monkeybox

The Bean and I forwent our usual Saturday nature hunting/small town festivals this weekend. There was a festival, but to get to it, we would have had to have driven right smack through the Arkansas Razorback football traffic. 80,000 people 2 miles from my house makes me go way 'round the other way. We ended up going the "back way" as we call it to bypass the idiotic magnet encrusted flag waving vehicles (I hate that stuff, and am embarrassed to say that DH has a pimped out Razorback truck complete with logo hat, flags, magnets and various other idiotic things. That I bought!) and go to a neighboring town for more of a retail adventure.

First stop - The Dollar Shop. This is not the typical Dollar Store - this one has lots of overstocks and clearance items from other stores, but everything is $1.00. And, about three times a year, they mark everything down in 10¢ increments until it reaches 25¢ a piece. Then they close the doors for a week and restock. And I go buy my brains out. They have a great scrapbooking department - lots of kits, papers, stickers and other goodies - all $1.00. I am terrible about pretty much grabbing one, if not two, of everything! DH says, "How can you spend $50.00 at the Dollar Store???" Restraint, honey, that's how.

When we were leaving, a young couple came in - they were about 20 or so. The girl looked relatively normal - wearing cargo shorts and a tank top. But, the guy was so not normal. Oh my, where do I start? Shall I stop at the bottom and work my way up? Combat boots, black pants with zippers, chains and studs all over them, a black shirt with yet more zippers, chains and studs, arms encrusted in black leather braclets with 2-3" long metal spikes on them, arms covered in various tattoos, wide leather band around is neck with 2-3" metal spikes, various piercings on each ear, a 6" tall black dyed mohawk and the piece de resistance - a dog leash attached to a collar. And the realtively normal girlfriend was leading him around by the leash. Now, I pride myself on not being judgemental or descriminating towards any person, race, religion, stature, etc., but apparently my mouth gaped at the sight of these two, because the girl behind the counter took one look at me looking at them and did a spit take of her Coke. I guess I can be judegmental. And, rightly so, in this case. Come on! What's up with that? How do you explain that to your kid? Especially when you don't understand it yourself. (It was the dog leash that I found upsetting - the rest of it was just his fashion style.)

When we went outside, still shaking our heads from what we had seen - we walked smack dab into this truck:

I'm pretty much betting that this truck belonged to them. I was happy to knote that they were out-of-towners and not locals. Whew.

We headed out of weirdsville and went to a store called:

This big chair sits by the front door. I would love to have this in my front yard!

This is a 100,000 square foot store packed to the gills with holiday merchandise, furniture and close-outs of all sorts. They also have aisles and aisles of Hanna's candles. Hanna's candles are the ones that Valarie Parr-Hill sells on QVC. They are made right here in town. These candles are seconds, but only because maybe the stickers aren't straight, or the colors weren't perfetly pure. I restrained nearly everyone until I picked up the Chocolate Candy Corn. Yum-O. It's in a big nice heavy jar and was $2.00.

These candles are still gift-able since they are nice and still gorgeous and smell-O-rififc. Unlike the Flop-Pops we used to buy from the local lollipop factory. They make those big round suckers you see at stores that are stuck in the big wooden tree stand thingy. Anyway, we could get a 5 lb. bag of suckers for $3.00. It was always interesting sticking one in your mouth, because you would pick out a green one, but it would taste like red hot cinnamon, or a tutti frutti colored one would be chocolate. Or sometimes a red one would be grape. You just never knew what you were geting. I miss the Flop Pops. They were good.

But, I digress.

I did some Christmas shopping while I was there. I got my Mom the most wonderful...pbttttttt Mumsie - I'm not telling.....

~~~~~~ The first stop we made in town was a yard sale. I hadn't been to one all weekend, so I had to go to just one. We had passed a few baby clothes/Fisher Price explosions thrown out on lawns and not stopped. But, I passed one and it was full of my kind of stuff and old furniture. STOP THE CAR! Oh wait, I was driving. So, I stopped. I bought this cool old iron and iron attachement.
I really love the polka dot graphics on all the inserts and on the box. Betty Crocker made ironing look fun! I paid $5.00 for it and have absolutely no where to put it. I hope to have a laundry room someday suitable for decorating with cool old laundry themed items, but doubt I ever will. But, when I find something particulary wonderful, I pick it up anyway. You just never know. (I do have a lottery ticket. ;O))

As I was leaving I noticed an old metal round back lawn chair siting by the fence. I am obsessed with these chairs. I see them at nearly every sale and always, always, always ask "Is that chair for sale" but they nearly always say "NO", much to my disappointment. So, I asked, "Is that chair for sale?" She said the magic words, "Yes." "But, it has a matching glider". A GLIDER? Are you feaking kidding me? I have been searching for one of those for years. You may remember my pink glider and chair set I bought earlier this summer. I adore it. But, I have always wanted one of the double seat gliders to match the chairs. I really didn't think I could get it in the back of my rather small SUV, but with a little stuffing and prodding, we got it in there. (Getting it out was a whole 'nother thing!). I paid $30.00 for the set. So, now I have the pink glider and chair set, the new old white glider and chair set as well as four other white matching chairs that I already own. I have a total of $72.00 invested in all of that - which is a steal.

This lady had a great backyard full of old junk (I called it junk and then let her know that I think Junk is a GOOD thing) and beautiful flowers. I gave her my Junkin' card and invited her to visit my blog and the other junkin' gals on blogspot. So, if you're reading this - welcome!

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This picture is not the best - but it was cool. The Canadian Snowbirds were in town last night for an arial show. We live over the mountain from the Airport so they were flying right over the house. They were really low, but this picture looks like they were very high. It is interesting to see cool things in your very own backyard. One day The Bean and I were in the yard and we heard this sputtering noise - we didn't see a car or truck coming and we couldn't figure it out. Then a big cloud cast a shadow over the entire backyard. I looked up and the freaking Goodyear Blimp was hovering over our house! Yikes!

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Off to a sale or two.....