more gift talk.

morning. brrrrrrrrrr. it's cold outside here this morning. the kind of cold that makes your bones hurt. the thermometer is reading a chilly 24 degrees, but the windchill makes it feel like 7 degrees. cold. wishing they made this costume in my size. doesn't it look cozy? emma thought so.


yesterday i had a 3 o'clock date with tricia to wrap presents at her house. heh. i wrapped a whole 3 presents. and i was there almost 3 hours. what's even more pathetic about that is that TWO of the 3 were for ashlyn's birthday that's still a month away. i really need to give myself a little more credit though. i came home with about 15 things in gift boxes with tissue paper labeled with a special code on the bottom of each so i know who they go to when i finally get around to wrapping and adding tags.

the conversation is always fun though. i'm so thankful ours paths have crossed.

proof that it really is a small world after all: i used to go to the same church as her husband, jeff, back in those days of the aqua net spray fest. then i met doug and started going to his church when i was 15. anywho. doug's sister was dating, then later married to, daren. weird co-inkydink #1: daren and jeff used to sing together in a traveling group called Testify. weird coinkydink#2: this spring my kids started attending a pre-school/after school program at a local church and i'm walking down the hall and see a picture of jeff on the wall outside of an office with his name underneath. whoa! i about did a double-take. just a few months ago, i finally saw him leaving the church as i was entering and said "hey.....remember me!" what i didn't know was that he had already run into my husband just a few days earlier.

anywho. story shortened a bit. i've since met tricia, his wife, and their children who are the same ages as my kids and we've just clicked. i think it's so incredibly cool how paths intermingle and God brings just a certain someone into your life just when you need them. she's a huge encouragement to me.

speaking of tricia.........if you remember from my to-do list, we had a Christmas party to attend last week. and gifts to wrap for the white elephant gift exchange. those are always random fun and good for a few kicks and giggles.

so, they used some modified rules to start off with the person who's birthday was in january and then go clockwise around the room from there.

becky was second in line and she promptly jumped up and grabbed the prettiest box among the gifts. (clue #1: if you're ever playing white elephant, steer VERY clear of the prettiest wrapped present. the gifter does that to deceive. hahhahaa.)


she opens the box to find a present, wrapped thickly with paper and taped closed with masking tape. a nervous look falls over her face and she pulls it up out of the box, trying to shake it out instead of just tearing the paper apart. and out falls a LOBSTER!


up she jumped & squealed in disgust trying to get as far away as possible. it was hilarious. what was even more hysterical was the fact that the gal beside her (name escaping me now) was in love with this lobster. she's a lover of all animals and owns a farm.

we were all rolling with laughter. absolutely THE BEST white elephant gift i've EVER seen. don't worry, the lobster wasn't harmed. they had it on ice up until 5 minutes before and put him back on ice just after opening.

anywho. what was even more hysterical was listening to tricia tell the story of how they came to the tradition of wrapping up such a thing. i mean really, who thinks to do something like that!


she was telling how her dad (i think it was) wrapped up a whole fish head from the grocery. and the laughter was so much that i don't even remember the specific details.

of course, after the exchange was all over, the kids couldn't resist taking turns "petting" it and wanting to see it. doug had some humor to add. at some point it was being referred to as Mr. Krabs from Spongebob.....even though it wasn't a crab.


emma approached with nervous trepidation. she couldn't decide if she wanted to laugh or wanted to hide.


funny stuff.

new topic. are you all done wrapping gifts yet? as you read, i'm not even close! ack! trying to think of some good ways to conceal some smaller items, i remembered a small gift i got when i was in high school and had to share. the wrapping job was BRILLIANT!

one year before Christmas we went out window shopping for a class ring. but we did just that, window shopped. it was close to Christmas, so i pretty much knew to expect it as a gift then. but, man, did my parents pull a good one with the wrapping job. that Christmas morning, i had unwrapped everything except a HUGE box. i couldn't for the life of me figure out what they could have purchased that was that big and i still hadn't opened my ring. disappointment was setting in, because i was really stoked to get that ring. but, a quick glance of the room and i noticed we were so excited that we skipped stockings. my attention was diverted to the stocking. rings are small enough to fit in stockings. a quick dump of the stocking and no ring.

bummed.

okay, then. let's open this HUGE gift. so, i open the huge, HEAVY box and inside is another box with about 50 rolls of cash register tape. hahhahahahaaa. what a decoy! BRILLIANT. open the other box........and yep, you guessed it, another box with even more cash register tape rolls. you see where this is going. this went on for another 3 boxes or so.

and that has to be the BEST wrapping job/decoy EVER. doug wasn't around when i got that gift, so the year i got him a watch for Christmas, i recycled the wrapping idea. it was awesome!

do any of you have any white elephant or wrapping decoy stories to share?

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yesterday's winner: Delia W!!!! delia, please email me at taniamwillis at (yahoo.com) with your mailing address so i can get your goodies out to you!

only 4 more days until Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!! make your list and check it twice.

today's prize: another 8x8, 24 sheet pad + 4 sheets of die-cuts, a pack of 6x6, 24 double-sided decorative edged patterned papers, some chipboard shapes and a pack of metal embellishments.