Eileen Hull

Three dimensional art... with heart

Exploring Maryland

In the course of our RV adventure last weekend, I had the joy of stopping in two of my favorite discount stores: the Christmas Tree Shop and Ollie’s Outlet. Unfortunately, I think that both of these chains are limited to the East Coast but hopefully someday you will have the pleasure at stopping in one or both of them. There were all kinds of treasures to be found. Although it’s called the Christmas Tree Shop, their product line is not at all limited to holiday merchandise. There are a lot of seasonal items, right now they have lawn and garden, housewares, stationery and just fun stuff. The prices are amazing and I always find great deals when I go. Ollie’s is a little more quirky- really, how can you NOT love a store whose motto is “Good Stuff Cheap”? They have a huge selection of books- not new, but pretty current, and great prices. I have been buying up books for Trinity and putting them aside for Christmas. They have rugs, hardware, food (sometimes labeled in other languages) and all kinds of interesting things that you have to just poke around to find. But I go for their scrapbooking and stationery items. There aren’t too many places left these days where you can go in a store and come out with a big bag and you have only spent $25.
While I was at the Christmas Tree Shop, I spotted some brightly colored plastic placemats for $.69. I had been thinking (in Aruba) that it someone should invent a book wrap that would keep your reading material dry, especially when you had wet hands. So I fiddled around and came up with this. No, it’s not rocket science but it works! It will adjust to most size books that you would read on vacation (not War and Peace). The one that’s in there is the Oprah’s book club size paperback and works great.
All you need is a plastic placemat (a piece of flannel backed tablecloth would work too), 4 binder clips paper clips and some ribbon.Measure the height of the book. Fold the placemat down on top and bottom and paperclip together on fold. Center the placemat and wrap around the covers. Binder clip the folded under flap and book.  If you want a handy carrying strap, wrap the ribbon around the book horizontally and vertically. Knot at the book edge and again on the end of the ribbon.
Happy Father’s Day, if any fathers happen to read this! Don’t forget to call your dad…

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