Have you started your holiday shopping yet? Ah, the holiday displays and "Silver Bells" playing over the sound system--not to mention parking hassles, crushing crowds and fist fights over the last Tickle-Me-Elmo...

Why not avoid the stresses of your local mall and shop at home? Not only are we helping you to save money when you shop online with our Black Friday coupons and Cyber Monday deals, but we're giving away a HP DV7T Quad Laptop so you can surf the web in style.

We're gearing up for holiday shopping here at Savings.com. Expect to see a lot in the way of Holiday sales, deals for Christmas, etc. as we edge ever closer to the Holiday season. As you traipse through the mall looking for the perfect gifts and the best deals, there's one thing that will ache more than your empty wallet.

Your feet.

Fortunately, we have a solution for that--at least for one lucky reader. We're giving away a total leg and foot massager!

It's time to end the suspense and to let you all know who we've chosen to attend the first ever Save Up. These lucky ladies and gentlemen will be joining us in San Francisco on November 5th for a day of savings-oriented panels and fun. We received many, many amazing entries, and it was very difficult to pick just a few.

Without further ado, here are the names of the DealPros who will be attending the Save Up next month:

Today's the day, folks. Today's the day we announce which two of our lucky contest entrants win The North Face backpacks we have to give away. We had 97 comments posted on our contest announcement blog post, and we counted over 200 tweets with our #freepack hash tag in them. We ended up choosing one winner at random from each of the entry sources.

(Drumroll, please!) And the winners are...

It's time to announce the winner of the $250 Woodwind & Brasswind gift card! We asked our members to submit their "One time at band camp..." stories in the comments section of our the contest announcement blog post, and the comments we got were all very entertaining. Thanks to everyone that shared a fond band/orchestra memory with us.

Now, down to business. Drumroll, please.

School kids, college students, travelers and hikers all rely on backpacks to help them transport the maximum amount of stuff in the minimum amount of space. The perfect backpack is sturdy, durable, versatile and roomy. Recently, I had the opportunity to do a test drive (or test hike, actually...) with The North Face Isabella backpack. Read on for my review:

One of the coolest parts of working here at Savings.com is watching our elite community of deal experts find, post and share the best deals on the Web. From the mom who knows where to get diapers on the cheap to the tech-guru who shows us where to find the best deals on laptops and gadgets, many Savings.com users are the Web's true coupon connoisseurs. We like to call these savvy savers DealPros™.

Band geeks. Every high school has them. You all know who they were in your school, and there's a pretty good chance a lot of you were band geeks yourselves. And if you were, I'm sure you've got a story or two that begins, "One time at band camp..."

When we told Woodwind & Brasswind (one of the stores on Savings.com) about this post, they decided to ask their Facebook fans to share their band camp stories with us.

Here are a couple of snippets: