THE PRICE IS FINALLY RIGHT

I have often commented on your blog posts about how you guys in the US get the best shopping deals.

Where I live in Canada, not too far from the border, the clearance sections in the stores take off about 10% and call that a clearance. What? A $100.00 item is clearance priced at $90.00? I don’t think so.

Yesterday I went to a clearance centre for the  Sears store to look for some tops for work mostly. This is a separate store not part of the regular stores and is all clearance items.

Finally someplace that understands how to clear out merchandise.

Not only was this stuff at a low clearance price but they were taking a further 25% off at the checkout. If I had used my Sears credit card they would have taken off more still.

Here is what I bought….wait until you see the total price

The column on the left is a black skort, a coral, white and cream coloured turtleneck (think fall) and a black tee.

The second column is a nice green faux suede jacket with a zip front and an ivory colour silky shirt.

The 3rd column shows a coral sleeveless shirt and a lovely striped shirt.

Last but not least was a 2 piece set. A beautiful yellow silky tee with a sheer overshirt with a pretty butterfly design.

What did I pay for all this booty? 10 pieces of clothing for $74.00 before our taxes. I would have bought a lot more but because I am only 5’ tall but wear a large size of clothing the sleeves are often too long for me. I will shorten the sleeves on the green jacket but the clothing I left behind had fancy cuffs and stuff that I would not want to try to alter.

That my friends, is what I call a clearance!!!

AND THE WINNER IS

Hooray. The best man won. I do have to say I didn’t think it was much of a duel.

If you want a good chuckle look up Fabio’s weather report skit. The wind never stops, lol. He does have a bad case of moobs though. (man boobs)

CASTING MY VOTE

I am casting my vote in the Old Spice Mano a Mano Challenge. Have you seen the commercials? Great marketing scheme.

Yup. I have picked my “Mano” and am sharing it here with you.

Have you seen the commercials? Isaiah Mustafa Old Spice Guy against Fabio.

Now you may have loved Fabio back in the day but let’s face it. He is old now. I am surprised he can be photographed on a beach since his past experience with seagulls attacking his face should make him pretty jumpy out there.

Share your choice on Twitter, Facebook, blog etc. to cast your vote.

Here is my guy. You can find him  @Isaiahmustafa on Twitter. Bring it on!!!!

GENEALOGY, RANDOM: The Year Without A Summer

I am joining in with Chari @ Happy to Design for Sunday Favorites. Stop in and see some older posts brought out from the archives to free up some time on a Sunday for other fun things.

I first posted this in March of 2009 but I think it is interesting given the weather extremes we are all experiencing now.
________________________________________________________________

Today we are very concerned about weather patterns and global warming. There have been abnormal instances of weather in the past too.
In 1816 things went terribly wrong and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The normal temperatures in the N.W. United States and in the S. E. of Canada in the late spring were usually around 20-25 degrees Celsius. (68-77 F). Snow in the summer was almost unheard of. Maybe a bit in late May but for the most part never.
In May of 1816 most of the crops that were planted were killed off by a frost. Anything that was replanted after that was also destroyed by two snowstorms in June through eastern Canada and New England. There were widespread localized famines and in a weakened state from hunger there were many disease related deaths.
There was still lake and river ice in July and August as far south as Pennsylvania. The few crops that did grow to maturity went up in price eightfold.
So what caused this you ask? Amazingly enough it was something that happened a year before this. In 1815 in Indonesia the volcano, Mount Tambora, erupted spewing out ash and volcanic dust into the upper atmosphere. During the time frame of 1812-1814 four other major eruptions had already built up the amount of atmospheric dust.
When this happens there is a drop in temperatures world wide. There were food riots, flooding. Hungary reported brown snow and Italy had red snow throughout the year.
I know we had so much snow in our area this year. Not a normal thing for the Lower Mainland of B.C. Now we have rain and cold temperatures and are about 3 weeks behind the normal pattern. We will have to tough it out and think about how lucky we are.
I hear that Mount Redoubt in Alaska has erupted 5 times since yesterday. Uh oh.

NO, ME EITHER

BEAUTIFUL STILL LIFE INSPIRATION

Still Life Par CONSUL Musique Simon and Garfunkel

There are 35 pictures. You can view full screen.

SERIOUS ERROR

INSTALLING SUMMER.....
██████████████░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE.
Installation failed. 404 error: Season not found. The season you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again..

HOW DID YOU FIND ME?

I may be doing a recurring post on the search keywords that show up in my stats because quite honestly I have no clue how these words brought someone to my blog.

This weeks most uh….shall we say unusual search keywords for the site were:

• your gift will come in handy when I am broke
• women bending over in short shorts

Now that I have written about these two searches it will bring many more people to my blog when they are in fact searching for these things.

Brilliant!!!! Think of the traffic this will generate. I should just post all kinds of word strings every day and those stats will be through the roof….unless of course I actually do post a picture of me bending over in short shorts.

I THINK I AM MOVING

I would so move to this place. what a blast.

This video came to my attention via Susan @ Between Naps on the Porch.

You are going to enjoy this clip so much and I’ll bet many will be packing their bags and trying to get in.

As Susan said, let’s get them up to a million plus hits on YouTube.

My favourite part??

Let me just say “Quack, quack”.

Share, share, share this video.

PASS MY MEDS PLEASE

Every time we turn around there is another article about whether or not something is good for us.

Eat lots of this….no, no don’t eat that it causes your ears to fall off.

Drink wine, don’t drink wine, drink a little wine. Well I know what camp I am in for this one.

Now on to coffee and tea. Some studies say it is harmful where others tell us it is good for our brains and for our heart.

A U.S. study now says that people who drink coffee or tea regularly are less likely to carry the MRSA superbug than those who don’t drink either one regularly.

Coffee and tea are found to have antimicrobial properties which may protect against carrying the infection.

I for one am behind this study all the way. I knew my coffee was good for me and it certainly is good for others because without it I may just pinch someone’s head off in the morning.

I am starting on my second cup now….you are all safe for today.

DESIGNER AWESOMENESS

Over the years I have watched many decorating shows and gone through many magazines and one of my favourites has always been Kimberley Seldon.

Kimberley has hosted 3 shows on TV, one being the well known Design For Living.

She is the Decorating Editor for Style at Home magazine. She has a couple books published and a furniture line called Kimberley Seldon for Brentwood Classics. Of course she has her own design firm.

Now there is something new I have found that she is involved in. She is the Editor in Chief of Dabble the online magazine. Have you seen this yet? Go here and have a look. You are going to love this. They are bringing us design, food and travel ideas from around the world.

One of the main reasons I am sharing this is because they will accept contributors to their magazine and I know so many of you amazing bloggers would be perfect for the magazine. Go to their careers section to see what the scoop is.

In the mean time sign up to receive their feed for their bi-monthly online magazine. Tell them Lori E sent ya!

RANDOM: What A Mess

THIS IS A REPOST BUT IT IS TIME FOR ME TO DO THIS ALL OVER AGAIN. IT IS EVEN WORSE THIS TIME AROUND. IS THERE A 12 STEP PROGRAM FOR THIS KIND OF THING? NO I AM NOT A HOARDER. REALLY!! I'M NOT.

I am famous for buying more of something at the grocery store that I already have in the pantry. I am very short and can't even see what is on the top shelf let alone reach it. Besides if I am getting one of something I might as well get two. You never know when all the grocery stores in the world will disappear on the same day and I won't have a tin of green peppercorns from Madagascar to make a sauce for my steak.

I luckily had a tall person here to empty out the top shelf for me.
I don't have "food" so much as I have "ingredients". Always the promise of good things. None of the commitment.

Then there are the expired products. Now I will have a record of when it was clean and tidy so that I can see how long I can keep it up. Enough writing. I need to go to the grocery store.

THERE ARE FAIRIES AMONG US

Well now there are some things in life that we believe in and some that we don’t.

Leprechauns? Nope. Not likely.

Unicorns? Only in little girls minds.

Elves & Gnomes? Ya, right! Maybe in your garden or on a travel site.

Trolls? The stuff of kids tales.

But what about Fairies? Are they real? Have you seen one? Met one? I am pretty sure I have.

I have been contacted by the Fairy Hobmother and a wish has been granted just by telling you about them.

I left a comment on Happier Than a Pig in Mud’s blog when she had been visited by the Fairy Hobmother and Kapow!!!! I was granted a wish. So just by posting about the Fairy Hobmother I was gifted an Amazon gift card.

We often post about our cooking endeavours and our appliances are a big part of that. The Fairy Hobmother is a blog showcasing appliances. It is full of information.

But wait….don’t go yet….if you leave a comment on here you may be next to be visited by the Fairy Hobmother. It is real, I know because it happened to me!!!

LATE SHIFT LOLLING

http://www.flickr.com/photos/goingslo/4622193908/lightbox/

v. lolled, loll·ing, lolls

v.intr.

1. To move, stand, or recline in an indolent or relaxed manner.

2. To hang or droop laxly: a pennant lolling from the mast.

v.tr.

To permit to hang or droop laxly: lolled his head on the armrest.

n. Archaic

An act or attitude of lolling.

****Not to be confused with laughing out loud*****

Normally I work 4 ten hour shifts a week and get an extra day off during the week.

I love this shift. I don’t even notice the extra 2 hours a day that I am at work.

Sometimes I get a Friday or a Monday off and I have a long weekend. Sometimes I get a Friday off one week and the Monday off then next week giving me a 4 day weekend. I love my 4 day weekends. Kiss, kiss.

This week however is supposed to be crazy busy at work and I am working all 5 days…in a row…Gah!

Since these will just be 8 hour shifts though I have all this extra time in the morning and I am lolling. Don’t you love that word? Say it with me…lolling.

I still get up early so I have an extra 2 hours to loll. I roll over in bed and peek at the clock. Lots of time. Loll, loll.

The down side is that I am sure one of these mornings I am going to forget to get ready and will realize too late that I have to go to work. LOL. Okay this time I am laughing out loud not lolling. Get it? Lol.

UNCLE LOUIS' STORY

My mother had 11 brothers and sisters that survived past infancy. There were several more that sadly did not.

One of her brothers, my Uncle Louis told me a story once about when he was just a little boy. Now I won't tell it the way he would have because as people have said to him "do we have to pack a lunch for this story".

The way I remember it was that back in his youth, around 1928 maybe, he was walking down the street in their home town in Manitoba. It was near Winnipeg, perhaps Transcona.
Uncle Louis looked down at the ground and found a nickel. That was more money than he could ever hope to have.

Oh my goodness what would he do with this fortune. He thought about it and thought about it. After all he has so many brothers and sisters. He went to the store and spent his nickel. He bought a can of sardines. Not candy. No. Simply a can of oily sardines. And do you know what he did with his treasure? Wrong. He went and hid in the attic and ate the whole can himself. You know what. I can't blame him. They lived in such poverty and this was his one selfish act to have the prize all to himself. To not have to share every waking and sleeping moment with the others.

Image via Wikipedia

Now Uncle Lou could have told this story much better than I could but then we would have had to pack a lunch and all the sardines were gone.

I am joining in with Chari @ Happy to Design for Sunday Favorites where were get to repost something from our earlier blog days to  spare up some valuable time on a Sunday for other things.