Today is my niece’s sixteenth birthday! She is old enough to get her driver’s license. Hence, the title of my post. Unfortunately for her, she cannot get her license until she takes some driver’s education classes and her mother cannot afford to pay for them at this point in time. So the roads are safer a little while longer! Regardless, I hope she has a great birthday and I hope she has many more happy birthdays in years to come.
Oh really? Then you lose the sale buddy!
Guest post by Becky Thurman
I could not believe it when I went to Wal-Mart to buy a few things, and when I went back to the car it would not start. I think that the gas line was frozen, so I went into Wal-Mart and bought a can of dry gas. I put the dry gas into the gas tank, and the car still didn’t start. Well, I decided it was time to buy a new battery, so I went back inside the Wal-Mart and went to the automotive department and told the employee that I needed to buy a new battery and have them put the battery into the car. I explained that the car was in the parking lot and that they needed to go out to it because the battery in the car had died. The employee told me that they would only install the battery for me if I brought the car inside their garage. Well, I had no way to move the car into the garage, so I told them that they had lost the sale, and I would just get a jump start for now and buy the new battery someplace else.
So out to the parking lot I went. I popped the hood of my car, got my jumper cables out and started to hook them up to the dead battery. There was a nice young man just getting out of his car parked right in front of my car (talk about great timing!) I asked him if he could help me out with a jump start, and he did. He hooked up the cables, and started my car no problem. I offered to pay him for his trouble and he refused. So I gave him a big ol’ hug and thanked him so much. Then I drove home and told my hubby what had happened. He used to work in that Wal-Mart in that automotive department. He told me that he was going to call the store manager and raise some cain. Come to think of it, I didn’t hear that phone call; I’ll have to ask him if he ever made it! One thing is for sure, that Wal-Mart will not be selling me a new battery – we will buy it elsewhere.
Last minute shopping
Not being a fan of shopping for gifts, I tend to do a lot of my Christmas shopping at the last minute. Yes, I admit it, I procrastinate on things like this. There is a good reason for this, though, when I finally get around to shopping for the gifts, the people that I am buying gifts for don’t have a lot of time to change their minds about what they want! There have been years in the past when someone told me that they wanted something for Christmas, and then when I got it for them and they unwrapped it, they told me that they had decided to not wait for Christmas and just bought it for themselves! So waiting until the last minute helps to keep that from happening. To be honest, I’ve started to think that the best way to give Christmas gifts that the person really wants is to just give them a gift card to one of their favorite stores. That way they can get what they REALLY want!
Frugal is good
I was surprised earlier today when my wife pulled out three “empty” bottles of Gold Bond hand lotion (the pump style) and cut them open with a knife. I asked “what in the world are you doing?” She replied “salvaging hand lotion. There’s a lot of lotion left in these bottles!” She ended up getting about eight ounces of lotion out of the bottles! She used a rubber cooking spatula to scoop out the lotion and transferred the lotion into four empty night cream jars she had been saving.
I was so impressed by how much lotion she salvaged from being thrown away! That is a lesson I’ve learned today – when you think your pump bottle of something is empty, there really is a lot left – you can cut it open and transfer the contents to a jar and use it up! It may not seem like a lot at the time, but it adds up!
Made in America
I’m trying to buy Made in America products for Christmas presents this year. I am finding it to be a very difficult task. Many of the gifts that people want are electronic in nature, and most of those items are made overseas. When I Google “Made in USA” very few items actually show up that would be things that the people on my gift list would really like to have.
I’d like to shop local, but I don’t want to pick up every item on the shelf and turn it over to see where it was made. I figure that if I look online first for the product itself, then I can go to the local store to buy it. If you have any suggestions about where to find items that are Made in USA, please let me know, I’m interested!