More about me - Katie

Hi Everyone,
I just realized I never did my Getting-To-Know-You Post. You can read about me over on the other Fresh Comfort Blog, so I'll try to come up with something original here.

Yikes, it's harder than I thought to come up with something new. Here goes . . .

I grew up in a small coastal Maine town and ended up falling in love with one of my classmates during my senior year in high school. After finishing high school and also going to college in Maine, we got married and are still married over 20 years after our first date. We even went to the prom together. After we got married, we moved around a bit. We lived in Colorado Springs for a few years then in Myrtle Beach for a few years. We loved those places, but I tell you, Maine gets in your blood, so we ended up moving back about 10 years ago. We live in Portland now which is the biggest city in Maine, but it still feels like a fairly small town. My husband always says, "Country living with city conveniences" which is true except for the country living part. It definitely doesn't feel like living in the county. Our closest neighbors live only a few feet from us. We're very happy living here, but come February and March, we miss Colorado and especially South Carolina an awful lot.

The summer definitely makes it worth it, but it's a little hard to hang on to those few months all year round. My father lives on a sailboat, so every summer my husband and I take turns going on a sail with him and my brother and some of our friends. This year my mother and sister babysat my three youngest kids, so my husband and I both got to go along with my oldest son. We sailed from Boston to Provincetown and spent a couple days there then sailed back. Every year we say we want to do a longer sail. One of these days we will. Of course, we'll have to find another destination. Provincetown didn't have any fabric stores that I could find.

Speaking of fabric stores, have you Maine bee members discovered Marden's for fabric? If you haven't heard of Marden's (it's just a Maine store, I think), I'm not even sure how to describe it. It's a discount store, but not like Target or Wal-mart - kind of like TJ-Maxx and Marshall's only the stuff is a lot more worn - not used - but a little (a lot) dusty. But you can find some really good, weird things. I found some fancy European baby shoes (Baby Botte) for my daughter once. When we were together at Thanksgiving a family friend from Boston asked me if I'd heard of Marden's and if I knew about their great fabric section. I figured she must have the name wrong. We have a Marden's in Portland, and they don't have any fabric, and I certainly couldn't imagine any Marden's having any fabric I would want. But this friend has really good taste, so I figured it was worth checking it out. Was it ever?! Seriously, if you live fairly close, you have to go. They have hundreds of bolts of fabrics. (Don't make the mistake I made the first time I went of thinking you won't need a cart.) And not just JoAnn type fabric either. They have a lot of designer fabric. I've found a lot of Free Spirit fabric there - some Joel Dewberry and Kaffe Fasset. And get this - it's about $2.99 a yard! If you go or if you've been, let me know what you think. Oh - not all Marden's have fabric. I've been to the one in Sanford twice now and come away with yards and yards of fabric for less than $50. If you go online, I think it will tell you which ones have fabric. I'm not sure if the selection is all as good as the one in Sanford, but if you live within a few hours, it's definitely worth the drive.

Happy Friday. I hope you have a full weekend of crafting planned. Don't you just love Friday night when you have the whole weekend ahead of you and so many possibilities?