My daughter’s school held a fund raiser to raise money to purchase new band equipment. The function they held was a carnival. They set up numerous games to play, a cake walk, bake sale and sold popcorn, soft drinks and other food items. I was in charge of operating the popcorn machines. They weren’t the extremely large ones. They were commercial medium sized ones. It was unbelievable how easy and fast they worked. After the carnival was over, the cleanup was very easy, too. Since I had extra time, I helped others clean up their areas. The fund raiser ended up making twice as much as they needed, so more music was bought and the rest of the money was shared with other departments at our school.

A friend of mine has been looking around for Chevy grilles. He’s been wanting to add some accessories to his Chevy Tahoe for a while now but he hasen’t really had the spare cash. He recently received a nice little bonus from his office and he figured now is a better time than ever to pimp out his truck. Summer is right around the corner so it really is the perfect time. I wish I could afford to pimp out my truck.

I have a friend that cleans houses for a living. She owns her own business. I recently went with her to buy her supplies. She goes to one company to purchase everything. Everything she buys is bought in bulk, because it is much cheaper that way. She buys cases of different cleaners, disposable gloves, rags, brushes, mop heads and other items. It is amazing how much she saves by buying them in large quantities at a time, instead of small amounts. She gets paid well for cleaning houses and buying her supplies this way makes her profit much higher.

My uncle works for a company that builds new homes. He only works part time as an assistant purchasing representative in buying the interior plumbing supplies. One of the items he purchases is fancy restroom and kitchen faucets. One of the latest faucets that he purchased for a home was one with a fancy brass handle with ivory on it. It was being installed on a pedestal style bathroom sink. After going to see it after it was installed, it was really beautiful. Just by adding fancier faucets to a sink, it can change the entire look of the room.

My uncle lives on a farm with horses. He rides them daily. He built all his barns and corrals himself. I never realized how much time and effort goes into taking care of horses until I started spending more time with him. Between grooming, shoeing, feeding and everything else there is to do physically, there really is a lot to do. He also has to be sure he has all the necessary supplies as well. I went shopping with him last week to buy new brushes, pitchfork for the hay, scoops to clean the stalls and much more. While we were out, he also shopped for two new saddles. It was unbelievable how many different styles there were to pick from. He bought a real nice leather brown one with a rare fancy design on it.

My cousin is getting married next month. I am going to be his Best Man in the wedding. He also is going to have 6 groomsmen. It is a rather large and expensive wedding so him and his girlfriend want everything to look the best possible. All the men in the wedding went to a men’s suit store and bought all the same suits that match. We are also all wearing gold cufflinks. I never wear cufflinks so didn’t realize how it dresses a suit up. Gold cufflinks would look good on almost all dress shirts in my opinion.

Our household has many different gaming consoles and systems that hook up to our televisions. The latest being the Playstation 3 system by Sony. It seems like we are always shopping for new games for different systems. You can often find used games reasonably priced in stores and on the internet. Sometimes, the games can be very expensive. If they are played enough, they are well worth the money. It is much cheaper staying at home playing these games rather than constantly spending more money going out and doing other things.

My sister recently found out that she was pregnant. She is so excited. This is her and her husband’s first child. She was even excited to start wearing maternity clothes. Nobody could believe that she actually wanted to wear them. Of course, most of them had already had 2 or more children, so they were tired of them. She went shopping one day to buy her some new maternity clothes and ended up buying many more than she had originally planned. She loved them! They came in so many different styles and colors. She had never really paid attention to the many different stores there were either, that sold maternity clothes. Now all she is waiting on is a little time to gain weight so she can begin wearing them.

My grandparents had never had the internet before. My Grandfather just retired and they were on a very limited income. Since my Grandmother had never worked, she had no retirement to draw. They still had 3 years before receiving Social Security and were trying to make ends meet on my Grandfathers retirement alone. They couldn’t travel or make many long distance phone calls, due to the high costs. Due to missing all their children and grandchildren, the decided to get the internet since everyone else in the family already had it, and they could communicate daily with everyone that way. I told my Grandfather everything to get and he got it and had me hook it up for him. The only thing he didn’t get was the fiber optic cables. He was not aware that he would need these to hook up the internet. It ended up being no problem, as he and I made a trip to the local computer store and picked some up. They now have faster internet than I’ve ever used and are communicating with everyone and are so much happier. I’ll probably have to start going over there to use their internet for super fast downloads.

My Mother and Father had an anniversary coming soon. It was the big important 50th Anniversary. My brothers and sisters wanted to do something special for them, but we  really weren’t sure what to do, or what my parents would like. We tried to decide if we should give them a reception, gift or pay for them to go on a trip. We set up an appointment with a travel agent to discuss luxury vacations. We decided to pay for them to go on a tip to Hawaii, since they always talked about going there. They never were able to take any big trips, due to how expensive it was to raise 4 children. We also gave them a low budget, inexpensive reception before they left. We learned that giving someone a luxury vacation, or taking one yourself, can sometimes be a one in a lifetime experience and one you’ll never forget.