Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Christmas Dilemma

Christmas Dilemma

As any red blooded American can relate I have suffered from the Christmas Dilemma of what gifts to buy, how much decorating to do. Do I want the place to look like the Griswalds have taken over or what to fix for Christmas Dinner? Or even to fix Christmas Dinner.

Now I am faced with a unique problem. Well, unique to me. Those of you who have been invited to partake in an Ugly Sweater Contest may have a better handle on this. I’m new to thisl I have not been in the habit of creating Ugly Sweaters or Sweatshirts. In fact, to the contrary. In my fabric hawking days the idea was to create good looking, flattering sweaters and sweatshirts. One time I was even asked to make an apron to be worn in a Christmas Fashion Show the local Chamber of Commerce was putting on. My creation, worn by the Mistress of Ceremonies, was a showstopper. Well, ok. The apron wasn’t the showstopper, but when my beautiful niece, Summer, appeared on the runway in red knickers, that was the show stopper. You get the idea. I am not used to making ugly stuff.

So....because I was not really familiar with Ugly Sweaters and the like I went directly to my information source; Amazon. Practically as I searched for them there was a price change. Are you ready for this? The prices on some of these less than desirable sweaters WENT UP.

It is abundantly clear that I have to get out more. What should make sense doesn’t. It’s like working for the government.

So, instead of ordering an ugly sweater from Amazon I plan to go to the dollar store and buy some silly, unattractive decorations and safety pin them onto a sweater from the Salvation Army. Details to follow. While I’m at it I’m sure I can find some creative number for Mr. Lucky wear. (Wink).

Stay tuned. I’ll report on the end result.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

As Seen On TV

As Seen on TV

For you non-over-achievers out there in shopping land I have a few tips for shopping or I should say not shopping. If you haven’t done your Christmas shopping yet, you might appreciate this.

It’s all about my experiences with the ‘As Seen on TV’ stuff which I usually buy in stores

to save the shipping and handling. Have you ever noticed that the second one is free, but you get to pay the shipping on the second one? But I digress.

Let me tell you about some of my experiences with that incredible Pocket Hose. Notice I said experiences. I am the idiot who bought not one, not two, but three. Ok. The first one just sprung a leak. A little hole in the middle of the thing appeared. Dang it. We were getting along so nicely. Like the guy on TV says it’s lightweight and easy to drag around. Anything can malfunction. So, off to the store where they pleasantly replaced it with a brand spanking new one. About 48 hours later the business end popped right off the brand new (2nd) one. After changing my clothes from the cold shower that minor hose explosion created, I went back to the store. Hmmm. They were out of Pocket Hoses. It seems that they had been having quite a run on returns, too. They politely refunded my money. I’m thinking that the problem was with the plastic connecting gizmo. Silly me. So my next course of action was to spend yet twice as much money for the X-Pro Hose. The guy on TV bashes the brass fitting with a hammer of the X-Pro. So after seeing this commercial no less than 9 times I zip off to get this magical X-Pro hose with the brass fitting. Well, I’m hear to tell you DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY OR TIME ON IT. The magical brass fitting is what blew off my new X-Pro Hose.

Remember a few years ago every 20 minutes or so you were entertained by a ‘As Seen on TV’ commercial about a wonderful handbag. The actress on TV put an incredible number of things in one of them. She crammed in a wallet, a bottle of water, umbrella, a gaggle of keys, makeup of all kinds, a pile of credit cards and I think I saw a small poodle - all into the purse, which by the way, came in a variety of colors. That was one of the selling points for me. I bought a blue one and a red one. The end result was you could put all this stuff in the bag and it was just a matter of time until it started to fall out.

Despite my hose failures and the malfunctioning handbag I have had some more positive experiences. If someone on your is in need of a cane, I recommend the "Trusty Cane"....not to be confused with the Hurry Cane. Mine usually will not stand alone like ‘as seen on TV’, but the light works. Ok...Mr. Lucky did have to put the battery in it.

Another of my success stories is a little number for cooking in a quick and easy fashion called an Xpress Cooker. In fact I have been so satisfied with this one that I bought the new and improved model. Whoopee. One for the house and one for the motor home.

How can you go wrong with a cookbook for making Dump Cakes? I haven’t used it yet, but I have it and at some point I’m sure I’ll need to dump a glob of cake batter and some assorted items into a pan and bake it for awhile.

You may have had a good laugh when you saw the commercial for the cloth pocket gizmo for baking potatoes. Well, it works. I figured out how to make my own for a lot less than ten bucks, but I caved and bought my first one. And FYI you can bake sweet potatoes in them, too. And even yams. Oh, my. Be still-my heart.

Another thing in the win column is a set of "Hard to Find" County Music CDs. That was Mr. Lucky’s Father’s Day present. A big hit, I might add.
  

In retrospect I have done pretty good with my As Seen On TV experiences. But I am a bit of a pro when it comes to shopping. Just ask Mr. Lucky. He doesn’t seem to think shopping is a sport.