Back to school

The neighborhood kids have been back in school for only a couple of weeks now.  As time grew closer for the start of this school year, I realized that I was sitting here with no back to school shopping to carry out.  No building excitement over who this year's teachers were going to be.  No new clothes to try on and purchase.  No band camp (you might think this is a good thing, but Wando band student and parent alumni miss that part of a school year).  No back to school preparation whatsoever.  And what in the world was I going to do without the wrapping paper fundraisers???  Last year we were very involved in the back to school process with moving the youngest into her dorm, shopping for accessories, school supplies, a computer, etc.  This year, all I had was watching the commercials advertising the latest 'must have' items for this school year.  I saw the new and improved items in the stores (I love the colors that Wal-Mart is offering this year and Target has awesome binders and composition books made from recycled materials!) and I wanted to buy a whole bunch of stuff I did not need.  The colors, the brand new never-before-seen items, the new spin on the old items (have you SEEN the colors and designs they use on the old black and white marbled composition books?) were all working their magic on me.  It seemed that this may well be THE most amazing year for back to school shopping but that changed nothing. I still had no reason to purchase any of these things.  Our college daughters handled all of their new semester shopping on their own this year but where did that leave me?  Well, I'll tell you.  I went right over to Wal-Mart and purchased myself three of those really cool looking composition books AND they were college ruled- my fave.  I also looked over all the awesome writing tools and purchased some new pens to go with the composition books!  Let the journaling continue--in style!

Oh, and the wrapping paper?  It's beautiful and I ordered a TON of it!