Gift Cards: Beware This Holiday Season

This was sent to me last week and I wanted to pass along the info to all of my readers. With the economy as it is, it would be wise for anyone to do their homework before purchasing gift cards this holiday season.

This is a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards
around the holidays, you need to be careful that the cards will be
honored after the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after
Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though
the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them
from doing this. On the contrary, it is referred to as 'Bankruptcy
Planning". Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be
cautious about.


Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine's to close 150 stores nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owned by Talbots)
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores mo re to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stor~s
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Loews to close down some stores
Dillard's to close some stores

Hope you will consider doing some on-line shopping and maybe make a purchase at WhatEver Accessories.

Is Purple the New Black?

I saw a funny cartoon today where the husband is in the attic and finds a box labeled "old clothes". He searches through it and finds a shirt he likes. He has it on and is showing it off to his wife saying he found it in the attic and doesn't it look great on him. His wife smiles. The shirt....well, it was an old maternity blouse.

This made me realize it's almost time for me to clean out my closet. I think the cooler weather we are having (very unusual for August) is making me a little anxious to start pulling out the Fall clothes. Which is really kind of weird, because I never pulled out all of my summer clothes this year. It was the week we had out of town company that I began to wonder where certain summer tops were and discovered I had never taken them out of my storage boxes. Boy, was that weird. What kind of memory loss was that?

Anyway, Fall is usually my favorite time to shop and find new clothes. I love to see those mannequins all layered and covered up in smoky, earthy colors. Of course, I could never wear all of those layers as I'm not a size zero. I'm trying to convince myself that all I need this year is a few new things to show that I'm "in fashion" for the Fall. I can't wait to see what kind of tops will have this Fall's purple. Purple has always been a favorite color, but I never seem to have it in my closet. Well, this Fall it is supposed to be the "hot" color. Will they be saying purple is the new black? So I was looking through my pictures taken at various locales during my travels and found a few Fall colors. The purple I found was not the saturated purple on the runways, but look how great it looks with the Fall leaves. The reason I included the picture below of Maine's Bubble Rock is because of the saturated blue. This picture was also taken during the Fall. So saturated colors are seen in the Fall and I think that is the key to updating your Fall wardrobe - saturated colors in accessories and tops.