Here are some pictures of the gourds at the gourd festival and the class. I'll show you the ugly one first (mine).... The gourd I picked had an opening that was slanted. I wanted it to look like a cracked egg with little lizards crawling out (ok, I'm a little macabre!). The lizard pattern was from a Native American kit. I would like to paint the lizards a couple of shades of green and then stain the rest of the gourd so it looks natural. Here are some of the instructor's sample gourds: For this one, she used a doilie to create the pattern. It was my favorite. This is another simple but pretty one she did. Here is one with similar Native American designs to the one I did. Now here were some awesome sculpted gourds for sale at the festival. I was afraid to even look at the price!

There are good buys at Goodwill - I bought an almost new KitchenAid mixer (in blue) for $15 (they probably had no idea the real value). But, on the whole, the prices for housewares are quite high. I did tell the store manager and she did drop a lot of the prices on housewares. The clothing prices are fixed and on a board above the racks. Shirts for $3.59 are good deals in my mind since I use a bleach solution in my kitchen and am always spilling or spraying some on my clothes. You know they don't do any training or repairing by the handicapped like they used to. Now they are just a for-profit who gets their stuff free from donations. Such a deal. Must be quite profitable over all. Never see canning jars or decent mixing bowls here. I don't think there are very many canners in my neck of the woods. The dumps must be full of jars. I can't even get my regular jam-buying customers to return the jars to me! Nancy

The box or instructions should have a date?? Maybe even the bottom of the unit?? Much cooler looking than your words described. Sooooo jealous. I never "got" the fondue thing much but my dh loves it. He is 6.5yrs older than me so I think he enjoyed more in his youth than I did. He got me a really nice one and we used it once. It has a bunch of little cups around it for toppings and cubed stuff. Hmmm now I am hungry again. As for Goodwill, you are better off shopping in nicer neighborhoods to get good stuff. Here in Sacto area there are plenty of dives. The one Golddust went to is in nice area but stuff is so so. I remember when I lived in Atlanta when dh was in school I went to yard sales and thrift stores in the really ritzy neighborhoods. Got amazing deals. I think my best score ever was the 1941 Oneida King Arthur silverplate silverware I picked up at a junky antique store back in 1985. Service for 8 in original box. Everything was half off so I paid about $20. The entire set is worth over $1500 and pieces are hard to find so a serving piece can run over $40 IF replacements unlimited has one. The pieces are hard to find because they stopped making it because of WW2. When I divorced my practice husband that set was only thing I made sure judge gave me out of all our belongings. He never cared about it anyway, it was my special find and I treasure it. Gold, now you got me itching to go thrifting. And yes Fly, where is the quilt?

Thanks all, for sharing in my excitement. Sometimes I hit all of my favorite haunts and come home with nothing, and other days it seems that there's a treasure in every store. I've even gotten DH on board, and when he has a day off, he'll often suggest that we hit a few of my favorites, as he's an old book junkie, and will peruse the bookshelves for hours while I paw through the junk looking for a treasure. Hahhah Flyleft! That's it! It's a Huffy "Beach Cruiser" (for all of the beaches we have here in Oklahoma....) It's not a super high-end bike, but they're at least $100-175 elsewhere, so I feel like we got a really good deal. The tires are nearly new, brakes are great, etc. My DD is actually out riding it right now. :)