One of my favorite memories of my Grand-dad is triggered when I smell cigar smoke. Grand-dad loved to smoke cigars as a special treat. If we went over to his house to drop in for a visit, I always tried to remember to swing by Joe’s Smoke Shop and buy him a hoyo de monterrey President cigar. The memory of his face lighting up with a big toothless grin when he opened his front door, in answer to our knocking is etched permanently in my mind’s eye.
For the past thirty years I have worn compression stockings to help relieve the pain of varicose veins in both of my legs. The first time I ever wore a pair was when my mother mailed a pair of maternity compression pantyhose to me that she had bought at a medical supply store near where she lived. Those pantyhose made my legs feel so much better that I have worn compression stockings ever since.
Guest post by Pebbles Woodward
One of my cousins LOVES to scrapbook. There is hardly a family event that we go to where she doesn’t bring at least six scrapbooks she has put together since the LAST family gathering of special family moments of her, her hubby, and her kids that she wants to share with the entire family. Scrap booking certainly livens up picture sharing! Sharing her scrapbooks is a fun way to see pictures of her family doing things during the year with some extra cute embellishments and text to narrate the story. I recall many times at the office when someone would come in with newly developed photos of their baby to show off and so many people would try to run and hide to escape having to stand around and pretend to be impressed by how cute the baby is!
At least with scrapbooks, one can appreciate the time and effort and creativity of the person putting it together, trying to make it look special. Looking through a well made scrapbook takes the tedium and humdrum right out of looking at pictures!
Guest post by Allison Willette
I love to take advantage of end of season sales. Living in Maine as I do, I am always on the lookout for extra warm clothing to keep me warm and cozy for winter, which seems to be most of the year! The only month of the year that I don’t wear thermal underwear is July! (Ok, and part of August!) The North Face is having a great clearance on a 700 fill down filled jacket for women that I am going to order. I just saw that they have it on sale for men, too! It is lightweight and folds up into its own pocket. I am a big fan of down filled jackets! I’m going to order one for me, and one for my hubby! They offer free shipping on orders over $50, so I’m sure to get free shipping on them!
Every once in a while I take a critical look at household items and realize that it is time to replace or upgrade some of them. I have towels in the linen closet that I bought 20 years ago. You think it might be time to replace those? Just the fact that the colors are so out dated was once clue. Do you remember when very dark jewel tones were so popular? I had towels in dark red and dark green. But after all those washings, the colors have faded badly. And, frankly, dark green is just not a happy color for a small, dark bathroom with no window.
So I went to Kohl’s and shopped their towel selection. They had a BOGO sale and I looked at several different brands and price ranges. I ended up buying two new bath towels as a test. If we like them, I’ll go back before the BOGO sale is over and buy several more.
They are Canon brand towels, a well known brand, and I picked them because they were so incredibly soft on the shelf. After I washed them and put them out for the next person taking a shower, I waited for some feedback. Turns out that those are not going to be the right towels for us. Although they are very soft to the touch, they are not very absorbent at all.