Category Archives: shopping

Dec9

Shopping and decorating

Posted on Sunday, December 9, 2007 by Dianne

Finally! I did a bit of shopping last night at TJ Maxx. I love that store! They have just about anything you can think of, but I love giving body lotions, ornaments and useful kitchen or household items too. I saw a few things I liked, but Bri had pooped out and went to sit in the van. I like cloches (clear bell-shaped glass pieces) and they had one that was maybe a little larger than I wanted. Poor Bri now thinks he has to run around looking for cloches. I know a artist from eBay who uses them (the tiny ones), so I’ll have to ask her if she would mind telling me where she gets hers. I remember when I use to stencil slates with designs for ‘Welcome’ signs for a local lady and someone else who stenciled went off and started selling them herself. I was hinting around to where she got the slates and she wouldn’t say exactly where as she didn’t want competition in case I wanted to sell some. Anyway, I also saw a neat looking Victorian style glass biscuit jar in the store that was a bit on the large size.

Today, Bri fixed the switch in our bedroom-hooray! It was a pain pulling the cord in and out to use the main light. It didn’t take him long to do so. Then he got the Christmas tree out of the attic, stuck it in the stand (it unfolds like an upside down umbrella) and I ‘fluffed’ the branches, added red lights (some have the white lights with the red) and garland and antique gold beads. It looks completely different than last year’s tree so far. I wanted to perch cardinals on the branches, but need to get to a craft store to find some. I did add candy canes, so I am calling it my ‘candy cane’ tree. I have so much more to do. This is a ‘sneak peek’ as I like to see how the tree looks through the ‘camera’s eye’. I did have to rearrange the top. There are no ornaments on here yet, just some candy canes.

Last year it looked like this, quite different!

I did want to add that I was checking through one of the several catalogs that I get in the mail and found a few things I wanted to see if I could get on the web, one being a book for Bri’s dad. Sure enough, I found it on Amazon and ordered it and saved about 50% off the cost of what it would be in the catalog. I saw some cute angel wing earrings (one wing an ear) and a garden gnome that is holding a medallion that says ‘Gnomes for the holidays’. I may be ordering them from the company’s online service.

I need to take a break as my sore area is bothering me a bit. It’s rough to be a leftie and to have a boo boo on that side.

Dec5

Early December snow

Posted on Wednesday, December 5, 2007 by Dianne

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Some of the fluffy stuff is falling as I type this. It really makes me feel like Christmas is around the corner now! I need to go finish making my Christmas cards, a bit different than most people are use to getting from me, but I think they are neat. The ladies at the copy shop loved them! I’ll show you one when I mail them off as a few of my readers are getting one and I want them to be surprised.

I did get out by myself yesterday for the first time in over a week. I was overdressed and got quite warm. I went to the stationery store and then to a local department store which happened to be ‘Tuesday over 50 club’ day. Yikes! I still have a few more years! It was filled with many senior citizens. I went to the young girl department for things for my niece and all the mediums were practically gone. I did find some cute tops that I think she will love. One is fuchsia with a crocheted butterfly as a decoration. The other is a coppery color with a sparkly belt buckle type piece. I got 40% off, but the original prices are so high! My nephew only wears t-shirts year round, but they didn’t have any I liked there. He wears the ones we gave him last year all the time. I’ll check online and at TJ Maxx for him. I know they are getting an awesome system-Wii and I know my brother will be playing with that a bunch. : )

I was allowed to take off my bandage yesterday (called the doctor’s office to ask) and it’s red and yucky looking. The doctor left a big tail on a suture and that is pulling. The main area has a big scab on it and is a bit raised and may have sutures there too. I hope they don’t have to come out, except the one with the big tail! Only two more days!

Brian was invited to a baby shower tomorrow. He asked me what to get and I said I’d check my eBay table! I have some cute figurines and one is a Cherished teddy piece that is also a music box. The music box wouldn’t work correctly, so I took it apart (like my grandmom would) and oiled it. Still no good. I think it was overwound. Well I fiddled with the spinner piece and broke it! Opps! I’ve got to have something else, if not, he’s on his own. He’s the first guy I’ve known who got invited to a baby shower!

Off to fill out cards…….

Nov26

Cyber shopping Monday…

Posted on Monday, November 26, 2007 by Dianne

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…starts in a few minutes, but I’m off to bed in a few too. I’m really tired from grocery shopping. Bri came along because I am trying not to do too much lifting this week. I got a few frozen things to make cooking easier, well for both of us, at the end of the week.

Speaking of shopping-I have no idea what anyone wants for Christmas. I just can’t wrap my head around it right now. The only thing I saw I want is the Reynolds vacuum sealer-saw that in the grocery store this afternoon. And maybe the movie that Todd from my class wrote and directed ‘Lonely Hearts’. I believe I own one of his other movies ‘White Squall’ which was really good! I love that Todd’s little sister Traci works along with him in many of his projects. She was a really sweetie in high school. My friend suggested I send Todd two photos (shown in post below) and have him autograph and return one. I also have clippings through the years that were in the local newspapers about his different milestones, probably added by his mom Ronnie. I told him I’d send them to him and he didn’t say no. I didn’t know I would have his Malibu, CA address right in our contact spread sheet at the end of our ‘what are you doing’ booklet. I just think it’s so neat, my miniature brush with a celebrity (my mom’s was with Governor Rendell!). But you know, both Todd and Denice (an actress out of Nashville) from my class are real ‘people’ persons. They know how to get close to you and make you comfortable. I felt that way immediately with them. I remember Todd being quiet on the school bus and always writing something. I had forgotten that the family didn’t spend most of their growing up years in Media, I read they were from the Long Island, NY area. But here he is, a famous guy, coming back to his 30th reunion.

Sean gave me a nice Art trading card book focusing on rubber stamping. It’s great and I am getting ideas. I packed away my paper things for a while, though I have a perpetual Christmas calendar I started and really want to finish before the 1st of December. I need to add numbers to the cards and some velcro dots to adhere them to the poster board.

I started a cross stitch gift tonight while watching ‘The Amazing Race’ and ‘Brothers and Sisters’ (both good episodes with Chevy Chase being Sally Field’s love interest on B&S-ha!). I already tore out half of what I added. Focus, sister, focus.

We are expecting a wet day today. Have fun cyber shopping if you do so!

Rats-The Food Network-Iron Chef is having a dessert battle-should I stay up for it?

Nov20

Some gifties

Posted on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 by Dianne

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Thanks for all your continued birthday wishes! I really appreciate them! I was gone all day today, so I finally got around to taking a few photos.

Thanks first to the two Carol/Caroles I know! The fairy bird feeder/ornament, the Canadian BC awareness angel pin, snowman ornament and teapot night light are from Carole/ Pea from Canada (plus some maple chocolates). I love them all. Carol from NH made me the sweet ‘Stick it here’ pincushion-perfect stitching Carol. Angela from NY made me the little book that holds art trading cards-great idea-I’ll definitely use it!

I got about 18 birthday cards!
Brian gave me this to help me draw on the computer.
Today I got a ‘on the house’ hair touch up and cut from my sister-n-law Colleen. I showed my niece Tori my big book of Art trading cards and gave her all of the Wizard of Oz ones I had made. She says she has 5 from me now. We dropped by to see my mom, but she was unable to go shopping with us. She gave me a cross stitch book, candy, a cute teddy bear, a heart pin and some other little things. I told her not to worry about going out in the damp cold, but she does anyway.
Sean and I did some power shopping at Value City and Old Navy. I got a little faux red alligator purse to use for my reunion on Friday. I got a few Liz Claiborne tops, gray and cream (I had birthday money), plus a pale teal color sweater at Old Navy.
Sean and I stopped for dinner at PF Chang’s, a Chinese Bistro. He had honey coated shrimp and I had lemon grass prawns on garlic noodles-really delicious.
When I got home, I found out I had forgotten to pay the mortgage (very unlike me, the bill lady-too much on my mind lately) and Bri and I ran it up to the post office and hit the less crowded grocery store. I so wanted to bake a pecan pie, but the pecans are about $10 a bag. I settled on some store bought pies as the store has a pretty good bakery.
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To my Neighborhood Round robin pals-my piece is sitting at the post office! No one was home (it figures) to sign for it, so I’ll run over to get it tomorrow. I thought for sure it would be here yesterday-darn. I’ll get a heap of photos to share. I can’t wait!

Nov14

Colors for a gloomy day

Posted on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 by Dianne

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I had to run down to the store. I really shouldn’t say ‘run’ as I’m still so achy, all in the area I strained while moving the books, my left side and in ‘that’ area. My purpose for the trip was to get Sean a Carvel ice cream cake (football shaped) for a belated birthday cake and the makings of stew. He is driving home on Friday with a friend in tow, so I figure stew can sit on the stove all day. He mentioned they may stop in Lancaster for lunch and shopping. Lucky guys! That trip down here isn’t terrible, except for maybe the first 40 or so miles through the mountains as there isn’t any place to pull over if you even have a flat! I told him to make sure he goes to the bathroom too-ha!

Here’s a Thanksgiving cactus that is blooming in my family room window:

And my $1.98 flower purchase from the reduced bucket:

These are Spider mums and I love the colors. Quite a few of them weren’t any good and a few of these are falling, but they have already given me $2 worth of pleasure.
I’m dedicating these photos to my friend Barbara’s Aunt Hattie who just passed on.

My tip for the day-Most times Altoids will open up a stuffed head. They use real peppermint oil too. I would say most of the times I eat one, I will sneeze!

Oct13

What’s wrong with this cover?

Posted on Saturday, October 13, 2007 by Dianne

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Bri asked me earlier, and I couldn’t see it right away. But a local University did and asked for a refund. Bri doesn’t do the cover layout, he gets the ads for this supplement. Now I would be a little peeved to see that mistake on an educational supplement! Bri is hoping no one else makes a stink as that’s his bread and butter-he did most of the ads for this.
Speaking of smelly-I can’t think of a Photo Hunt photo for smelly that would be nice or interesting, so I pass today.
I went back to the LNS shop and got a bigger piece of linen on Friday. I’m glad the place is still in business after all these years. I use to go there when I was in my early 20s, so it’s been around a while. I also went to Michael’s and hit a rubber stamp sale and got a few nice ones plus one you can make your own words with and stamp it. I’m still looking for a rubber stamp of wings. And I did hit Trader Joe’s and am putting together a box of birthday goodies for Sean. He’s had a few rough days, and was blue over a test he studied really hard for and didn’t do well with. He did get a curve and has a ‘C’ now, so that helped. It’s homecoming weekend and he went to a parade last night. I’m sure the game and festivities will lighten his mood. He said he’d like to come home for a bit, but that’s up to him, he’s gotta do the driving to and fro.

Oct9

Venturing and raining

Posted on Tuesday, October 9, 2007 by Dianne

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Today I got awake a little after 7 and got up right before 8 as I knew my sister-in-law Colleen wanted me down to her house around 10:30 so she could do my hair. I actually got out the door around 9:30 and even stopped at the post office in Chadds Ford to mail a package and the Love Quilts Thunderbird square. Colleen wasn’t home, but I went in and ate some yogurt and only had to wait about 10 minutes as she had been food shopping. So now I have brown hair again(!), almost like my real color. She was nice enough to trim my hair and blow it dry too. I was out of there by 12, got lunch for my mom and me and headed for mom’s house. After we ate, she wasn’t feeling chipper and I just started tidying up there. Two hours later she was ready to go out, but I was ready to go home. I left at 3 and headed down the road then decided to stop off at a cross stitch shop I hadn’t been to in years. I was looking around and saw the cute punch needlework samples. The shopkeeper showed me how to do it (she was a lefty too) and I decided to buy a kit and the needle. I also bought Little House’s ‘House of a Needleworker’; The Prairie Schooler’ Santa’s 1-4 days of Christmas; TPS 2005 and 2007 Santa cards and some mocha linen to make the Santas on. I stopped and got us some pizza (small ones-white for me and regular for Bri). When I went to look at my stash from the shop, I saw the linen said $8.50 on it and the receipt said $17.00! That’s a big difference. I’ll have to call to see about that and may have to make another trip there.

~Update-I was charged for the bigger piece of linen (one number difference in the item number on the receipt!), so I do have to go back to the store and either get my money back or another piece of fabric. I might as well get another piece of fabric. ; )

Needless to say, I’m bushed. We had some thunderstorms pass through tonight and it’s now in the 60s. Nice to have some rain!

And I got a new school photo of my darling niece Tori. She did good posing as it looks just like her, no silly or scared face just her sweet smile.

Sep15

Found this neat place-part 2

Posted on Saturday, September 15, 2007 by Dianne

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I was looking for a journal for my mom as a birthday gift. It had to have blank pages and if it had handmade paper, the better. So I looked in about 4 different places locally, nothing. I got online and found: Creative Papers Online and it’s really awesome! The journal is exactly what I was looking for-even nicer. I ordered handmade papers too-they’re huge-I didn’t look at the size, but they’re about 3’x3′. AND, you must order the HALF price ($4.64) 1/2 pound of super scrap assortment. They should take the word scrap out of there as it’s gorgeous paper-perfect for art projects. I’d say there are 20 pieces of 10″ x 10″ (around that). All colors and textures. I was ga ga!! To get to where you order ‘the scraps’, you have to put something in your basket and proceed to check out. It will take you to a page and ask if you want to add the assortment to your order-check it off!!!

A lady from the company called and asked if I wanted to sub some paper for another, which I did. On the order form she included a note that said she hoped my mom enjoyed the journal as much as I do.(edited from a note I left for my crafting pals).

Aug31

Seeds

Posted on Friday, August 31, 2007 by Dianne

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First of all, I want to thank Zoey over at Perennial Passion for the Lynchis Coronaria seeds she sent me recently. Zoey had a flower game-a letter mix-up and I guessed them all and got this awesome prize in a sweet homemade envelope-love it. So in return, I am drying some seeds for her. If anyone else would like purple or lime zinnia seeds, let me know. I’m also trying to get the Autumn Harvest heads on a few of the sunflowers before the birds get to them.

Tonight it dawned on me that I planted saved marigold seeds from last year and hadn’t seen them. The marigolds are in their glory right now, but where were the ones in the circle garden? Here they had fallen over, but they were the yellow marigolds with the big flower heads. I thought they may be the white ones. I’ll save them too.

I’ve been to Big Lots twice today, by myself and then later with Bri. They bought out a local drugstore and the stuff is 30% off. I noticed they had compact flash cards for the camera, so that’s why Bri and I went after dinner. We got a 256 mb one for about $11! They also got some neat scrapbooking stuff in, many items for $1! I was playing with some of the new stuff when Bri wanted to go there.

Sean went to a pep rally for the football team tonight and it was fun. He got to see Coach Joe in person for the 1st time. This has been the slowest week here! It will be a week since we have been to PSU soon.

Aug18

The last hoo-ha of the summer

Posted on Saturday, August 18, 2007 by Dianne

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It’s nice to be home, but of course next Friday we’ll be in central Penna. to help Sean with his move in at PSU. Sean did most of the driving over the last three days. He said he needs to ‘get use to it’ since it’s about 160 miles one way to PSU.

Day 1-It was smooth sailing and we stopped off at the rest stop in Smyrna. This time I was looking for the freebie literature for my art projects. They had quite a few of them. The people working there were watching me, but didn’t say anything. I even got a neat NYC book. We got to Rehoboth Beach in a jiffy, but the traffic was backed up which we sat in for 20 minutes for so. We went to our favorite sandwich shop there called ‘The Arena’. It’s not like it’s name, a rather small hole in the wall with mile high sandwiches. I got chicken salad and actually took the second half apart to eat the filling out of it. Sean did the same with his tuna, but Bri ate his entire sandwich. I swear when that man is on vacation, he eats to his heart’s content. I wanted to go in a cute gift shop and sent them to the bookstore. I got a cute journal with a leaf cover and little handmade sandals as a cover decoration. I went to the bookstore and no guys! Here they had gone to the bookstore way up near the boardwalk. I had to get a bathing suit cover up and found a long sleeveless t-shirt style and got a freebie decal for the front. It was hot walking around and we had a 5 minute walk to the van, which is a long walk for R. Beach.

We got to the Atlantic Coastal Inn which sits in front of the old Fenwick Island lighthouse. This was taken from outside our room.

Directly near the lighthouse are trailers, a little tacky to have near this historic place. The only downfall was that we had to cross over the wide and highly traveled highway to get to the beach. The place last year was on that side of the road. We went to the beach for about an hour as the wind was like 25-30 mph, so you felt like you were going to get blown away.

The water was nice after you got use to it. I don’t go swimming, but Bri and Sean do. We went to an Italian place for dinner and had to wait a while. We decided on pizza because of the big lunch. Afterwards, we went to the Country Store where I got a variety of fudge and jams. Sean wanted to drive all the way down to the inlet area of Ocean City (140 blocks) and cross the bridge to an outlet area (HA-I used inlet and outlet in the same sentence!) We had to wait about 20 minutes for the bridge to close. The outlets were a bust-the bookstore was gone and we got there too late to really look in any stores. Sean was happy to get ‘Dippin’ Dots’ ice cream. He’s still a kid in that respect.

The next day we went the same place where we went to breakfast last year and sat at the same table (without telling the hostess even). Later we went to the beach again. Still a bit windy, but hot. It got overcast and started to rain. I haven’t been on the beach for years when we got rained on. When I was little we got caught in a torrential downpour down in Wildwood, NJ and that scared me. We left and hung out a bit in our room. It was too humid to really do anything. We went out to ‘our big dinner’ at Harpoon Hannah’s. It was right down the road and thank goodness we got there fairly early. Sean and I had lobster tails (3 each!)

and Bri had swordfish. It was pretty good. After dinner the guys went to find a car museum place and couldn’t and decided to play miniature golf. I got some down time and read up on Lewes, DE. a little town down the road that I hadn’t been to for a while. I wanted to see the actual town, not where you get on the ferry to go to Cape May, NJ, across the bay. We did that when I was a kid and I was seasick for like 3 hours when we got home.

On the last day we went to breakfast again and headed for the Shipwreck Museum. The bottom is a store that sells hermit crabs and lots of souvenirs. They do a great job with the free museum. I asked the woman there if I could take photos and she said yes. I’ll make a slideshow of the photos from there, but here’s a sneak peek:

We checked out and headed for the Rehoboth Beach outlets. Sean wanted to go to Old Navy. It was crowded and the clothes weren’t that great. We didn’t stay long and headed for Lewes. We drove down to the beach area. It’s not huge, but you can see down the shoreline and we saw a few lighthouses in the distance. We headed to where a lightship was and got out and took a few photos. We found the Zwaanendael Museum,

erected in 1931 to commemorate the founding of the town by the Dutch back in 1631, it’s 300th anniversary. It’s an unusual building. All the parking was taken, so Sean sat in the van while I went around and took some photos. I did manage to get one of a cross stitch sampler inside.

I really like Lewes. It’s a Victorian town and on the water! There are some retirement places there too. Hmmm! We headed to Dover, DE where my favorite bookstore is located-Atlantic warehouse. I tried to be chosey and concentrated on scrapbooking books and gift items. We headed home after an hour and stopped off at Wendy’s for an early dinner. Cos was glad to see us.

Off to eat lunch and then pick a ton of ripe tomatoes. It’s a gorgeous day here, a little cool and no humidty. I’ve already been outside for over an hour, most of that time with the cat.

I got my Cafepress.com rose t-shirt and it’s pretty. I’ll have Sean take a photo of me in it soon.