Duct tape

So, I was going to go garage saleing this morning, but after realizing one sale was all large antiquey items and one was someone's I wasn't really interested in seeing, there were only 2 left and they weren't close. I did have to pick up a few more things for the upcoming trip, so I ventured to Target, Walmart, Dollar Tree and Hobby Lobby.
First up was Target:

 My electric toothbrush is slowly dying, so I had to get a new one before it went completely out. I tried brushing my teeth manually, but my teeth are messed up and the electric round head really gets in the nooks and crannies. I picked up the Target brand one, first because it was cheaper (only $19) and second to see how long it lasts. The Braun 3D pulsating one I have has lasted me years, I want to see how long this one lasts and if it's cost effective to just buy the cheaper ones. I picked up a bralette on sale and some flipz.
Second was Walmart:

 I needed another bralette. I had picked up the gray/white one a few weeks ago and it's wicked comfortable, so I wanted another one for the trip, I decided to pick up another beige one as well. I may have gotten a little too excited when I saw these large envelopes were only $1, they weren't really that much on sale, apparently they were $1.10 to begin with, but every little bit helps.
It's always a bad idea to go down the clearance aisle.

 I found the monster and birthday cake in the clearance aisle as well. The monster was $0.75 and the birthday cake $0.50. I think I should have just picked up the monster and not the birthday cake. Oh well. I always check out the food clearance aisle as well and picked up the waffle chip sandwiches, I had to pick up another bag of these u-gua things, not exactly sure what they are other than sweet. The Haribo is a mix of all their different gummies.
Dollar Tree:

 This may be the only time I've ever gone in and not bought stickers. I seem to always buy stickers and I have a ton I haven't used. I did pick up these cute gift bags and cards. I can't pass up cards, you never know when you'll need one. Also, picked up some cute birthday cards, don't know when I'll need those either.

 Here's the boring stuff. I like these cups and the one I got last year is getting sad. I have all of two plastic cups I use. The bags and sunscreen are for the trip.
I also think I'm taking all the snacks on the trip.
Lastly, Hobby Lobby:

 I mainly wanted to go because all the paper was half off. I had picked up some birthday paper and a paper pad, but then I turned down the aisle with the duct tape, and picked up 9 rolls. The paper went back on the shelf. I'd rather use duct tape to package my packages, right now I'm using my double stick tape with washi on top, it is helping me use up my washi, but I don't want to use up the double stick tape. I feel these will hold me for awhile, and considering they were all originally $5.99, it was a great deal. I also loved the little smiley face magnet, the envelope stickers, the macaroon Christmas ornament and the shell jewelry piece.
The mailman was delivering the mail when I left, so I opened it when I got home.
Letter K and SMS handmade.

 My partner was very creative with the letter K of a postcard with a kid and kitten, knife and kebabs.
A spring tag:

Very cute
And a birthday card, which I'm saving until my birthday. So far it's been a good day.

Jigsaw puzzle

Sunday: after work, my friend and her mother took me out to supper. We had some good burgers and then stopped at an Asian Market to pick up some snacks:

 Kit kats, corn snacks, jelly drinks, Ramune.
I realized after I got home these are the same flavors of Kit Kats I bought last Labor Day at this place and I'm not sure they are worth $5 each. The corn snacks, I've picked up another flavor of before and these are not as flavorful as the others and I have more to eat now. I saw on a YouTube channel I watch that jelly drinks are pretty good, so I picked them up to try. I've been trying different flavors of the Ramune (kind of like Sprite), this one was melon and it is the best I've had, but I'm not sure it's worth $2.
Monday: I'm still getting used to my new schedule and it's been pretty hard after working all weekend to go back and be at work at 8:15 the next morning. I found some fun happy mail when I got home.
There was a box that sounded like legos, pretty sure that wasn't right, especially since it said FRAGILE on it. This was inside:

 Along with these items.

 it was a wish granted of anything cactus and cute pens. I appreciate it all, but if you don't wrap something breakable in bubble wrap or tissue paper, how can you think it won't show up broken to it's destination. The pen on the far right says Hop on Pop, from Dr. Seuss. I love the thought they put into this package, it's just sad it wasn't protected very well.
I also found this from wish.com:

 It's a keychain with a "W", a mermaid and a scale charm. I love it.
I also had a candy bag tag:

 I put some of these in my mother's birthday cupcake. I bought a cupcake box at a garage sale and plan to fill it up with stuff for her birthday, but I can't figure out what to put in it. I know she likes cherry life savers.
This is a time for me swap, I love the presentation:

 And here's all the stuff in it:

 I love everything she put in it, I've already tried the chocolate and will finish it soon.
Also, a July calendar tag:

 Love this. Very cute! Again, I need to get used to this new schedule, I'm used to Wednesdays when I also open, I do my errands on the way home from work and then relax for the rest of the day, so that's basically what I did on Monday.
Tuesday I did get up and work on my tags/swaps.
Here's letter K:

 I try to be creative with the letters, but when I was cleaning out and found some key items, and every time I found more I just added to the stash.
Here's a flipbook tag:

 The person I was sending too said she liked unicorns and mermaids so I tried to make it a little magical.
Pocket letter tag:

 I already had this one made for something else and it didn't work. I really like it, so I sent it along.
I was so excited to be done until I realized I had to make a tag for another group, this took me like 5 minutes. Sometimes you can be pretty creative if you have the right materials even if you aren't feeling crafty.

It was supposed to have a flower and a butterfly or dragonfly. I didn't realize how crappy the picture was until I looked at the pictures after packaging everything up.

Watched a few movies on Wednesday. Thursday I slept in until 8:15, cause I guess that's late-er. Read some books, couldn't believe I hadn't done any reading since the 17th, but I've been pretty busy with other things. Found some happy mail.

ATC:

I like that's it's vintage sewing themed.

 Cactus:

 I love how she personalized the pencil bag.
Friday, I had plans to go to the Central Iowa Junk Jaunt with my mother, aunt and uncle. Turns out another aunt came along. We ended up going to only 5 places, four and then we had to go back home to pick up my dad and go to lunch and then one place after lunch, then we went back home to drop my dad off and it was already 3pm, my aunts and uncle had a two hour drive ahead of them, so they decided it was time to go home anyway. If we didn't have the two hours that we had to get my dad and go to a special place for lunch we could have hit more places. Lunch was good, but I don't think it was worth wasting 2 hours of my time.
When I got home, I found a postage due slip from USPS, I wandered down there and had them send it back. My mailman hadn't finished his routes for the day, so I don't know what it was, but I bet it was from one of my groups. One of them says we can pay the postage and not get reimbursed or send it back and wait for it to return with correct postage. My other groups give us the option of paying postage and getting reimbursed or sending back and waiting for it to return with correct postage. The postage due on this one was $1 twenty-something. I decided awhile back, it's more work to try and get reimbursed for postage that I'm just sending it back. It's their own fault for not putting correct postage on it, and I'm not paying to send mail to them and to get my own mail.
I had a few happy mail packages.
Letter J:

 Pretty creative. I had a hard time with J and everyone keeps posting pictures of what they've sent and I keep thinking why didn't I think of that.
Dollar Store:

 And my June Lollipop box:

I'm a bit disappointed in my day, I had fun with my relatives, but there were places I wanted to go that we didn't get to, I also wanted to find something really cool to buy, even though I decided I could only spend about $10. Now I want to go buy stuff because of the disappointment of my day. I'll refrain today, but I'm going to Hobby Lobby tomorrow.

Hodgepodge Number 356

It's Hodgepodge time. Head on over to Joyce's blog at From this Side of the pond to see other people's responses.

1. Summer is upon us this week in the Northern hemisphere. Tell us three things on your summer bucket list. 
1. St. Louis, I will be there over my birthday
2. Central Iowa Junk Jaunt, that's actually this weekend, I'll be going with my aunt, uncle and mom.
3. I don't have a third item, sorry world. Honestly, I haven't really planned anything past my vacation next week. I want to do something exciting for my birthday, but we're going on this trip, so that's taken care of.
2. Something fun you used to do as a kid in the summertime? This was actually an end of the summer hurrah, but going to our time share at Lake Okoboji, some of my favorite childhood memories are from there.

3. Rooftop or backyard? Why? Rooftop. When I was a kid, we lived in this 3 story house with a porch on the second floor. I used to go out on the porch, climb over the safety railing and sit on the porch ceiling and watch the world. I didn't have much of a backyard.

4. Do you read food labels? Place importance on them? Make an effort to find out/care about where your food comes from? I should, but I don't. Sometimes I'll look at how much of something is in a container and decide if I want to spend my money on it, but that's all.

5. A song you'll have on repeat this summer?

I love this song, the chorus really gives me great memories:
And it's two bare feet on the dashboard
Young love and an old Ford
Cheap shades and a tattoo
And a Yoo-Hoo bottle on the floorboard

This song popped up on my MP3 player when my ex and I were coming back from a weekend at Lake Okoboji our first summer as girlfriend boyfriend, my barefeet were on the dashboard of his Ford truck (not old), I had sunglasses on (not old), and tattoos. I don't drink YooHoo, though.

6. Insert your own random thought here.Like I said, I'm rather excited about the weekend. I actually have a four day weekend, after working more hours than normal the last three weeks. I kinda want to just ignore the world and read all weekend. My family and I are going on a rather long vacation next weekend and I want to return some things to my library before then. 
This Central Iowa Junk Jaunt is a bunch of antique places around central Iowa that are open for this special event. My aunt and uncle are coming down for it, I'm more excited to hang out with them than to really shop for anything, I haven't seen them since Easter.

Medium

Tuesday: I realized I had a book due Friday and actually read it in one day. I was pretty impressed with myself.
Wednesday: mailed a bunch of swaps.
Time for me:

 July calendar tag:

 Spring ATCs:

 ATC tag:

 SMS loveable:

 I had the hardest time with this tag. I was going to send a stuffed animal, but didn't really know what to send, and then I was going to send a Snoopy book I just bought, but realized it would be heavy to send, and then I remembered these cute animal prints I had, so I sent them.
Happy mail:

 The person I had liked religious stuff (the card), used postage stamps (the stamp envelope), photography (the postcard) and retro stuff (the calendar card), and I figured, who doesn't love stickers?
Dollar Store tag:

Also had a hard time with this one, finally decided on this coin purse and stamp set.
I also mailed a J tag: jokes, jacket (a piece of stationery), Jonathan (some card I had). SMS prickly: I stamped some images of cacti and hedgehogs.
I have an issue with mice in my ceiling and Tuesday night this little guy appeared:

 He came back Wednesday night and I realized the trap had been tripped and there was a larger dead brown mouse.
Thursday this happened:

 tons of rain and flash floods. A bunch of our streets were flooded due to the torrential rainfall.
I couldn't figure out if the mail was delivered really late Wednesday or really early on Thursday. I'm leaning to late on Wednesday since the mail was barely wet after I went out about 10AM to check it and that was shortly after the huge rainstorm.
I don't have pictures, but I got my H happy mail of Hershey's and hand sanitizer I totally ate all the Hershey's, a birthday card I kinda wish I knew it was a birthday card before I opened it so I could save it until my birthday and a penpal letter. The person who sent the birthday card didn't say she was sending it, so I didn't have her on my list, if I had, I would've known to not open it.
I worked on sorting and cleaning my crafty stuff and finishing a book on Thursday.
As I was heading to bed Thursday night, my little friend came out again and I caught him.

 He's so cute!! I wish I could have kept him, he's very tiny:

I took him out to the trash can and dumped him in there, he had a fighting chance, I just didn't want him back in the house, so gave him a way to travel to get back.
Friday: I got up to go garage saleing. There was a heat advisory, so I just hit a few. This was the first one:

I loved the show Medium and have missed it dearly. I'm not sure how many seasons there were, this sale only had season one, but I picked it up for $2, Mrs. Doubtfire was $1.
I used to just go to sales that had interesting sounding ads, but started going to sales that are close to me a few years ago, because there's always something that doesn't get in the ad, and it could be that thing I'm looking for.
The next two sales I didn't find anything. I had planned to hit TJ Maxx at the mall since one of the sales was right next to it, but I didn't factor in the fact that the mall doesn't open until 10, and I left about 20 of 9. I also didn't factor in how long it would take me to get there. Unfortunately, TJ Maxx was not open when I got there, so I decided to kill time at Walmart and then hit TJ Maxx on my way home.
I found a few interesting things:

 Ren and Stimpy, blast from my childhood.
Also:

 Another blast from the past.
Ren and Stimpy were $10, and the Gremlins were $12, but I certainly don't need toys. I found something better to spend my money on:

 Earrings, Dot-to-Dot book, sticky notes, horchata drink mix, tape, washi, gummies, chocolate.
I was doing really good not picking stuff up, until I wandered down the stationery aisle.
First I found the washi:

 They are five rolls at 5 yards each.
Here's the side:

 Which doesn't look like five yards, but they must be washi thickness, like tissue paper. It's amazing what's considered washi, but I think if it's thicker than tissue paper, it's not actually washi, which is the whole reason I'm not buying the Dollar Tree stuff anymore.
The sticky notes:

 They were 3 pads of 90 sheets each.
Here are the packs open:

The first was mermaid, unicorn, and rainbow. The next was sloth, raccoon, and fox. The last was flamingo, pineapple and cactus. That second pack is kinda weird, the raccoon and fox look kinda mean, but sloth.
The washi and sticky note packs were $1.88 each.
As I was leaving Walmart, I saw my local buses showing up at the mall, so I decided to just catch the bus home, as I was almost home, my dad got on the bus and we went to campus to get lunch.
When I got home, I realized I only walked about 2 miles, if I had realized that before I would have walked home. Oh well, I got a free lunch out of it.

I bought an octopus

Sunday: work, very busy, but it's Sunday, that's normal. I finally finished watching all the seasons of ER. It was pretty cool that they brought all the original cast back for the last season. I recall growing up watching ER and Third Watch and loving the camaraderie in their workplaces, I always wished I could work somewhere that people cared about their co-workers like they did in those shows. I keep hoping that will happen at my workplace.
Monday: I had to open, I feel we are just busier in the summer, and much busier in the mornings than I'm used to. We had a lost child, two dogs in the library (one a working dog, the other the owner left in the vestibule because we don't allow dogs in the library), and way too busy.
I went to lunch with a friend and then went shopping.
Dollar Tree:

 How cute is that sign and the flamingo pens? The sign is metal, I kinda wanna keep it, but I feel I'll pass it on to someone else. Also, the flamingo pens, there was a pink one, but I didn't really like it. I picked up the nail art to use on art.

 Stickers.

 Food, I was looking for sugar-free chocolate for a swap. The Hershey's are for my dad.
JoAnn's:

 I keep hoping to find cool paper pads, but I don't. I'll probably use most of this for happy mail. I couldn't pass up the butterfly and lemon notepads.
Hobby Lobby:

 They have a lot of the home decor for 75% off, so I bought the octopus for $4.50. I'm surprised the unicorn tags were still in clearance, they're missing the stamps, but we all know we only want the tags. I was surprised to find the blades I need for my paper cutter, guess I won't need a new one after all. And I really liked the flowers, they were 50% off.
When I got home I found some happy mail.
Anything unicorn:

 Something sparkly:

I kinda set myself up for the fallout. I really wanted to see what someone would send.