Stocking up for Charity and Gifts

 After breakfast out with all of our Harley friends this morning Hubby went off with the guys for some "Man Time". Alright by me as I want him to keep up with his local friendships. Seem to me guys just don't seem to have as many BF's as we ladies have GF's. If and when hubby ever gets to return to his home office I NEED him to have some Man time away from me if you know what I mean!! Ha Well now that he was off having a good time I headed for the Dollar store to see if I could score some 1/2 off Valentines Day things for next year. Ya baby, pink and red hot/cold cups 12 for .50 cents, I picked up six packages. Cellphone goodie bags with 25 in each bag for .50 cents each, I bought 3 packages. Total cost $4.40. So far so good. Off to the next save some cash stop.

 One of the local big box fabric stores was the second stop. Most of the quilt shops don't run sales on holiday fabric as they know quilters/crafters work on holiday items year round. The big box stores are a different story, they like to move that stuff out at great reduced prices. I feel its my obligation to do my part to unload all that yummy fabric. Now I went with an idea in mind for a charity project next year so technically  I am not breaking the Carla's 30 Day Scrap Challenge right?  The idea I had in mind was just that "In my mind not on paper" sew I didn't really know how much fabric I might need...What the heck at $2.99 a yard might as well get 1 1/2 yards of each except the white with pale pink dots, 3 yards of that went home with me. Grand total $37.28

 Here is what I had in my mind when shopping for that discounted fabric. Valentine mug rugs. I like to try to do things the easy peasy, nice and easy way. I figured doing strip quiting might do the trick. Rather than doing each individual heart I quilted a nice long piece. After I had quilted a pretty good size strip I used an 8 inch heart cut from the Circut and traced around it.

 BEFORE cutting out the heart I did a close zig zag stitch around the trace lines. Also I went back and did top stitching after doing the quilting as you go strip method to add a bit more fancy to the whole she bang.

 Next I cut the heart out using pinking shears. By using the zig zag stitch and pinking shears I didn't have to bind the mug rug's. This saves me a whole heck of a lot of time. Another cool to me thing is the edges will get all soft and fussy but the stitching won't fail.

 The hot/cold cups I picked up from the dollar store are much smaller that this over sized Valentine mug. There will be plenty of room for a cookie, cupcake, or some other tasty treat. For whatever durn reason the photo of the gift pack I put together won't load, grr, So picture this. One of the hot/cold cups with a mug rug tucked inside, packaged in the Valentine gift bag's closed with curly ribbon. Total cost for 72 Valentine gifts to the nursing home next year....Drum Roll Please...$58 cents each!!!! Can't beat that price with a stick I would say!!!

 Well the backing doesn't show up very well but trust me its cute.

 I can't stand to see an nice quilted scrap go to waste. Tomorrow I will try and work on my other "In my head" idea for this scrap. I had to stop for the day when Hubby and Tyler took over the kitchen table.

Tyler is having a sleepover with us tonight. Of course that means Lego time with Papaw!! Tonight's Lego building is "The Coast Guard Boat" with all the fixins. Did this set come from the Lego's I picked up on sale a couple of weeks ago? Na, Papaw and Tyler needed to pick something out just for them. One look at the Coast Guard set and Papaw was a gonner, he is a Navy man after all! Ha.

Today was a spending sort of day, not unusual when hubby is around I must say. The bulk of the spending went on at Toys R Us. Papaw and Tyler's Lego set in addition to.......a super duper deal on a travel system for the new grand baby boy.

DD#3's baby shower is coming up in March, our gift is ready to rock! When Kara was born DD#3 wanted everything to be girly, her travel system included, sigh. DD#1 had a gender neutral travel system but after 3 kiddo's it has seen better days. I will get a photo of the new set tomorrow and share the ridicules low price we score it for.

Time to get the boys yet another snack, wash the sink full of dishes from the numerous meals and snacks of the day then kick my heels up with a new sewing book that finally came it. Sew many yummy projects between the pages and the best part of all I can do most of them with SCRAPS!! Gotta love that!

I should also say IT SURE IS NICE to have this man of mine HOME!!! The grands agree!