I have climbed highest mountain...I have run. I have crawled. I have scaled these city walls...but I stilllllll haven't found what I'm loookin for....

Okay, so I haven't scaled walls, but I have googled 'til I just can't google any more and I've been to IKEA, Kirland's, Michaels, Lowe's, Home Depot and Menards.

Don't you hate it when you have something in your head that you know is out there but you just can't find what you are looking for?

Happens to me quite often both at work and at home.

At work this week I'm on a quest to find inexpensive, attractive trade show seating for ten. Basic criteria: Black, comfortable, portable. Could be a bench seat. (Last year 3M had these lovely boxy upholstered boxes to sit on. Looked much classier than my simple $9.99 IKEA folding chairs. However, don't get me wrong - the folding chairs worked, they just need to be replaced because after shipping around the country to three or four trade shows many of them are in sorry shape.

My final criteria - they need to be less than $75.00. Isn't that ridiculous? Freeman was going to charge me $75.00 PER CHAIR. $75.00 to rent ONE CHAIR is highway robbery and the best thing yet is that as I need 10 chairs, I would have to shell out over $750 plus tax to rent them for three days - better yet, not even three days, merely 12 hours. (Seriously in the wrong business)

Secondly I am looking for some sort of candle looking sturdy slipcover. A few readers may be aware that we have this somewhat decent candleabra at church. The problem is we can't use real candles and this lovely piece of equipment has these obnoxious spikes to hold candles. The regular battery operated candles have the batteries exactly where the spike would go so that doesn't work and for a while we were using old candles however they've slowly been breaking apart and while we are frugal, piecing together crappy candles to "make" a makeshift candleabra eventually just looks crappy.

I did find this resin sleeve, but it's $9.95 for one and I'm not sure how sturdy it is and how translucent. On the same site they also suggested a paper sleeve so I wonder if I found some alabaster velum and made it into a cylinder and then ripped it along the edge to make it look "melty" if from far away it would replicate a candle. Yep, why pay $9.95 when you can spend hours thinking of an alternative that might not necessarily work.

It also kind of looks like a microwaved melted plastic tupperware cup but I'm not probably going to test that theory either.

And who says I don't have hobbies?