durham, nc!

i'll be adding durham to my list of "must repeat-visit" cities! bunkins and i made the journey down friday morning and it only took 4 hours, with minimal traffic! bunks was less than thrilled. here he was at the start of the journey, terrified, huddling in his litterbox (gross, man!):and here he is after the journey. notice he didn't touch his beloved veggies at all. or move!but no worries, because we set up a home for him in erin and henry's guest bedroom (complete with his zebra doormat!)and he had a blast exploring the room all night (including pouncing on the bed to hop around while i slept). oh, my bunks...while bunks explored, erin and i checked out the local thrift craft store, the scrap exchange! it had more than just fabric and knitting notions and was stocked by distributors of random industrial leftover goods, store closings, and donations. heaven!!!the front of the store had tons of blue bins filled with these random industrial notions. you could fill one of these plastic bedsheet packaging bags with all the stuff you could jam in it for $3.75! erin and i scored some really interesting fabric scraps (one i will mat and frame for art in the dining room!), canvas (to make tote bags!), and parachute fabric to make lan's boys their christmas presents!in the back of the store was the fabric and "notions" section. they had tons of fabric, ribbons, buttons, beads, sequins (!!!!! i bought a ton because i have never successfully found loose sequins on sale for cheap and here i found 700-900 for just $0.75!), bias trim (so i don't have to laboriously make my own!). eeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! so exciting!here's all the stuff i scored for less than $30! the yellow fabric actually has metallic stars on it. jimmy ended up stealing the space jam pj shorts before i could give it to nathan, so i'm going to make nathan another pair. it's so ridiculous!we went to a really authentic thai restaurant for dinner friday night. henry and erin belong to a csa for seafood and we had the freshest fried flounder sandwiches for lunch (erin's cooking!) and shrimp scampi for dinner (henry's cooking!) on saturday!!! and on sunday for brunch, we went to dimsum and the dimsum was fresher than the dimsum in the dc area!!!!! erin and i created a crafting storm saturday night where she sewed baggies with which she was planning to wrap holiday presents while i worked on a christmas present for mommy. (pics will not be posted until after christmas, since she gets my blog updates as well!) i had so much fun and it was great to be able to go somewhere without having to find someone to watch bunkins! i will most certainly be back!!!