Look! Our Amazon Loot Came in on Father’s Day.

Mia has long been asking me to buy her bath paint – she started to do so after watching those toy review channels in YouTube. She would be very creative in asking me to look for it, by telling me that she can learn mixing colors, painting, etc, while taking a bath. However, this “bath paint” is not available anywhere here in Manila – I tried looking for it in Toys R Us, Toy Kingdom, but all I got were blank stares. So Mia suggested that I ask my friends if they can buy it for us at Amazon, yes, she’s smart like that. Good thing my mommy-friend Mica, who happens to own an online shop (how convenient!), has an open box and an Amazon Prime account (thank you, universe). I searched for bath paints at Amazon –  Mia wanted the Sofia the First kind but it was out of stock so we had to settle for Dora and Friends. While searching, I saw very cheap Crayola add-ons which I purchased too, these are items Mia would need in school. Amazon Add-ons are the best! I also bought my husband a pair of shoes and packs of boxers – which became our Father’s Day gift to him. 🙂

We’ve been buying from Amazon for quite some time now, it’s our go-to shop for hard-to-find items (like that bath paint) and cheap supplies. We also usually purchase shoes for my kids and husband there since most of the brands they carry have wide sizes (W). It’s fairly difficult to find the right shoe size for Mia and Michael here since their feet are wide. Toys, costumes and party supplies are also very cheap at Amazon especially if they go on sale – that’s why we time our purchases during holidays (think Black Friday and Cyber Monday after Thanksgiving)

Here are some tips if you plan to buy from Amazon:

Always check the Today’s deals page. They always have a wide variety of items – you can choose and search what you need, and filter the selections too, for easier browsing

• Consider buying the suggested add-ons – these are small and low-cost items that you can buy together with your orders.
• Buy in bulk. Buying in bulk will enable you to save on shipping fees, some stores or sellers will ship for free if you reach a certain amount.
• Check and compare the prices of the item among different merchants. Amazon has a lot of sellers and it’s almost impossible that the item you are trying to buy is only available at one seller.
• Compute the total cost of acquisition – that means the price of the item, tax  and shipping(both will depend on where the item will be sourced). Sometimes you end up not buying on Amazon if the tax and shipping will be very costly.
• Search for coupons. Make sure to search if there are available coupons, you can save a few bucks using these.

There are a lot of options on how you can ship your purchases here in Manila. You can have Amazon ship directly – I have not used this service though- but you can find information here. You can also use US shopping service and carts like LBC’s shipping cart or My-shopping box, Johnny air plus or, you can ask your US-based family and friends to receive the items there and then ship it here!

P.S. You can view Mia’s reaction here when the delivery man came today with our stuff.

Happy Father’s day to all the fathers out there! Hope you had a good, fun-filled, weekend!