Food, jeans, and plates

Fairly uneventful day today.  Went grocery shopping for the week, so that was fun.  I'm actually excited for this week's menu...I think it's going to be a good one.  We've got a lot of Italian-style things...minus my famous fish tacos.  Man I love those.  I could eat those every day.  If you've never had a fish taco...for goodness sakes GO HAVE ONE!  Your life will never be the same.  In the best possible way.  Promise.

I just wanted to say a big hello and thank you to my new followers!  It's SO exciting to me to come to my little bloggy dashboard and see that number grow.  It's actually kind of amazing to me, because I don't think I'm that exciting, lol.  But it's good, I have pressure to write more than the "oh I don't have anything to say today" type of post.  You guys make me want to step it up, and that's good.  I really appreciate each and every one of you!

I did have a little moment of goodwill today that was nice.  There are very few stores in our mall, but one of them - Vanity - was doing a clothing drive collecting old jeans to use as housing insulation.  100,000 pairs of jeans will insulate around 200 homes.  Pretty freakin' sweet huh?  And they were taking any form - shorts, pants, ripped, grungy, nothing was turned away.  Being a painter, I have a *lot* of paint pants, and I usually wear them until I rip a huge hole in the butt or crotch.  Then I usually patch them, and wear them a little longer...until I'm really forced into retiring them.  I actually wore one pair so thin that if I held them up to a window I could see through them.  No joke.  Anyway, I hate throwing out clothes more than anything, and so then I just have piles of ripped, paint-y jeans in my closet that are unwearable.  So to hear that Vanity was collecting them was awesome for me.  I donated to them 6 pairs of jeans, and in return got 6 coupons for 25% off new one from their store.  Now I am all about coupons.  Especially for pants, cause I'm forever short of good jeans that fit me.  However, Vanity is not a....shall we say....full figure friendly store.  I can't actually shop there because they don't carry my size.  So I've been toting these coupons around in my purse for a couple weeks, trying to find someone to give them to.  Today, I was shopping in Claire's (next door to Vanity) for a headband for my Halloween costume and I had an idea.  The manager of the store is a really sweet gal I would guess in her early 30s, built similarly to myself.  After chatting with her while I was in the store, I said, "You know, I donated all these jeans and have coupons that I'm not going to use.  Would you maybe have some customers that would like them?  Otherwise they'll just go waste."  She was delighted!  I was so glad.  The customer base at Claire's is such that *someone* who shops there is bound to want them.  Yay!  I helped out and made a friend, bonus!  :)

Ooo!  And while I was in town today, I picked up the plate I made at Biggest Loser night last Tuesday.  It turned out really cute, I'll have to take pics and post them.  :)  Cause I'm 5 years old and have the "look what I did!" syndrome, lol.  I don't even remember if I mentioned Biggest Loser night....if I didn't, sorry! That'll be a different post.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!