The Fabulous! Festival for May ‘08
By Meg | May 5, 2008
The May edition of The Fabulous! Festival is up over at General Housewifery. Anastasia did a maaaahvelous job hosting. I’ve enjoyed reading all the featured posts, which are as interesting as ever. The quality and scope of submissions never ceases to amaze me. There are posts on everything from skirtinis to green fashion and skincare to pin up gals in Vespa ads. You really should check it out.
Attention Bloggers!
Next month’s edition will be hosted here on June 2nd. The deadline to submit posts for that edition is May 30th. If you have a post you’d like to have featured and it’s on the topic of fashion, beauty, shopping or personal style, please submit it using this carnival submission form.
If you’re interested in hosting the Fabulous! Festival, please don’t hesitate to contact me. It’s an easy way to bring more people to your blog.
You can find out more about the Fabulous! Festival on the festival home page.
Past posts and future hosts can be seen on the Fabulous! Festival blog carnival index page.
Tags: Beauty, Blog Carnivals, Fabulous! Festival, Fashion, Green Living, Links, Style
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Yard sale money leads to shopping — but some good buys
By Meg | May 4, 2008
There’s something about yard sale money… all that cash seems to disappear so quickly.
Yesterday we had a very successful yard sale with a friend. My husband Charles and I raked in just over $400 and still have so much stuff that it looks like we’re going to have another one next weekend — though I may let my husband and friend do most of the work next time since I hope to be entertaining some special guests and prepping for an early birthday party.
But selling all that stuff did make me want to get out and buy. It didn’t help that I got a 20% off any single item “birthday” coupon from Steinmart, a.k.a. land of the oh-so-cute-if-not-mostly-matronly hats. Hat shopping, yay!
Since I’ve been looking for more casual summer hats anyway, I decided to go. And yes, I brought home a cute straw hat (which I’ll début some other time). That was the only thing I bought there, and part of me was actually sort of disappointed that I didn’t spend my coupon on something more expensive. I was prepared $50 on the hat, but alas, it was only $16. I know the math was in my favor, but part of me is still silly that way.
And just for the record, I also survived a short stop at the mall — two stores — without buying anything. Charles was just replacing a Craftsman tool that bit the dust. (How we love their replacement policy!)
After that, we headed to one of the local health food stores. Since we’re running low on toothpaste, I decided that it would be a good time to experiment with some more natural varieties. We found.. well.. almost too many varieties. Black currant and apricot flavored toothpaste? Sounds great, but we’re sticking to spearmint for now. Unfortunately, everything else seemed rather pricey, so we then headed to another grocery store.
The other grocery store is locally-owned, rather small, but known locally for great prices and a good selection of health food, fresh produce, and meat. While my husband and I have typically shopped at Publix (which is right down the road and also has great prices), I think we’re heading to the locally-owned store more often now because #1 my husband has discovered that the meat there is better and cheaper, #2 I love their fresh produce, #3 they have a great selection of health foods and alternative products which appeals to me (though I seem to keep overlooking toothpaste), #4 they have lots of plants for sale which I’ve been buying up as we grow our garden, and #5 they have the best selection of Dagoba chocolate I know of in town.
So, despite bragging about our $15 weekly grocery bills, we’ve been cheating. This week’s might have been, had I not loaded up on stuff like:
- four bars of Dagoba chocolate (two plain milk chocolate for Charles and two chai bars for me since I’m already stocked up on the roseberry flavor)
- four different bottles of wine (honey, honey and cherry, pomegranate, and blackberry)
- a slab of precooked ribs (not as good as home-cooked but de-lish still the same and done a lot sooner)
- two kinds of grapes
- blueberries
- a bunch of bananas
- lots of sweet Vidalia onions
- a new tub of yeast for the breadmaker
- about two dozen seedlings (watermelon, pumpkin, banana pepper, lettuce, bok choy)
- some cinnamon raisin bagels
- one bite-size snickers bar at checkout for Charles
I could still swear that I’m leaving out something… but I think that was about it. But despite our splurging on the wine and chocolate and a precooked dinner (actually five meals now by the looks of it) and fresh produce and additions to the garden, the bill came out to less than $100 — and still much less than we used to spend. Meanwhile, I feel like we’re eating like royalty. We got to be careful, though, because that store is way too easy to splurge in. They have all sorts of jam flavors I didn’t even know existed and we’re still eating down the block of honey comb we bought last week there. Yummmmmy. There are still quite a few Dagoba flavors I haven’t tried. Plus, I haven’t even hit the cheese section.
Fortunately, the prices are good for the area, meaning that we can have our locally-made, locally-sold cake and eat it to, washing it down with Florida wine. And now that we’ve freed up some money elsewhere in our budget, it’s nice to spend it on something we enjoy and that meshes well with our values.
Along those lines, we’re thinking of trying more natural products. I managed to yard sale some of my unopened toiletries yesterday, but I still have a lot left, so it may be a while before I get to trying more than toothpaste. However, if you have any good brands in mind, let me know and I’ll keep an eye out for them.
Tags: Food, Green Living, Hats, Health, Home & Garden, Spending Money
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My low expectations weren’t low enough
By Meg | May 3, 2008
I recently attended an awards ceremony at the community college here. The invite said that “cocktail attire” was suggested, so I dressed accordingly in my little black dress, eggplant heels, and sparkly clutch. Despite the wording of the invite, I was fully prepared to be the only one there dressed up.
Fortunately, I wasn’t, but most people were dressed as I expected, in t-shirts and jeans. O.k., I’ll give them that. It’s a community college, it’s a weekday evening, people are coming from classes, it’s a super casual city — I get it. Personally, I don’t think it would have killed anyone to wear a blouse and nice pair of slacks (or *gasp!* a skirt), but eh, sometimes I’m just beyond caring.
But just when I thought that I had set my expectations low enough to be accurate, out comes a girl on stage with a top so short or jeans so low-rise that several inches of midriff were exposed.
What the heck?!
How does someone — presumedly an adult — think that is appropriate attire for class, let alone an academic awards ceremony where the invitation even says to dress up?
Tags: Impressions, Modesty, School, Style
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Twittering
By Meg | May 3, 2008
O.k., I finally did it. I added Twitter to the blog so you can check out some of the thoughts that don’t quite warrant a blog post, plus tons of random stuff that goes through my brain. Check it out in the left sidebar.
Tags: Site News
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Six random things
By Meg | May 1, 2008
Une femme d’un certain age has tagged me for the “6 random things” meme. Thanks for thinking of me Une femme ;)
I’ve already responded to a “7 random things” meme, and an “8 random things” meme, so this is a little tricky, but here it goes.
- I like online genealogy. I spent much of last night and this morning checking up on what others have added online about some of our ancestors. One crazy tree traced it all the way back to both the Bible and Greco-Roman mythology. Of course, I take it all with a huge grain of salt, but that’s still pretty neat. Even discounting the less than credible branches, my dad’s side of the family has been in the U.S. since at least the 1600s. Plus I found out that one ancestor died from a gunshot wound at the Civil War battle of Cold Harbor.
- Today I’m trying to organize stuff for a huge yard sale we’re having Saturday. I can’t believe how much stuff we’re getting rid of — and I can’t wait to see it go.
- If all goes as planned, my husband will be done with our chicken coop this weekend. Then Cleo and Chloe Clucker can move in. (We haven’t actually bought the chickens yet, but I didn’t let that stop me from naming them.)
- I don’t wear perfume or other fragrance-y stuff. I’m not against it, it’s just not worth the time, clutter, or money to me.
- I really hate it when people leave knives out on the counter. I’m forever getting on to my husband about it because I can just see our cats doing something stupid.
- I recently organized three bookcases by color, then by height on each shelf. My friends who have seen it think I’m nuts — but they probably knew that already.
- Bonus: My birthday is this month — and I still haven’t figured out whether I’m looking forward to it or not.
If you’re reading this and have a blog, consider yourself tagged. (Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen if you don’t… but it is a pretty neat meme.)
Tags: Memes
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