'In Color' Alert at Lands End!

I went to the {shudder} mall tonight after work. I almost never go to the mall, but that is the only place we have a Sears store, and Sears has a Lands End department, and I love Lands End, and I love the fact that I can buy stuff real-time and not have to pay shipping, so I go to Sears. Then I leave the mall, but still, I went to Sears.

Today was my lucky day! They were having a 30% off of EVERYTHING Lands End sale! Being the end of the day, I was not in the mood to try on anything, so I just grabbed the polo shirts I wanted, then I grabbed a few more because they were on sale, then I paid and I left.

The whole reason I am telling you this boring story is this: Lands End carries shirts in the new In Colors! No joke! Lookie:

Now I ASK you, are these not Bermuda Bay? Heck, even if they're not, that solid one is bound to be my new favorite shirt, second only to the Michigan shirt I wear just to irritate one of my co-workers who attended Ohio State. :-)

And does this sweater look like Melon Mambo? Okay, is it a little close? I own maybe three go-to colors of shirts, and 'watermelon', or 'Melon Mambo" here, is one of them. The other two go-to colors are yellow and anything near the green family. Now you know one of my dark secrets.

I also picked up this one because I liked the color (could you think of a better reason to buy a shirt?), but when I started snapping pics, I thought this one was close to Pacific Point, so I tried it. Close enough for me. So at least in my world, Pacific Point will never retire.

I also got a few other colors like Navy, Black, and another shade of green, but these three are my favorites of the bunch.

So there you have it: In Colors at Lands End. If you love them, get 'em while you can! (I did!) :-)

Creative Avoidance (Major) and Some Food

I am supposed to be occupied with my Clean Sweep, but once again, I am instead immersed in some major Creative Avoidance. Creative Avoidance is something at which I excel, and if it were an Olympic sport, there'd be no contest.

First, I took all my new ribbon from RABOM (yes, I needed more), wound it on my few remaining wooden clothes pins and put it away in my Every Color But The One I Need boxes of ribbon. This accomplished the clearing-off of about 6 square inches of table. However, while putting away this ribbon, I spied several other spools that I'd not wound on clothes pins, because I intended to use it right away. You know, you buy it and you can just see it on a card, and then it never happens? Yeah, that 'right away'.

Meanwhile, in the Kitchen, I was working on my belated Care Packages for my childs. First I needed to clear out all the shipping boxes from my last set of purchases, then assemble some of my cache of Flat Rate boxes, then start to see how things fit. I had only baked one batch of brownies (I ran out of eggs because of the Great Corn Bread Fiasco of two weeks ago, but I got more this week), so I washed the bowl and made a batch of brownies.

Then I took one of the not-yet-used spools of ribbon (b & w), then I decided since I was near the computer that was connected to the printer, I'd see about printing some of PaperTreyInks' free download paper swatches. You know how it goes - you want to do something, and you keep remembering you want to do it, but it is never the right time, then finally it is the right time (but not really, but the opportunity DID present itself), so you do it. So I printed off the b & w patterns onto Whisper White card stock with the idea to use the squares to make some cards (not for sale, because that would be wrong) to include in my boys' boxes. See? There is some sort of connection here, albeit sketchy.

THEN, with the whole place smelling like brownies, I sat down and made these:

I punched out four of the patterns with my 1 1/4" punch, then punched out some white 1 3/8" squares, mounted them all on a black square, then onto some color. One red ...

... and one blue, all scraps. The bases are Whisper White that I cut 4 1/4" x 8 1/2" to make the 4 1/4" square cards. See how nicely that ribbon goes with the square patterns? Mission Accomplished.

Then I remembered that Monday evening is the beginning of Purim, one of the more festive Jewish holidays. You can read all about the history of the holiday here, but now-a-days I mostly only observe the eating-of-the-Hamantaschen part of the holiday. For those of you not in-the-know, this is what hamantaschen (plural) look like:

(I put a quarter there so you can see the approximate size.) I do remember the story, and that the three-cornered cookie represents the three-cornered hat of Haman (Hamen ... Hamentaschen ... it literally means Haman's Pockets)...Haman was the Bad Guy in the story.

So because it had to be done, I put on shoes and left the house to stock up on baked goods (Hey, I'm bringing them to work on Monday, k?!). Conveniently for me, as I left Whole Foods, I remembered Mike's is right across the parking lot, so I walked over just to look again at the new EK Success flat punches that I saw last weekend and managed to NOT buy. Just to look! Okay, I got two of them this trip. I'll report back some time next week on how I like them. I also (since I was already there), checked out the MS punches, since I covet the Arched Lattice punch, but it was, of course, sold out, but I had a coupon burning a hole in my pocket, so I got a different one. I am weak. THEN, because I was there, I wandered around looking for things on clearance, and I got lucky. I shall share the abundant goodness of my purchases next week after my workshops. Yes, I must restrict myself now so I can reward myself later.

Now here it is 1 pm, and I have yet to cut up card stock or clean anything. I tell ya, we're talking Gold Medal material here in the Creative Avoidance world. I am a PRO!

08-08-08

I love that today is 08-08-08. I was thinking about 07-07-07, then thinking ahead to 09-09-09. Are you aware that after we hit 12-12-12, this will not happen again for another hundred years? Scary, non?

So tonight I needed to stop at Mike's on the way home. No really, I needed to! You see, I was playing with the Scratch-N-Sniff technique this week, and used up almost all of my clear embossing powder in my attempt; then I realized I need clear EP for one of my projects this weekend. OF COURSE I do. Sheesh. So off I went to get some EP at Mike's. Naturally, I strayed. My first 'just look' episode was totally caused by the card posted in this post on Julie Ebersole's blog. She is so enabling, I tend to stay away, but I had a free moment, and ... there it was. Suddenly I needed to find those K&Co. thingies. And I did. And I bought them, and here they are on my table, in poor lighting:

Go ahead - click on the photo to see them larger - I dare you! Then I dare you to not start clipping coupons and stalking Mike's yourself!

Whenever I buy anything like this, I do the math. If I have a package of brads in my hand and they are 12 for $4, that's 33 cents each, which is a lot to add the the cost of a card. And no, I still have not implemented my 5-year-old plan of tiered pricing, so I just do not buy expensive embellishments. Hmmm .. this could explain The Stash ...lots and lots of cheap inexpensive embellishments that I could justify buying because they were not a lot of money, so I feel better about never using them...

So ANYway, those packs of 40 labels were $2.99 each, which makes them ... divide by ... carry the 1 .... 7 1/2 cents each. I CAN DO THIS!!! So I did, in spades, by getting all three packs they had.

Next I wandered and found these little lovelies:


They are wooden letters, and small enough to fit on an A2 card front without clogging the whole thing. I thought they would be fun to paint or cover with patterned paper and use, say, one wooden letter at a time; not necessarily a whole word. And these were ...6 cents each. Sold!

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And THEN, I wandered over to the 10/$10 Spot and found these:

Packs of 10 note cards for a buck. I thought they'd make really cool layers on black or white or red card stock. With coordinating embellishemnts from The Stash, of course!

Okay, after reading back over this post, I now see clearly how The Stash was formed and is continually fed. Wanna take any bets on if I ever actually USE any of this stuff? Oh, was that a challenge?!?! Yeah, we'll see.

One final note: My total damage for 'must haves' from the new SU catalog? At first I thought I was going to be sunk. Then I went over it again and again and again, and tonight I whittled down the list and I thought I was okay, but the total is still a very large number. Will I get it all with my first order? I'll let you know next week. :-)

Trip Report: Offray Ribbon Outlet

I drove. I gaped. I shopped. But first, I met Heather! After the first 30 seconds, we realized we are cut from the same cloth, and the more we talked, the more we found we had in common. After she and her family move into their new house and get settled, we will meet up again for play days, workshops, and such. It's always nice to meet people that 'get' you. :-)

Now, about that Outlet. Let me say this place is not nearly as large as I thought it would be. I don't know why I thought it would be big; it is no different than any factory that has a small retail outlet stuck on the front of it. But man, what they have packed in there!

I tried to be really good, and I think overall I did make some good choices, both in what to buy and what not to buy.

Here's The Loot, all nice and contained. Those three bags were a total of under $40. While that is a very large amount to spend at this particular Outlet, I am not aware of ANY place you can fill that many bags that full for $40, even at the Dollar Store!

I had two things in mind to look for - velvet and twill, neither of which I found. But look what I did find:

These spools are the largest thing I got, and they are heavy! When I first discovered the bin holding them, Heather and I thought the ribbon on them had to be by-the-yard. HAD to be. Nope. The whole spool was $1.50. That's it! And since this really is twill, even though it is pretty thin, $1.50? SOLD!

To give you an idea of scale (since I am such a lousy photographer), that is a 6" ruler. $1.50!!!!!!

To give you an up-close-and-personal shot, I pulled out a piece of each one. And yes, they are a little glimmery, especially the rust-colored one. I think I have enough of these to last a lifetime. Look for some in upcoming Blog Candy. I do not think I will miss it ...

In the same bin was this partial spool of lace. Heather really liked this one, too, and for 50 cents she also grabbed one. 50 cents!!!!!

Here is a close-up of the lace.

I told myself I did not need grosgrain. After all, I could buy that from myself, right? This spool of 5/8" wide Navy Blue grosgrain is about 8" in diameter. $1.25. I had to get it! I also got some Taupe. And Cream, I think.

Oh, and I have no plans to wind this one around a clothespin, just in case you were wondering.

Then there were the "so out of my comfort zone I had to try it" spools. This one is kindof Vintage-looking, and will definitely challenge me.

This one is purple and teal - waaaay outside of the ole comfort zone.

There is a LOT more, but I will not bore you with more photos of the usual suspects - mostly normal-sized spools of satins in colors SU does not offer, if only to make myself feel better about being disloyal. I think it is safe to say I am pretty set for ribbon for a while. I may even be over the urge to buy the new Papertrey colors, though some of my new satin ribbon would go nicely with their Moss, Aqua and Berry ...

On the way out of the store you get to pick a free Grab Bag of ribbon and other stuff. Heather and I sat in her car and sorted through our free stuff, handing off to each other what we knew we would never use. At the end, she handed me a chunk-o-ribbon and a challenge: use it.

Baby ribbon! Oh, JUST what I need! I tried to see it as anything other than baby ribbon. She suggested candy ... I said maybe Cotton Candy? ... but I kept coming back to Baby. She just smiled and left me to my thoughts.

Right now my challenge is to put all this stuff away ... somewhere ... and start cutting card stock for my workshops. Most of tomorrow will be spent outside at the LSS's Yard Sale trying to sell my retired SU stamps sets, miscellaneous stamps, inks and punches, and anything else I can grab and get out of here. Tomorrow evening will be spent setting up and cleaning. Sounds like fun, huh? :-) I will report back on how the Yard Sale goes.