Remember in The Nutty Professor when Eddie Murphy, all decked out in his Prof. Klump fatsuit, takes Jada Pinkett to see a cheesy stand-up comic (awesomely played by Dave Chappelle) and for no reason the comedian yells out “women be shoppin!â€?  Well, as much as I like to challenge the stereotype that colors all females as crazed spendthrifts who squeal at the sight of really nice towels or killer platforms priced at 75-percent off, I have to admit that in my case it’s kind of true. I may not squeal because I’m a feminist, but I am very guilty of letting out a gasp and an “Oh my God this is so awesome I need to have it!†at the sight of even the dumbest things, like a salt-and-pepper shaker shaped like a topless sunbather, then swiping my debit card even if the balance on it is dangerously close to zero. Lucky for me, as your new Urban Scout blogger, I now have an excuse to buy a bunch of stuff I don’t need and call it “research.† And lucky for you, I am pretty broke most of the time so it means I have to dig for killer bargains wherever I can find them. And I’m not afraid to disclose any sweet deals I get my greedy little hands on.

Make-up is one of those things that I could spend a fortune on (I do spend a small fortune on it), but the reality is, I rarely wear it. It’s the promise of what it may do for me that’s so alluring. And colors—I really like colors. 

There are no real indie places to get make-up in this town, you either go to a drug store for the low end or you go to Sephora or a department store for the high end. And this is why I’m a fan of this chain: Ulta Beauty (corner of Rosecrans and Midway Drive, additional locations in La Jolla Village Center, Carlsbad Forum, San Marcos and Oceanside)—because they bring the low and the high together in one behemoth store. And San Diego has a new one, centrally located in the Sports Arena area, next to the old Henry’s, aka the new Sprouts.

So many events, so little time.

On March 22, from 6 to 9 p.m., Michelle from M Wine Consulting will be doing a casual class on wine at Chillers in Pacific Beach. In spite of their unfortunate name, the store does have some very cute clothing inside. And drinking and shopping go together like peanut butter and chocolate, so there. You can sign up for this evening on their website.

Rust, a store in Old Town that I LOVE for their amazing chocolates and just all-around awesome old time-y vibe, is hosting a coffee and chocolate pairing featuring Caffe Calabria and Saint Jacques Chocolate on Friday, March 23, from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. They want you to RSVP by March 20 via their email at events@rustgeneral.com. Rust really is a great little gift store, home store, sweet shop and a must-see when you’re in Old Town—they’re right on the square.

There is an actual store called The Stamp Addict. And they don’t carry peace sign stamps. 

Which is sadly, what brought me here. But never mind—despite the headline, I can’t see myself becoming an stamp addict. Still, this store was pretty fun. There were definitely some mod and organic stamps to be found that would make for some fun crafting. I loved the different  types of ink pads, some matte, some glitter; there were even fluid “chalk” stamp pads in pretty-pretty colors. And a ton of paper. In more pretty-pretty colors.

Turns out they have an array of classes—there’s one on card-making and another on stenciling. And several classes on using Copic Markers, which they also carry, and which I actually do covet. So all in all, if you’re a stamp addict, or a scrapbooking fiend, or just an idle crafter looking for inspiration, check this place out as an alternative to Michael’s. Added bonus: it’s in the same strip mall as Rosie’s Calico Cupboard, the bestest, most grandma quilt shop in town!

The Stamp Addict 
7151 El Cajon Blvd. Suite K
College Area,
619-667-5060

I was visiting Happy Buddha, my favorite place to take my shoes off, when I noticed the sign: THE FRUIT SHOP. Not exactly descriptive but still enticing. What did that mean?

Turns out it means mangosteen (which look vaguely like fairytale eggplants on the outside but have soft white cloves inside). It means rambutan (which is a spiny green and red fruit that from the outside looks like a sea creature and when cut open resembles a woman’s sweet spot). It means star fruit and jack fruit and more common, but no less exotic, fresh coconut. It’s a simple shop—completely open to the air out front and just a few bins of remarkable, fragrant, prehistoric looking fruit. It really is all they have, save for the coconut water. Their stock changes with the seasons and availability. The folks running the place are super kind and helpful.  If you’re looking for exotic fruits, or just want to teach your kids or friends about them, this is the place.

The Fruit Shop
619 Convoy Street
Kearny Mesa
858-565-6654

So I have a crazy dog. She’s from a shelter and part Husky and I always figured that her neurosis and slight imbalance was due to those two facts. And, hey, she wears her crazy well—she’s simply gorgeous with piercing sky-blue eyes. Thing is, until recently, her crazy carried over to her food. She fake buried it. She buried it for real. She barked endlessly about it. But she did not eat it. We tried organic fresh food, we tried junkie grocery store food and everything in between. And she barely ate. Lived off fumes. Until recently.

I went in to Pet Me Please on Adams Avenue and explained, as I often do, that my dog didn’t eat. Now I’ve done this at various pet shops across town and mostly I’m met with sighs, or worse, a slap down (yes, recently a pet store employee told me it was my fault because I clearly was caving in to her craziness and therefore perpetuating it). But at Pet Me Please, they asked me several questions about my pet and then went and got me a handful of samples—little bags of different foods, for free. And then they pulled out one in particular and said, “I think this one may do it.” Why? Because it’s food that looks and apparently eats like a treat. Stella & Chewy’s are healthy raw food pressed into patties. Yep, they’re a bit more expensive. But she loved them. And after feeding my dog these things for three weeks, she’s kind of a lot less crazy. The eyes still say wild, but the behavior has mellowed—because she’s now eating. Actual real food. There are a lot of local pet stores that sell smaller brands of real food and I urge you to go to them over the big box stores, but I’m really partial to the little hidden gem on Adams Avenue.

And fine, artisan chocolate is really unlike anything else. It’s certainly better than the yellow boxes we got as kids from our grandparents on Valentine’s Day. There are a few wonderful places in town that craft their own treats in-house and spice them up with unusual concoctions that make them a perfectly acceptable dessert all on their own. Plus, they go great with wine.

At Eclipse Chocolat in North Park, I go for anything with salt. You could get a bag o’ mini bars (nothing like the minis of Halloween) for your sweet love. How does Basil Mint, Gingerbread Crumb or Salty Dulce de Leche sound? They also make Sea Salt Caramels and this thing they call Rococo—think very fancy rocky road. The one I crave is studded with the classic marshmallows, but also burnt caramel toffee and cayenne spiced candied pecans. 

Chuao Chocolatier is available at most grocery stores these days, but they started here and they still have several cafes including ones in Del Mar, UTC and Encinitas. Their specialty this season is a port-wine drenched strawberry enrobed in dark chocolate. Sign me up! This week they’re selling like hotcakes. Or, chocolate strawberries. They have other V-Day inspired treats, like marzipan or praline hearts. But I always look for the Gingerette: caramelized ginger coated in dark chocolate and sprinkled with a smoky chipotle chili. 

Chi Chocolat in Liberty Station do truffles and they do them well. I’m partial to the ones infused with Jasmine Tea and am dying to try their Curry Truffle that’s dipped in coconut. My kid wasn’t too into trying that one, so we passed. But Valentine’s Day is but four days away... definitely better than nothing.

For some additional spots to pick up chocolates, check out last week’s Wandering Appetite column.

Subscription-based services are all the rage right now. Think: Bacon of the Month Club. These types of things have been around for some time. My in-laws used to get regular monthly deliveries of cheese from Hickory Farms. But, lately, entrepreneurs are looking at new things to sell monthly and by mail.

Want to start juicing but don’t want to do the work of actually pressing your own veggies? There is a subscription for that.

Want to try out new beauty products but can’t be bothered with a trip to Sephora? There is a subscription for that. There is even a subscription for strictly manly products. This is a sub-group of subscription services dubbed "tryvertising"

There are two different companies that could be referred to as "panty of the month" clubs—Me Undies and Panty by Post.

Here are a few more that have caught my eye:

Man Packs will deliver socks, underwear, razors, condoms, shaving cream, toothpaste and more, every three months.

Trunk Club is a personal stylist for the fashion-challenged man. They pack a trunk of new clothes in your sizes. And like Garanimals, they will tell you what to wear with what.

Citrus Lane, a Cali-based company, will deliver new parents "care packages" of tested products each and every month for $25, based on the age of the child.

Little Passports is an educational subscription service for the kiddles that sends them "adventure kits" from a different country each month that include a letter, genuine souvenirs, "passport stickers" and more.

Craft Coffee will send you coffee (duh) from various artisan coffee companies from around the globe.

Threadless, the art collective, has a T-shirt of the month club that features a different artist’s tee each month. 

Winner of the most random is NotAnotherBill, a U.K. company that sends you a surprise gift! Past gifts have included hand-made leather key fobs, Swedish-crafted dustpans (!) and tattooed-knuckle oven mitts.

But my favorite, and I think the most genius of them all, is another English-based subscription service. Trinkets delivers natural cotton tampons every month in pretty little packages. Is there any other product that we need each and every month, like clockwork? OK, maybe just us women, but still, that’s 50 percent of the population. Can someone start this in the U.S.? Please?

And if not that, then can we get a Soup Cycle here in San Diego?

Earlier in the week I went to check out the Mid-Century Minx store on Adams, but it’s only open on Friday and Saturdays, so I have to go back (have to!) but since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d duck in an old stand-by: Resurrected Furniture (2814 Adams Ave., University Heights, 619-283-3318). With antique stores, the stock can be hit or miss, depending on when you drop in, but this visit yielded some interesting finds: A stack of Heller plates & mugs (like they use at Influx Cafe), a couple of very dainty white china cake plates, a cabinet full of blue and white china (I love the mix of patterns, while the shade of blue barely varies). There was a mid-century plant print in the back stacked among the framed fake colonial paintings.

But it was the shelves of steins that truly caught my attention. I know, it’s not October, but that’s when it’s hard to find those things—you’ve got to stock up now, in January, for your future Oktoberfest festivities. There are classic and genuine German steins, there are American-beer branded steins, there are conical hinged-lid steins, there are minis and giants and everything in between. There are dozens of steins!

Where there was once 20 dresses for thousands of dollars each, there now sits 1,000 dresses for $20 each. Irony?

It’s official, Forever 21 has taken over the site that used to house Saks Fifth Avenue in Fashion Valley. And while I know I should not care about Forever 21—seeing as I’m not even close to 21 and maybe I shouldn’t write about such a behemoth mega-chain on my small-store, shop-local blog—I cannot help myself. Because it’s good shopping. Not every week. Not even every month. But I can’t stay away for too long.

That being said, more isn’t always betta. The size and scope of the new outpost is just too overwhelming. They’ve had to fill this giant space up with product and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but: it only highlights the crap.

The Good: The jewelry is always interesting, if not disposable; the accessories—I swear I saw the same exact hat at Nordstrom for about eight times the price of it here; the new kid department that features trendy mini-wear for the sub-12 set and at prices that make sense (kids grow, fast).

The Bad: Everything else. The overabundance of neon is frightening, the fake-Pendelton wear is so frighteningly faux it screams “Run for the woods!” and, um, who deemed sailor suits back in style? Yuck.

Since I’m on the topic of The Mall (dun, dun, dun) it should be noted that Lush Handmade Cosmetics has opened an outpost at Fashion Valley, as well (upstairs, near Macy’s.) These are the folks who owned the company that originally made a lot of the products for The Body Shop and later sold their first company to TBS. About 16 years ago, they re-formed and created Lush, which now has more then 650 stores around the world—this is no small company. Yet, they endeavor to use organic ingredients, don’t test on animals, save sharks, stop tar sands (?!) use BPA-free plastics and recycled papers and have about a zillion initiatives to reduce their footprint on this green earth. In all honesty, I do love that a lot of their products simply have no packaging (that’s the greenest of all packaging, right?) and their solid shampoos, particularly the "Ultimate Shine" one, are kind of genius. It’s a fun store to browse, too—lots of things to smell and touch.

Is it Tab-le? Ta-ble? Or just plain Table? They said it all French-like on Top Chef last week, but it’s such a common word it feels mega-weird saying it with an accent I don’t truly possess.

No matter. This is an awesome store, however the hell you pronounce it. Years ago, my father, a good cook, took me to the Sur la Table in Berkeley and I remember perilously tall shelves packed with oodles of weird cooking utensils and gadgets I’d never seen before. It was so intriguing. And inspiring. The store in Carlsbad’s Forum is no different, really. I have no idea why the company has decided to put their only San Diego store in the far nether reaches of our landscape, but I’d say it’s worth the effort to get there. They have Le Creuset in every color and size, including purple (nay, "Cassis") braisers. They have a large assortment of the paper baking molds that the French employ so beautifully in their cafes.

The Japanese grocery stores in the Kearny and Clairemont Mesas are all pretty wonderful places to get sugar-filled treats with adorable and modern graphics. I used to prefer the sizable and very clean Mitsuwa Market, but recently my allegiances have switched to Nijiya, and not just because it’s next door to my most favorite Japanese restaurant in all of San Diego (and maybe my favorite restaurant, period) Okan.

More gifts, less time. Or, where I tell you how to get the rest of your gifts in just a few blocks with nary a Westfield in site.

Start at Bazaar del Mundo. It’s on the outskirts of Old Town and it’s easier to park anyway. Plus, they have a lot. Go up, go down, go in, go out, and go back in again and within the walls of the Bazaar you will find adorable kitschy aprons and tea towels, handmade napkins and tablecloths, gorgeous glassware—both decorative and useful—paper flowers and pinatas, Indian art and tapestry, crosses and altars. You’d expect to find all that here, right? But you can also find the unexpected: Wooden birds with such expressive detail in their faces, plastic woven bird cages, hand-felted stuffed animals that while probably intended for children, would look stunning on a bookshelf. And you know you have a crazy cat lady in your life: there is a whole cat room at the Bazaar. Everything adorned with the signs of the Cat Lady of all time, Laurel Burch. There are books on making tamales and Mexican art but also on endangered animals and birds watching. The kids books have been chosen so very well. But it was the belts—the basket of belts, hand-embroidered in amazingly vivid colors and I’m saying right here and right now, I want one. Or three.

Let’s get right to this: you’ve put off your shopping because there is always tomorrow but tomorrow is now. You need some presents and you need them fast. There’s no more time to be choosy. Or is there?

I spied those tall slender Stanley green thermoses—in a few sizes—at the Rite Aid on Adams Avenue. Maybe they have them at other Rite Aids, too? They’re great for hipsters or grandpas, for the desk jobber or the construction worker; they are old school but seriously modern. They are perfect for toting coffee to work or beer to the movies.

This year, I can confidently say that I’ve found something for everyone on your list.

For Your Loving Grandma
I picked up one of these Grandma Journals for my daughter’s Grandma—they make them for Grandpas, too. Essentially it’s a questionnaire in a pretty package, but who doesn’t like to talk (or write) about themselves? I do! I truly think this is the Grandma Gift of the Year. Oh, and as a side note, Paper Source carries Edward Gorey’s Tarot Cards (The Fantod Pack), also an awesome gift. But probably not for Grandma.

For Your Down-to-Earth Gramps
This is how I want to imagine your Grandpa (mine is dead, so I have to imagine yours)—he’s robustly chopping wood, then digging a big hole for that pine tree he’s a-planting. He’s taken a short break to eat some tomato soup out of his faded green Stanley thermos and then he builds a roaring fire. After truly enjoying all those activities, he’s settling down by that fire with a good book. But wait! What’s missing? A rugged-looking throw over his lap to keep him warm! The Woolrich Civil War Cavalry Blanket makes my eyes tear up, just a bit.

I interrupt this blog post to tell you about something else I want this year:

I have a grand statement to make: I think the perfect gift for the person who loves art and design is a deck of cards. Bear with me, please. While the art on a deck of playing cards can be really hokey or, worse, boring, it can also be truly amazing. And the cards are practical in a fun way that can be construed as everything from grandma (pinochle) to naughty (poker variants). Theory 11 is an online magic store which itself sounds totally dorky, but it’s not; it’s sophisticated and vaguely mysterious and carries more than 20 styles of playing cards that start at five bucks a deck. And there’s a story behind every damn deck. I love the Monarchs.

iPhones are ubiquitous and, therefore, accessories for the phone are a pretty easy gift idea for at least 78 percent of your friends and family. The following are my favorite accoutrements to be found online.

Holga cameras are everywhere. They turn ordinary light and action into pretty pictures from the past. Holga makes a Filter Kit for the iPhone that is also a case that looks vaguely like an old rotary phone. It comes with nine filters to dial in, plus a blank space.There are three split-image filters; a few brightly colored filters; and, maybe the best part, a macro lens for taking pictures close up. I got one for the husband and, fortunately for me, he doesn’t read any of my columns so cat’s not out of the bag—yet.