For all your down-to-the-wire shopping, here is part two of my online shopping guide. I had hoped to include more retailers, but to be honest, I either couldn't find anything I wanted to purchase, or the things I did find were out of stock. Everything I almost ordered on ibeauty.com was out of stock, and while ULTA.com is great for stocking up on essentials, nothing special caught my eye and said "Buy me!" My search started and ended with Beauty.com and Drugstore.com.

Ever since Drugstore.com acquired Beauty.com, the line between the two has seriously blurred. Sure, one carries brands like Cetaphil and Neutrogena and the other has tarte and Shu Uemura, but is there really much difference otherwise? Both sites have fairly clear product images and thorough descriptions usually with ingredient labels and instructions for use. When you see something you like, just click "buy" and it is added to your shopping bag. You can continue shopping or checkout. When you are ready to check out, you will be prompted for your Drugstore.com customer username and password. This login information works for both Drugstore.com and Beauty.com. If at the checkout you change your mind, you can click on "modify order" and either delete the item(s) or go back to shopping to add other things. As with all online stores, there are places to enter your billing and shipping information, and it stores it with your profile so you don't have to type it in everytime you shop.

Beauty.com and Drugstore.com have a combined shopping cart and checkout, and there is just one shipping fee for purchases made on both sites. One of the features I like is that the sites track not only the products you've purchased before, but also the products you've looked at and brands that you've searched for.

After browsing for about an hour on Thursday 12/6, I made my purchase at 9:30pm. I picked up modern organic products (mop) mixed greens shampoo, mop daily rinse conditioner, and mop d-curl straightening balm from Drugstore.com, and Skin Alison Raffaele Reality Base and Skin Alison Raffaele True Concealer from Beauty.com (reviews to come in a future issue). To see how fast their express shipping would be, I paid $29.95 for overnight delivery. Minutes after placing my order, I received an order confirmation email stating that my package was scheduled to arrive by Monday 12/10. Not exactly overnight, but close. Sure enough, my order arrived Monday morning by UPS Next Day Air, but curiously it was in two separate boxes: the mop products from Drugstore.com in one, the Skin Alison Raffaele from Beauty.com in the other.

I would not pay such an outrageous fee for overnight delivery again, but it was an interesting test to see just how fast I would get my order. If you aren't in a hurry, right now you can take advantage of Drugstore.com's free standard shipping on orders over $50.