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Thrifty Thursday: the accidental lamp edition
It was a
dark and stormy nighthot sweaty afternoon and I was on my way to the grocery store for some odds and ends for a new craft post I’m writing (Stay tuned! I have a new writing gig and it’s super fun!) and I suddenly found myself in the right turn lane instead of going straight at an intersection. That happens in this town. I hate it.So instead of making some kind of crazy-dangerous illegal lane change, I decided to ride this mistake out and go with the flow of traffic going right. Very inconvenient but sometimes God works in mysterious ways, right? I turned onto the very busy avenue and the first chance I had to make a u-turn back to the street I wanted to go straight on, happened to be a thrift-store parking lot.
Since I happened to be in the thrift store parking lot and I had some extra free-time because I was not picking Bug up from kindergarten (Grandma was. They had a special afternoon planned.) I decided to stop. I was there by divine intervention I figured, why not. I haven’t been thrifting since forever. I’m watching my funds closely and I don’t really need stuff. But that’s when you always find the best stuff, right? When you don’t need it and aren’t looking for it.
And of course I found a lamp for $6.99.
I’ve always dug these lamps with clear bases. The kids I babysit have them in their parent’s bedroom and I always thought they were cool. Of course their’s were clear glass, not tinted yellow but I bet they didn’t pay seven bucks for them either. So the dusty lamp jumped into my hands and I bought it.
I took it home and cleaned it up and then spray-painted the warbly, cracked, messed-up shade red. I should have a photo of me spray-painting here but I did it in the backyard and it was about eleven-hundred degrees out and my face melted.
Then I ran out of red spray paint half way through. So it’s hot pink on one side and red on the other which might be super cool and hip except the spray paint didn’t paint evenly and now I need to either go buy more spray paint or just get a new lamp shade. I’ll probably just ignore it until I find a new shade by accident or divine intervention or something. Garage sales are great for u-turns.
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In other news: I’m reviewing some Fair Trade Green Mountain Coffee on my review blog and there’s a FREE Keurig coffee machine in the mix!
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phoning it in
Here is little Bug at the park under a giant oak tree. We stopped after school because I’d promised we’d go the day before but then I broke her heart because I realized that going to the park when it cools down is also when all the gangsters like to go to the park and cuss loudly and generally act like hooligans who might steal your purse or something. They are probably harmless but I’m a scared paranoid mama bear in this town.
We have to move. I’ve set a date. We are moving in June.
So we went the next day after school. It was sweltering and there was no one at the park, probably because the metal slides were hotter than a cookie sheet in the oven. Why would anyone install metal slides at a park in the desert? I don’t know. Anyway, this giant oak tree offered us wonderful shade. It was actually pleasant. We spread out a blanket on the soft over-watered grass and she ate her leftover lunch from her lunch box, which was pretty much all of it.
