My New Best Friend's Name is Amazon Dot Com

Sometimes I get overly excited about things. Okay... in all honestly I am known as both a squealer and a gusher, but I assure you that I only give recommendations for things I am very impressed with. That being said, I am not the kind of person to pay for a service such as Amazon Prime, but I definitely took them up on their free year of service (I believe the offer is now two years) when you sign up as a student with a .edu e-mail address.

We are renovating an home turned office back into a home, and I've found so many high end products for a steal on Amazon. With Prime we have taken extreme advantage of the  free 2-day or $3.99 overnight shipping.

For instance, one of us may have forgotten to buy a wedding ring a week before the wedding and in a panic bought one on Amazon and had it overnighted. Same carat weight and clarity as one I priced at Helzberg and Kay, but at 1/3 the price! It looks amazing and no one knows I didn't buy it elsewhere.

I find that with the Prime shipping perks, I'm more likely to go to Amazon to price things before buying them locally. I have saved at least $100 on knives, $150 on a Kitchenaid pot/pan set, and of course the ring.

My Amazon strategy: search for what you're looking for, then use the categories to narrow it down, then sort by Bestselling (in a drop-down menu), add Prime items only by clicking on that, then add items with a 4 star or better rating. The reviews may not be by experts, but I will be better equipped reading info from a few strangers than standing on an aisle at Bed Bath & Beyond playing eeny, meeny, miny, moe with the knife sharpeners.

In the past year, I've purchased:
- A diamond "eternity" wedding band
- A Iwata Ninja air compressor and Eclipse airbrush gun (I do airbrush makeup)
- A set of Kitchenaid stainless steel pots/pans with silicone handles
- OPI Axxium nail system and UV lamp
- Two MP3 players for my parents for Christmas.
- Victorinox 3 knife set and santoku knife
- a knife sharpener that had amazing reviews and was $7.00!
- 4 place settings of Fiestaware in Turquoise
- a Le Creuset utensil crock in Caribbean
- Sigma camera lens for Canon Rebel
- $20 underwater casing for my point and shoot camera (soon to order!)
- several books
- my wedding shoes when I couldn't find suitable ones anywhere else and gave up on designer ones.
- Museum Putty ( a must have with cats)