First of all, about the stockings:

I’m not sure about the velcro part, because I need a special color, special sizes. We found one place on line that only sold them in bulk – like 80 yards for $80. I’m going to call this one place today to see if they really are selling that material for $1.85 a yard, since Angoraknitter found a place at $8 per yard, and that is just a huge difference. Just the material and the fluff and the 550 cord (of which I’ll be happy to use some of the gazillion yards we happen to own for some reason known only to Army guys) is really only about $1 or $2 per stocking.

I went on line and looked up handmade Christmas stockings. All were nice. Some were super nice. The price range for handmade stockings was $30 to $90. Machine-made novelty stockings were only $10 to $20 each. I need to keep reminding myself that these are handmade (by machine), not (bulk) machine-made.

I don’t mind doing them for cheap to contribute to the overall Christmas spirit, but my husband knows that the main condition of a big discount would be that the price be kept a secret. My husband’s office is a high-traffic, high-visibility one. And everyone passing through is top brass. I WILL make extra stockings, because there WILL be requests for purchase. I don’t need his boss saying she got them for $20 when someone would happily fork over $35.

Hopefully this afternoon, I will dig out my husband’s stocking and take a picture for you all to see. He has a few BDU tops that are waiting for the knife. I’m going to make them into stockings as well and sell them too. Perhaps my kids and I will do a unit study on running a business. So if you Army wives like this idea, but don’t want to make one yourself, check here in November for pricing. I’m just not sure what postage to Germany is, Renee.

And the fire update. My house still smells like we’re pack-a-dayers, but it is getting better. The firemen gave me the number to the Fire Prevention office, which was voice mail. I left my name and number. Maintenance came over with a spray can of smoke and tested every single detector and they all went off. Of course. They looked at me like I was an idiot. I insisted that every single room had smoke in it, and they said they didn’t know what to tell me. My neighbor’s alarms go off all the time, so maybe I’m imagining things. Perhaps my husband and children and I are all under some big delusional spell. Right. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Perhaps buy some cheap alarms and install them myself. I don’t feel safe, but I do sympathize with the maintenance crew too. What can they do? The alarms claim to be working. I’m not interested in setting another fire in my house to prove my point.