December 26, 2007

dirty santa and the great mystery

The way I see it there are three good gift types:
1. Something you need that you can't afford. (Furniture; new car tires; stainless steel cookware; etc.)
2. Something frivolous you love that you would not likely buy for yourself. ($100 hurricane lamp; rabbit-lined leather gloves; 600-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets)
3. Something fun that suits your personality and interests. (video games; cds; a $15 cinnamon lipgloss; restaurant gift certificates; scrapbooking supplies; et. al.)

This leads me to question the "Dirty Santa" game that we played with my husband's family on Christmas Eve. The girls were to bring a girl gift, the guys were to bring a guy gift. The girl stuff ranged from a Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card to lotion to chocolate to a journal to earrings. No problem. It is the guy stuff that perplexes me. The gifts were as follows: Electrical tape; Duct tape; garden hose roll-up thingy; plastic rain gauge; wrench; box cutter; a dozen pairs of work gloves; and various colors of plastic cable ties. Seriously. And they grappled over these things like toddlers fighting over the last cookie! Now, I gave this some thought. If this was a girl gift, the equivalent would look something like: A travel sewing kit; box of safety pins; nail clippers; twelve pairs of yellow playtex dishwashing gloves; spatula; a curling iron caddy; and an old lady clear-plastic rain bonnet. Am I the only one who sees the humor in this? These are not gifts. I'm convinced these are the purchases of 5 men who do not have a clue how to shop and were equally relieved that none of the other guys knew how to shop either.

Gift cards make sense to me. Big boy toys I can appreciate. Electronic gadgets I understand. Game systems I even like myself. But plastic cable ties remain a mystery to me.

December 12, 2007

Darlings by Design

Okay, just for fun, I'm changing the picture. Sara shot so many great pictures (of course, with the help of her lovely and talented assistant . . . ) that I can't pick a favorite "real" photo.
This one, however, is truly my favorite:

possible excuses why I haven't blogged for the past week . . .

*My life is incredibly boring.
*My life is incredibly fascinating, you know, working with Mikey and
Terrell everyday, and I just don't want to make the rest of you envious.
*I've actually been sleeping all night long for the last month, so there
are 3 fewer blogging hours in my day than normal.
*I've been seriously contemplating purchasing a water buffalo. No joke.
*I don't have any cool illness, depression, finals, engaged friends, or pregnancy to blog about.
*I don't want to post pictures of myself from 10-20-30 years ago. That would make me have to admit how old I am then I WOULD be depressed! (Though Sandy looks as beautiful now as she did at 18! I hate her.)
*I'm not obsessing about what I didn't get done yesterday.
*I'm not obsessing about what I'm not going to get done tomorrow.
*I'm not obsessing about what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.
(And neither should my daughter . . . )
*Is anybody out there REALLY interested in what font I decided to use for the church letterhead? I think not. (But, if you are: sylfaen. It looks nice if you emboss it in 18 font, though the embossing tends to blur on the smaller font, especially since I have to set the leading at 14 for 11 font. Fascinating, huh?)
*I'm not lavishly visiting/vacationing Evansville or any variety of exotic Texas cities.
*I feel guilty blogging when I should be Christmas shopping.
*I have writer's block.
*The cat ate my mouse.

I didn't say they were good excuses . . .