Kate wants to know what I want for Christmas. World peace, Kate. And for my tulip bulbs NOT to be eaten by voles this year. Also:
(image from Amazon.com)
A Few of the Girls, by Maeve Binchy. This is a pre-order, and I LOVE to get pre-ordered books for birthday/Christmas: Amazon then ships it so that it arrives the very first day the book is available, and by then I’ve lost track of when it will arrive so it’s a happy surprise. I have low hopes for this book, since it’s YET ANOTHER book published after Maeve Binchy’s death, and so I’m wondering if they’re just sort of scraping together some half-formed notes and calling it a book, but whatever, I want it.
(image from Amazon.com)
Catastrophic Happiness, by Catherine Newman. Another pre-order. Her first book, Waiting for Birdy, is the kind I happy-cry all the way through. Strongly recommended for pregnant women, if you have any on your shopping list.
(image from Etsy.com)
Marmar Modern Daisy Earrings. I am slowly acquiring quite a collection of Marmar and Marmar Modern earrings. I love them so much, and the French hooks don’t bother my skin the way some do (I don’t know if I have a weird neck angle or a weird earlobe angle or what, but the ends of French hooks often brush lightly and itchily against my neck, so that I keep scratching and leaving big pink marks).
(image from Target.com)
Stud earrings. We are not forbidden from wearing dangling earrings at work, but we are strongly discouraged. “Accidents happen,” my trainer said darkly. But I don’t usually wear stud earrings, so I have the ones I got my ears pierced with and that’s about it.
(image from Walmart.com)
Scrub tops. This is a good moment to mention the winner of my gradually-increasing scrub top collection: the Scrubstar Premium Flexible. They have big stretchy black panels on the sides. I wish they came in alllllll the colors and patterns. Only hot pink and turquoise are available online at the moment, but when I went to the store the other day they had it in red and grey as well. I look silly in red, but I now own all three other colors. The pants, too, are superior: big wide stretchy waistband, so comfy. I plan to wear these as pajamas when I no longer need them for work.
(image from Kiva.org)
Kiva gift cards. Paul gets me a $25 gift card every birthday and Christmas now, and the more of them I acquire, the more often I get to re-lend. I love this.
(image from Amazon.com)
(image from Sees.com)
See’s Candies. So expensive, so yummy.
(image from Amazon.com)
Traverse Bay chocolate-covered dried cherries. These would be on my list except that they went down in price and I pounced. Previously, the best price I’d seen them at was $7/pound, or $28 per 4-pound box. When they went down to $23 for 4 pounds, or ONE-FOURTH the price per pound of See’s chocolates, I SPRANG.
(image from Amazon.com)
Jewel: Let it Snow. Jewel’s Joy: A Holiday Collection (which is only $3.99 now, probably because of the new album) is one of my favorites to listen to while wrapping presents (I cry every time she hits the high note on O Holy Night, though I skip past her jouncy version of Rudolph), so I’m half-excited, half-nervous about hearing the new one.
(image from Amazon.com)
Kikkerland Retro Pens. My sister-in-law and I both have these and we both love them, and we both want MORE.
(image from Amazon.com)
Animal Box postcards. I really really really really don’t need any more postcards. I have, like, an 18-gallon bin FULL of them. But. Animal cards are a very common request on Postcrossing, and it’s fun to have the very animal someone is collecting.
That lunch box is adorable, but might I suggest the neoprene kind? They’re very popular in my office and I finally got one and figured out why. They are stretchy, so you can put all kinds of odd shaped or large items in them. They are insulated and will keep stuff cold for a couple hours. AND, they are machine washable if you spill things in them. I got mine on Groupon, the brand is Built NY, but you can buy them at like Bed Bath and Beyond and places like that. Highly, highly recommend.
I loved Waiting for Birdy, so thank you for alerting me to this new book!
Have you ever had Chukar Cherries? AMAZING. https://www.chukar.com/category/best-sellers-chocolate-assortment-boxes
Those earrings are amazing – I feel an order coming on…
French hooks annoy me as well. My solution is to put them on and then squeeze them so that the pokey end moves farther away from my neck (essentially making the hook narrower and changing the location of the bend on the wire). I also find that often the last few millimetres of the hook is bent out at an angle, so I just bend it back so that the wire is a straight line at the end that slips into your ear. (I feel I’m not explaining this well.) Anyway, the gist of it is that I always re-shape the hook to make it less annoying. For some earrings that is only a little change and for some it’s a bit bigger.
BUT! For my favourite earrings, I just remove the French hook and put on a lever back or a small kidney (shape descriptions are here: http://nunndesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Ear-wires-horiz-image-section-500×250.jpg). You can buy the lever backs at Michael’s, for instance, and I’ve never really found that the aesthetic of the earring is horribly altered by changing the shape of the wire it’s dangling from. All you need is a set of teeny pliers, which Paul or the kids may already have.
That is a good list.
I’ve been wanting to ask about the Kiva loans: H ow quickly do you get paid back (oh, that doesn’t sound chintzy at all; let’s try again), or rather, how frequently can you reinvest the money you’ve put in? Is it the sort of thing where you are regularly able to pick a new project, or is it more like a donation, because it’ll be months and years before you see that money again, and you need to just plan on putting more money into it regularly?
It varies, depending on the loan: some are small and/or paid back very quickly, and others are large and/or longer-term. You can see the term of the loan when you’re considering it. When I had only a few $25 loans out, it felt like a long time between re-loanings—but now I have more than a few (I think I have about a dozen $25 loans), and it feels like re-lending happens pleasingly often. Hm, “pleasingly often” is not helpful. It feels like…every couple of months.
This is wonderful, thank you so much for sharing!
If you feel up to it sometime, I would LOVE to be a nosy pain in the ass and see a photo of you in one of your scrub tops. I don’t think you’ve posted one before? I like seeing photos of people I like (er, in a non-creepy way, because I’m aware that I just read your blog, we don’t actually talk!!) in clothes that mean something to them.
Obviously I understand if you don’t ever want to do this! I hate photos of myself! But if you feel like it, there is at least one person who’d love to see it. Thank you!