A Cautionary Tale: All Ribbon Is Not Created Equal

I just realized that I never posted this when I took all the pictures at the same time as the actual photos of the sweater. Oops. 

Beware! A cautionary tale and ugly, cringe-worthy images to follow!

Back when I finished my Minty Miette cardigan, I mentioned how I had stabilized the button band with ribbon. I had seen this technique mentioned by many, and when Lauren posted her wonderful tutorial I finally knew the ins and outs of what to do. I went to Walmart and bought what looked like grosgrain ribbon to match my buttons - this should have been my first big warning alert ... it came from Walmart.

Once I sewed the ribbon on, I was thrilled - it looked great and definitely kept the buttons from pulling. Mission accomplished, I thought.

Looking at this original photo from the day after I finished the sweater, I can already see the tell tale signs of what came next. The two photos above are from before I wore the sweater more than just to try it on, so at the button holes pictured here had only been used maybe 2 times each. Even where the buttons are - see how there are little white dimples in the ribbon? And the edges around the button holes are also white? Well, after wearing this sweater the first time for only a few hours, I took it off and saw this:

My button holes are actually SLIDING OFF my ribbon! This was when everything finally clicked and I looked at the ribbon spool - this was polyester ribbon. Not actually grosgrain. It sounds incredibly naïve of me looking back (and I can't believe I'm actually admitting this here), but I had no idea that there were big quality differences in ribbon. I thought ribbon was ribbon, and if it looked kind of ribbed, it was 'grosgrain' ribbon. Not so, dear readers! Learn from my mistakes!

Not all ribbon is created equal.

The sad thing about this realization is that I had already purchased the ribbon to back the button bands on 3 other sweaters. The other ribbons were bought at Joann's, but it's still the same poly-acetate crap. Even sticking a sewing needles through this stuff leaves a weak spot because it's literally putting a hole in a piece of plastic. Real petersham and grosgrain ribbon are made of real fibers like cotton or silk or even rayon. It is a woven item, not "poured" into a mold to look like it's woven, lol. I learned this lesson after hours of wasted work, and even though it's honestly embarrassing to admit here, I hope this can help at least one other person not have the same thing happen to them.

I haven't redone this yet or even taken the bad ribbon off the sweater since it's just on the inside and I don't often button my sweaters anyway. I've searched locally, but no "craft stores" seem to carry the real deal ribbon - everything is polyester. I've found some online sellers, but I just can't bring myself to pay more for the shipping than the item itself, you know? I plan on stocking up on real petersham ribbon at The Sewing Studio on my New Year's trip since they are the only local-ish place I know will have it. Until then, I will just live with pulling at my buttons, or wear them open, lol.

I'll be sure to post how this goes when I finally get the right ribbon at the New Year!

Weekend Update From Hell

This last weekend was hard. To say it was tumultuous would be a bit of an understatement lol. I have come through it alive though, so I figured I could tell the tale here. Just to let you know - this will be a long one.

Saturday night, my husband called me on my way home from work (around 5 pm) to tell me that the storm that was going on had knocked out our power. He heard a loud lightning crack not far away, so he got up and unplugged everything (last time our hdmi ports on the tv got fried so now we are super careful). While he was going around and unplugging, he said that lightning struck again and very close to the house - so close that when it hit he could hear the light sockets sizzle and crack for a few seconds afterward. The rain had subsided slightly by the time I got home, and we went outside to see where the lightning hit. We were surprised and freaked out to say the least when we saw where it hit:

 This is the edge of the front planter, right outside our front door. From the front of the house, it would be here:

See that black circle? Yeah, lightning struck right there.

The crazy part is that it was so obvious except there was no scorching to anything but the roots of the grass. The pressure from the strike pushed all the surrounding grass away from the impact spot. Pretty scary. We were without power for a few hours, but everything came back on around 7:30 pm and we though all was good except our internet connection wouldn't work.

So Justin went to work and I watched a movie while knitting. Everything was fine until 12:05 am. The air conditioner started to grumble like it was trying to turn on, and then it just died off and all you could hear was the sound of a fan blowing in it and I smelled burning. I was afraid it might have sparked something, so I shut off all the breakers for the ac unit and waited about 15 minutes. When I tried to turn it back on after, it would just blow the fan - no cooling. I will confess, I was so sad that I broke down and cried. We knew that our ac unit wasn't going to last forever when we bought the house, but it honestly couldn't have happened at a worse time. Not only is it the absolute high heat of summer right now, but we just had to go through and re-budget this past week to try to make up for some bad financial stuff. I had a box fan, so I just slept with that on all night and I was ok. The house stayed fairly cool until about 11 am the next day due to the rainy weather, but it was so muggy and humid. 

One good thing is that my dad and I had already planned to install a portable air conditioner in our bedroom on Sunday before all this happened. He came over that morning and the two of us set to work at redneck-rigging this ac unit into our non-accepting window. Our windows are the old fashioned kind that you turn a crank and the little panes flip outward. All ac units are made to fit in the kind of windows that slide up and down, so the equipment that came with the unit wouldn't work. Instead, we devised our own system.

We took some plywood I had from our old attic and used two pieces to make it the right size, then we added another small plank I had hanging around for length and made it just slightly smaller than the size of the window. Then we measured the exhaust hose for the unit (also jerry-rigged - the old hose dry rotted so I bought a dryer hose which was slightly too small) and cut a 4" circle toward the bottom for the air to escape. Then we cut a notch for the window crank. After everything was cut and screwed together, we painted it white with 2 thick coats on each side and the edges to avoid rotting from moisture. Once the paint was dry, we took this stuff:

Rubberized stick on weather stripping (white to match) and not only stuck it on, but stapled it with a staple gun as well so it was very secure. We put this one all the sides so we could create a good seal around the window. Once all this was done, we went upstairs to put it in ... and it didn't fit! The window sill was actually crooked and not level when they originally made it. So, we had to rip off the weather stripping, cut it down a bit, reattach the stripping and try again. And it fit! Check it out:

This is the window when the curtain is drawn back. The hose is fed through the wood, stapled and clear duct taped on the outside, then secured with more duct tape on the inside. We did lots of layers of tape to make sure it held well - like 4 or 5 on each side. 

This is a close up of the weather stripping on the edge. The only place it didn't match up perfectly was around the crank, so I used more clear duct tape there to seal it better. 

The hose itself is also heavily duct taped to the exhaust opening on the unit - again like 4 or 5 layers of tape. We didn't want the pressure of the air blowing to make it come undone.

This is what it looks like in my room now :) The real kicker is that this window was already broken and screwed shut, so it could never open anyway. Now we have the bottom pane propped open with a nail and the others all closed, adding to our nice seal. The fact that the window was already broken ended up really helping us out, so it was meant to be :) So even though our house ac unit was kaput, we still had a nice cool bedroom and we were able to sleep comfortably.

My dad and I planned a few other projects to work on as well.  About 3 weeks ago my husband got a little heavy handed and pulled the fan light cord in our bedroom so hard it broke the spring and you could no longer pull the cord to turn the light on and off (he would never admit that he broke it though, so please don't mention it to him lol). The cord was stuck with the light on, so we could only have the fan on if the light was on also, meaning we couldn't have the fan running at night - a big nightmare for us as we are serious fan fans. So, we pulled the whole fan base apart and diagnosed the problem. My dad fidgeted with the pulley piece a bit (involving using a few knitting needles, lol, they are handy), but the spring was sprung and it just needed replacing. So I went to the hardware store and wouldn't you know they sell new ones? I never would have guessed you could just go buy a new "3 way split fan pull" and put it in. This is why dad's are great things :) We put it back together et voilà!

The pictures are crap, but they show that the fan now works with the lights on or off! Hizzah! This helped with our no ac situation as well, believe me.

The last thing my dad and I worked on has been a long time coming, and it's still not done. Our master bathroom is pretty much the joke of the house. It could literally fall off the side of the house and we wouldn't notice for a week or so - we never go in there. There is a hard clog that has made the room completely unusable for almost 2 months now. We haven't had the money for a plumber, so we've been trying things ourselves, all to no avail. My dad has tried with me before to break the clog and he was just as determined on Sunday, but alas it still remains stopped up. He was bummed, but we definitely know we will just have to call a plumber. At least we have 2 other bathrooms we can use.

Even though we don't use the room, we did solve another problem. Our shower was seriously made for midgets. The spot where the pipe exposes for the shower head seriously hit me at about my ear, so I would have had to crouch under the shower head in there and I'm only 5'7". My husband is 6'4", so you can see our problem. Happily, they make extenders for your shower head. They aren't easy to find and a lot of them are pretty expensive, but Ace Hardware had one for about $20 that gave us an additional 10", putting it at a normal height for average sized people.

 Here's a closeup of that extender:

It's pretty neat really. I did end up having to run tot he hardware store again for a new flange to accommodate the little pipe (the flange is the round thing that covers up the hole in the wall - I learned that Sunday lol), but other than that it went very smoothly. So we were able to strike 3 things off our to do list! Who cares that the bathroom still isn't working lol.

To top off all my crazy work in the morning, we shot a family portrait session at 4 pm and then went to my parent's house at 6:30 for a birthday party. It's was a crazy day. I seriously couldn't stay awake later in the night. But we definitely got a lot done :)

Monday morning, an AC technician came over to check things out. They were able to fit us in at 9 am - bless them! Seriously, it was so nice to get it looked at before the heat of the day. The burning smell was coming from a "hard start" which is some type of accessory that assists the compressor. The technician didn't think a new one would fix it, but he put one in just to rule that out as a possibility, and it cranked up! I wanted to cry I was so happy! He was amazed it worked. Apparently it's a bad sign that our unit has to have one of these to work - they are supposed to work without them; so we know it won't be long before we have to replace the whole thing. But at least we didn't have to replace it right now! Now we have time to set some money aside. The only other bad thing was that it turned out our  internet issue was that our router is fried, so we had to order a new one. It was more money spent, but at least it gets here today and the problem will be solved :)

So, my crazed weekend turned out ok in the end. We even went out to dinner to celebrate - and paid with gift cards, of course :) - and we watched Warm Bodies finally (it was awesome and the soundtrack was great!) and I worked on my giraffe a bit (he's really close to being finished!). It was emotional to say the least, but it all came out well. The events of this weekend really brought me to a realization about our relationship to our house. When we first bought it, I was very gung-ho and accomplishing things left and right and I was really happy with my house. Once we moved in, we kind of "gave ourselves a break", which turned into months of not doing much fixing up around the house. I mean, I still don't have any doors on my kitchen cabinets! I never got them painted! Yeah, I'm kind of ashamed to admit that. The sad part is that both my husband and I have become really dejected with the house over the last few months. Since we haven't been making it nicer, all we get to see are all the things breaking and feeling like we made a huge mistake buying this house. So I have resolved to be better about it all. I am going to focus on one room at a time - another problem solved there since I was working on several rooms at once, making it impossible to see any progress at all in any of them - and I will work on it until there is a big improvement before moving onto the next. The kitchen cabinets will be the first one I get done. I will start painting the doors this week - and you all will be my wardens! I will be accountable on the blog. So be prepared to see a lot less animal making and much more house and diy posts :)

Thanks for reading this far, and I am excited to show my progress in the next few weeks!

*Update on Pepsi Deal at CVS*

I posted about this deal that I got in my email from CVS yesterday and I went to take advantage of the offer and there were issues, so I wanted to let everyone know so you don't have any problems.

The deal was emailed around to CVS subscribers that you can go in to any store today only and when you scan you CVS card at the magic coupon machine, it would print you a coupon to get a 12 pack of Pepsi or Diet Pepsi for only 99¢. I just went in about 30 minutes ago and scanned my card - it said I had no coupons. I scanned it again - again, no coupons. So, I asked the nearest employee (who turned out to be a manager of some type) and he said that for some reason their machine wasn't printing them for anyone. There also happened to be another customer who was there for the same reason and she said it didn't print for her either. The man I spoke to asked me a how I found out about the deal and if my email said I needed to print anything out to bring with me and I told him no. So, they said it was no problem and they would just change the price by hand at the register.

So, when you go in, make sure you tell your cashier that you received the email and the coupon didn't print at their machine and they will still give you the deal. They said it was no problem at all, but that the customer had to be sure to tell them if they had any issues, or the Pepsi would just be rung up at regular price. They may fix this issue later in the day, but if you do have any problems, just make sure to mention the email and you will be fine :)

Walgreens Likes Couponers? Are You Sure?

 Recently, I had an unpleasant run-in with Walgreens - after which I wrote to their corporate office. I was contacted by the store manager by email apologizing for my experience, he said, "We very much want our coupon shoppers to shop here, I just got done talking about this at the last employee meeting we had." 

The manager was very nice and this is in no way against him. He did everything in his power to make things right, and I really appreciate it.


That being said, today I was in a different Walgreens to take advantage of their advertised deals and was met with this: 

These were both items that, when you combine the sale with the available manufacturer coupons, were completely free.  Now, I understand imposing a limit and all but it should be reasonable. Limit 1? Seriously? This isn't Black Friday, this is just a normal sale.

Wouldn't you think that when they know it's going to be a hot item that they would just distribute more than one box at a time to their stores? Oh no, let's just dupe people into coming in so they can be mad they only get one. I know that with the rise in "extreme couponing" due to that unrealistic show on TLC that stores are starting to realize why their sale items disappear from the shelves so quickly when just one customer has enough coupons to take out an entire palate of a product. This is not only excessive, but extremely inconsiderate. I have only once cleared a shelf of an item, but it was only a shelf. I knew for a fact that the store had more in the back, so I didn't need to feel bad about it. This is not the case with a store like Walgreens. They seem too afraid of having one too many items at the end of the week than making a legitimate sale.

Anyway, I'm rambling, sorry. This just really burns my biscuit. Walgreens is now attempting to correct one extreme with another, which is never the right way to go about it. Why not, instead of treating us like 5 year olds, give us a realistic limit. It is entirely possible that I could have had no coupons for these items and just wanted to take advantage of a store sale, like most average consumers. Even before my couponing days, I would always buy a few of an item when it was on sale at a good price and I think that's true for most people. I admit, it is frustrating to go to a store only to find out that they are all out of a product, but I stand by the fact that it is worse to be frustrated at the store because they literally won't sell you products that they physically have than to be frustrated with other couponers who got their first. That's the luck of the draw, the store limit is not.
So Walgreens, if in fact "We very much want our coupon shoppers to shop here," maybe you should make it a bit more conducive to shop in your store without these types of frustrations.