Hey gang! Just dropping in for a quick hello before heading off to watch another one of Vanessa's ski lessons. Ted and I will bring Vanessa back here while Tony drives home to pick up his wife and son, then all back here for pizza and strawberry milkshakes. Mike and the band are now in Newfoundland after an 8 hour ferry ride, and as far as we know, Nick is well in BC as the ski season there winds down for the year.
Sounds like a nice afternoon. We haven't done much, took Jolene to the playground so she could run off some energy but the wind made us cold so we came home after not much time. Kind of stunk. So we have stayed inside most of the day doing not so fun house stuff.
I hope Vanessa's ski lessons are going well. Is she enjoying the experience? How adorable she must be!
It was a pretty day today, and fairly quiet, although I'm beginning to notice "spring" activity in the neighborhood. There are more sounds of children playing outside, and more outside chores beginning. Love it.
I ran over to the fabric store, and several other places, because I needed some fabric to go with my new RIBBON!! I'll tell you about that adventure in a minute, but this week I'll be preparing for our club's spring exhibit, which we have to hang on April 1st. (I hope that's not a bad omen.)
So I've been hearing about a factory outlet for Offray ribbon which is in Hagerstown, MD. This really frosts me too because AZ-D was in boarding school there for two years, and I didn't know anything about this place when I was driving up there regularly. It's slightly over an hour's drive from here, but I didn't know if it would be worth the effort to haul all the way up there, only to find out that everything was tacky discarded junk! Not to mention the disappointing drive back, and the cost of gas.
Friday was a pretty day, though, so I bit the bullet and went.
WOW!!
The outlet store is attached to the factory, and is in a residential area, oddly enough. There is also a large outlet mall (clothing) in Hagerstown, but I didn't have the time or the energy to drop by there afterwards.
The FIRST thing I saw in the Offray outlet was a huge spool of beautiful grey/silver ribbon, and there was 300 YARDS of it. I bought the entire spool for $2.50! Practically free. That along paid for my gas... Then there were plastic sandwich bags filled with ribbon, except that they were the slightly larger quart size baggies. Gorgeous colors. Each bag was 25 cents. I couldn't tell exactly how much was in there, but it looked like a sufficient amount, and it was Offray satin ribbon, and it was only 25 cents. What's to lose?? Once I got home, I measured it, and each bag contained about 25 yards. Crazy...
There were boxes of trim, and I found some beautiful little ribbon roses, not the tacky stuff you find at Michaels, but really pretty stuff. Ten cents a bag!
There was a spool of green and copper wired ribbon, 100 yards of it, for 50 cents. That was for the entire roll.
There was a 50-yard roll of beautiful striped marigold ribbon that was $2.50. I'd seen the same roll in a bin for $10.00, so I asked the sales woman why one was $10.00 and the other was $2.50. She told me to turn the roll over, and look at the bottom side. One was rolled perfectly on the spool ($10.00), and the other was wonky ($2.50). There wasn't anything wrong with the ribbon itself, just that it hadn't gone onto the spool evenly. Bought several of those...
Well, I could go on and on, but I came home a very happy little camper with three trash bags filled with gorgeous ribbon!
One of my doll club members teased me and asked what I plan to do with 300 yards of silver grey ribbon, and I told her that if I can't use all of it myself on doll costumes, I'll share with others, and/or wrap Christmas presents with it! LOL... There's always a use. If I had a source for selling it, I'd make a killing, just on that ribbon alone!
So I'm happy! I was telling AZ-D all about it yesterday, when she called, and she told Jim later, "Mom is the ONLY person I know who could be THAT excited over ribbon!"
-- Edited by Moore ideas on Sunday 22nd of March 2009 06:09:54 PM
__________________
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"
(Dumbledore to Harry Potter)
WOW! Do you not LOVE that kind of major bargain find? We need photos of the ribbons, Moore!! Three garbage bags? That's a LOT of ribbon!!
Well, Vanessa wasn't all that into skiing yesterday but she did fairly well on the 4 runs we watched. Then we brought her back here in my car while her daddy went home for the rest of his tribe. All arrived here along with my parents, I cooked 6 pizzas, made huge salad and for dessert we had strawberry and chocolate milkshakes and peanut butter cookies. Vanessa's milkshake ended up on the sofa, so that was fun. Quentin is so funny now as he loves all things electronic and Ted's collection of remote controls on a shelf are a major source of fascination for the little guy. Click, click, fireplace on, off, on, off, lol. We finally took the batteries out. We're slow learners. Anyway, it was a wonderful afternoon and evening but kind of exhausting. It took us quite a while to clean up after all went home, then we collapsed in front of Desperate Housewives.
Sounds like an awesome sale, and what a way to spend the day. Besides pictures of the ribbon you will have to send pictures of what you make with the ribbon. I need to find an itty bitty piece of ribbon to glue into my bible. My mom bought me this really nice Bible a couple years back but it didn't come with a bookmark. So I need to find one of those...
Sounds like a good weekend for all....
Jodi if you pop in will you please tell us how the trip to Montana went? And let us know how badly you have been snowed in.
Well the Bible is a navy blue, but my name is printed on it in silver. So either of those. I am still unsure how I am going to get the ribbon into the book. A woman at church said to use a glue gun. We shall see.
