Sweatermen

Scary Winter Driving

Coffee pods

Biscotti bits

Infirmities

Cool Christmas Ornament

Capers and Cauliflower

Advent intangibles and misadventures

Now that we are officially in Advent I can tell you a funny story.

When my kids were growing up, I always bought them one of those cheesy advent chocolate deals.  You know the one - a flat box with crappy chocolate inside of it.  Each day  you open up a little door on the front of the box and there's a piece of chocolate behind the door.  My kids LOVED them - even as teenagers.  It was pretty obvious from the pictures on the box that they were made for a younger audience, but they didn't care.  It was kind of a weird/fun thing that we did every year.

Well, about 3 years ago I saw an idea - I think in a Martha Stewart magazine.  She wrapped up little gifts for each day of advent.  I thought that seemed pretty cute, and the chocolate thing had gotten pretty lame.  So I decided to try it.  I went to Target and bought a bunch of little things - about half candy, and half  other things.  Little packs of tissue, small travel sized lotion, post-it notes, etc.  Nothing very expensive. 

Every year I go to a warehouse sale close to where I work where they sell lots of tiny little party favor boxes, wrapping paper, ribbon, etc.  So I had quite a stash of small boxes of various sorts.  And anything that I didn't have a box for I wrapped in christmas paper.  I used ribbon to tie a number onto each package, as I had them somewhat sorted so that they would get a candy item one day, then a non-candy item, etc.  I also separated out things like big bags of kisses and put them in smaller containers and didn't want them next to each other.

Are you with me so far?  The kids loved it.  They were both away in school and I think it helped them get through the holiday season.  Emma even had a little tree in her dorm room the first year that she put all the little packages under.  It was a big success, so I did it again last year.

This year I decided to up my game.  Remember the story I told you about Intangibles?  Well, I thought it would be fun this year to put little notes on all of the gifts.  I came up with 25 attributes for the notes, and figured out how to print them on my computer so that I could fold each note.  On the front it says :  #2 (or whatever the number is)   YOU ARE:    - - - then when they take the piece of paper off of the gift and open it, the attribute is on the inside - like SWEET,  or KIND.   I thought that Emma could add them to her intangibles jar, and Joe could start one, or save them, or do whatever.  So far, so good.  Sadly, here is where the plan,  unbeknownst to me at the time, began to fall apart.

Since I can't ever do anything the simple way......   I printed up two sheets of the lists, but instead of just going down the list and numbering them, I randomly put numbers on the sheets.  I was thinking that if the kids were together when they opened any of them (which they won't be) they wouldn't necessarily read the same thing on the same day.   Generally the way that I get the gifts figured out, is that I line them up down both sides of the dining room table, one side for each kid.  That way, as I said earlier, I can sort of adjust candy,  non-candy, don't put the chocolate kisses next to each other, etc.  After I had all of them lined up, I cut up the sheets with the numbers and the attributes on them and put them next to the packages on the corresponding days.  Then I started wrapping and taping.  Here is what they look like - multiply this times 25.  (50 little gifts).  So you can see here, that when you pull off the tag by the  number (which isn't completely taped down) the tag will open up and the attribute will be on the inside.

Did I mention that this is totally a labor of love and not for the faint hearted.?
Well, everything would have been just fabulous except for one tiny problem.  As I was finishing up, oh, about gift number 22, I figured something out.  Remember when I told you that I randomly assigned numbers to each sheet and then cut them all apart?  Well, UNFORTUNATELY,  when I did that I didn't keep the two sets SEPARATE.  Bad move. As I'm taping on the last of the numbers, I realized that there are some duplicates for each child, and no specific attributes for some.  For example, #8 might have been 'TALENTED" for one child, and #8 have been "KIND" for the other.  So when I realized this, I couldn't just swap them because of my brilliance in randomly assigning numbers to begin with.  Oy.   So after spending about 2 hours wrapping and attaching I spent about another hour plus trying to figure out the duplicates and get things rearranged.  I had a graph - I was reminded of Emma's Game Theory class at school. 

It seemed to get more convoluted as I went, so after I think I figured all but about 2 of the mismatches, I decided that Joe wouldn't notice, and Emma will read this and know.  (Sorry sweetie) -

My heart is in the right place, and if she gets two pieces of paper that say YOU ARE SWEET (or whatever the duplicates are) that's not the end of the world since all of the attributes are nice, right?   And it's more about knowing that you are loved and thought about than perfection.  That's what I'm going for. 

Martha would have gotten it right. 

Christmas Chairs

Tags in my clothes

Candied Ginger

Knitting and the odd things it sometimes makes one do

Felting

Intangibles

Food Blogs

Reading in the car

I live 50 miles from where I work. Because of this, I spend a LOT of time in my car every week. The minimum is probably 8 hours if I work at home one day, and the maximum can be much higher if there is construction, bad weather, an accident, etc. Although I've gotten used to the drive, I get tired of listening to the radio all of the time. I have found that listening to books while I drive shakes things up a bit.

I am normally a very fast reader. I can read two or three books on a Saturday if that's all I'm doing. (And no, I'm not skimming - I actually read and retain). Because of this I don't buy very many books. I would go broke in a hurry! I go to the library frequently, but have a tendency while there, to only look at mysteries. So my regular reading material definitely has a theme - which I'm fine with. I have my favorite authors, and read everything they write voraciously. Sometimes I wish they would write faster!

The 'books on CD' section at the library is much smaller and has far fewer mysteries to choose from.

I also have a colleague at work who goes to library sales and buys books on tape and CD and then gives us a list.  We choose from that list and and then she lends the books to us. She told me the other day that she has over 700 titles now! About half of them are on tape, so that doesn't work for me. But when she gives me a new list, I go through it, crossing off the tapes, the books I've read, the authors that I know I don't want to read, etc. I then go to a website and read summaries of the books that look like they might have possibilities, and highlight them. I get them from her one at a time and listen to them while driving back and forth. Interestingly, I find that the 'average' book is about 8 - 10 hours of reading which is about perfect. I like being able to listen Monday through Friday for long periods of time, and don't like to wait over the weekend for the finish, or listen to it for 5 or 1- minutes when I'm driving to the grocery store.

So now I'm going to get to the point. (Finally, you say!)

Because my colleague who buys these books is not particularly a mystery reader, I have found myself listening to very good books that I would otherwise never read. Listening to someone speak allows you to pay very close attention to nuances. You also need to pay attention because you can't (easily) flip back a few pages to reinforce something that you read. The narrator also makes or breaks an audio book. It's interesting to hear how different people handle the reading. Some simply read, others, have different voices for different people. (I like those more) Men tend to make the women all sound the same, and women do the same for the men's voices often. It's also interesting when I listen to a book that I've already read to hear how the narrator interprets a scene differently than I hear in my own head when I'm reading.

Sometimes I get a book and find out pretty quickly that I don't care for it, but more often than not, I listen to the book during my commute. (It has to be VERY bad for me to not listen to it.) And yet - it doesn't really make me want to start reading other genres generally. Weird, huh?

This week I'm listening to a book called 'Wives Behaving Badly'by Elizabeth Buchan. It's pretty interesting. I can't tell you a whole lot about it because it would spoil the story, but basically it's about a woman who is a second wife. Her husband had an affair with her and left his first wife. His kids from his first marriage hate her, and his first wife is still around. They (second wife and husband) have young twin boys.

Now this TOTALLY does not sound like something that I would read, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless. And of course there's much more to it that the brief sentences above but if I told you more it would spoil the story.

Some other day I'll tell you about the only other place I go to look for non-mystery books. But that will have to wait.

Lemon Thyme

I got a good looking recipe last weekend from my sister, who is an awesome gardener. It is for lemon thyme bars - and - of course - she was sweet enough to bring me a mess of lemon thyme. So as a break from my knitting (which I can't go into detail about since I'm working on Christmas presents) I am making a batch of these bars. My sweetie is out riding his bike - as usual. I just finished a pair of lobster claw mittens for him. I made them big, so that I can felt them and make them nice and warm for him when he is on his bike. I hope it works. Without a pattern it's sometimes difficult to gauge how much something will shrink. I know I can control it somewhat, but the widthwise/lengthwise part is a bit of a puzzle. We shall see.

A Trial Run

My sister has been telling me that I should start a blog. Since I love reading hers, I thought I'd give it a shot. I don't yet know what I might find to say, but since I like to read, and knit, and do needlework; have kids and a husband; like to cook..... I might find something to blather on about. We'll see what happens.