Sally Beauty August 2010 Offers, Promo Codes Posted

07/30/2010 By


Shop SallyBeauty.com!
Just posted Sally Beauty Supply’s August 2010 promo codes in Sales & Deals on Perfectly Shaped World. Keep this window open while heading to cart checkout on their website, so you’ve got all the promo codes at your fingertips while you shop.

Sally Beauty gift cards are also available through their Sales & Deals page, in three denominations, a great send-off for the girl headed to school or as a thoughtful bridal shower gift.

Sally Beauty is the world’s largest retailer of professional beauty supplies. Sally Beauty currently owns and operates more than 2,700 Sally Beauty Supply stores worldwide, including stores in every state of the continental United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, France, and Spain. Sally Beauty Supply offers over 6,000 professional quality products for hair, skin and nails to retail customers and salon professionals. Sally Beauty has a heritage as the first choice for professional cosmetologists’ product needs because of the broad range of salon products and complete assortment of salon equipment.

Sally Beauty products and equipment are featured at Beauty Lass and throughout the cosmetics sections of Perfectly Shaped World.

Filed Under: Beauty Lass, SalesCast Tagged With: beauty supplies, cosmetics, gift cards, hair care

29 July 2010 Daily Specials at 6pm

07/29/2010 By

Shoes. For Feet.
As Back-To-School specials begin to roll in, watch this space (these spaces?) for new sales, deals, special prices and coupons. Sending a kid off to college? Outfit ‘em with a couple of nice gift cards to take for a weekend of shopping at their favorite outlet!

This sales event has ended.

Current and upcoming specials are posted each day on 6pm’s Sales & Deals at Perfectly Shaped World.

Deals change daily. Subject to availability – if something sells out, that’s it.

For more 6pm specials and all the rest of the daily specials, visit Sales & Deals at Perfectly Shaped World.

Stay updated automatically – grab our feed.

Filed Under: SalesCast Tagged With: SalesCast, shoes

What in the World Do I Do All Day

02/11/2010 By

Danse Macabre(Warning: Humor)

A man came home from work and found his three children outside, still in their pajamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and 20 wrappers strewn all around the front yard. The door of his wife’s car was open, and so was the front door to the house. There was no sign of the dog. Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall.

In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.

He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife.  He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened.

He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door.  As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor.  Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls.

As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel.  She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went…

He looked at her, bewildered, and asked, ‘What happened here today?’  She again smiled.

‘You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world I do all day?’ she queried.

‘Yes,’ was his incredulous reply.

‘Well, today I didn’t do it.’

Send this page to a woman. This is priceless.

(Lovin’ this – my mom sent it a few minutes ago, and I just HAD to share.)

Filed Under: Fern Likes Tagged With: household, moms, overworked

Overcoming Plus Size Online Shopping Perils and Pitfalls

12/04/2009 By

Originally Posted: Perfectly Shaped Life – September 2007

(Much of this advice can be applied to online shopping in general, but I’m going to focus on our goal of finding and listing the best plus size shopping locations.)

In a perfect life, shopping online would be as simple as opening a browser window that goes directly to the item you want, clicking on the [[I WANT THIS]] button, entering some payment data, and pushing Go.

Unfortunately, a perfect life doesn’t exist (yet), so we have to do a great deal more work that those four steps. Where do we start?

Time, Time and More Time

One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard about online shopping is that it takes too much time. Many of us start with a search engine like Google, search for what we want, scan down a few entries, click on what looks interesting, surf the site and not find what we want, go back and find another site, surf that site and not find what we want, find a third site, go back to Google, refine our search, and repeat until we either find what we’re looking for or give up and drive to a store, or give up and settle for something close, or give up entirely and decide we don’t really need the item THAT bad.

It often boils down to a matter of time. Do you have the time to search, surf, plow through dozens of websites that may or may not have what you want? If you’re like most of us, the answer to that is a resounding ‘NO.’

Build a Solid List of Shopping Sites

You may have a set of favorite plus size shopping sites, and that’s great! We’d love to hear from you and know which ones you prefer, so we can add them to our directory of shops. Do you have time to visit them once a day or once a week to watch for sales, special offers, free shipping deals, seasonal clearances? If not, don’t worry – we do, and will.

We’re building a list of recommended stores, based on our own experience and feedback from our readers, and will keep that list updated on this site. You can help! Let us know where you have shopped with success, so we can add to this list!

Spread the Word

Many of the places we shop are well known, like Old Navy and their new Women’s Plus Online Exclusives, and Junonia.

But have you heard about Bigger Bras, which offers fuller bras and lingerie with styles by Playtex, Vanity Fair, Tatiana and more? Did you know that Kiyonna.com offers a full line of Spanx Body Shapers in the plus sizes we need?

Know the Right Size is the Right Size

Almost every shop is different, just like brick-and-mortar stores (our term for those places down the road where you walk in and shop off of racks). Before you shop online, arm yourself with a good tape measure and pad of paper, and take reliable measurements – bust, waist, hips, inseam – we’ll give you some charts to use. Never assume that a 2X jacket available on one site is going to fit just like a size 2X jacket from another site. Check each shop’s size charts, just to make sure.

Know the Return Policy in Advance

Some online stores have very forgiving return policies, but a few of them are tougher than Fort Knox. Some stores will let you return items after they’ve been removed from packaging, tried on and worn, and some restrict the type of item that can be returned at all. Usually, for health code reasons, swimsuits and lingerie carry the strictest policies. Be sure to read the policies before placing an order the first time with a new store.

Know the Security and Privacy in Advance

You have rights as a consumer. Any store site that wants to take your credit card information or sell things to you online needs to have a clearly written Privacy Statement. This statement should provide you with their policies about email, credit card security, data security, personal information privacy and contact information.

These Privacy Statements may be labeled with different names, like Security, Our Commitment to Your Privacy, Security and Privacy, Service and Security, etc. Terms and Conditions of Use may also contain privacy statements, but many firms separate the two to keep them easier to find and read. But no matter what they’re called, they are that firm’s commitment to protecting your privacy and rights. Read them carefully. If you disagree with their approach, don’t shop with them.

Protect Your Good Credit

Look for Verisign icons, Better Business Bureau, Security Metrics. You may see TrustE and HackerSafe icons as well, services used to give assurance of a site’s reliability and integrity.

Shopping cart pages may or may not be provided through secure webpages, depending on the approach the store has taken. However, any place that asks for financial information like a credit card number must be secure pages. Make sure the website page’s address starts with https:// (normal pages are http://) before you enter any credit card information.

Let Us Know – Good or Bad

If you find a wonderful place to shop, let us know. Leave a comment, so we can add the store to our list of recommended stores.

If you find a place that doesn’t treat you right, let us know that as well. I want to make sure that our list of recommended stores is going to be the best possible shopping experience for all of us!

Bottom Line

Shopping for plus size clothing online doesn’t have to be a painful experience. My goal is to help take out the painful parts, find and provide the best places to shop, gather up handy information and serve it up here in an easy-to-retrieve manner, and cheer you on as you shop and find the fantastic right-sized apparel that helps your own special personality shine through.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: comparison shopping, online shopping

Hermes. Birkin. Giveaway.

12/01/2009 By
Hermès 25cm Matte Chocolate Niloticus Crocodile Birkin Bag
The pictured Birkin Bag is known as the Hermès 25cm Matte Chocolate Niloticus Crocodile Birkin Bag. This is NOT the bag in the giveaway.

How many times in your lifetime do you expect to see the words “HERMES BIRKIN GIVEAWAY” in the same sentence? If the mere thought of this is leaving you a bit light-headed and clutching at your chest, then it’s definitely time to check in and find out how to get registered for this drawing.

Just click on this link. C’mon, You know you want to. You really really REALLY want that Birkin Bag from Portero.com, who announces: “Win our biggest ever handbag giveaway – the Hermes Birkin.”

No purses or bags were harmed in the preparation of this semi-commercial announcement. Your mileage may vary. Do not dry clean. Passengers must stand clear of front door.

Filed Under: Fern Likes Tagged With: birkin, hermes

Happy Hallowe’en, Ghosties!

10/31/2009 By
Codys2

Boo, You!

As fun as it was this time last year – Happy Hallowe’en!

For many of us, Halloween brings back fond memories of dusk trips around the neighborhood, disguised as pirates, ballerinas, Superman, even bedsheet ghosts, eyes cut out with Mom’s pinking shears (sometimes without Mom’s knowledge – sorry, Mom!). For others of us, we’ve got recollections of specially crafted haunted houses in community center halls and church basements. Even a renegade few of us may recall the adolescent pranks of TP’ing a neighbor’s house (shhhh. never did that. nuh uh.)

But whatever your recollection, whatever your memories may be, we at Perfectly Shaped World wish you a happy and safe Hallowe’en – and don’t let the goblins get ya!

Sanity Check:
Dark costumes can make a normally very visible child almost undetectable after dark. If your kid insists on a black cape or a Batman outfit, convince him that neon orange stripes of reflective tape along the front, back, arms and sleeves are ‘WAY COOL.’ No sense telling them it’s for their own safety.

Filed Under: Fern Likes Tagged With: costume safety, halloween

What The Heck, Captain! (Over)

04/14/2009 By

Yes, you saw a brief flurry of tiny product posts. I’ve just spend the night installing Datafeedr, a new product feed management tool that works hand in glove with WordPress to facilitate store presentation. It’s got this great feature called ‘drip’ (I kid you not) which, when properly set up, will post a product snapshot and write-up on a regular basis.

Being a natural-born button pusher from ‘way back, I had to give it a whirl, pushing all the buttons and flipping all the switches just to see what they’d do. So I set the duration and wait rates rather low, flicked a lever, leaned back to see what’d happen. It worked great!

Then the phone rang.

While I handled the situation on the other end of the ringing phone, the drip feature continued to obediently post – and post – and post. And by the time I’d finished the call, it was blithely preparing its 6th post in 12 minutes. ACK! Durn thing did exactly what I asked it to!!

I caught and killed most of them, leaving the first three in place, even though I hadn’t planned to actually putting any in place until the redesign was much further along.

So, thanks for the patience, and sorry to have flooded your afternoon’s RSS feed!

Filed Under: Articles

Apologies, Dear Reader

04/13/2009 By

I apologize to you for the delay in posting here at Perfectly Shaped World.  The past few weeks brought a series of personal and family upheavals which completely derailed my train of thought.  Things are settling down slowly, and this week is dedicated to regaining direction and momentum.  I am hoping to have everything back on track by the end of the week.  Thank you for your patience – and to those who have sent private messages, thank you for your warm thoughts and expressions of concern.

Filed Under: Articles

How are YOU Surviving the Econom-Icks

03/26/2009 By

Dollars !I’m no financial wizard. I hold no degree from the London School of Economics. But it doesn’t take a Warren Buffett or Alan Greenspan to know that the economy is in trouble. There’s been a lot of belt-tightening required, and not in a good way.

Frugal hint sites are gaining more popularity by the day. We’re getting smarter about using what spending power we have. Clipping coupons, watching for specials, developing our sixth sense for sales.

I’ve been asking some people what steps they’re taking:

Patricia D. says:  Check on the stock market ONLY after the trading day has closed.  This way I ACT instead of REACT to a stock price change in either direction.

What’s your savvy spending tip? How are you making your dollar go further than it used to? What’s the most important hint you’d give your friends to help them survive the Econom-Icks?

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: economy, money saving tips, shopping hints

Batteries, Batteries Everywhere

02/26/2009 By

Batteries used to strike me as something along the lines to flood insurance here in the high desert: Not something terribly crucial, not something forefront on my mind, durn handy to have in case of a flood (which happens more often than you’d think), more of an annoyance than a mandatory item. After all, if I want a light, I’ll reach over and flip the switch on the lamp next to my desktop. Right?

Then we lost power for four days running. In the high heat of summer. In that same high desert where it floods about once a century. Suddenly, batteries weren’t so much of a luxury item as they were a lifeline.

It started on a sweltering Wednesday mid-afternoon when the substation up the road from us caught fire, although I didn’t know at the time what the cause of the disruption was. I just stared at the blank, black screen of my desktop system, shrugged, ambled over to the laptop and powered it up. Or at least I tried to. The laptop battery was low, so I had only a few minutes of power left on it before it too turned into an expensive paperweight.

I assumed the power would be back on in a few minutes anyway, so I didn’t really worry too much. After all, we’ve had rolling blackouts for a few years now as California’s power resources have been stretched to the breaking point. The minutes turned to hours, and the house began to swelter a bit in 112-degree summer temperatures. The swamp cooler became a sorely missed necessity.

Darkness began to fall, and I reached for a flashlight. My Mini Maglite, faithful as ever, powered right up and got me around the house to locate a larger and more powerful flashlight – which was out of batteries. I retrieved the last few remaining C-cells from the recharger and installed them, then used that to find the supply of non-rechargeable batteries, which had managed to dwindle to four AA-cells that remained in a mangled, dusty sealpak that once held 16. I tested them quickly in the Maglite. Two were viable; two were barely alive.

So there I was, in the dark, two batteries left, no clue when power would be restored. I did the math.

The portable fan I got my husband for his birthday a few years back: 4 AA-cells to power up. No joy there, so I retreated to the coolest part of the house.

The big flashlight with the rechargeables inside: 4 C-cells, all dwindling. No joy there, so it would be saved for emergencies.

The laptop: one specialized battery, without a charge, without a backup. No computer work tonight.

Dinner was a handful of Triscuits and an unheated cup of soup. The stove top, though gas, takes electricity to light. Attempting to light it with a barbecue clicker failed. No batteries. Attempting to light it with a cigarette lighter failed, and I can rationalize that singed eyebrows are all the rage these days. The cats got tuna, thanks to a manual canopener. Good thing we kept it after we got the battery-powered one, which barely had enough of a charge to turn a quarter way around the can.

My beloved stack of unread books taunted me from the darkness. No reading until dawn, I muttered back to them. Must- save- batteries. Still way too hot to sleep, so I considered the portable CD player as entertainment. No batteries. We’d taken the batteries out years ago and used them elsewhere.

I considered driving into town for batteries, got back up and fumbled for purse and keys, then headed for the garage. Stopped, garage door opener in hand and feeling rather stupid. The opener runs on… you guessed it. batteries. Oh well. I decided to get in through the locked side door and attempt to open the car door by hand. No joy. The manual override chain dangled far out of reach up in the rafters, and I don’t do ladders. Didn’t matter. In the heat of the moment, I’d forgotten that my husband had taken the car out of town anyway, and there was no way I could drive the vintage restoration project Datsun. No battery.

With the careful deployment of eight small votive candles, judiciously placed in high-sided containers so that panicked cats couldn’t knock them over, I switched off the flashlight and got in a bit of reading time. NO idea when I extinguished them and went to sleep. No batteries in the battery-assisted electric clock.

By the end of the four-day ordeal, I’d burned through 3/4 of my candle collection and the house was permeated with the smell of blueberry-vanilla-pine-sandalwood-cherry-pumpkin-ocean-spice aromas. The C-cells in the big flashlight were drained. The batteries in the Maglite were barely sputtering along. I would have called into town but the desktop phone runs on wall electricity even to get to a dial tone, and I don’t own a cell phone, but if I DID, it probably would have needed a battery anyway!

Now, feel free to call me an idiot for not being better prepared. And, while you’re doing that, take a quick mental inventory of everything in your house and garage, car and RV that you may take for granted will just work when you pick it up, start it up, fire it up. How many of those things run on… oh, I dunno … batteries?

[Reprinted from my Fern blog which is going up in smoke as we speak]

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: batteries
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