This Sunday, Jai and I are going to have engagement photos taken in Portland for a review on Contest Corner, which will also be filmed for The Love Story. We’re very excited! This week, I made a list of things that I needed to buy before the photoshoot – I wanted to get a new dress for the pictures, and re-stock on some cosmetic items. Beauty and apparel purchases can really add up, so I started brainstorming ways to save. I ended up utilizing two Amazon gift cards to greatly reduce the cost of two items. I had a $20 Amazon gift card which I was sent as payment for a review that I wrote (This is as good as cash to me, so it’s well worth my time to write a quick blurb in exchange for a gift card!), and a $5 gift card which I earned via Swagbucks. I’ve mentioned Swagbucks before – they are a search engine that I have used for years (pre-coupon days, even!), and they reward you for using them by randomly awarding you “Swagbucks” that you can redeem for prizes, such as gift cards. With these two gift cards in tow, I headed over to Amazon to see what I could pick up.

It never occurred to me to look for clothes on Amazon, but they actually have quite a large selection! I wanted a cute, flirty dress to wear in the pictures, and this dress by Alki’i fit the bill and was in my budget at $19.99.

I used the remainder of my balance to pick up this Plump Lips lip gloss for $7.95, and paid a grand total of $2.94 out of pocket.

I still have a free trial of Amazon Prime thanks to the “Amazon Mom” program, so I received free two-day shipping on these items – so they will arrive just in time for the photoshoot!

Click the thumbnail above to see a screenshot of my receipt

This entry was posted on Monday, November 29th, 2010 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Gift cards, Online deals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.