I started gardening as a hobby when I was in high school. My family had a small square patch lined with red pavers in the backyard where my mom usually planted a few annual flowers each year. I expanded it until it was doubled in size and grew everything from flowers (cosmos, bachelor buttons, and…
Legos were the primary imaginative playground of my childhood. I collected thousands of pieces across many sets, ranging from medieval Europe to outer space. More often than not, I would assemble the sets as designed for a short time before breaking them down to create universes of my own. I wove entire sagas with those…
A few years ago, some of my family members got interested in making fairy gardens. It started with my mom, and she then gave me a few items for my birthday one year to build my own fairy garden. Now, my children also set up their own fairy gardens each spring. Fairy gardening is a…
Dollhouses are expensive these days. The most popular houses — including Barbie Dreamhouses, L.O.L. Surprise houses, and the new Rainbow High Dorm — can go over $200 on sites like Target. If you are interested in finding a house for your dolls, Dollar Tree may be the last place you would look, but they do…
I’ve mostly had bad luck with store brand shoes. I’ve had fails with both Target and Walmart footwear, and only marginally better luck with non-name brand department store shoes. When it comes to what I put on my feet, more often than not, I get what I pay for. In that context, buying shoes from…
Two of the biggest dollar stores in America are Dollar General and Dollar Tree. You can’t go anywhere in America without running into at least one of them. Dollar General rules supreme in rural areas and also many urban areas, while Dollar Tree is especially popular in larger towns and bigger cities. Some people might…
If you enjoy gardening, this is the time of year when you start dreaming of warmer days, drooling over seed packets, and plotting where to grow everything. You might soon begin keeping an eye on your local garden center to see when they put out the first seedlings of the season, including more cold-hardy flowers…
Any tissue I buy doesn’t seem to last very long. I work in an education setting, and it’s astonishing how quickly a large box of tissue can end up empty. My tissue boxes see some use during the fall and spring months, thanks to allergy season, but winter is the worst. Cold and flu season…
Potato chips are a staple of American cookouts, and no small number of lunches. Tasty — if not nutritious — they are made to complement whatever burger, hot dog, or sandwich you want to pair with them. If you want to know how popular potato chips are in the United States, just consider who sells…
Conventional wisdom says that it’s probably a bad idea to buy clothes from a dollar store. You know there’s a high chance they’re cheaply made and possibly even poorly fitted. Yet people do buy clothes from dollar stores, not only because they’re convenient, but because the clothes themselves are nearly always cheaper than what you…