Happy photo-ing!
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Freebies Part 1 - Shutterfly
Happy photo-ing!
Registries
There are so many places you can open a baby registry. Two of the bigger ones are Buy Buy Baby and Babies R Us. You can also find some smaller local places like Magic Beans or Giggle. They have great products, but tend to be more expensive than some of the bigger retailers. But it's nice to support local businesses, plus sometimes they offer incentives to open a registry. For instance at Giggle, when I opened my registry and put 25 items on they offered a $50 gift card. So keep a look out for special offers. Buy Buy Baby and Babies R Us also offer smaller incentives for opening registries in the form of small gift bags that contain samples of baby items. Something else to keep in mind is that Buy Buy Baby is associated with Bed Bath and Beyond, so you can use their 20% off coupons for baby items. Also, the Buy Buy Baby online registry doesn't offer free shipping, but if you access the registry from Bed Bath and Beyond's site you can get free shipping that way and also use their online 20% off coupons. They also have a super reliable return policy, so if you decide you don't want something you got, you can easily return it!
I had a lot of trouble deciding what to put on my registry because there's just so much stuff. One thing I did that I found helpful was to go on other friends' registries and they have a feature where you can add things your friends chose directly to yours. You can even copy entire registries if you want! It makes the selection process a lot easier.
Something to note: Babies R Us has a MUCH better furniture selection than Buy Buy Baby does.
Monday, November 10, 2014
Strollers
There are lots of stroller options. Too many, in my opinion. I went to the store and tried A LOT of strollers before selecting the City Select. It took me a while to settle on this one. Here was my thought process:This stroller has a few features that I really liked:
1. The seats come out and can face in either direction so you can choose to have the baby face you or face the street.
2. There is an option for a second seat. The UppaBaby also has an option for a second seat - but I didn't want that second seat to be a "second class citizen" seat and fit under the top seat. The City Select has a better set up. Financially we also considered the options of getting a single seat stroller now and then what it would cost us to get a second stroller should we have another kid.
3. The Price. By far this was the most cost effective stroller to get. The stroller costs $499. Through the month of November you can also get the second seat for free (a $170 value). This made it even more cost-appealing.
Since this stroller can fit another seat it's a little heavier to push, but we tested it out in the store and we spoke to a lot of friends who loved it and said it worked really well for them too. We also bought it in a specialty baby store - it didn't effect the cost because Baby Jogger (the company that makes the City Select) manages all of the costs and keeps it consistent across all sellers - we were able to mix and match the pieces. So we got the silver frame with the ruby seat and then as our free second seat we got the Amethyst.
We also considered the Phil and Ted's Smart Luxe, but doesn't hold a second seat. The UppaBaby is another stroller that people love, but it's ridiculously expensive compared with the City Select and it didn't make much sense to spend the extra money just for the name UppaBaby.
Maternity Clothes
Before I start writing about maternity clothes, I feel like I should start off by giving 2 caveats:
1. I am 5'9'' so I didn't start really showing till about 20 weeks.
2. I didn't believe in spending a lot of money on maternity clothes so I didn't do a lot of research on the higher end clothing but I'm an expert on the middle to low range stuff so I'll be talking about that here.
Maternity clothing is a funny thing. When women buy clothing they buy it for a season and they assume that while they wear it they're bodies won't be changing all that much. They can shop at the beginning of a season and expect it to last throughout that season and perhaps even into the next. Maternity clothes on the other hand have a lot more of a finite life span.
Something else to keep in mind when shopping for maternity clothes, is that you should be looking for your pre-maternity size clothes in maternity. If you go up a size, generally it will just look baggy and big. The maternity cut clothes account for your growing body, so you don't need to go up a size.
Additionally, if you choose to buy non maternity clothes to wear while pregnant it can be a little tricky to do that. for items that are tight, and body-hugging you can go up to bigger sizes (be careful of materials that stretch because the colors will look washed out as the fabric stretches to accommodate your growing belly). If you are going to get something in a bigger size that is loose fitting, be careful about that too because sometimes bigger clothes will just make you look bigger (fatter, sorry) rather than pregnant.
I started shopping for maternity clothing in early June (I am due in November) so I was barely showing. I was hoping to be able to buy enough clothes in one shot that I didn't have to keep going back for more.
My first stop was Destination Maternity. This place has multiple stores in one. The Pea in the Pod is their highest end line. I wasn't interested in spending multiple hundreds of dollars per item for maternity clothes (I don't even do that for regular clothes) so I focused on their Motherhood section. I primarily shopped in the Manhattan store which I found to have a decent selection but was also often hit or miss. I did have good luck there though. Especially in the sale department. I got a lot of stuff on sale - including some Pea in the Pod items.
Another thing about DM is that in the changing rooms they have baby bumps that you can try on with the clothing. These are great, theoretically. They give you a sense of what something will look like with a bump. But what they don't do is account for the other parts of your body that grow - your boobs and butt will most likely get bigger, so if you're trying on dresses, keep in mind that the dress will most definitely get shorter. I had a to return a bunch of things because after putting it back on a month later, a formerly knee length dress was now mid-thigh.
They have a 30-day return policy, and after that I was able to get store credit. But the good thing about store credit is that they don't only sell clothes. You can get other baby and maternity accouterments OR, even better, put the money to their spa. They have the Edamame spa on site where you can get massages and facials and they also have a Yoga/Pilates studio you can put the money to. So even if you have to return something for credit, there are lots of places you can put it.
The other place I had luck was at Old Navy. Many of the stores have pretty limited maternity options, but their online shop was great. Really reasonable prices, nice, trendy stuff that actually held up really well. The online store has free shipping in both directions. One of their great staples are their maternity tights. If you need tights, get them there. Their leggings are not so comfortable, better off getting those at Destination Maternity.
Some other decent options are Target, Asos and Amazon. I got jeans at Target and they were super comfortable. Amazon and Asos had a nice selections of items, but to be honest I didn't get anything there.
Happy Shopping!
1. I am 5'9'' so I didn't start really showing till about 20 weeks.
2. I didn't believe in spending a lot of money on maternity clothes so I didn't do a lot of research on the higher end clothing but I'm an expert on the middle to low range stuff so I'll be talking about that here.
Maternity clothing is a funny thing. When women buy clothing they buy it for a season and they assume that while they wear it they're bodies won't be changing all that much. They can shop at the beginning of a season and expect it to last throughout that season and perhaps even into the next. Maternity clothes on the other hand have a lot more of a finite life span.
Something else to keep in mind when shopping for maternity clothes, is that you should be looking for your pre-maternity size clothes in maternity. If you go up a size, generally it will just look baggy and big. The maternity cut clothes account for your growing body, so you don't need to go up a size.
Additionally, if you choose to buy non maternity clothes to wear while pregnant it can be a little tricky to do that. for items that are tight, and body-hugging you can go up to bigger sizes (be careful of materials that stretch because the colors will look washed out as the fabric stretches to accommodate your growing belly). If you are going to get something in a bigger size that is loose fitting, be careful about that too because sometimes bigger clothes will just make you look bigger (fatter, sorry) rather than pregnant.
I started shopping for maternity clothing in early June (I am due in November) so I was barely showing. I was hoping to be able to buy enough clothes in one shot that I didn't have to keep going back for more.
My first stop was Destination Maternity. This place has multiple stores in one. The Pea in the Pod is their highest end line. I wasn't interested in spending multiple hundreds of dollars per item for maternity clothes (I don't even do that for regular clothes) so I focused on their Motherhood section. I primarily shopped in the Manhattan store which I found to have a decent selection but was also often hit or miss. I did have good luck there though. Especially in the sale department. I got a lot of stuff on sale - including some Pea in the Pod items.
Another thing about DM is that in the changing rooms they have baby bumps that you can try on with the clothing. These are great, theoretically. They give you a sense of what something will look like with a bump. But what they don't do is account for the other parts of your body that grow - your boobs and butt will most likely get bigger, so if you're trying on dresses, keep in mind that the dress will most definitely get shorter. I had a to return a bunch of things because after putting it back on a month later, a formerly knee length dress was now mid-thigh.
They have a 30-day return policy, and after that I was able to get store credit. But the good thing about store credit is that they don't only sell clothes. You can get other baby and maternity accouterments OR, even better, put the money to their spa. They have the Edamame spa on site where you can get massages and facials and they also have a Yoga/Pilates studio you can put the money to. So even if you have to return something for credit, there are lots of places you can put it.
The other place I had luck was at Old Navy. Many of the stores have pretty limited maternity options, but their online shop was great. Really reasonable prices, nice, trendy stuff that actually held up really well. The online store has free shipping in both directions. One of their great staples are their maternity tights. If you need tights, get them there. Their leggings are not so comfortable, better off getting those at Destination Maternity.
Some other decent options are Target, Asos and Amazon. I got jeans at Target and they were super comfortable. Amazon and Asos had a nice selections of items, but to be honest I didn't get anything there.
Happy Shopping!
Over the last few months since I found out that I was pregnant and would, G-d Willing, be having a baby, I've learned a lot of information that was previously foreign to me. 9 months ago I didn't know the difference between a city mini and a city select, a UPPAbaby and Bugaboo or what kinds of products you need, don't need, should get and forget about. I didn't know anything about what to expect to happen to my body - not the obvious stuff like a bigger belly or swollen ankles, but other stuff. I didn't know anything about maternity clothes or where to go to get them. My aim with this blog is to help women like me get some insider information to some of these details so hopefully others won't go into pregnancy as blindly as I did.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
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