I love the “industrial farmhouse” look. Metal + old school furniture vibes and chippy paint makes my heart go pitter-patter.

Throw in a little color (preferably aqua or teal, of course), and I’m in decor heaven.

Which is why I just about flipped my lid as I was browsing Anthropologie’s extra 40% off sale this past weekend (it ended yesterday; sorry) and spotted these gorgeous pale blue metal bistro chairs.

For a very reasonable price.

bistro chair

Remember that big farmhouse table I mentioned that Shaun will build for the dining room in the new house?

Well, it will be surrounded by these beauties.

Yup. I bought them. She says so calmly as if she hadn’t feverishly clack-clacked away at her computer like a lunatic, having her husband read out gift card numbers to her (I’ll explain in a sec), checking every couple of seconds to make sure they hadn’t disappeared from her cart, and only fully exhaling when she’d received a confirmation email that the purchase had gone through.

Because good deals on Anthro’s website go fast, y’all. Like, faster than a toddler who just noticed you left the back door open. (FREEEEEDOOOOOM).

Sure enough, within in an hour after I ordered, they were all gone.

In FACT,  sadly, the day after I ordered them, I got an email notifying me that they had canceled 4 of them. Figures. But! I get to keep 6, and I was already planning to mix and match them, so I’m still calling it a win (even if I did spend an hour on the phone with a very confused Anthro employee trying to explain to him that the amount I’d been credited back was not equal to the cost of 4 of the chairs plus their tax…and could he please remedy that?).

But back to what a good deal they were.

I’ve never bought a single stick of furniture from Anthro before for obvious (E.X.P.E.N.S.I.V.E.) reasons, but these were considerably cheaper than anything comparable for the size/quality. I checked. These were $78 + tax/shipping each (they were on sale and then an extra 40% off). Wayfair and Joss and Main have the exact same chair in various colors–although not “sky,” so they wouldn’t have won me over anyway for $180+ EACH.

Here’s the where the best part comes in.

Have you heard of Raise.com?

It’s a site that sells gift cards at a discount–sometimes nominal (think 7%), sometimes quite substantial (some restaurant cards are discounted by 30%).

Well.

They sell Anthro gift cards too. So, we scooped up a few of those at 15% off, which means we were able to take 15% off the top of the extra 40% off of the already sale price.

Insert an incredibly awkward victory dance around my living room, in socks no less, and you pretty much know how I felt about that.

Ultimately, what that means is that I am getting each chair shipped to my door for $72 (tax + shipping included).

We’ve also used Raise.com for Lowe’s gift cards (which provide up to an extra 10% off the top of building supply purchases–which quickly adds up when you’re making large purchases like lumber for framing an entire house).

My kids’ favorite place to eat out is Chick-fil-a, so we stocked up on cards at about a 20% discount.

Marshall’s/TJ Maxx are also faves for buying gifts, inexpensive sandals for the girls, and feeding my ever-growing throw pillow addiction (just kidding, babe! nervous giggle), so an extra 18% off for one of their cards was a no-brainer.

And that barely scratches the surface of all of the brands that they offer.

And no, Raise.com is not sponsoring this post. I just like finding (and sharing) easy, money-saving hacks.

If you’re so inclined to try them out for yourself, you can use this link for $5 off of your first purchase (I get one too–win, win).

Update: a reader expressed concern because Raise has some bad reviews, but I just wanted to clarify that our experience has been very good. There have been a couple of bum Lowe’s gift cards, but our money was promptly refunded, and we have already used all of the ones I mentioned above with zero incident or problem.

Oh, and stay tuned for Wednesday when I show you 3 different possible design boards for the look I’ll put together using these chairs in the new dining room. (My husband likes to lift an amused eyebrow at my design-loving, gun-jumping self, considering that decorating the dining room is likely many, many {many} months in the future).

Until then, Happy Monday, y’all! Or at least Decent Monday (just in case, “Happy” and “Monday” seemed a little too incongruous to be included in a sentence so close together).

dear monday

The only thing that could make me like this meme more is if they had actually included the comma that should be after “you” and made it grammatically correct. #nerd

0 Comments

  1. Shouldn’t it be “doesn’t” instead of don’t? I’m a grammar nerd too :-). That’s why I can’t stand that song!

  2. I would totally buy chairs months before I needed them if it meant i could be a super saver. Carter’s had a gi-NORMOUS baby sale last week, and I stocked up on boy AND girl stuff b/c we won’t find out the gender until tomorrow, but I just couldn’t miss that sale! Whatever we won’t need will just get returned.

  3. Using re-sold gift cards bought online can be very if-y. I will be interested to hear how your experience with Raise.com turns out. Reviews online have too many negatives for me to try it, and too many reports to The Best Business Bureau.

    1. I guess I wasn’t clear. Because I was trying to tell you how my experience with Raise has turned out. 🙂 We’ve been using them for months and haven’t had a truly bad experience yet. There have been a couple of times that the Lowe’s cards have not worked or at least once that they never arrived in the mail, and Raise has always refunded the cards without a fight. The rest of the time, (including all of the cards that I have bought for my purchases), they’ve had exactly the amount on them listed and worked like a charm. I’m sure others have had bad experiences, but we’re really liking it.

I love hearing from you guys!