Walmart Score

My first trip to Walmart in New Jersey was a rough one.

I walked through the sliding doors and was hit with a store that was packed, filthy and the first rack of clothing I saw contained cheetah print MC Hammer pants.

The prices were outrageous, the employees were rude and I was honestly shocked by how different the environment was from even the worst Walmart I'd been to in Utah.

It was not a good experience and I  vowed not to go back.

Of course, I went back. 

The prices were not any worse than anywhere else, everything costs more in New Jersey. I adapted to the grouchy employees and it was convenient. That convenience is why we all put up with Walmart.

Today, Walmart was good to me.

I was looking for bags to put leaves in. You have to use paper bags, otherwise you are not allowed to get rd of your green waste. Now that we have a truck, we can actually go to the dump and have a decent yard as long as we don't get any more tree- toppling hurricanes. 

Walmart didn't have any bags, I was annoyed.

 I went to look at yarn to ease my irritation.

They were making space for the Christmas craft items, so they had a bunch of fabric on clearance in the tiny back corner of the store where they have a small selection of sewing and knitting stuff.

1 yard cuts, packs of 4X4 squares and jelly rolls  for a buck. 

2 yard coordinating prints for three bucks and a pack of larger squares that matched the jelly rolls for four bucks.  

I nearly cleared the shelf. 

This almost makes up for the TWO times I have come home with rotten milk from that store. 

Almost.

Hungry?

Food shopping here is always interesting.

There are seasonal, ethnic foods that fill the shelves alongside the Wonder Bread and Cheese Whiz.

There are so many foods I have just never even heard of.

There are so many foods I will never try as well.

I'll stick to my Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Matt told me today that Twinkies and Ding Dongs will be back soon, they sold the company.

My super healthy Raspberry Red Zingers had better come with them.

These are some of the items that we did not pick up today at the supermarket:

Butter beans, ackees, large green boiled peanuts in a can and callaloo.
I have no idea.

  Yum! Irish Moss peanut drink!!

 Care for a chocolate digestive?
Matt says it's just candy from Great Britain.

Better make sure you have the jumbo sized container of oxtail seasoning......

There is a giant assortment of various brands and flavors of plantain chips, as well as every flavor of Goya fruit soda/drink on the planet.

Pineapple is my favorite.
 I am just starting to develop a taste for guava, too. Okay- guava flavoring and guava filling, but I'm getting there.

These are wafer cookies from Europe, they also come in about a dozen different flavors. They don't stock them all in the same place though so you can find different kinds in the cookie aisle, near the checkout and in they make seasonal flavors, too.

Plum Butter.
Who knew?

PRUNE butter.
Who cared?

Note that plum butter and prune butter were in  different aisles. 

Prune butter is seasonal, I think it's for Seder.

We didn't buy any of it, but we did leave the store with these:

Matt had them at work recently and said they were wonderful.

Matt was correct.

They're  bite sized layered cakes with a layer of lemon, vanilla and almond cake. The filling between the layers is raspberry jam and they dip the whole thing in milk chocolate. 

The first bite will give you a cavity.

The 400th bite will give you diabetes. 

Totally worth it.

More Treasures

Last week I took a little break from everything and spent some time being amused at our crazy local thrift store again. I meant to find things to do Halloween costumes with, but I forgot to actually ask the kids what they were going to be first. 

So, I just looked around and snapped pictures of some of my favorite oddities there.

It's always an adventure at the Union Unique.

Did you have these on your tree as a kid? 

I almost bought them, and then I reminded myself that I didn't need them, and they would probably burn my house down. I can take a picture and still have the memory, I don't need to buy things just because they make me smile.

Unless those things are shoes.

I'm sure someone's mom spent hours on this little guy:

And here it is at the goodwill. 

John never appreciates anything.

John is a spoiled brat.

This one had googly eyes.

I don't know which one was creepier, the peach or the peanut, but the fact that they already have a shovel ready for some good old fashioned body buryin' scares me.

It doesn't scare me as much as this:

This probably belonged to John's sister. 

Their mother works so hard trying to give them nice things. They really don't deserve her.

Ingrates.

This game was 15 bucks:

 Probably the most expensive thing at the thrift store and I can totally see why. 

What's more fun than Granny Racing?

Oh yes, Granny racing :The Board Game.

I have nothing to say that is funny about this one, I don't want my words to take away from it's awesomeness.

 Dick Dastardly. 

Sweeeet.

 There were some great cassette tapes to choose from.

 MOTAB REPRESENT.

And look a little further, yeah, it's Gloria Estefan & The Miami Sound machine AND Ratt.

Ratt.

I KNOW!

It's a good thing we don't own a cassette player, or I'd have never been able to resist these.

Lastly, this beauty pretty much summed up my whole Unique Store trip:

Nothing says Hillbilly Homebrew like drinking your moonshine out of a tin mug.

None of these were any help in making this year's Halloween costumes, but they did make me smile.

Now I just need to create a Pikmin, a vampire and the 11th Doctor Who by Friday.

Thrifty

I have attempted to post three times in the past two days and accidentally deleted my post and dumb blogger saves the change within a nanosecond of my deleting the post.

No, it isn't an issue that can be solved with control +Z.

It's probably not even a blogger issue, but I need to blame something.

I'm tired of rewriting the same darn post, so I'm just going to make this one quick and get it published before I hit whatever key makes it vanish forever. I know it's a user error, but this user has had enough of it.

My cousin Marla was in town this weekend, she's our first houseguest here in New Jersey.

We hit NYC, but got sick of it after a couple of hours, so we weenied out and spent the rest of the time in New Jersey.

We did hit the famous Magnolia Bakery, though.

Meh, they have nothing on Meghan's Creme Brulee cupcake from the Sweet Tooth Fairy in Utah.

She was doing a job out in DC and was able to tack on a couple of days to come and see us at the end of her trip. She lives in Japan with her sweet family and we had a great weekend hitting all of the big fancy American places like Target and Michael's.

We also ate a ton of wonderful pizza.

I think I am converting to NYC style..... so amazing.

We also hit the goodwill.

The goodwill here is nothing like the DI back in Utah. It had rack after rack of random, weird knickknacks and it just cracked me up.

I think some one got an "F" in horse painting class......

Ah, memories of that awesome trip you took to Gudeloupe........

I just want to know the back story for this one.....

"All I did was have lunch with that crazy woman and she gets all weird and MAKES ME A PLATE."

I wonder if there were cookies, or if it was just a plate to thank someone for meeting them...face to face.

Why is Obi Wan Kenobi so angry at Jesus?

Thanks Marla for soming to see us. I love you so very much and I appreciate your joyous laugh and patience with me as I wind own nerves up in a giant knot over so many silly things. Thanks for being such a great cousin and more than that, a great friend.

Matt and I both love you to bits and hope you have a safe flight back to P & J.