Yardsales-1, Heidi-0 and Ribbon storage

It's been a couple of weeks with no yardsaling for me and I've been feeling the 'itch' something terrible. The weather here this weekend is fab so I knew there would be tons of sales. I was right! Signs at every corner and every intersection. Quin had to help at a church function this morning so I was on my own with Maren, but I packed her up and we headed out. I don't know what the problem was but the sales, as plentiful as they were, stunk! I realize that yardsaling is, in essence, looking at other people's junk. Sometimes it's good junk--sometimes it's just plain old junky junk. Today it was the latter. If I had been looking for old, over-priced VHS tapes or stuffed animals with matted fur, I would have hit the jackpot.

The only things I ended up buying were a puzzle and three mugs (two hopefully for the upcoming Sweet Goodness swap) for a total of $2.00. Oh well, I'll just save my money. Next weekend is my subdivision's big sale and when I was out today I saw another subdivision sale advertised for next weekend as well. I'll have to take Maren with me again as Quin will be working, but she's getting pretty good about riding in the car with me to go "treasure-hunting" as I tell her. I've learned that if I stock the car with treats and toys and stop about midway through and let her run around at a park for 20 minutes, she hangs in there pretty well.

I know I can't be the only one out there with a ribbon *ahem* problem, so I wanted to show you my storage solution. I'm not the originator of the idea; I found it on Two Peas a couple of years ago but it has been so long that I can't remember who did it first. Most ribbon holders that you find in stores work great if you only have a dozen or so rolls of ribbon to contain. I have, well, a few more than a dozen, so none of those pre-made storage boxes are particularly effective for me.

This is one of my ribbon holders. The back piece is one of those wire grid squares that can be made into cubes. You can buy a big box of them at Target for about $12 on sale and use the rest to actually make into cubes for storage. The plastic baskets on the front are from the Container Store (but you can find them lots of places); you want them to be about the same length as the wire grid. You can fit three baskets on each grid; the baskets are attached to the grid with plastic zip ties along the back and then the ends are clipped off. That's it! Just pop in your rolls of ribbon and hang by two nails on the wall or even by a wreath hanger on the back of a door. I currently have three of the grids with three baskets each but they are full, so I need to hop over to the Container Store and pick up the baskets to make one more. I told you I had a ribbon problem! And that's just my rolled ribbon...you haven't seen my cut ribbon yet! *eek*