For those of you who are familiar with shopping carts at other online websites, no need to read further. Our shopping cart works just like the others. So just click on the Close Window button above.

But for those of you for whom online shopping is new, and I realize that is a lot of you, this tutorial should have you shopping like an online pro in no time. To give you all the information you need to shop online the following is a little verbose--well, OK, a lot verbose. But the alternative is to leave out some steps that you may need to know. You may want to print this page which is why we have left it very plain.

This whole shopping cart terminology is akin to shopping at a grocery store where you place items in your shopping cart. Then, when you are done with the shopping aspect, you go to the checkout area where your items are rung up and the clerk takes your payment. The analogy breaks down somewhat in that we don't know who you are or where you live so we have to ask those questions as well during the check out process.

OK, enough background. As you look through our catalog, hopefully you will find an item (or 2 or 3 or so) that you would like to buy. Click on the picture or description which brings up a detail page with further description and a nice size picture. To the left of the description of each item is a button that looks like this: If you click on the button, you are "putting" one item in your "shopping cart". Unlike a real grocery store, however, you will next see a screen which lists that item and gives it's price. Here we might note that other websites use various terminology, such as "Add to cart", "Buy me", "Select", "Put in bag", etc. They all do the same thing.

At this point it is important to realize that you are not committing to actually buy anything. You can always "put it back" and we will talk about that in a moment.

At the bottom of that screen are three buttons, Continue Shopping, Go to Payments and Recalculate. Pressing the Continue Shopping button takes you back to the item you were looking at. From there you can click on the Back to Catalog link to look for other items or click on the Search link to search for something in our catalog by keyword.

Lets say that at some point you want to check on what is already in your cart or you are ready to check out. Well you can't just look down in the cart because here there is no real cart. So on most every page of the website there is a button that looks like this: If you click on that button, you will see a list of what you have put in your cart. If you have not yet put anything in your cart you will see the message "You currently have no items selected in your order" and only the Continue Shopping button is visible.

You may decide that you really don't want an item that is in your cart. In that case, just set the quantity to 0. Or you may want 2 or more of the same item. No problem. Just highlight the number 1 and replace it with a 2 or whatever number you want. Now you will notice that when you changed the quantity, nothing happened. That is what the Recalculate button is for. Click on it and the item whose quantity you changed will disappear or the price will change to correspond to the new quantity.

At this point you can click on Continue Shopping or you can say OK I have what I want. In that case, assuming there is something in your cart, you can give us any special comments such as must have by date or the particular item you want in those few cases where you are asked to say which of a plurality of pictured items you want. Or you can just say hello or tell us how nice our pictures are or whatever. Then click on the Go to Payments button.

You will be asked how you want your order shipped. Choose from "Least Cost", UPS or USPS (the post office). If you choose least cost, we will do just that which usually means UPS but for small packages it may mean USPS. Choose UPS if you want its package tracking ability, for example. Or choose the USPS because you need your order shipped to a Post Office box, or you live outside the US lower 48 states or you want 2 or three day delivery and you live west of the Mississippi, for example. Then click on the Continue button.

Now you will see a recap screen showing the order total, the shipping cost according to which shipping method you chose. If you chose Least Cost as the shipping method, the listed shipping cost is the most you will pay. You will be charged only the actual shipping cost which is often less.

This is the where you tell us your email address, billing address and ship to address it if is not the same. Please understand that the billing address must be the same as the address to which your credit card statements are sent. We use this information as a fraud prevention measure. The check box referring to whether we are shipping to a business has a very special use. If your ship to address is a business and we ship by UPS the cost is between $1.10 and $2.60 cheaper than to a residence. But a business conducted out of your home is still a home to UPS.

We need to be able to communicate with you about your order so the email address is mandatory. Please understand, however, that you are not going to get advertising type (spam) email from us and we do not pass your email address to others.

At this point you are almost done but you should realize that you still have not committed to placing the order. When you have filled in all the appropriate fields (note the required field names are in bold), click the Continue button.

Next you will see a screen listing what you ordered and what address information you entered. Click on the Continue button again. Now we get to finances. We accept Visa and MasterCard. Please enter the appropriate information. At the bottom of your browser there is a lock symbol in the closed postion. This is very important because it means you are connected to a secure server which in plain speak means the credit card information you send is encrypted from the moment it leaves your computer. Then click on Continue again.

At this point you have placed your order. There is a brief thank you message with our telephone number and email address in case you want to change your order or ask any other questions. There is also a link back to our website where we give you further information about what happens to your order. The system will automatically send you an email with all the information you entered, not including your credit card information. That email will also give our telephone number and email address. This is just in case you discover an "oops" and need to change something or just want to ask a question. We will, as soon as possible, send you a personalized email telling you when we expect to ship and when you can expect to get the package. Now we say "expect to get the package" because once it leaves our hands, it is up to those brown vans or white trucks with the red and blue stripes.

When we do ship, we will email an invoice to you and if we ship by UPS, we will instruct them to send you an email giving the expected arrival date and giving the tracking number so you can follow the progress of the package if you so choose.

Finally we charge your credit card ONLY when we ship.

So now you have all the details. Click on the Close Window button below and have fun shopping.