Shopping Maniac

Great products, Bargains and gift ideas


You are here: Home / Archives for 2010

Archives for 2010

Found a great Vitamin and Bulk food store

by

My husband and I were shopping on the weekend and we happened to visit a very interesting store while we were in a shopping mall.

The store was called Healthy Planet. It’s mainly a vitamin store, but it also sells health foods, organics and some bulk items.

We were amazed by how large their selection was, and their prices were great as well. Vitamins that we normally buy in other stores were about two or three dollars cheaper per bottle at Healthy Planet.

My husband, who’s hair is getting a little thin at the top, even found some information about a website called www.stressandhairloss.net. He plans to visit the site this weekend to get some information. Who knows, maybe he can stop or slow his hair loss.

We didn’t have a lot of time to look around the store, but I’d like to go back soon and take a better look at their bulk foods. I don’t know why, but I love buying bulk foods. LOL

Have you noticed product sizes are smaller yet the price is still the same?

by

I was just watching a story on the news about how manufacturers are “shrinking products but not the price”. By this I mean, maybe you used to buy your favorite yogurt in a large size container – perhaps a 750 ml container. Now you’ve just noticed that while the packaging looks the same the container only holds 600 ml and the price is still the same or perhaps even higher.

All kinds of manufacturers are doing this. Watch carefully. Everything from the weight of loaves of bread changing to the amount of product in a package lessening. Oh and watch out when manufactures announce a “new look” or new packaging – I’ll bet you’ll notice that the weight of the product is less or that if it had 12 items in it before now it has 10.

A friend of mine recently noticed something like that with her weight loss supplements the packaging had changed and there were fewer pills.

Consumers being interviewed in the news clip also noticed that ingredients in some of the food products that had decreased in size had changed as well. They had more or cheaper fillers in them so consumers are being cheated twice on those products by paying the same price for less product with inferior ingredients.

What products do you buy regularly that you’ve noticed have been downsized recently? Do you feel ripped off by the manufacturers?

I lost a little bit more weight

by

I think I’m getting closer to my clothing shopping spree. I saw my doctor earlier this week and as usual she weighed me during the appointment. Why she weighs me at every single appointment I don’t know … I’ve been seeing her since 2006 and I see her almost every single month – do you know how many times that means she’s weighed me?

LOL It’s not like there’s been a lot of changes in my weight either – until recently.

Ever since I started taking that migraine medication at the end of August I’ve been losing weight. It’s probably because it has a side effect of making some foods taste different or awful. By this I mean I can’t drink carbonated drinks anymore and anything really sweet tastes salty. So it’s no wonder I’m losing weight. LOL

I’ve lost 3 more pounds in the last three weeks. Not a lot. It’s slowing down because I’m trying to eat more even if I don’t feel hungry. I’ve lost more than 15 pounds now though. Hmmm if this keeps up I might be looking for some kind of stretch mark cure ’cause I’m sure that stretch marks are going to start showing if I keep losing weight like this.

What’s with all the furnace care companies offering their services this week

by

I think the home service companies are having a little customer war in my area of Toronto.

This week along I’ve received letters from three different companies asking me to switch from my current furnace maintenance company to their company. Of course their offering deals for the first year, but then their prices revert back to normal in the second year and well … that’s higher than what I’m paying now, so uh … I think I’ll stick with my current company.

It’s just odd that I got three of these letters from different companies all in the same week.

A few weeks ago something like this happened with companies calling us on the telephone and offering cheap auto insurance quotes. I guess these things happen in cycles.

Do you ever get mail or phone calls from similar companies around the same time?

I quit smoking a couple of days ago!

by






I was just saying in my last post that I quit smoking this week.

I’ve wanted to quit smoking for a long time, but when a neurologist told me last March that with my migraines and strange prolonged auras that I’d been having that my chances of having a stroke had just increased, and on top of that I was a smoker which increased my chance of stroke even more I knew I had to quit.

Unfortunately, even though I knew I needed to quit smoking the timing wasn’t good. April through early September is pretty busy for my husband and I. We have lots of family members and friends that drop by our house or end up staying over at our house and then there’s the entertaining and so on. I just knew I could successfully give up smoking in the spring or summer with all that going on. I had to do it as a quieter time.

So … I picked October. It’s perfect. Hopefully no house guests, no traveling, no invites to places where others will be smoking and drinking … the perfect time to give up this awful habit.

I’m using Zyban to help me quit. I started taking the medicine on October 1st and by the 3rd or 4th of the month the cigarettes I was smoking began to taste just like hot air. Still … it took until this past Tuesday, October 12th for me to finally stop smoking. I only had two cigarettes that day and the last one was at about 2:30 pm that afternoon.

I’ve had none since and my cravings aren’t too bad. I’m managing. I think the Zyban is really helping with the nicotine withdrawal although I’m dizzy and my stomach is a bit achy.

I keep telling myself how much better I’m going to be feeling soon and how much extra money my husband and I will have soon. I figure our bad habit costs us about $400 a month. Now we can save that money, or put it towards or bills or our car payments or hey … maybe treat ourselves to a holiday, perhaps a week on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship or something like that? Yeah, that sounds good to me.






Meta

Pages