Tag Archives: Shopping

Stuff I LOOOOVE!

Stuff I LOOOOVE!

OK, I’ve been really busy lately, not so interested in posting after I’m done with this – just reading and responding to other blogs, wouldn’t ya know. . . but I’m going to show you a couple of things I’ve been using that I think are marvelous.

I’ve been doing some sewing, but my sewing room is also for mending and such, so sometimes I end up not interested in sewing by the time I’ve made room for it. One of the time-consuming things is a few of hubby’s shirts. (BTW, when they tell you a high cotton count shirt is “wrinkle free”, they’re lying.) I don’t mind doing them, I put on the TV and zone out, but it just takes hours to do all of them – and I forget to iron until I have all of them. So when I got an e-mail from Atlanta Thread with a discount coupon, I splurged on a couple of things.

ironing-board.jpg

This is a Reliable Home Ironing Board. It’s heavy and sturdy, doesn’t rock around like your average board, AND it has a heating element and a fan that will blow upwards or downwards to help move steam and heat through the fabric. The foot pedal turns the fan on and controls the speed, and not only does it help in getting the wrinkles out (and not putting new ones in) but it also keeps things in place that might otherwise slip off the board. Only bad thing is that it’s way more powerful than my Iron now, so I might have to upgrade that, too. Heh.

sleeve-board.jpg

I also got this massive sleeve/pants board. I can finally do the cuffs and the pleats above the cuffs. I do sleeves first, then the rest of the shirt, because the shirt gets kind of twisty while I’m ironing the sleeves.

craft-lightbulb.jpg

Now, normally I’m not a big fan of Sylvania lightbulbs, but this one is great. It’s a full-spectrum halogen for sewing and crafting that fits in a regular fixture. Is it as good as an Ott Light? No, but it’s darn close and a heck of a lot cheaper. I have my Ott bulb on the right and this on the left, and I can see everything as I sew.

I haven’t spent all my time indoors, though. We had a lovely weekend, and I got started cleaning up. I prefer to take care of the leaves in the Spring. In Fall, they’re everywhere, and they keep dropping after you think they’re done (or blowing in from other places), and you always feel the pressure to drop everything and work if it’s nice, because it won’t stay nice out for long. The heck with that. Before Winter, all the leaves have blown off into piles, and I can bag the ones that might damage plants by staying there and leave the rest as protective mulch. In Spring, they get blown into even more compact piles, and each nice day will be followed by more nice days, so the pressure’s off. Since I started the Spring Leaf Cleanup this weekend, I became reacquainted with a couple of my favorite tools:

rake.jpg

This is one of those rakes that can be made wider or narrower by sliding a rod attached to the tines. (It has a telescoping handle, too, so it takes up less storage space.) It’s great for getting under and in between and behind – less time crawling around on my knees to clean out tight spots! This is one of the cheap ones from Rite Aid or Cost Cutters or wherever I got it, and I’ve been using it for several years without trouble.

bag-insert.jpg

This was here when we moved in. We had no idea what it was, but for some reason, we didn’t throw it away. Now I’m glad we kept it:

leaf-bag.jpg

We’ve tried all kinds of leaf bag holders – wire frames, boxes, tape holding them to fences, the daughters, but none of them has worked as well as this. I dump in rakefuls of stuff, I can smash it down to fit more, and nothing pierces the bag. When it’s full, I grab it by the little handle cutouts and slide it right out. Yowza! Oh, and I’m not being all irresponsible with these bags – the handles are tied in bows so I can take them to the town recycling center, untie and dump them, and then use them again. They’ll collect them at the curb, but it’s so stupid. They don’t want them in paper bags, which would speed up collection and would decompose in the giant town mulch pile, oh, no. They want them in plastic – and when they collect, the guys rip the bags open, dump the leaves in the truck, and leave the empty, torn plastic bags on the street. It’s a pain to take them in myself, but less so than cleaning up the mess the leaf pickup leaves behind.

So there you go. Merchandise that gets my seal of approval. Buy with confidence. Heh.

A Day in Manhattan

A Day in Manhattan

So. . .four Moms and six teenage friends get up at the crack of dawn and drive to the PATH station at Newport Center for a day of wandering and shopping. Everyone is tired and sore, but it was definitely a trip we’ll do again (only with more time sitting on the subway. . .even the kids were worn out from walking!)

The original plan was to hit Madame Tussaud’s, then head downtown to the Village/Soho and general vicinity. We had gathered up discount tickets, because the place is pricey, but AAA offers a 15% discount, Entertainment books have coupons (some printable extras for people who bought books, too) and I found a site with a nice assortment of discount coupons just by googling, too.

I also went searching for the location of a clothes store called Uniqlo, because some friends had recommended it as a place the girls might enjoy (more on this later) and it led me to a very useful site called yelp. Woohoo! Rather than have to do an advanced search, you can go from general to specific, and navigating around was incredibly easy. I would ask for clothes, select women’s, and then specify the neighborhood by clicking on a navbar that stayed up all the time – no going back each time to pick a different area. Some things weren’t categorized 100%, not all of the stores/restaurants had all information, but there were addresses, phone numbers, map locations, and reviews from people who had actually been to the places. I printed up a bunch of pages of ideas. (one caveat – if you select the printable version of a business’ page, and don’t specify how many pages, you can print all the pages and pages and pages of reviews as well. Oops!)

Anyway. The PATH let us off at the World Trade Center Station. When I lived up North, I had seen it only from the vantage points of Eagle Rock Reservation and the Circle Line. Before that, I had seen and been in the towers pre-9/11 many times. The first look was. . .well, I won’t say a shock, because it’s not something fresh in my mind anymore. . .humbling. If the towers were impressively huge when they were standing, their absence is equally impressively huge.

wtc.jpg
Read the rest of this entry