Nordstrom Anniversary Sale - Pep Talk

Ok this is the only time I will ever encourage you to get a credit card.  I am a cash girl.  I am a debt free girl. But in this case you might consider getting yourself a Nordstrom credit card.  Nordstrom has this BIG anniversary sale in July.  If you are a card holder you get early access to the sale.  The sale will begin for the public on July 21st, however, for cardholders the sale will begin on July 13th. And yes things do sell out.

Now you have to decide if you can have a credit card in your life.  I run a line item in my budget for this sale where I put a little back from each paycheck from August to July.  So I know how much I can spend, I use my card and then I pay it off immediately.


This will be my 4th year shopping the sale.  I have gotten great deals on Frye boots, Barefoot Dreams Cardigans, Voluspa candles, Northface clothing, Zella athletic wear and lots more things.   It is a great time to do Christmas shopping because it is primarily fall/winter stuff in the sale.  There are always good boots and booties, designer jeans, leather jackets and just cute tops, sweaters, and accessories.

If you live near a Nordstrom, you have my envy.  You can actually go into the store and they have the anniversary sale items tented off and you get to duck into the tent and buy your goodies.

I buy on line mostly but am considering a little roadtrip this year.

I already have a true love for Nordstrom because sometimes I wear an 8, sometimes I wear a 10 and depending on the price I can sometimes wear a 6 or a 12.......you get the idea.  If you are between sizes, just go ahead and order them both, try them on in the comfort of your own home and send back what doesn't work.  Remember Free Shipping and Free Returns.  Here is the other thing I love about Nordstrom and this sale......if you give someone something for Christmas that doesn't fit or work for them, they can still return it.  Yes, Nordstrom doesn't have those testy time limits for returns.   Honestly, there is no comparison to their customer service.

So you have a couple of weeks to get yourself a card if you want the early access.   Otherwise, join in when it opens to the public.  This, ladies, is our prep time.....make your lists, do a little stretching and come July 13th its GO TIME!!!!

I will be posting my favorite finds and buys here on the blog.

Have a great weekend!

Nantucket Trip Review - Part 2

Today I am wrapping up our trip to Nantucket.  If you missed part 1 you can click here.

We got a great weather day and headed out.  We happen to be visiting during Restaurant Week.  This is when participating restaurants offer a special menu for a set price of $40 to $45.  You got an appetizer, an entree and a dessert for your money.  This was a great deal considering most of the entrees were $30 on their own.

We started the day with breakfast at a little place called Black Eyed Susans.  When I say little place, I mean that literally.  There were probably a total of 6-8 tables in the whole place.  This restaurant is known for breakfast and they don't take credit cards.  Cash only for a good breakfast.......my love language for sure.  Apparently, I was so excited that I did not take pictures of our food.

From there we took a short walk down to one end of the island to the beach. We passed house after house with beautifully manicured hedges and cute picket fences.

Yep, I totally want a hedge lining the street in front of my house now.

When we reached the beach it was gorgeous.

The selfies were a struggle.  I can't tell you how many pictures of my hand I have.

This is us at the Brant Point Lighthouse

Thank you nice Nantucketers for having these rocks right off the beach so I could sit down and get the sand out of my shoes.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around and perfecting our selfie skills.

This one is in front of Bookworks where Elin Hilderbrand comes to release her new novels and sign books for her fans.

This evening we had our first Restaurant Week meal.  We went to a restaurant on the harbor called Straight Wharf.

It was right on the water and had craft paper on the tables

We started with a fish pate and crackers.  Delicious!

We then got our second course.  We had a spring pea salad that had snap peas, english peas, parmesan, and radicchio .  Our other selection was a seafood chowder complete with a lobster tail.

For our entrees we selected the chicken under a brick that was served with heirloom grits, braised greens, pancetta and green tomato relish and the spice crusted skate wing that was served with a cauliflower tabbouleh, kale, rice, beet labneh and green olive relish.

For dessert we had a hot milk cake with grilled pineapple, cashews, black pepper and a buttermilk pineapple gelato.

And finally a rosemary shortbread with fresh pressed coffee.

That was a lot of delicious food for our money.  Well done, Straight Wharf, we hope to see you again.

The next day we did some more sight seeing.  There were so many beautiful churches on our walks.  I wanted to peek into each of them but only found one open.  It was an Episcopal Church.  It had Tiffany Stained Glass Windows and was beautiful

We also saw the original Fire Truck that was there for the big fire of 1846 that destroyed all of main street.

In honor of NASA, I took a picture with the marker for The Mitchell House which is the birthplace of America's first woman astronomer.  She had quite a set up with a lovely planetarium.

We also found my favorite beach to date.  It had a fabric walkway.  Yes, beaching without sand in my shoes.....this should totally be a thing at every beach everywhere.

We walked back to this same beach that evening to eat at Galley Beach.  They had beautiful fire pits on the beach where we waited for our table.

Tonight we started with a Caesar salad and the ricotta gnocchi with butternut squash.

We made our reservation to coincide with sunset.  And we were not disappointed.

Our entrees were pistachio crusted salmon with basmati rice and a horseradish butter sauce and the Fish Soup which had white fish and mussels.

For dessert we had an apple pastry with ice cream and the molten brownie.

The next day we made the trek back down main street, boarded the ferry back to Hyannis, met up with our driver who took us back to Boston and caught our flight back to Nashville.  Surprisingly with all those connections we did not have one hiccup.  Everything was on time and went smoothly.

It was a fantastic trip.  We are grateful to have had the opportunity to go.

I highly recommend it, if you have the desire.

See you back on Friday!

Nantucket Trip Review- Part 1

Nantucket is a place we have always wanted to visit.  It's just a part of the country that we hade never travelled to.  So this year we decided to make a quick trip.  We were scheduled to leave on a Sunday and return on a Friday.   Now getting there was the interesting part.  We drove to Nashville to catch a non-stop flight to Boston.  When we arrived in Boston we had a driver pick us up and drive us the little over an hour to the Hyannis Ferry.  We then boarded the Ferry for a nearly 1 hour ride to Nantucket.
Are you worn out yet?  Yes, getting there was part of the adventure.

Even though it was the first of June the weather was chilly.  Robyn, one of my good friends, had advised me on what to take.  She said jeans, sweatshirts and sneakers.  So that is exactly what we took.  I made it through the whole week with these shoes

Shoreline Converse

Black Adidas

JBU Sandal

Let me be super clear here.  You cannot wear heels or wedges or any other manner of shoe in Nantuket.  Those adorable, quaint coblestone streets will take you down.  You must be sure footed.  I did see one person in a wedge and let me just say she was on the struggle bus.

Yay Cobblestones!

When the Ferry arrived in the Nantucket harbor we simply pulled our suitcases straight up main street, took a right and arrived at our lodging.  We stayed at The Robert's Collection.  They have several different options but we chose the Gate House.

No Key Cards....real keys

Flavored water was always on the porch in the courtyard

The first night we decided to grab a quick dinner at the Rose & Crown Pub.  We had Swordfish with a salad and Fish and Chips with slaw.

We were off to a very good start.

The next morning we grabbed a continental breakfast at our hotel.

We did a ton of walking.  My FitBit was on fire.

We grabbed lunch on the Harbor at a little place called the Fish Market.  We split a grilled flounder sandwich and quite honestly the best clam chowder I have ever had.  We also had a great view of the harbor.  The weather was cool.  It was a little drizzly but we enjoyed all the same.

Here's a few fun facts about Nantucket.  It has the nickname of the Grey Lady....partly because of the fog and partly because of all the grey buildings.  The island is only 3.5 miles by 14 miles.  Approximately 10,000 people live year round on the island.  The high tourist months of July and August will find 100,000 people there.  I cannot imagine that.  There are no chain stores or restaurants allowed on the island.  Everything is mom and pop style.  There is only one grocery store, the Shop and Save, but it has two locations.  All the buildings are either gray shaker or red brick and the island limits the trim colors you can use.  I think there were either 6 or 8 trim colors to choose from.  A common question is "have you ever been to Nantucket?" if you say yes, the next question is "has anything changed"......they want you to say no.  The island goal is to stay Nantucket and not change regardless of the year.   I learned most of that on the one hour island tour we took the first afternoon. We saw some very historical sites like this old windmill and the oldest house on Nantucket.

For dinner we went to the Brotherhood of Thieves.  I had a chicken parmesan sandwich with fresh mozarrella.  My husband had some kind of wrap that had way too many greens in it for me.  But he enjoyed it.

The next day was our worst weather day.  The high was barely 50 degrees, it was raining and there were 25-30 mile an hour winds.

Fortunately, the Whaling Museum was just around the corner from our hotel.  We spent 4.5 hours there.  They had several guided talks and tours and we did them all.  It was so interesting.  Amazing how this little island was the whaling capitol of the world.  I had no idea that the oil used for the street lamps and lanterns in people's homes was whale oil.  We really enjoyed this museum visit.

Although the weather was bad, we would not be deterred from a good meal.  We literally walked about 15 minutes off of main street to a Seafood Market.  We got the best Seafood platter and clam chowder and hiked back to our room.

 This was one of our favorite meals of the week.  There was every kind of seafood you can think of.

The weather turned in our favor the next day and I will show you the rest of our trip on Wednesday.  I hope you will come back to see how we wrapped up this great vacation.

See you Wednesday!