Saturday, February 6, 2010

Okay, A little Excited


We went shopping last night for winter outerwear. I'll admit, that was fun and exciting. Especially since I've already budgeted money, so I wasn't stressing over every price tag. I've planned on $750 initially to outfit us for Montana winters. The girls will need more as they get bigger, but I figured if I shopped for ski clothes in Texas in the spring, I'd be able to find some really good deals and avoid scrambling at the last minute, and paying a lot more, once our first winter hits. I've been watching online sales, but things were selling out a lot sooner than I anticipated. So yesterday, I looked up the stores at our closest outlet mall and there's a Columbia there. I spent some time checking out Columbia prices on different websites (because outlet stores aren't always cheaper), and after dinner last night, we made the drive to the store. As a background, the cheapest I've been seeing kid's snowbibs (on clearance) was $20 and kid's jackets were typically $40 and up. I wasn't finding any adult jackets available for less than $100. So here's what we got:

Men's 3 in 1 jacket (fleece liner that zips in and out of a breathable, waterproof shell, with hood) $56
Women's long sleeve thermal (I just had to have it because it's cute and the sleeves are LONG and usually sleeves are too short for me) $20
Two Women's hats (for the girls, they have big heads) $7.50/each
Neck gaiter (I know, easy to make, but it was cheaper than my time) $5
Women's ski gloves with fleece liners $20
Men's ski gloves with fleece liners $20
Women's 3 in 1 jacket $45
Girl's ski jacket and snow-bib matching set $35
Toddler's ski jacket and snow-bib matching set $17.50

We ended up paying $233. The suggested retail price on the tags totaled $865 and the outlet price on the tags totaled $590. Even if you assume outlet prices are artificially jacked up (and yes they are, a lot of times) we saved several hundred dollars based on the prices I had been seeing while shopping online. Not to mention the fact that the act of going to the store and trying on new things and building a large pile of purchases (which we just don't do in this family) got all of us a little more excited about moving, and that's priceless.

I think this is a pretty good start on our outerwear. Josh and I already have down jackets and Sierra has another heavy Columbia jacket that was passed down from a cousin. Both girls have Montana-worthy gloves. Josh has some ski pants already and Sedona will be growing into some of Sierra's stuff while we're there. For outerwear, I think we need at least one more set of pants or bibs for each of the girls, snow boots for everyone (maybe? Josh and I both have gortex hiking boots already), and a pair of snow pants for me. We'll all definitely want a few sets of long underwear too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow what good deals you got. That is just fantastic. Your really right about those outlet prices. I have been there and seen people pay more than going online.

Hey that house looks really nice very charming. Did you get any pics of the inside of it yet? Is it in the city or in the country?

K

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