~ IKEA - It is well worth the half-hour drive down to Stoughton to spend a few hours browsing through IKEA. You can even drop your potty-trained kids off in their playroom for 45 minutes! The stuff is stylish and modern, the quality is decent, and the prices are great. We bought a really nice solid wood dresser for our guest room for $179! The food in the cafe is great too!
~ Jordan's Furniture - If you're looking for furniture to last a while, Jordan's has the best furniture, the best service, and the prices are not bad for the quality you get. Their showroom is a fun way to spend an hour or two, with taxi/fire engine strollers, an hourly "show" for the kids, a small snack bar, and thousands of square feet of decorating ideas. If you buy something you get tokens for the candy machines, and a year of credit with no interest.
~ BJ's - I go to BJ's at least once a week and Ben probably goes once a week too. If I make it out of there for less than $100 I draw stares from the other shoppers as I high-five myself. On the bright side, if there's ever a natural disaster you can all come over to our house since we have enough tuna, cereal, and mac&cheese to feed us all for the foreseeable future. If I have any money left after I leave BJ's, I head over to Target.
~ Trader Joe's - For just about everything food-related (and wine!!) that I can't buy at BJ's, I shop at TJ's. Auntie Em (Monica) is a long-time TJ's employee, and Ellen (Degeneres) claims to shop there so it HAS to be good. I love to check out their demos...you can usually get a good dinner idea. One time they gave me the suggestion of serving their lobster bisque (awesome!), "thinned" with heavy cream, over a few lobster raviolis as an appetizer. They told me to cut a few chives on top and it looked so *FAHN-say*.
~ Joe's American Bar & Grill - Conveniently located in Shoppers World, this has become my new favorite casual dining spot. Everything at Joe's is made fresh. They have a great kids' menu and a booklet for the kids to color and do puzzles in. The atmosphere is warm, casual, and not overly loud, even though there are lots of families with kids. For a night out without the kids I like the Melting Pot (ladies' night) and the Oregon Club (date night).
~ Amazon.com - You can buy just about anything on Amazon.com these days, and their one-click service and free freight on $25 orders make it way too easy to overspend. You can even buy articles by yours truly for the low-low price of $5.95 each, with irresistable titles like "Dissecting the Life Safety Code." I'm still waiting for my first royalty check.
~ eBay - Anything I can't find on Amazon.com eventually shows up on eBay. Again, way too easy to blow the budget on out-of-print books and my discontinued china pattern. I know it's only a matter of time before I buy something and the seller turns out to be Lana.
~ J. Jill - Really, the only place I shop for clothes. Well, when I used to shop for clothes anyway. At the end of each pregnancy I made an emergency run to J. Jill for some baggy clothes to wear postpartum. I'm still wearing them.
~ Alpha Dog K9 Training - Although Alpha-Dog has limited appeal (you have to own a dog), we couldn't live without Christina and the rest of the trainers there. They have been so helpful with Zoe and Annie, and I highly recommend them for obedience training, fun stuff like Agility, Rally-O and Flyball, and specialized classes like NEADS (National Education for Assistance Dog Services) and TDI (Therapy Dogs International). Christina is even testing the use of a digestive enzyme to keep dogs from eating poopsicles. Woohooooooo!!! Annie recently graduated from the Puppy Kindergarten class and will be starting Beginner Obedience soon.
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