Ellen wants me to update the blog

Honestly, I don't have much to report here. It's just been the typical back to school busy days. The days fly by.

Paul has been grouse hunting this weekend. Ellen started volleyball practice this week and will start band soon. She wants to play the saxophone. Carly is enjoying school and because she is only five doesn't realize that her class of 30 kids is too damn big. I had said I'd give it a couple weeks and then I would revisit the issue with my superintendent and principal. So that's a job for this week. I'm going to a referendum committee meeting tomorrow night and I'm going to talk with some school board members about it. I could go on about this for quite a while, but I'll spare all of you.

I also volunteered at the DFL office in Hibbing this past week. They have a "Women on Wednesdays" phone bank, so I did that for a couple of hours. It was me and a bunch of 20 year olds. Two hours on the phone was about all I could take. I could never be a telemarketer. Everyone was nice to me on the phone and I was actually pretty good at it. I'll go again. You can sit around and gripe or you can do something. It felt good to help, but I'd rather do something rather than make phone calls.

Our hockey tickets came in the mail this week. It's hard to believe that we are getting close to that time again. I finished reading the latest David Sedaris book - too funny. I especially liked the airplane crossword puzzle chapter. We finished watching the 4th season of "Entourage" from Netflix last night. I love that show. I could watch every scene with Ari and Lloyd five times and laugh just as hard each time. Paul is a big fan of Johnny Drama. I need to find another comedy to rent from Netflix. I've rented some hour long dramas, but that's so time consuming. I can get an entire season of a comedy done in two weekends.

It rained all weekend. I only left the house to make a quick trip to Walmart and Penneys. I was going through my closet looking for long sleeved shirts and it would appear that I gave an awful lot of mine to Laurie's thrift shop, so I picked up a couple and will need to get a few more when we start going to Duluth for games.

Dinner's ready. Paul cooked a porketta in the crock pot and it smells really good and I'm starving. Everyone have a good week.

First Day of School!

Carly was very excited for the first day of kindergarten. She was ready to 30 minutes before we needed to leave. She's wearing the same dress that Ellen wore for her first day of school. I thought she looked very cute.

Carly's teacher is Miss Samson or as Carly has been calling her - teacher. I correct her every time she says that because it would drive me crazy if my students called me "Teacher."

Ellen's first day was "Awesome!" She has Mrs. Fillman for a teacher. She was hoping to get her. She and Kayla have math and reading together, but are in different classes the rest of the day. They think this is just fine because it means they have more to talk about after school. I wouldn't have thought of that.

My first couple of days have been good. I have 21 kids in my class. They seem pretty good. They follow directions well. Tonight 1/2 of them had to bring home an assignment to finish. It will be interesting to see how many of them do it. Paul has 28 kids. He always has at least that many.

I'll write more this weekend.

Garage Sale Finds

The grand total for the Pyrex items above is $1.75. I bought the bowls and casseroles at the same sale. They had 50 cents on the large brown bowl and 25 cents on the other items. This isn't a pattern that I love, but I thought the brown colors would be nice in the fall and I'm not going to pass up any Pyrex in this great shape at prices like that. Paul really liked these. It's called Early American and it's from the early 60s. The brown bowl has a couple scratches. People must use this size bowl a lot because I've noticed that they always look more used than the other sizes. I bought the pitcher at a different sale. It was priced at a dime, so technically I had $1.60 worth of old Pyrex, but I just gave them a quarter. As soon as I saw the shape I knew it was Pyrex. It was sitting with a bunch of ugly vases. The pitcher has gold starbursts on it. I don't know how old it is, but I bought another one very similar to it at a thrift shop earlier this summer. This was a good find. I have three pitchers now, as Creed from the Office would say (as he was collecting office chairs), "One more to go." I didn't really know what he meant by that, but I'd buy another.

$1 for a cute Corning Ware teapot. It's from the same sale as the Pyrex bowls. Laurie has one in a different pattern that she uses a lot. I've seen them in antique shops for $8. Not a high end item, but it's a cute usable item.

50 cents for a vintage Christmas apron. It was the only thing I bought at this sale, but it was well worth the stop. I will make Christmas cookies this year just so I can wear it.

There are a few more things that I bought that I didn't bother to take pictures of. I should go garage saling more often because I really do enjoy it. The truth is I should have a garage sale, but that's a different story. Tax deduction slips work well for me too.

Garage sale finds

A vintage Yahtzee game for $1. No pieces are missing - the directions are still there. The box is even perfect. This one will not be going to school. The game we had at home will go to school and this one becomes the family set. We play a lot of Yahtzee in my class. It's an awesome way to practice multiplication, adding, and number patterns. I bought a Taboo game at a thrift shop for $2 last week. The timer was broken, but I have timers at school. I love finding useful games at garage sales and thrift shops.

Carly got shy on this picture. I can't find a date on this cookbook. It appears to be some sort of Sears freebie. I consider my Betty Crocker cookbook to be my cooking bible, so I thought it would be fun to have an old one. I paid 25 cents for it. I'm going to make the cinnamon rolls from it.

I bought this jewelry organizer for $1 at the garage sale of the lady who owns "Rummage in the Park." It lays flat and could easily fit in a drawer if you didn't want it sitting out. She had two so I bought both of them and gave one to Ellen. On the chair behind Carly you can see a small square vintage table cloth that I bought for a quarter at the same sale. I kind of felt like Laurie when I bought that.

Rummage in the Park

Laurie, why didn't you buy this dress? Carly had asked Laurie to try it on. When She came out of the dressing room we couldn't make fun of it because it was way too cute. On the hanger you would never have predicted how cute this dress would be. I'm guessing this must be from the 70s.

Rummage in the Park is the best consignment clothing shop I have ever been in. They have a lot of really awesome vintage clothes that are fun to try on, but they also have a lot of clothes from the past few years - lots of shoes and jewelry too. I go there once a year when Laurie comes up and I think I'm going to have to stop in there more often because I do find some cool things. I have been keeping my eye out for a pair of trouser jeans and haven't had much luck until last week. I got a pair from Esprit for $8. I do have to wear super chunky heels to keep them from dragging on the floor, but that is the price of fashion. It wouldn't kill me to appear to be taller. I bought a pair of chunky heeled Italian sandals here that do the trick - they're cute and they only cost $5. This is the place where I bought a brand new, never been worn pair of Dansko sandals for $22.

The girl who works in the shop told us that today was city wide garage sale day in Hibbing and that the owner of the store would be selling housewares at a garage sale down the street. I made a point to go to it and I'm really glad I did. I talked to her about her store for awhile and she asked if I ever bring in items. I said I had not, but that I'd like to know how they take items. You pay a one time start up fee of $5. You bring in all of your clean items on hangers (you get your hangers back). She prices the items and you each take 1/2 when they sell. Considering that I give away all of my clothes that I no longer wear, I think I'm going to start doing this. They take men's clothes as well. I might as well get something back from it and visit the store too.

Art in Vining

On our way back to Keewatin, Carly and I stopped to gas up in the small town of Vining. This town is know for their collection of metal sculptures. It all started with a great big foot and then then grew from their. I took picture of the ones that Carly told me to. It was cold so we made it a quick stop.

The man responsible for these pieces of art has the last name Nyberg. His daughter Karen was one of the astronauts in the last space shuttle launch. If you remember, Hillary Clinton mentioned her in her concession speech. She said she was the 50th woman to go into outer space. One of my coworkers is married to Karen's cousin, so he and his family went down to Florida for the shuttle launch at the end of May.

I have to go watch Barack's big speech, so I'll add few more posts later. I had a good garage saling day!

Done Celebrating Barack & Laurie's Birthday

Sorry it took me so long to get back to the blog. A couple weeks ago we went to Laurie's place for the weekend. On the way down we stopped at a little coffee shop in Pillager. Businesses around the Brainerd area have been painting oxen to match businesses. Carly like this one that was covered in ice cream cones and cookies. There was a really cool one outside a Scuba shop that had a scuba diving ox.
Ellen & Gracie. She's a walker now!

Ellen & one of the cats - Maisy I believe. That was it for pictures that I took that weekend. Laurie had a bunch of pictures that I'll have to download to my computer. We played at the cabin that weekend. On Monday we went into Fergus Falls and hit the junk shops. I had some fun finds - a great Hawaiian print shirt for Paul, a wooden recipe box, vintage Raggedy Ann birthday invites, and I forget what else. Ellen bought a bunch of books at great used book shop. We had lunch at a really good authentic Mexican restaurant.

On Tuesday, Ellen and I went back home. Ellen stayed with Laurie for a couple of days.