Therefore, as we have oppor­tunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. — Galatians 6:10

ShopOnline2Give.com is really easy to use:

• Select the ministry that you want to help support by clicking on either the Ministry Partners button at the top of this page or the Shopping Pages listing in the left sidebar
  
• Shop at online stores by clicking on the ads on the ministry’s page
• Place your order directly with the online retailer
• We share half of our commission with your ministry
  

Remember to do all your online shopping from the ads on your ministry’s shopping page. Bookmark this page or your favorite ministry’s shopping page to make it easy for you to remember to come back to this site as a portal for all your online shopping needs. Come back often, as we are adding new online retailers on a regular basis.

Just in time for the Christmas shopping season, ShopOnline2Give has been completely updated and refreshed. You’ll find a number of new stores here in many categories. Shop to your heart’s content with the assurance that you’re buying from the top online vendors. And don’t forget our special link to Amazon.com. It’s on a page all by itself. You can access it through the Amazon menu link near the top of the page.

Thank you for using ShopOnline2Give for your online shopping. At least 50% of the commission earned by clicking through to your favorite stores from this site go to the ministry of your choice from the column on the left.

Wishing you a joyous and blessed Christmas holiday season.

Phil Hovatter
Webmaster

Most people arrive at an age in their life where practi­cality takes prece­dence over appear­ances. We get to the point where we do what works for us, what solves our problems, regardless of how it looks.

I’ve reached that point. I’ve crossed the line. I’ve started carrying a “man bag.”

So here’s the deal. Over time, my pants pockets have become over-burdened with stuff. I cram a wallet, car keys, a cell phone, spare change, and any number of other items (breath mints, Kleenex, business cards, and so on) in my pants. I started to feel like a pack mule — a pack mule with droopy drawers. Let’s not forget the other things that I carry (or want to carry) that don’t fit in pants pockets. I don’t go anywhere without either my Kindle or Kobo ebook readers (both available here at ShopOnline2Give from Amazon or Borders, respec­tively). And it’s nice to have an ink pen or two with you, too. There had to be a better way.

Enter the Man Bag. I spent much of the past summer watching several series of “24” on Netflix (now available on ShopOnline in the Enter­tainment section). I watched Jack Bauer save the world over and over again, all while carrying a messenger bag. He stylishly lugged all the stuff he needed while maintaining his manly demeanor. Sure, Jack usually packed a Sig Sauer 9 millimeter in his bag instead of an ebook reader, but I knew I could pull it off, too. Jack Bauer gave me the confi­dence that I could carry a man bag without sacri­ficing my testosterone.

Once I had crossed that line I knew exactly where I had to go to find the perfect man bag. My choice was eBags, a great store that you’ll find in the Clothing & Acces­sories section of each shopping page on ShopOnline. I had gone to them once before when I was in the market for a laptop bag that could accom­modate a 17″ laptop, so I knew their selection of bags of all kinds was second to none. Whether you’re shopping for a backpack, luggage, purse, duffel, or gadget bag of any kind, eBags is the place to go.

eBags’ site is easy to navigate and find what you’re looking for. They have a menu bar along the top of each page and a navigation panel in the left column that lists all their major categories of bags. I clicked on “Messenger Bags” and found literally hundreds of options. But eBags’ sub-menus made it easy to narrow my search of messenger bags to canvas bags, leather bags, bags on sale, vertical bags, man bags, and so forth. I made a beeline for the manly bags.

After consid­erable comparison shopping and agonizing, I decided on a Case Logic model TK Messenger Bag. It looked like it had every­thing I could possibly need and was discounted to only $21 (with an online coupon code that gave me 25% off at checkout time) and a shipping fee of only $4.95. This was a price point that took the pain out of taking the plunge. It arrived via FedEx and I was surprised to see how large it was. It could easily fit my wife’s 15″ laptop and a whole bunch of other stuff.  I tried it out for a week and decided that while I liked having empty pockets and having every­thing I need in one conve­nient place, it was just too big. I felt obligated to put more stuff in it than just my Kindle and pocket clutter to justify carrying it. It was great for carrying to church, where I wanted to take a Bible and notebook and other special stuff, but for the day-to-day pocket emptier, it was too much. But I knew that eBags was still the place to find what I knew I really needed.

On my second foray into eBags, I decided to enter a search term into their search box on their home page. The biggest item I wanted to carry on a routine basis was my Kindle and I found a section for” iPad and ereader cases.” That’s what I’m talking about! I sorted by price, from lowest to highest, and found what I was looking for right away. Again, it was a product by Case Logic (I like their gadget bags) and it was consid­erably smaller than Man Bag 1.0 (aka the “Big Man”). Instead of fitting a 15″ laptop, this one was designed for a 10″ netbook. Just right! It fit my Kindle easily (and my Kobo, too) and still had room for my wallet, keys, hospital security badge, pens, etc. This was Man Bag 2.0, or the “Little Man.” Again using the 25% discount code (enter LINK25OFF1 on the checkout page to get this discount, good throughout the month of November 2010), I got it for just $12 plus a $4.95 shipping fee.

With both orders the product arrived in seven days. Surpris­ingly, eBags paid for FedEx Saturday delivery to get them to me by their projected delivery dates. For just a $4.95 shipping fee, I was favorably impressed.

eBags is always running a variety of sales and frequently has discount codes available. If you’re a person who buys a lot of bags, you can join eBags’ Rewards Program and earn points equal to 5% of every order you place, good for discounts on a future order. They also have an e-newsletter that will keep you advised of sales and special promo­tions. For price, selection, and customer service, eBags is first rate. Highly recommended.

This is a review of an online spice store called My Spice Sage. You can find it on the ShopOnline2Give shopping pages in the Food & Beverage section.

When Sandy and I moved to Norwalk five years ago, some of our new friends helped us with the move and the unpacking of our household goods. There was a team of folks who helped unpack and organize our kitchen for us. When they came to my box(es) of spices, they couldn’t believe it. They had never seen someone with so many spices.

What can I say? I like to eat, I like a lot of ethnic foods, and I like to try new things.

My problem is that now that I live in a rural community, I have no local source for exotic spices. Sure, the grocery store has a big section of spices, but how long have they been sitting on the shelf? Any good spice-er worth his salt (forgive me, please) knows that high quality spices have a relatively short shelf life. If it’s been sitting around for a year, it’s getting stale. After two years, just pitch it. Plus, where in Norwalk, Ohio am I going to find a source for Himalayan Pink Salt or Bhut Jolokia Pepper Powder?

That’s where My Spice Sage comes in. This is a wonderful online specialty store that will entertain you and educate you about more spices than you’ve ever heard of. Having purchased from them myself, I can tell you that they are a great company to buy from.

When you click on the link from ShopOnline to go to My Spice Sage, you will be impressed by how good their site looks and how easy it is to navigate. Get comfortable, because this is a site that you will enjoy spending some time at. You can learn about spices in their section devoted to spice education and their spice blog. Research recipes on their recipe link. (If you submit a recipe to them that uses their spices, you get a 10% discount on your order.) You can even search for spices based on the type of cuisine (such as Mediter­ranean or Cajun, etc.) or by the type of food that you want to cook.

Each individual spice’s entry has infor­mation on its charac­ter­istics, the types of food that you would typically use it for, other names that the spice is known by, and more. Every spice is available in quantities of 1 oz. up to 50 lbs., with some of them available in a variety of containers. Buying an ounce of any spice lets you sample it without making a huge commitment to it.

My Spice Sage always has some kind of free giveaway going. At the time of this writing, you get a free 16 oz. bag of turkey brine seasoning with every order. Plus, with every order you get to choose a free 1 oz. sample of the spice of your choice. You can always shop with complete confi­dence because My Spice Sage offers a risk-free, no questions asked, money-back guarantee on every­thing that they sell. Shipping is free on orders of $40 or more and just $4 on smaller orders.

Here’s what I bought from My Spice Sage:

• Chipotle Pepper, Granu­lated: I’m a chipotle junkie. I love it’s spicy kick and smoky goodness. I use this stuff on every­thing except oatmeal. I bought a 4 oz. bottle with my first order. I’ll opt for a bigger quantity on my next order.
• Hickory Smoke Powder: In the past when I’ve wanted to add hickory smoke flavoring to a dish I’ve reached for “liquid smoke.” I’ve found something even better with this product from My Spice Sage. It is delicious, potent, and more versatile than liquid smoke. Makes a great addition to dry rubs. I will always have a supply of this on hand from now on.
• Pork Chop Seasoning: I confess. I haven’t actually tried this yet because I don’t eat a lot of red meat, but I’m looking forward to trying it. (This was the free 1 oz. sample that I selected at check-out time.)
• Bhut Jolokia Pepper Powder: This was My Spice Sage’s free giveaway offer when I placed my order. It’s something that I probably never would have tried unless they gave it to me. They market it as the world’s hottest chili powder. For you chili pepper experts out there, this bad boy is rated at 1 million Scoville units of heat. To give you some comparison, jalepeno peppers are rated at 5,000; Dave’s Insanity Sauce get a score of 180,000. A tiny sprinkle of this will make your eyes light up and your tongue say “howdy!” I’m consid­ering my 1 oz. sample to be a lifetime supply. It’s intense, but I like it!
• Quinoa: My Spice Sage doesn’t just sell spices and seasonings. They also sell other hard-to-find ingre­dients. I’ve been wanting to try quinoa (a nutty and tasty grain product that’s high in protein) for some time, but even though it’s available in local stores, how much of it are they selling and how long has it been sitting on their shelf? Honesty check: I still haven’t tried it — but I will, soon.

I’ve been very happy with every product that I’ve tried from My Spice Sage and will most certainly use them as my regular vendor for spices and other exotic ingre­dients. Their quality, selection, and prices are hard to beat. My only complaint about them was their slow shipping time. It took almost two weeks to receive my order. I don’t know if this is normal for them based on one order, but when you buy from them plan in advance.  While freshness and variety are their strong points, speedy shipping isn’t.

The AeroG­arden is an indoor, compact, self-contained hydro­ponic gardening system. They come in a variety of sizes and colors with prices starting at only $49, including free shipping. They call it a “kitchen garden” because it can easily fit on most people’s kitchen counter tops or any small space, allowing you to grow fresh vegetables, herbs, or flowers all year long.

Ever since we first saw this product adver­tised, Sandy and I have wanted one. We finally took the plunge when Sandy saw a good sale price on one of their models. If you’re inter­ested in this product, visit their site every week to shop for sales. AeroG­arden looks for any excuse to run a sale. (Don’t forget to jump there each time from your favorite ministry’s shopping page on ShopOnline2Give.)

The sale that Sandy found was so good that she bought two units, both of them the AeroG­arden Space­Saver 6 model, in an appro­pri­ately space-age silver color. Both came with a Gourmet Herbs seed pod set (a combi­nation of basil, thyme, oregano, dill, mint and chives). She also wanted to grow salad greens, so she ordered one of those seed pod sets separately.

Assembly and planting of our new AeroG­a­rdens was a snap. The whole process took just a few minutes. Then the waiting began…

Fortu­nately, we didn’t have to wait long. Within just a couple of days the salad greens started to sprout. We were advised in the planting kit that the herbs are slower growing and would take longer, and we’ve found that to be true. It’s been a real hoot for us to check our gardens every day to see how much they’ve grown. The salad greens literally doubled in size every day for several days in a row!

Mainte­nance is a piece of cake. The units we bought have sensors that tell us when to add nutrients and water, but even if you buy models that don’t feature this, all you do is remember to add nutrients every two weeks and water as needed. The nutrients are provided with your kit, either as tablets or packets of liquid.

Yesterday, less than four weeks from planting day, we enjoyed our first harvest of salad greens. Instruc­tions advise never harvesting more than one-third of the growth at a time. Our first harvest provided enough lettuce for a huge dinner salad for both of us. Today we’re having spaghetti for lunch, seasoned with fresh basil from our herb garden. (See our photo below.)

Like I said earlier, AeroG­a­rdens come in a wide variety of sizes and config­u­ra­tions, ranging from 3-pod models to extra-tall 7-pod units. They offer lots of seed pods for each type of unit allowing you to grow many different types of herbs; vegetables such as cherry or heirloom tomatoes, green beans, different kinds of peppers; and several kinds of flowers. They even have a pod set for growing your own tea plants! What’s more, they have kits for using your AeroG­arden to start seedlings for trans­planting to your outdoor garden.

We’ve been thrilled with our AeroG­a­rdens. They are ideal for apartment dwellers, families with kids, classroom projects or home schoolers, shut-ins, dorm rooms, or anyone who’s become convinced that they don’t have a green thumb but want some home grown freshness in their diet. Growing some of your own food is fun and is a great idea. AeroG­arden makes it fool-proof. Highly recommended.

by guest blogger Sandy Hovatter
You can visit Sandy’s blog at www.ApprehendingGrace.com

Near the bottom of the list of vendors, nestled in the “Software and Web Devel­opment” category, you’ll find a jewel when it comes to cost effective, high quality computer training. In today’s job market, most people need up-to-date computer training, either to be more marketable to a new employer or to become more valuable to your current one. Lynda.com is the best, most conve­nient, and least expensive way I know of to upgrade your computer skills.

Whether you want to learn how to get the most out of sophis­ti­cated, commercial software like Adobe® InDesign® or learn how to use Twitter or Facebook, you’ll find what you need at Lynda.com, at a great price. More about price later. First, about the training.

Courses, Courses, Courses
So far, I’ve taken courses in InDesign (9 hours), and WordPress (5 hours). I took both courses after I had been using both products for a couple of years. And I learned a great deal! On my list for future training are:

• Quick­Books (6 hours)
• Microsoft Access (5 hours)
• Acrobat Pro (9 hours)
• Several Photoshop courses (Lynda.com offers 21 different Photoshop CS3 courses ranging in length from 1.25 hours to 20.75 hours!)
• I might even take the Facebook course (3 hours).

It’s not like I have tons of time on my hands for training, but Lynda.com makes training easy. Each course is broken into short video segments – usually 3–8 minutes long. You can easily watch a segment or two during lunch, while waiting for a phone call, or simply when you need a short break. The quality is very high, the content is very good and the breadth of offering is phenomenal.

The Lynda.com training library includes more than 730 courses that are available 24/7. You can easily search through the courses by subject, software, vendor, or author.

Did I Mention the Great Price?
Every one of their 730 courses offers free video tutorials so that you can get an idea of the course. The free modules might be as much as half an hour of training. That’s plenty to leave you wanting more. So when you’re ready to learn more, you can subscribe for the low price of $25/month or $250/year. Premium member­ships, which include exercise files so you can practice along with the instructor, are $37.50/month or $375/year. Personally, I subscribe on a monthly basis when our workload is light or when we have an immediate need for training. Over the course of a year, I might purchase four to six one-month memberships.

I’ve taken profession seminars on several different software packages. A great price is $149 for a one day course. $1,499 for three days is not uncommon. That would be anywhere from six months to six years worth of Lynda.com training. And with Lynda.com, you have training in more than 730 courses, not just one.

A final thought: A subscription to Lynda.com is a great gift for just about everyone who uses a computer.

Don’t forget to jump to Lynda.com from your favorite ministry’s shopping page on www.ShopOnline2Give.com.

ShopOnline2Give.com is delighted to announce that we have written our first payout check to our ministry partner River of Life Christian Church in Norwalk, Ohio. Congrat­u­la­tions to River of Life for having a suffi­cient volume of online sales to cross our payout threshold and receive our first commission check. Payouts are made quarterly to those ministries who have had enough sales to trigger a commission check from our various online networks of vendors. Ministries who don’t receive a payout in any given quarter have their commis­sions roll over and accumulate until they reach our payout threshold. Every purchase counts.

You can help your ministry of choice receive a commission check by remem­bering to do your online shopping here at ShopOnline2Give.com. Tell your friends and family to help support your ministry by shopping here as well. The more the merrier, the less the scarier! There are no log-ins, no passwords, no member­ships, and it costs you nothing to help earn online sales commis­sions by shopping at your favorite online stores for products ranging from books and clothing to power tools and gardening supplies. With over 150 top online vendors available to you from each ministry’s shopping page, there is truly something for everyone.

Keep your eye on this blog space, as we will begin posting notices about special limited-time sales, offers, and money saving coupon codes from our various vendors to help you stretch your dollar further. This site is designed first and foremost to raise money for our ministry partners, but our second goal is to provide our shoppers with the best shopping experience from the best vendors at the best prices possible.

To God be the glory.

Seriously, folks, when you start to see Christmas decora­tions in all the stores, you can tell that Halloween can’t be far away! It used to be that retailers waited until Thanks­giving to roll out their Christmas sales, but every year it gets earlier and earlier. With nearly 130 retailers on our ShopOnline shopping pages, my email box is flooded every day with announce­ments from stores about their pre-Christmas sales that are going on right now.

I have two objec­tives with this site. The first is that I want to earn tons of commis­sions for all of my partner ministries. I want  commission checks to be rolling through here on their way to the churches, mission­aries, and ministries that we support through shopping on these pages.

But my second objective is that you, the shopper, get the absolute best deal that you can when you shop online here. I appre­ciate you using this site to help fund these ministries, and I know that the ministries themselves are praising God for the revenue that comes their way as a result of your shopping, but we all want you to not spend a penny more than you have to when you shop here, so I want to tell you about these sales.

The number of sales that are running online now are just too numerous to list. You can pretty safely assume that almost everyone is having a Christmas sale of some kind right now. The best time to shop seems to be on weekends. More stores run specials on weekends than any other time. Another way to save while you shop here is to find online discount codes, write them down, and come back to your ministry’s shopping page here at ShopOnline and use them at checkout with your retailer. You get the checkout discount, but your ministry still gets the commission from your purchases.

Here’s another smart money tip — save some of your Christmas shopping money for after Christmas. This is a lesson I have to re-learn every year. After-Christmas sales are even better than before-Christmas sales. All the retailers are looking to dump their overstocked merchandise as quickly as they can after Christmas. You can really scoop up some great deals in the couple of weeks following Christmas. We were able to give late gifts to several friends and business associates that we didn’t think we could afford to buy for at Christmas, because we got at really deep discounts by waiting a week (or two or three) after Christmas.

So if you’ve got to have the latest and greatest Christmas wish list gizmo, by all means, buy it now before the stores run out. But if you’re the kind of person who can delay grati­fi­cation (especially if delaying brings the oppor­tunity for more grati­fi­cation), here’s a bright idea for you — the Orthodox Christian church celebrates Christmas on January 6th. Not being Orthodox myself, I’ve always thought this to be strange (most likely because I’ve never heard their reason for it), but from a shopping perspective it just sounds downright smart. So buy presents for the little kids on your list so they have something they can tear open under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning, but strike a deal with the grown-ups on your shopping list to celebrate Orthodox Christmas this year — and save a pile of cash.

Have you visited our partner ministries’ shopping pages lately? We’ve grown to 150 online stores. It’s gotten so that we can honestly say that if we don’t have it, you don’t need it. Many of the stores that we offer are companies that you’ve bought from for years, either online or in their “brick and mortar” stores located in shopping centers and malls.

So why should you shop online here at “ShopOnline” with stores like Walmart or Best Buy or Men’s Wearhouse or Sally Beauty Supply or…? Well, you get the idea. We offer a lot of stores that might be right down the street from you. Why buy from their online site instead of just popping into their store?

There are several good answers to that questions. The most obvious from the stand­point of ShopOnline is that when you buy from the store, they don’t pay a commission to the ministry of your choice. This site exists to generate commis­sions from online shopping for the ministry of your choice. You’ll pay no more for having shopped online, but your ministry will receive a commission on all of your purchases from this site.

The second reason is that you can often find the same product cheaper online than from the same vendor’s brick and mortar stores. The cost of doing business is less online, so the retailers can often offer better prices to online customers. I have read lots of letters to the editor of computer magazines saying that they have shopped online at BestBuy.com (or wherever) for a computer or a cable or whatever, and then gone to the physical store to buy the item, only to find that it is consid­erably more expensive in the store than on the store’s website. The pastor of one of the churches supported by ShopOnline told us that when he was in the market for an auto part this summer, he found it online for almost half what it cost in the parts store. So shopping online can save you money, even if you have to pay for shipping (which a lot of times you don’t). Comparison shop at your ministry’s shopping page before you buy something at a store.

The next reason is that there is a greater selection of products online. I have a Super Walmart just a couple of miles from me and it is crammed full of “stuff,” but they don’t have as much “stuff” as Walmart.com (one of our retail partners here on ShopOnline) offers on their website. Walmart.com has more than one million products for sale on their site — far more than they could stock at a local store. Their website doesn’t have every­thing that the store has (for instance, you can’t buy many grocery items online), but they have literally tens of thousands of other products available online that they don’t stock in their stores. Walmart.com isn’t the only store this is true of. Any of our online retail partners carry more products on their websites than they stock in their stores. So shop for hard-to-find items on your ministry’s shopping page. You might be surprised at what you can find.

The last reason I’m going to lay out for you can save you a lot of money. Local stores might have a small section of closeout merchandise, but many of their websites have a ton of deeply discounted closeouts. I’ve bought some brand new merchandise for pennies on the dollar in the closeout sections of some of the retailers featured on ShopOnline — and every time I did, not only did I save a pile of money, I also earned a commission for one of our ministry partners.

I used to work in a computer store near Chicago. Many, many times I would give a great product demon­stration and sales pitch to a customer, only to lose him to a different store that sold the same thing cheaper than we did. We called those people SHABEs — Shop Here And Buy Elsewhere. I encourage you to become a SHABE (to some extent). Browse the aisles at local stores, then come back to ShopOnline and comparison shop the same products from the same store’s online sites. (I do not recommend you take the time and build up the hopes of a commis­sioned sales­person at a store only to order online to save some bucks. If someone gives you great service and depend on a sales commission for all or part of their income, do the right thing and buy from that person.)

ShopOnline can be a powerful tool for raising money for your ministry. I works every time you use it. Buying from the online sites of some of your favorite retail stores can help your ministry finan­cially. Bookmark your ministry’s shopping page and check it first for all of your shopping needs — those things that you have always bought online, and a surprising array of things that you’ve never thought of shopping online for before.

When I started building this site in the summer of 2009, I asked many of my friends who shop online where they shop and what they buy online. One of the most enthu­si­astic responses that I got was from Lesa who is a big fan of a particular premium tea vendor (who will remain unnamed until they agree to be listed on this site). I pushed Lesa’s “tea button” and got about an hour’s worth of infor­mation about the virtues of premium tea — not the kind of stuff you buy at the grocery store, but the really good stuff. As a result of Lesa’s passion for good tea, I signed a number of high-end tea dealers as partic­i­pating vendors for “ShopOnline.”

Your humble Webmaster fell in love with the tea sites that signed on with us and promptly placed an order with Mighty Leaf Tea for a green and white tea sampler assortment. The price for this 30-teabag assortment was $21.95, plus $7.95 for shipping and handling. With every order, Mighty Leaf lets you select two free teabags of your choice, so I received 32 teabags in seven different varieties stored in an attractive tea tin.

It was love at first sip.

The first variety I tried was Green Tea Tropical, a healthful, low-caffeine green tea infused with a melange of sweet, fruity flavors. Rocked my world. I’ve now tried all the varieties in the sample assortment, which also included Mountain Spring Jasmine, Organic Hojicha, White Orchard, and Marrakesh Mint. I have to be honest with you, some of these flavors didn’t appeal to me — until I actually tasted them. Jasmine is too floral and perfumy for me, but I like this tea in spite of that. Mint tea has never been “my cup of tea,” but I love Mighty Leaf’s Marrakesh Mint. It pleas­antly surprises me every time I taste it.

So what’s the difference between “the good stuff” and the grocery store stuff? A good tea is like a fine wine — it has lots of “complexity.” Different parts of your tongue register a rainbow of comple­mentary flavors. It’s a party in your mouth. After I’ve had a couple of cups of grocery store tea, my tongue feels like Astroturf. Not so with the good stuff. The teas I’ve tried from Mighty Leaf have a smooth, almost creamy, consis­tency. Bye-bye “turf tongue.” And the huge variety of teas available from the premium vendors offer something for every palette. I’ve now got a tea wish list as long as my arm.

Suffice it to say that I look forward to a cup or two of tea every day now. It has become my 15-minute vacation to peaceful, exotic lands.

If you did the math in your head when I laid out the price of the package that I bought, you probably came to the conclusion that I’m paying almost a dollar for each cup of tea. I’m happy to point out that you would be quite wrong! I’m a big guy and I brew a big cup of tea, about 16 ounces each. Every Mighty Leaf teabag (excuse me, they refer to them as “silken, hand-woven, biodegradable tea pouches”) is good for a minimum of two of these mega-mugs of tea, sometimes three. That cuts the price per cup to less than half of what you would have guessed at first. If you brew normal-sized cups, you might be able to get even better mileage.

Sometimes, for the third time that I use a “tea pouch,” I’ll use two of different flavors. Tonight I enjoyed a blend of Marrakesh Mint and Mountain Spring Jasmine. An outstanding pairing! As a former Diet Coke addict, I am happy to bliss­fully sip a couple of mugs of tea per day, rather than mindlessly gulp down vast quantities of unhealthy soda pop. Another of our tea vendors, Adagio Tea, charges much less for shipping and offers free shipping on orders of $50 or more, and with all of our vendors, loose tea is a more economical option than teabags.

So now I’m a premium tea convert. I recently read an interview with a man from England who was in Australia for a conference he was speaking at. The inter­viewer asked him if he would consider relocating to Oz. The Brit replied that the country was gorgeous and the weather was incredible, but he couldn’t find a decent cup of tea in the whole country. Tea was the deal breaker. I’m not that far over the edge yet, but I spend a lot of time browsing the tea site here on ShopOnline, planning my next purchase.

I encourage you to take the plunge into the world of premium teas. They make outstanding gifts (I just celebrated my spiritual birthday — 38 years as a follower of Jesus — so if any of you want to bless me with a belated birthday gift…) and they are a real treat for yourself, as well. And all of the tea vendors at ShopOnline pay a nice commission for the ministry of your choice, so place your order, brew a cup, put your feet up, and prepare to get cozy.

In order to test the links on this relatively new Web site, I’ve done a number of small sample purchases from various stores found on our church and charity partners’ pages. Up to this time, I had never personally shopped at BookCloseouts.com. Here’s my impression of their site and service.

While you won’t find the newest and hottest titles at a closeout retailer, BookCloseouts does have a nice selection of books of all types from a variety of authors, some well-known and others obscure. They typically sell their books at 50% — 70% off the full retail price, so it can be well worth your time to sift through their rapidly changing inventory to find some real bargains.

I was drawn to a sale that they were promoting at the time in their “Religion & Spiri­tu­ality” section, where they were offering books at 50% off their already deeply discounted prices. As you can guess from the name “Religion & Spiri­tu­ality,” they had all kinds of books in this section from every imaginable religious perspective, but it wasn’t hard for me to find a number of titles that captured my interest.

I placed two orders. The first was for ten copies of a small group Bible study guide on the Gospel of Luke, written by Max Lucado. List price was $8 per copy — I got them for $2 each. The second order was for four individual books, two hardbacks and two paper­backs. I got all four of them for just over $10. All books were well packaged and received in excellent condition.

I’m happy to report that BookCloseouts doesn’t inflate their shipping rates to squeeze some extra profit from each sale, like some mail-order vendors do. The set of ten Bible study guides cost $5.25 to ship, while postage on the four books that made up my second order was a little under $5.

BookCloseouts offers a number of shipping prior­ities and prices. I was in no hurry to receive my orders, so I went with the cheapest option both times. Both shipments arrived in about two weeks.

Based on my experience with BookCloseouts.com, I am happy to recommend them to discerning bargain hunters. As of this writing, they have a new sale on “Scratch & Dent” books from every category at 85% off the retail price. If you can live with a less-than-perfect volume, you can find some crazy deals on books while this offer lasts.