B.Y.O.L.

As a budget conscious girl I feel that bringing my lunch to work is a great way to save money, I’ve also found it much easier on my waistline than eating out daily.  Unfortunately, it also makes me look a bit like a wandering gypsy when I leave the house in the morning carrying my purse, a gym bag and a shopping bag full of that day’s lunch.  I think carrying my lunch to work would be oh so much more exciting if I had a cute dedicated caddy in which to carry it.  I love the Macbeth Collection’s  lunch box for $48 which can be personalized with any of their design swatches. Monogramming is also available for an additional $10.  Its not exactly cheap, but if you figure you’re paying $10/ day to buy your lunch out this will  pay for itself in just one week!

The Neutrogena Wave Completes Me

I have recently fallen deeply in love with the Neutrogena Wave, a little battery operated skin cleansing tool. It comes with these little textured pads pre-dosed with cleanser that attach to the machine velcro-style. It is water resistant and shower friendly so you can scrub the holy heck out of your pores while waiting for your hair conditioner to work.

In the past I often felt that no matter how thoroughly or frequently I washed my face it was never truly clean, but after using the Wave for a week it literally squeaks with cleanliness- seriously, I was able to produce an actual squeak sound today in the shower by rubbing my cheek!

The Wave is the latest of a batch of skin cleansing tools that claim to clean your pores by stimulating the skin and sloughing off the top layer of cells. I was intrigued by the Clarisonic Skincare Brush System, but as a card carrying yankee was prevented from paying $195.00 for a skin care tool. Then the good people at Neutrogena came out with the Neutrogena Healthy Skin Rejuvenator, which was a vast improvement price-wise at $30, but I couldn’t pull the trigger on that one either. The Wave on the other hand is only $13.99, which for me qualifies as a lighthearted purchase at my local drugstore. And to top it all off I bought a box of the anti-aging puffs that are supposed to go with the skin rejuvenator, and lo and behold they also attach to the Wave. Wow.

March on Over to Ann Taylor Loft

I admit to not being the biggest fan of Ann Taylor Loft.  Sure, their prices are good but I’m rarely wowed by their clothes and I find the fit to be boxy.  But, upon occassion I’ve found great items there at bargain prices and today was one of those days!  I got the email that their March line had arrived which featured the City Twill Trench Coat.  Kelly green is one of my favorite colors and I really like the detail of the contrast stitching.  At $129 its not exactly a bargain, but I’m sure that any day now I’ll get another email with a 15% off code and when that happens I plan to march right on over to the mall and pick this up!  Just don’t tell the future Mr. CityMouse.  He thinks I’m taking up way more than my fair share of our coat closet.

 P.S.  Did everyone get the email from J.Crew today that all of their final sale items are now an additional 20% off for a limited time???

Pretty Spiffies

These disposable toothwipes (that’s right, toothwipes) are made for babies who can’t brush due to littleness. They contain Zylitol, a sugar alchohol that is used for cavity prevention and commonly as a sugar free sweetener, which is why Spiffies taste a lot like sugar free mints. They come in grape, apple, and mango flavors (we have the mango which is actually yummy), and are packaged in the all-important individual packets, convenient for those times your children just had a terribly sticky sweet treat and you are miles from a toothbrush. They can be used on babies as young as 4 months according to the box, but at that age I would do a spot test (on the inner lip). They cost about $4 for 24 individually wrapped wipes and are available at Whole Foods and Drugstore.com.  Hi SB this one is for you!

Dwell Well

For those of you who aren’t into baby shopping and have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Dwell’s line for grownups at Target the wait is finally over!!!  Here are a few of my favorites from the new line.  Pictured above are the perch collection bedding and the regency collection bedding, my personal favorite.  The comforter and pillow shams are $99 for a king set.  The new line also includes placemats, napkins, kitchen towels and potholders.  I’m having a hard time grading this line because some of the items I LOVE (like the ones pictured above) and some of them I find to be pretty boring and lacking the wow factor that Dwell is known for.  For this reson, CityMouse gives the new Dwell Studio for Target line a B, but reiterates that the items picture above are A++ for both style and price.

Read on for CountryMouse’s two cents. Continue reading »

Wallpaper Makes Life Better

I am a person who loves wallpaper, preferably loudly colored, flowered and british looking. And if there are birds involved, all the better. I clearly remember picking out what I thought was a lovely pale blue bird pattern wallpaper from Laura Ashley back in 1998 and being told by pretty much everyone I knew that it was totally hideous. Since then I have been happy to see wallpaper making a comeback, in both bird and non-bird form, however I am often appalled by the prices of the papers I see in many decorating magazines- often close to $150 per roll or more! Yikes!

Fortunately the American Blinds website sells lots of wallpaper at a discount.  I have ordered from this site about 4 or 5 times now and have always been pleased. The prices are very manageable (all of the patterns shown above are less than 30$ a roll), and they have a HUGE searchable database of patterns you can look through into the wee hours of the night until you find what you want.   I suggest checking out the “most popular books” first if you aren’t willing to search into the wee hours.  As a warning, there is a lot of not-so-great wallpaper you have to slog through (did you know that “Thomas Kincaid: Painter of Light” has a line of wallpaper?  I assure you he does), but many affordable gems are there to be uncovered.   I  am trying to commit to the yellow and grey damask pattern above for my bedroom, but Mr. Countrymouse has grave reservations about it, party pooper that he is.

Urban Outfitters- You’re Not too Old to Shop There

For a long time I was of the opinion that once you’d graduated from college you were officially too old to shop at Urban Outfitters. I was pretty sure that was the whole reason the UO folks created Anthropologie, for those of us that UO had retired. But a recent review of the UO website has revealed that there are in fact age appropriate items still to be had there. Hooray! Here are a few items that I liked, oddly most of them are rain related. I love the Kimi Twill Trench Coat for $88. It’s also available in Black. I have a similar trench I purchased ages ago from Banana Republic for a good deal more than $88 that I still regularly wear.

Continue reading »

Dream a Little Dream

As a person who loves dreaming up elaborate decorating projects and then puttering around the internet with vague ideas of buying something, I love when manufacturers offer programs that allow me to try out their wares on my computer. And there are quite a few of these programs out there these days, all available for the low, low price of free!

An old favorite is the Ikea closet planner. This program allows you to enter the measurements of any space, insert various Ikea closet system components, and see how they work together. It even hangs virtual clothes in your closet so you can see what it would look like if you were a sensible Swedish person with two or three white shirts. By the way, if you have a closet to furnish please check out the Ikea stuff first because it is MUCH cheaper than the other options available which I find way overpriced considering they are mainly particleboard boxes (I am talking to you, California Closets). When you are done you can create a shopping list complete with prices to take to the store. Continue reading »

Trimming the Fat

I’m a huge fan of trimming the fat, both from my budget and from my butt.  A friend recently told me about Skype, an amazing way to decrease your monthly phone bill.  Skype is an internet based telephone service and its free when you place calls to other people who also have Skype.  For only $3/month you can also place unlimited calls to people who don’t have Skype.  And for those of you who aren’t tech savvy enough to locate the tiny phones hidden inside your computer, you can also purchase a separate Skype phone which will work just like a regular phone, only cheaper!

Maine Cottage Paint

I love the bright colors of the sculptural wicker furniture line at Maine Cottage, but for me, the prices put these pieces almost as out of reach as a summer cottage to put them in. However I recently learned that Maine Cottage actually sells spray paint in their most popular colors for just $18! This means I can pull the old wicker furniture from my parents’ basement and paint it fun colors like hot lime, zinnia, and china blue. The people at Maine Cottage must be sensitive to those with limited means because they generously suggest such a budget makeover in the blurb by the paint- they are from Maine after all.