Adventures, Business and Money, Life in the Capital, News, The Daily Feed

Nordstorm Rack Coming To Friendship Heights

Photo courtesy of


courtesy of ‘erin m’

Friendship Heights is finally filling the long vacated Linens ‘N Things shop with a Nordstorm Rack. For those unfamiliar with the shop, it carries merchandise from Nordstrom stores and Nordstrom.com at 50-60% off original Nordstrom prices. Nordstorm Rack also features items purchased specifically for the shop at savings of 30-70% off original prices.

The 41,000 square-foot store, located next to competitor Loehmann’s, is scheduled to open on May 19 at 5333 Wisconsin Avenue, NW. Nordstorm’s currently owns 76 Nordstrom Rack stores in 21 states, with the Friendship Heights store representing the sixth Nordstrom Rack in the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area.

The Daily Feed

Sale: Big Deals on Duds for Active Gals

Photo courtesy of

courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

It takes a lot to get me excited about a sale on clothes, and it’s happening this week. Mail-order seller Title Nine is bringing a blowout sale to Friendship Heights from Thursday through Sunday.

They have fun fitness and casual clothing; a little summer skirt I bought from them is my favorite and has been worth every penny. Some of their clothes have eco-friendly materials, and I like that they use everyday women to model for their catalog.

I’m happy because there’s a limit to what I’ll spend for workout wear, and this promises savings of up to 60%. While I don’t have any ties to the company, I am hoping to have a new pair of their winter running pants soon.

Thrifty District

Thrifty District: Furnishing Your Humble Abode

‘Fausti Mobili – Lago Point XL a terni’
courtesy of ‘Design Conversation’

So, you need furniture. You don’t have a lot of money, but even so, you’d like something a little nicer than the disposable Swedish particleboard options of Ikea or even the tvbedstore.co.uk page. That can mean only one thing: Consignment!!  You’ll probably have to travel a bit, though. But that’s okay, right? You’re going to need a truck anyway.  Consignment is also good for your carbon footprint; it reduces the need for additional furniture to be recycled, keeps what you buy out of the landfill, and items are generally consigned locally, so even transportation is minimal. It’s an environmental triple-win.

Tom and I needed a dining room table shortly after we got married.   Oh yes, we had hit Ikea, but due to the weird, narrow shape of our dining room, had pretty much struck out. Nothing that we liked would fit.  So we wandered around a bit at a consignment shop, and found what we non-hyperbolically refer to as The Perfect Table. Slightly narrow, with pull-out leaves that nearly double it in length, it fits exactly into our space with room to sit around it, and expands easily for our frequent dinner parties.  Why do I wax poetic with the details of a table that by definition, you can’t buy because we’ve already bought it?  Because it’s an example of the glories of consignment furniture- that table that someone else got rid of, probably because it was too small for their new dining room, was the absolute perfect thing for our needs, and it’s high quality, and probably better than we would have been able to afford brand-new. (We bought chairs to go with it an an open-air antiques market, but that’s another post.)

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Arlington, Downtown, Life in the Capital, The Features

Thrifty District: Cheap, but Chic

Flappers

"French Flappers, Parisian Cafe 1920's" by Vintage Lulu on Flickr

In one of my many other lives, I’m a theater costume designer. However, I’m not really a costumer (someone who actually makes clothes), though I sew on occasion, I’m always disappointing my friends by not making them exquisite clothes from scratch. But what I can do is shop with them! Costume designers have to realize a director’s expansive and expensive vision on a sometimes depressingly tight budget in a small amount of time. So in our continuing series on the Thrifty District and how to maximize your fast-depleting funds, I thought I’d give you a little taste of my favorite shops to get cheap yet chic fashion.

Let’s start with the basic rules (getting them out of the way fast so we can have fun with shops!):

Know Yourself and Support Yourself
No, this isn’t some New Age mantra. It means don’t buy anything that doesn’t fit. If it’s too tight or too loose just don’t do it. Don’t get distracted by sizes, they don’t mean anything anyway. If you knew your actual dressmaker size you’d freak out the number is so high – even you superskinny misses! Continue reading