Road Trip to Mary Jo's!!!!

No U Turn! Well, those darned signs didn't apply to us. We made so many U-turns on our road trip that we began joking about it. We were the U-turn queens! After many U-turns while looking for Long Creek Mills we found this quilt shop, Sew Much Fun. It was fantastic!! It had so many unique things and was very inspiring (right, Shirley?) After a little side trip to this quilt store we found Long Creek Mills. This is a HUGE thread shop. Here we are posed inside the store. From left to right are: Joyce, Pam, Anne, Linda, Shirley, Carol, and me. You can see how happy we are with our thread purchases!!














I took this picture down only one of the thread aisles, just to give you an idea of how much thread there was.











Here is a shot of the inside of Mary Jo's. This picture really does not do it justice. There are so many fabrics and the prices are fantastic. For example, Kaffe Fassett fabric was $6.79 a yard. Normally I pay $9.99 a yard or more for his fabric. Non-designer fabrics were around $5.59 a yard. These are usually $8.00 a yard in quilt stores. I took a picture of the trunk after we loaded it down with our purchases.
When we were waiting to leave Mary Jo's a very nice man who was waiting for his wife told us about a great place to eat. It was Fletcher's BBQ and he said that they had great food. We know that it's a good idea to listen to the locals when looking for a good place to eat.After a couple of U-Turns we found it. It didn't look like much but it was completely wrapped up with customers at 2:30 in the afternoon. We figured that was a good sign. Boy, were we right! The portion sizes were huge! Almost all of us got the small pork plate. There was enough food for two meals. And it came with hush puppies, slaw, baked beans, and french fries. Of course I had sweet tea and banana pudding for desert. I just had to take a picture of the wild hog on the wall. So evil looking!!
On the way home some members of our group insisted on stopping at the Russell Stover outlet store for some scratch and dent candy. (Not really, they call them "Bloopers".) Someone was really on a chocolate jones!! It was a nice stop and we needed the break anyway.
The last pictures are of my loot! Can you believe how beautiful this fabric is? I could have bought more but I had to stop somewhere. We are hoping to make this an annual trip since we had so much fun. We shall see!!
Julie

UPDATE:

I have had some questions about some of the terms I used in this post, so I am copying the reply I sent to those who asked:

Well, here is what it says on www.allrecipes.com about the hush puppy. They can explain it better than I. They are normally served with fish so it was a little unusual to have them with barbeque.

Hushpuppy; hush puppy
This Southern specialty is a small cornmeal DUMPLING, flavored with chopped scallions, deep-fried and served hot. Hushpuppies are a traditional accompaniment for fried catfish. Their name is said to have come from the fact that, to keep hungry dogs from begging for food while the rest of the dinner was being prepared, cooks used to toss scraps of the fried batter to the pets with the admonition, "Hush, puppy!"

I was trying to be funny when I said "scratch and dent" candy. Here we have "Outlet" stores which sell items that are not up to the highest standards because they have some defect. For example, an appliance company has one that they call a "Catalogue Return store" in which they have appliances that were returned because they had something wrong with them. So you might buy a dishwasher that normally cost $500 for $300 because it has a scratch across the front of it. I tell people that I bought my downstairs dishwasher at the "scratch and dent store" - it was much cheaper due to that little scratch.

This candy store had "Blooper" candy that was not perfect enough to sell in regular stores and I called it "scratch and dent" candy. Scratch and dent is a slang term for a slightly damaged outlet store item.

Now a jones means that you are craving something that you are addicted to. For example - "I am jonesing for a cigarette" means you are craving one of those.

Funny how our languages have so many different terms! Thanks for visiting my blog.