Fencing was once commonly learned at an early age, which is why so many octogenarians still settle disputes with games of Rock, Paper, Épée. Celebrate civilized swordplay with today’s Groupon: for $25, you get a 90-minute introductory fencing class at Farmington Valley Fencing Academy in Bloomfield (a $50 value). Customers interested in other classes can choose to apply the $50 credit toward any class, program, or membership at the studio.

At Farmington Valley Fencing Academy, USFCA–certified moniteur Mal-sun Marletto instructs athletes 10 and older of any skill level with lessons she learned while training in Belgium at the Royal Fencing Club of Brussels. Marletto equips participants with the necessary equipment during one-time introductory classes limited to six to eight students to ensure personal attention. Offered on select Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., the introductory class provides fledgling swordsmen and swordswomen with an understanding of fencing fundamentals and postmatch beekeeping duties.

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The Groupon Guide to: Writing an Urban Legend

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Without furniture, houses would lack a conventional means of expressing their individuality, forcing them to resort to potentially ruinous facial piercings. Help domiciles save face with today’s Groupon to Revival Home in West Hartford. Choose between the following options:

• For $25, you get $50 worth of gently used home furnishings.
• For $45, you get $100 worth of gently used home furnishings.

Revival Home helps customers invigorate rooms with vintage furniture items and gently used designer pieces by manufacturers including Baker and Ralph Lauren. Within its 4,000-square-foot show room, furniture couturiers can enhance existing couches with pillows ($25 each) or use antique silver flatware by Sheffield ($100/set) to plait spaghetti dinners into elegant french braids. Wedgwood china sets ($50), and Kate Spade stemware pieces ($50) also accentuate fashionable food items, and porcelain vases ($50) encase floral bouquets in smooth ceramic. Because Revival Home relies on consignment goods, its stock rotates daily, providing shoppers with new antique lamps to check for genies with each visit.

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The Groupon Guide to: Office Icebreakers

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Without photographic evidence, it's hard to know if things such as aliens, Abraham Lincoln, or true love have ever existed. Package evidence of your own being for later generations to study with today's Groupon: for $15, you get $50 worth of photo books, cards, and more from Mixbook.

With Mixbook's photo-book services, you can instantly upload your treasured pictures and customize each with the easy-to-use Mixbook editor. Use the editor to crop photos, add text, and rotate any pictures, allowing you to convince friends you met Adam West while hanging upside-down in his master bedroom. Clients can then choose from several different types of photo cards, photo calendars, and photo books, such as the 8"x6" soft-cover pocket landscape ($11.99 for 20 pages) or the 14"x11" hardcover coffee-table book ($54.99 for 20 pages), ideal for stirring up jealousy in bookless coffee tables. Mixbook uses archival-quality silk paper to ensure that sentimental snapshots have a glossy look and feel. Capture the moment the bride said "I do" with a professional-quality wedding picture book, or encapsulate baby's first word—"mitochondria"—with a baby memory book.

You can also utilize Mixbook's services to craft engaging yearbooks and customizable cards and stationery (starting at $0.39+ each). Create jovial Christmas and holiday cards with the entire family in front of the fireplace or dainty wedding invitations with encoded messages about the real meaning of life.

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The Groupon Guide to: Writing an Urban Legend

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Enjoying a chauffeured ride in a luxury sedan is a cut above driving yourself and two cuts above pulling yourself in a rickshaw. Take an easier ride with today's Groupon from Exclusive Car Service. An additional charge may apply for pickups more than 20 miles from the 06763 and 01040 zip codes. Choose between the following options:

• For $99, you get a chaufferred ride to and from dinner in a luxury sedan with complimentary champagne (a $220 value).
• For $129, you get a chaufferred ride to and from dinner in a limosine with complimentary champagne (a $300 value).
  
  

Rides must be booked by February 26.

Exclusive Car Service's trained drivers chauffeur guests safely around town in glittering limousines and sedans. Elegant four-wheeled conveyances command attention as they hit driveways, collecting up to 10 guests or one giant teddy bear from a private residence. Sparkling champagne flows freely in plush backseats as majestic hood ornaments blaze trails to romantic dinner destinations. After dinner, vehicles reappear to transport revelers back to their abode, where they'll bid passengers adieu with a single tear streaming from headlights. Guests can negotiate additional stops and request that transport vehicles remain onsite throughout the entire meal for an additional charge.

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The Groupon Guide to: Writing an Urban Legend

Can I make an urban legend from soap?

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New England–Style Inn with Modern Luxuries

The gilded steeple atop The Westport Inn fits in perfectly along this stretch of coastal New England, where main streets are dotted with churches and clapboard general stores. A thriving arts community livens up Westport's staid colonial roots, and the inn's recent renovations seem to embody the town's personality—abstract paintings hang from the walls amid restorations of original fixtures, including the stone fireplace in the lobby.

At The Westport Inn's Eramosa Restaurant, farm-to-table fare graces uncovered wooden tables for breakfast and dinner. The hearty morning menu lists items such as Farmer's Garden omelets, egg sandwiches topped with thick-cut bacon roasted in pure maple syrup, and organic tea. American comfort fare dominates the evening lineup, with a focus on naturally raised ingredients sourced from local farms for healthy, hormone-free meals.

Rustic wicker chairs and vases filled with twigs lend an earthy quality to the classic rooms. In the bathroom, guests can surround themselves in relaxing, natural scents without bathing in a pile of burning leaves thanks to a stock of all-natural products by UK-based Aromatherapy Associates. Feather bedding adds to the room's old-fashioned feel, though the room also dons modern luxuries such as LCD TVs and iPod docks.

Westport, Connecticut: Coastal Town Steeped in Art and Culture

Once a farm town on the decline, Westport got a fresh start at the turn of the 20th century as it welcomed an influx of writers and artists retreating from the hustle and bustle of New York City. Creative types continue to flood the area, and a metropolitan feel mingles with the quaint, rural atmosphere. The town's seasonal playhouses, performing-arts pavilions, and fine-arts festivals start to draw open their curtains in late spring, and families can take advantage of the winter season by twirling in circles at ice-skating rinks or by group-hugging a snowman before it dies.

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Facials makes faces look younger, allowing parents to pose as their own children during high-school football tryouts. Put on your game face with today’s Groupon to European Skin Specialists in Bloomfield. Choose between the following options:

• For $49, you get a 60-minute skincare package (a $150 total value), which includes:
  • European facial (an $95 value)
  • A fruit enzyme peel (a $55 value)

• For $95, you get a 90-minute skincare package (a $370 total value), which includes:
  • A European facial (an $95 value)
  • A fruit enzyme peel (a $55 value)
  • A SkinMaster ultrasound treatment (a $220 value)

The epidermal therapists at European Skin Specialists allow guest preferences and skin type to guide cleansing, which harnesses advanced technology to combat signs of damage and aging. Guests begin European facials by sniffing out an essential oil to perfume a steam bath, whose warm, aromatic clouds open pores and quiet the mind. Nimble hands massage facial contours with a silk elixir brewed by Trappist caterpillars and extract lingering impurities with a mask customized for the client's skin type. Acids in a fruit enzyme peel seep into the epidermis, dissolving dead cells and loosening clogs to reveal fresh, new tissue.

Optionally, SkinMaster ultrasound sessions build on the manual refresher course with a high-tech offensive against fine lines, acne, and discoloration. During treatment, a technician micromassages skin cells with a vibrating metal wand, which is slicked in peeling solution to help expel drab, fashion-backward cells. The device's ultrasonic shimmy promotes holistic healing by bolstering blood flow to injured tissue while catalyzing the production of firming collagen for a smooth, carefree complexion.

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The Groupon Guide to: Writing an Urban Legend

Can I make an urban legend from soap?

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Like cartoon sound effects and open-heart surgery, breakfast and lunch are better when combined. Feast upon a compatible combination with today's Groupon.

The Deal

$24 for brunch for two (a $48 value)

• The brunch menu includes:
  • Waffle and pancake station
  • Omelets, frittatas, and scrambles
  • Carving station
  • Smoked salmon
  • Popovers
• Bloody marys, mimosas, and espresso available for an additional fee
• Located inside Litchfield Inn

Bantam Bistro

Within the stately Litchfield Inn, Bantam Bistro's executive chef Jonathan Gyles lends Italian flair to gourmet American dishes crafted from local and organic ingredients, such as mushrooms from Mountaintop Mushrooms and cheese from Cato Corner Farm. The expansive menu includes dazzling charcuterie platters, fillets of Atlantic salmon and tails of Maine lobster, and pastas such as bucatini and agnolotti. Barkeeps pour sips of more than 118 wines and muddle peaches into Bantam's signature take on the classic old fashioned, whose amber tones glow in the flickering light of tabletop candles in leaf-etched votives. The dining room’s brick-lined fireplace gives chefs a cozy place to store canapés shaped like Christmas stockings, and sparkling chandeliers twinkle above Sunday brunch dishes nestled inside pristine silver chafing dishes.

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The Groupon Guide to: Writing an Urban Legend

Can I make an urban legend from soap?

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When family recipes are passed verbally through generations, a pinch of salt slowly evolves into a pitcher of salt. Record properly salted family recipes with today’s Groupon: for $39, you get a lifetime membership to The Great Family Cookbook Project's custom cookbook-creating software (a $99 value).

The Great Family Cookbook Project, the culinary brainchild of two high-school friends, helps families of any size to come together and preserve their own collections of recipes with easy-to-use online software. One person, designated as the cookbook's editor, oversees the project and invites friends, family members, and gourmand dachshunds to add their favorite recipes to an intuitive online database. Periodic emails remind everyone to keep adding culinary contributions. Customize the page with layout designs, and intersperse recipe text with an unlimited number of photographs or quotations from existentialist novels. Users keep recipes safe online from chemically volatile cake batter, print out kitchen-friendly PDFs of the cookbook's pages, or request a minimum of 10 full-color cookbooks from the company's printing service for an additional fee.

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The Groupon Guide to: Office Icebreakers

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Fresh flowers spruce up Valentine's Day dates easier than making your own candy or paying your nephew to dress as a Cupid-themed living statue. Arm yourself with amorous bouquets with today’s Groupon: for $20, you get $40 worth of flowers and gifts from FTD. FTD offers same-day delivery in most areas for orders placed by 2 p.m. in the recipient’s time zone. Service or shipping fees vary widely based on order and delivery dates but typically range from $15.99 to $29.99. For detailed instructions on how to redeem your FTD Groupon, click here.

FTD steeps rooms in the fresh scents of spring with hundreds of thoughtful bouquets delivered by artisan florists or sheathed in gold organza and shipped in an award-winning gift box. Yield to Cupid’s arrow and persistent text messages by presenting a loved one with an FTD-exclusive Sweethearts bouquet, a heart-hued collection of red roses and burgundy mini carnations elegantly interspersed with sprigs of greenery in an etched glass vase ($44.99–$64.99). Or follow a more polychromatic path with the My Everything Valentine's Day bouquet, an unexpected marriage of deep-red roses and white Asiatic lilies ($29.99–$59.99). Red roses and pink lilies spring forth from a sculpted red vase in the Lasting Romance bouquet ($69.99–$94.99), and a spray of 12 long-stemmed roses ($49.99; $59.99 with vase) stands firmly on stems that measure around 16 inches without heels. FTD backs each floral arrangement with a satisfaction guarantee, which pledges that flowers and plants will remain fresh and keep their bedrooms tidy for at least seven days.

Those looking beyond the bloom can peruse FTD’s gift galleria, which encompasses a smorgasbord of specialty gifts, including jewelry and chocolates. Live plants, such as orchids ($39.99+) or miniature roses ($19.99+), outlive their clipped comrades with a simple regimen of watering and pruning, and silk floral displays brighten up sunless corners and survive solely on nightly bedtime stories.

Groupon Says

The Groupon Guide to: Office Icebreakers

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If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, then disheveled hair provides the least efficient route for climbing monkeys to reach the bananas in your fruit hat. Tame tresses for easy scaling with today's Groupon to La Beleza Day Spa and Salon in Watertown. Choose from the following options:

• For $140, you get a haircut package (a $335 total value) that includes:

  • Haircut and style (a $35 value)
  • Keratin treatment (a $300 value)

• For $35, you get a haircut package (a $75 value) that includes:

  • Haircut and style
  • Color treatment

• For $120, you get a keratin treatment (a $300 value).
  
  

The professional mane mavens at La Beleza Day Spa and Salon dress tresses and uncoil curls with smoothing keratin treatments amid royal purple walls and scattered groups of flowers. Over the course of one to two hours, a stylist slathers fuzzy head fur in a formaldehyde-free Coppola keratin smoothing treatment, which penetrates individual hair shafts to unfurl curls and make manes as shiny as a disco ball dipped in lip gloss for up to six months. Stefanie, the resident hue specialist, can forgo the sleekifying process in favor of full-head coloring, which infuses 'dos with Schwarzkopf color. This system has built-in conditioners that not only revamp dull crowns but also strengthen hair until it can pick up toddlers. The strand savant then chops off split ends before styling locks with a blow-dryer.

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The Groupon Guide to: Office Icebreakers

Is lack of self-confidence contagious?

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Art collectors protect their pictures the same way crime bosses discipline their children—by having them framed. Guard your pictures before they take a fall with today's Groupon: for $40, you get $100 worth of custom framing at Center Framing & Art in West Hartford.

At Center Framing and Art, a variegated cavalcade of meticulously crafted frames helps transform prosaic pictures into vibrant pieces of art. Inside the spacious studio, a medley of products and services allows patrons to preserve treasures without having to store their pirate gold in vats of pickle brine. Corral the trimmings of an 11"x14" or 16"x20" metal frame (under $100) to protect posters. Custom framing and matting for 5"x7" prints (under $100) maintain the integrity of smaller shots, while black metal frames (under $100 without matting) add sophistication to portraits up to 16"x20". Center Framing and Art designs their frames to increase the longevity of customers' pictures and uses only acid-free materials to prevent pieces from deteriorating or mutating into gremlins once the sun sets.

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The Groupon Guide to Everyman’s Classics: Animal Farm

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Physicists estimate that 47% of the energy in the universe is stored in stars, and the other 98% rages inside human children. Release your child's unyielding cosmic energy with today's Groupon.

The Deal

$22 for four all-day open-play passes (up to a $44 value)

• Indoor inflatable bouncing playground
• Ideal for kids aged 1–12 years old
• Arcade games with prizes
• Toys for preschool-age children
• Separate play area for toddlers
• Snack bar
• Free WiFi
• Adults receive free admission to watch their kids

Fun Factor of Middlebury's prices vary throughout the week.

Fun Factor of Middlebury

Sprawled throughout 8,000 square feet, Fun Factor of Middlebury's indoor inflatable playground, free WiFi, and fleet of arcade games regale children and adults alike. As youngsters bounce atop the facility's soft recreational equipment, grownups can supervise, or talk reason to the screens of arcade games in an attempt to score their kin prizes. A cache of preschool-appropriate toys keeps littler ones entertained, and staff members can shepherd toddlers into a special play area suited to their size.

Fun Factor of Middlebury also bolsters rambunctious revelry with classes and day camps and frequently hosts staffed birthday parties, local fundraisers, and regional Duck, Duck, Goose championships in two party rooms. Though the facility welcomes guests of all ages, most activities are geared to children aged 1–12 years old.

Groupon Says

The Groupon Guide to Everyman’s Classics: Animal Farm

Is a society run by animals doomed to fail/be hilarious?

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In 1891, James Naismith mounted two peach baskets on opposite walls of a gym, inventing the rudimentary version of what we know today as “shelving.” Take your basketball off this grand innovation with today’s Groupon.

The Deal

$39 for spring 2012 league registration for an individual in ZogSports CT league (a $79 value)
$375 for spring 2012 league registration for a co-ed team in ZogSports CT league (up to a $775 value)

• Basketball, football, or volleyball leagues
• Register with a team, or individually to be placed on team
• Leagues with different skill levels
• All leagues provide facility, refs, and equipment

ZogSports

ZogSports unites like-minded recreational athletes through fun coed sports teams and social events in leagues across the country. With seasonal sports such as basketball, football, and volleyball, teammates interact and compete in a fun environment. ZogSports organizes postgame happy hours at local bars and restaurants, which are designed for teams to mingle, talk about the games, and conjure up the possibility of a recreational dissertation-writing league. ZogSports donates 10% of profit and 100% of happy-hour proceeds to charities of each team's choosing, ensuring participants make a noticeable difference in the community. ZogSports and participating urbanites have donated more than $1,400,000 to charities since 2002.

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