Guess how I found that awesome neighborhood in Historic Riverside. I was looking for a Singer Sewing shop. And I found it - in a nice lady’s garage in my favorite new neighborhood. I guess she owned a Singer repair and sales shop for a long time and retired, but kept selling from her converted garage, where she has an awesome Gammill long arm machine. It’s a really nice setup. Anyway, she was super helpful. I got a walking foot (finally), extra needles, and the all-important little key to open my bobbin case for cleaning.

Her shop was a great find. The next closest Singer shop is over an hour away. They’re both pretty far, but this one is a little closer, and it a much more awesome neighborhood.

Then I headed over to Joann’s and found a bunch of cool fabric, fun notions (like denim rivets and fancy buttons) and a ton of good white and black cotton pieces in the remnant bins.

Which brings me to my real topic. Budgeting. David and I are going to follow the budgeting and planning advice of the money management lady on Oprah - we’re going to each get an allotment of cash each month and that’s all we can spend.

I guess I’m going to have to join a stash-busters group online, because I won’t be buying any fabric for a while. Unless it’s in the budget, of course ;)