Welcome Home Aunt Stiney

...or Justine, as most of you would know her :) My sister, Justine, made the cross-country drive from Denver to here last week and got home Saturday night! She'll be here at least through September, which is great since Baby W. will definitely be making his arrival sometime between now and the end of July... hopefully on the later end of that range! We wish Justine could stay longer, but oh what a pity...we'll just have to go to Hawaii to visit her! She will likely be joining a team of staff to start a new YWAM base on the island of Kauai later this year.

We were loving the beautiful weather this weekend ~ we've had the windows open for over a week now! It's been so refreshing! We got up early on Saturday, and Mike's mom joined us to stand in line for a local Baby Consignment Sale... that was lots of fun! I might have to get there even earlier for the next one to really get the good stuff...I'm all about bargain shopping! Mike also painted our thrift-store-find glider on Saturday and now I just have to find fabric to recover it. There are a few things we splurge on, but for the most part, we have no problem with hand-me-downs and bargain finds for this little boy.

The Best Kind of Shopping!

Have you ever gone up to a register to pay full-price for something only to be pleasantly surprised that it is on sale and costs less than you expected? Well, yesterday, my friend/co-worker, Senneca, and I went to BabiesRUs on our lunchbreak so she could help me add a few things to my registry. The brown lamp I wanted to add was the last one in the store and was being discontinued, so I decided to just go ahead and buy it... for $44.99. It rang up $11.75...and then we noticed the sales people whispering and we heard them say "are we discontinuing all the Amy Coe stuff? so it's 75% off?" Well, that's all Senneca and I needed to hear... we rushed back to the Amy Coe (modern designer for BRU) section and filled a cart to the brim with tons of stuff we had been eyeing but never wanted to pay full price for... most things were now ringing up between $2-5, even though they were marked full-price! Everything I got was part of two collections that go perfectly with the bedding I already have. We had so much fun!! And we could tell that the sales people were shocked that we discovered this unmarked sale before they could get back there and grab it all for themselves! It was a bargain shopper's dream day! So here's what I ended up with:

1 Large Brown Area Rug
1 Wall Art Canvas
1 Baby Hamper
3 Decorative Storage Boxes
6 Receiving Blankets
1 Chenille Blanket
1 Waste Basket
2 Lamps with Shades
3 Crib Sheets
1 Changing Pad Cover

Total Price: $98.15
Total Savings: $294.45!!

The feeling of finding an awesome deal that no one else knew about yet: Priceless.