones back in the day gave me wicked diaper rashes, so I was happy enough with my choice.

Last week, a friend told me about gDiapers. They have the same cloth shell and plastic liner of cloth diapers, but there is a disposable absorbent insert that you can remove and flush down the toilet. It’s fully biodegradable in 50 to 100 days, instead of 500 years for a disposable. You can even compost the pee diapers in your own garden compost.

The only part that makes me hesitate is the fact that you have to remove and tear open the disposable insert before you flush it, to help it from clogging up the toilet. And then you have to maintain the outer shell, of course. It seems like a lot of intervention, and I’m basically a lazy person addicted to convenience. I’m all about simplifying my life right now, using any shortcut I can.

They’re a little more expensive than disposables, but seem like an environmentally conscientious middle ground. Have you heard of them or tried, and if so, what do you think?

Game review: Cranium Bloom

I’ve raved before about Cranium’s products. I think they make smart, fun toys that kids really like to play with, and adults can have fun playing along. We have Cranium’s Hullabaloo, Cariboo and Superfort, and Simon got Sounds of the Seashore for Christmas. So when MomCentral Consulting offered me the chance to participate in a blog tour by reviewing** a new Cranium game for preschoolers, I was all over it. Matter of fact, when I pulled the game out one afternoon, Simon took one look at the box and said, “Oh! That’s a Cranium game!” My little logo savant.

Although we were supposed to review two of Cranium’s new Bloom line of preschool games, the first one (Let’s Play Count & Cook Game) didn’t have the game board included in the box due to a packaging error, so that review will be posted later. But, we have truly enjoyed the Let’s Go to the Zoo Seek & Find Puzzle.

First, you assemble a 24 piece jigsaw puzzle. Have I mentioned we love jigsaw puzzles around here?

assembling the puzzle

Then, you use a series of clues to find things in the puzzle. There are beginner and advanced clues, along the lines of “find something orange” or “find three penguins” or “find four things that begin with the letter T”. The clues come in little spiral-bound notebooks that Simon kept referring to as his “handy dandy notebook” with some delight. When you find the items, you circle them right on the puzzle board with the provided dry-erase marker.

finding the clues

I found this game just about perfect for my boys’ ages (almost 4 and 6), developmental stages and interests. (They love puzzles, and they love the I Spy type find-it books.) You could play this game with just one child, or in teams, or let each person find his or her own clues. I originally gave Tristan the advanced book of clues and Simon the beginner book, but the next time they played they had switched and both were still content. I started out playing with them, but they continued merrily on without me while I scrawled a few notes for this review, and in all they were occupied for the best part of an hour each time the game was pulled out.

My only caveat would be that after playing this one a few times in a relatively short period of time, the kids knew immediately where all the clues were, taking some of the challenge out of the game. But, you could easily improvise more things to do and find, and Cranium even gives you a few suggestions on how to do just that.

Another great game from Cranium!

**Disclosure: for participating in this blog tour, I received free copies of both the Let’s Go to the Zoo Seek & Find Puzzle and Let’s Play Count & Cook Game, and a $20 Amazon gift certificate. And, although I only realized after I started writing this review that these games are currently available exclusively at Target, you do seem to be able to order them directly from the Cranium Web site even if you live in Canada.

Tick tick tick – send Christmas ideas, quick!

There’s an old song by Nancy White called, “It’s Chic to be Pregnant at Christmas.” A few of the best verses:

It’s so chic to be pregnant at Christmas
I feel like the “round yon virgin” of yore
‘Cause though I have a warm bed to sleep in
There’s no room for me when I go to the store

‘Cause the aisles are so narrow and crowded
Christmas shopping has never been such a pain
(gasp) Here comes another Braxton-Hicks contraction
And I’m knockin’ over knick-knacks again

Oh, the salesclerks are so friendly this Christmas
One said, “Oh God, lady, don’t have it here”
Their discretion and manners go right out the door
When I and my stomach appear

It’s so Biblical to be pregnant at Christmas
No matter what stories you believe
And I may suffer from gravid senilis…and heartburn and nausea and charlie horses and overwhelming fatigue…and frequent micturation and varicose veins and…swollen ankles and shortness…of breath…and that…tired, achy feeling in the grooooooin…
But I won’t be alone on New Year’s Eve
Fa-La-La-La-La La-La La La

Yeah. What she said.

I’ve got about half my Christmas shopping done. The good half. The “oh, what a great idea, it’s the absolute perfect gift for so-and-so, I can hardly wait to see his/her face!” Now comes the agonizing, clock-ticking, “I’ve got no friggin’ clue what to get for so-and-so and so I’ll just keep throwing money at it until I feel better about my choices” part of the shopping.

I know I make it hard on myself. I take my Christmas gift-giving very seriously. Each gift is carefully chosen based on an offhand remark from some time in the past 360 days, or a known favourite theme, or by divination, ESP and intuition. Gifts are balanced so that everybody gets a more or less proportionally appropriate gift value. I rarely give a gift I wouldn’t like to receive. In short, I drive myself CRAZY every year over Christmas shopping.

This is almost entirely my mother’s fault. (Sorry, Mom.) She has a knack for the perfect gift, and I have learned a lot from her. Mostly about excess, but also about how gift giving really is a covenant between two people. It’s an acknowledgement of how that person has touched your life, made a difference, been a friend.

No pressure or anything. Ugh.

I like personalized gifts. We make a photo calendar each year, and have given photo mouse pads, coffee mugs and jigsaw puzzles. The boys are *almost* at an age where we can start substituting my handcrafted gifts for theirs (just in the nick of time, too – what’s cute from a six year old is a little odd from a thirty-something woman, and I’m running out of macaroni and glitter.)

I’m past the Christmas shipping deadline for online shopping and I still need ideas. Don’t make me go out there and aimlessly wander the malls – I need some inspiration! What is the best gift you ever got? What is your favourite gift to give?

Highs and lows in customer service

I may have mentioned (*grins gleefully*) that I got Beloved a Wii for his birthday this year. I started thinking about looking for one way back in August, and even then was having trouble locating one. When I finally found one online at theSource.ca at the end of September, I jumped on the opportunity, ordered it online and had it delivered to my parents’ house.

At the beginning of November, I happened to be flipping through a Source/Circuit City flyer, and saw that they had (as had most retailers) dropped the price of the Wii console by $20. Great, I thought, and went to the store in the Rideau Centre to ask how I could get the $20 credited to my account. First, they said they couldn’t do it at all. Then they said the Wii I ordered was of a different caliber (??) and the price on those units had not dropped. Then a second person said regardless, you bought it online you have to talk to the online people.

Okay, fair enough. I bought it online, I will continue to deal with them that way. So I called the customer service number, and argued my way through an employee and two supervisors, all of whom declined to credit my account for the measly $20 difference. “Our price guarantee is only good for 30 days,” they insisted.

“But, it was a Christmas gift!” I countered.

“Well, you didn’t indicate that when you ordered it in September,” they said.

“I ordered it online,” I replied. “There was nowhere for me to indicate any such thing, or I would have.”

“Well, no,” they said. “You would have had to place your order by phone. And anyway, the 30 day price guarantee is firm. We’re sorry, but no.”

“But!” I sputtered. “I’ll just take the whole unit, still in it’s shipping packaging, and return it to one of your stores and then rebuy it. Why are you making me go through all this? It’s terrible customer service!”

“You can’t return it,” was the blunt reply. “The 30 day rule also applies to refunds, returns and exchanges.”

“But!” I sputtered again, by now appalled in addition to frustrated and annoyed. “What if there’s a problem with it?”

“We’re sorry, ma’am, but those are the rules.” was the helpful reply.

In contrast:

The same week, I found $30 worth of unused but long-since expired gift certificates from the Rideau Centre in an old purse. I had received them in May of 2006 and the expiry date on them was clearly marked as May of 2007.

Disappointed but hopeful, I brought my expired gift certificates to the customer service desk, thinking of all the times I’d heard that expired gift certificates were invalidated and not honoured and prepared to argue at least a little bit over their validity.

“Oh, that’s absolutely no problem,” said the friendly woman behind the counter. “Heck, we get them a lot older than this – sometimes ten years old or more. Hang on, let me convert those to a gift card for you so it won’t expire and you can use them any old time you please.” And I went happily on my way, fresh gift card clutched in my grateful fingers.

Now that’s customer service.

***

Just a quick question: on my laptop, my banner is not displaying. It’s fine on any other computers I’ve been on recently, including our desktop. Very weird. No photos I host on my own site are displaying on the laptop, whether I view through IE or Firefox. I was just wondering if any of you are having the same problem?

A bit of a rant on baby gear

So, Dani, now that there are less than 10 weeks until your due date, what have you done to prepare for baby’s arrival?

*sound of crickets*

Well, that’s not entirely true. Couple weekends ago, I drove out to the Monfort Hospital, so at least I know where the hospital is for when I go into labour. That’s a good start, right? Didn’t actually go inside or anything, but if I can make it to the parking lot, I figure we’re off to a good start.

And it’s not like this is my first. We have boxes on boxes of baby supplies, and one of these days I’ll sort through them and wash all those adorable little sleepers and sockies and blankets. And the crib is still assembled from last year (see, laziness has its benefits) and I know exactly where the baby bucket car seat is in the basement. A place to sleep, a way to get him home from the hospital, and he won’t be starkers in the cold February drafts – what else does a baby need? Cuz I’m thinking that’s pretty much as ready as I’m going to get.

But just for kicks, this week I wandered through Babies R Us and took a look at the new stuff. There are a few things we’ll need eventually, including a new Pack N Play, and I’m waffling between buying new and buying consignment. I’m also considering buying a new baby bucket car seat because although we do have one, it’s been through both my boys plus a friend’s baby and this poor third child deserves at least a few new things of his own, don’t you think? Our stroller, too, is six years old and a little worse for wear, so while the boys oggled and coveted the Star Wars Lego in TRU next door, I took a quick wander down the stroller aisle to check out the prices.

I was balking at the prices, annoyed that the “travel system” stroller-car seat combos start at $250 and work their way up to $400, which I simply don’t have to spend right now on something I already own, albeit in slightly battered condition. And that’s where I came across the Bugaboo Frog Stroller. For more than NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS! Holy mother of consumerism, what the hell makes a stroller worth that much money? And that doesn’t even include a car seat!

And then I wandered over to the baby bedding section to take a look and see if I could find a nice little sun, moon and stars quilt to replace the baby quilt Simon still insists on keeping on his bed (sun, moon and stars has been our baby theme rather consistently) and found out that even after all these years, you still can’t buy a quilt on its own. You have to buy the full crib set, including the crib bumpers. Crib bumpers, which Health Canada (not to mention the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Canadian Paediatric Society, the Canadian Institute of Child Health, the Canadian Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths, First Candle/National SIDS Alliance AND the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to name a few) have been saying are dangerous since before Tristan was born.

This infuriates me, that not only is a product that has been deemed unsafe by several trustworthy organizations still on the market, but that Sears and Babies R Us and the other major retailers basically force you to buy them because they don’t sell crib quilts separately. And while it’s bad enough that it was only through my own neurotically diligent research that I was aware there were even questions about their safety when Tristan was born, here it is six years later and nothing has changed.

Grrrrr!

Maybe it’s for the best if I don’t do any more shopping in the baby stores, whaddya think?

Talk to me about online shopping

I’m starting to get worried. It’s just a little over a month until Christmas, and I don’t have any big ideas for the perfect gift for everyone.

(This is something I do to myself every year. Simply giving a gift is not enough, it must be the PERFECT gift. It must allude to the recipient’s personality, how much I value them, be unique, be useful, be fun… preferably all of the above, but at least most of them.)

Usually, by this time of year, I have at least a couple of ideas percolating in my head. This year? Nothing. And I’m starting to panic. Add to that panic the fact that we’re really trying to cut back costs this year, and the fact that I simply don’t have the stamina for hours of mall-walking in search of the perfect gift.

The answer? Online shopping, of course. Given the strong Canadian dollar, there has never been a better year to shop online. I’d still prefer to shop Canadian sites (shipping and duty can be a beast, even with a favourable exchange) and it continues to surprise me how many big American chains won’t ship to Canada (Old Navy and Target come to mind.)

Some of my favourite online gift haunts include:
Linens N Things
Canadian Tire
Chapters Indigo
Grand River Toys
Serendipity Crafts (some lovely handmade stuff here)

I recently discovered this gorgeous collection of fair trade gifts (not Canadian, but ships to Canada and exactly the kind of site I’m looking for!):
A Greater Gift

Time is running out! Quick, what are your favourite online shopping sites for gift giving?

(Note: WordPress holds comments with multiple links for moderation. If your comment doesn’t appear at first, don’t worry, I’ll be filtering and posting them throughtout the day.)