That's great news. I am happy for you especially since your son is military. No matter how any of us feel about the war, we appreciate our military people. We spent many holidays alone. Because of the parents and step parents issue, I decided what ever day my children could be with us was "the" holiday. The Christmas my oldest granddaughter was four, they were stationed in Abeline. We lived in San Antonio and my son's father lived in Kingsvile and my DIL's mother lived in Robstown. The kids had their Christmas at home and then drove to SA. The next day we had our Christmas. The day after they drove to Robstown and had Christmans at my DIL's mother's house. They went to my ex's on Christmas morning and had Christmas. Soooooo,my granddaughter got up the day after Christmas expecting it all to happen again. She was a tad disappointed.

When it comes to giving to a charity, I would choose Salvation Army hands-down over Goodwill. I know about the good work they do from personal experience. The Salvation Army provides people in need with shelter, food, and clothing. They feed the homeless and needy on a daily basis, providing meals to them at the shelter, boxes of food to those that have none, as well as food baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They give people vouchers to get free clothing from their thrift stores. They have an angel tree at Christmas that provides gifts for children. They do not discriminate against anyone, LGBT or otherwise, so please stop passing on that lie. The Goodwill calls itself a charity, but how can a charity justify paying it's executives millions of dollars a year in salaries ? They say they train the handicapped so they can get jobs.They did employ some handicapped people at one time, but I've rarely seen any in recent years. My sister worked part-time at a Goodwill years ago to supplement her S.S. income. When she worked there I believe they allowed their employees to take whatever clothes they wanted from the sorting room. Other items had to be put out on the floor and workers had to wait 24 hours before they could buy them. You have to understand that these places are overwhelmed with clothing donations. If you walk into a thrift store you will see mostly racks of clothing, so if they discard clothes or sell them to the rag man to be recycled into rugs, it's what they have to do.

purrus, you might want to go look at Apartment Therapy, nose around, look at house tours (and try not to die of jealousy at some of them :)), try to find the Small Cool contest entrants/winners...there are many folks there who have a knack for integrating MCM with A&C or whatever. You'll probably get lots of ideas from there. Maybe search under 'bedroom' and see what you get. They're great pieces, although I do suspect they're laminate on the top, yes? And maybe walnut on the drawer fronts?-add It was sold as a value-add when the style moved out to the lower-level manufacturers, as in "it'll be waterprooof and last longer with this strong wood-look top". Nice finds, esp. if the drawers are dove-tailed...are they?

It was back this summer, not recently, but I found a great, great buy on a quilting frame and light for the quilting frame. It was still in the shipping box, and so was the light. The frame had been opened but taped back, but the light had not..I took a chance and hauled it home for 15.00. The sales lady said she was glad to get it out of the store as it had been in there over a year. I frequent that S.A. so don't know why I haven't seen it. Everything was in the box, including set up instructions and a booklet on how to start your quilt. My husband put the quilting frame together for me and I was estatic. They obviously did not know what they had, or people just do not want to quilt anymore. It was a Grace Z44 quilting frame. Yippee for me! Someones trash---my treasure! Many years of pleasure!!