New hand towels for the bathrooms

Both of the bathrooms needed new hand towels. I like white towels because I can wash them in hot water with bleach to disinfect them but they don't change color.
I found packages of hand towels at Big Lots, just $5 for a package of 5. For the hall bathroom, I sewed polka dot ribbon on them - it matches the shower curtain in that bathroom.
I used fabric scraps for the master bath room, scraps left from the rugs I made last month.

I decorated all 10 towels - 4 for the hall bath and 6 for the master bath.

A Year of Savings - the year is half over!

I started 2008 with a goal to spend $100 on groceries and all household spending. As I added last weeks shopping totals to my yearly totals, I saw it was week 26 so that means that 2008 is half done already.

While I had hoped to have lower spending totals, I seem to be averaging about $108 in spending and about $45 in coupons each week. At the first of the year, prices were already starting to inflate and I continue to be surprised by how much. Inflation has caused my spending to be higher in 2 ways. One is because most all prices are higher. The other is that when I do find good deals, I tend to stockpile items we will need and use because I know they will just cost more if I wait and buy them later.

Birthday Month

I read once that June is the most common month for birthdays and it is sure true in our family. My brother Rex is a June baby. Jimmy and Nina are June babies. All 3 of my in-law children are June babies too. Some years, we have had one big June birthday dinner for all the kids, but celebrations were spread out this year.

This banner was for Jimmy and I put it on his door on his actual birthday. I made it with 2 circle punches, letter stamps, a piece of ribbon and glue. He took a trip to Portland earlier in the month and requested his birthday cash early so he could it for traveling.

John and Amanda have the last 2 June Birthdays and these were their gifts, wrapped and ready to go.

John also wanted "birthday dinner" and requested Mexican with homemade tortillas and Nina asked for blackberry cobbler. Nina and I did the tortillas together - I made the dough, she rolled them out and I cooked them on the griddle. We had beef taco filling with the traditional toppings and a Mexican chicken casserole.

Jeff made up a scavenger hunt for John's gift, and John seemed to really enjoy searching all over our house for the clues.

A Year of Savings - Hobby Lobby

Hobby Lobby is a company that was started in Oklahoma and is still headquartered here. My town has a very nice, clean, well stocked Hobby Lobby and it is just a few blocks from my office. I don't there too often but I had time to browse around and got some great deals this morning.
All their rubber stamps are half off. The alphabet sets were 6.99 each so with the half off applied, I got them both for 6.99 total.
Hobby Lobby prints a 40 % off coupon about every other week. It is good on anything that is not already on sale. I used one on a set of blank white cards with vellum envelopes.
My total at the checkout was a little over $10.

I am really happy with the sets of letter stamps. I looked up the price on sets of stamps in a 1997 D.O.T.S stamp catalog and the sets sold for $30 back then. Some prices do go down, maybe there is hope for gasoline to go down too!

Quilt for Connie's new grandbaby

My friend Connie is a not a seamstress except when she is expecting a grand baby. She swears she took 3 years of home ec in high school but she can hardly even thread a needle without instruction. With me talking her through the whole thing, we made a quilt in neutrals for her first grandson, Caleb, 7 years ago.

Connie's daughter, Jessica, is now expecting their second child, a daughter in September. Jessica has already decorated the nursery with custom bedding in black and white zebra, lime green leopard and pink polka dots so Connie wanted to match the quilt to the bedding. I talked her all the way through this one too, but she did get it machine quilted at a little quilt shop on Main Street.

I machine stitched the binding on it tonight and Connie will hand-stitch it in place. I have the scraps and plan on making some bibs for the new baby.

Jessica grew up in the 90's and I know she will really like these. It was nice to spend so much time with Connie working on this porject.

But I guess I am just too traditional, this hot pink and zebra is not my cup of tea.