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This year Microsoft has released some features to make shopping a little easier. Today I’ll walk you through how I use Microsoft Edge and Bing in tandem to get my gift-giving done in record time while shopping for my Mom, Dad, and younger brother.
First off, I’ve set up a Collection in my MSFT Edge browser to keep my gift ideas straight by using notes. (This is an awesome article about how to use Collections.) I like to organize my collection with Notes first so I can keep on track.
Really-Honey-Just-Send-Me-A-Picture Gift: Mom
Now that I have that out of the way, I’m going to start looking through Microsoft Bing to see if I can find some inspiration for mom’s gift.
My mom is someone who has excellent taste in fashion but won’t drop money on herself very often. After poking around in the gift guide and selecting “Gifts for Women” I saw “Designer Handbag” in the Gift Ideas for Women carousel at the top of the page—perfect!
I know my mom loves Michael Kors, I’ll filter my results to show for Michael Kors handbags between $0 and $100. For the first pass, there are some good options, but nothing I think would be quite her style. So, I’ll expand my price range to $150 which brought up a cute clutch at $148.50. Since this is a bit out of my price range, I dragged it to the in Bing Shopping so I can go check on it to see if the price drops into my range later. If dragging and dropping isn’t your thing you can also turn price tracking on in the product overview which will automatically drop the item into your Price Track Collection in Bing Shopping. With that figured out, I can update my note for Mom’s Gift in my Holiday Shopping collection in the Microsoft Edge browser and start searching for dad’s gift.
The-Chef-Who-Has-Everything Gift: Dad
Alright, one down, two to go. Dad is up next. With the pandemic this year, my dad has been playing it safe and not eating out, easy to do when you’re a chef! When it comes to kitchen gadgets, he has them all, but what he doesn’t have is tools to make cocktails at home. The tools I’m looking for are a mixing glass or a set of tins, a mixing spoon, jigger, orange peeler, cocktail strainer, and a set of small tongs. This should be a good assortment of tools for him to use to make just about any cocktail.
After the first search results pulled up I realized that doing this piece by piece will get expensive quickly since a mixing glass can easily be upwards of $45. I’m going to try and find a Cocktail kit that’s good quality, has the tools I want for my dad and is less than $100. As a bonus, I’m going to try and see if I can find something from a small business. To pinpoint what I’m looking for, I’m going to search for “Cocktail Mixing Kit” and filter by Etsy.
And there we have it! Within a minute I was able to find the perfect Cocktail Mixing Kit from a small business listed on Etsy. Looking at the comprehensive product information I can see that this 20 piece set is on sale for 15% off. Score! I saved this to my “Holiday Shopping” collection under the sticky Note for dad and now I’m off to the next.
The-I-Don’t-Want-Anything Gift: Brother
Finally, it’s time to find something for my brother. When we were younger I’d know months in advance what I was going to get him, but now that we’re adults it’s a bit harder. Since I’m not sure what my brother is into right now, I’d like to find something that is from a store that I know he shops at in case he wants to exchange it. Based on what I can find in the Deal Hub I’m going to check out Kohl’s and as luck would have it, this site has coupons!
(Learn more about Microsoft Shopping in our Microsoft Edged Insiders.) And there it is, a valet tray! Perfect, it’s useful and simplistic and easy to return/exchange if needed.
Now that I can see what I’m getting for everyone, I rest can easy knowing that I’ve got my holiday shopping completed.
Happy Holidays,
Alyxandria (she/her)
Community Manager – Bing Insiders
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
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