Shopping for Christmas?

This ought to go under LC's "What did you buy today" thread under Homes and Gardens, but I thought more people might see it here.

What are some of the items you are giving as gifts?

Here is what I got today:



Recipe Organizers. Two or three years ago, I stared the tradition. I was able to get two binders that were alike, but only two, so I got a box with the same designs for a third. Lynn and Susan each got a book, and David got a box. I felt bad about the box, because it didn't have all the goodies that the books had so this year, I got Dave (and Lyn) the book on the left, and the one on the right is for Lynn's (with two n's) in-laws, Linda and Clint, who have become family regulars since they retired here almost two years ago. The organizers are Hallmark products. Theycontain several pages of cooking helps and tips, dividers, and matching blank recipe cards. The card design for the older books and box won't quite match Dave's new book, but will be close enough hat he can move the cards into the new book, if he wants. (The cards are all 4x6; the books have pages of plastic holders that hold two cards each.)

The first year, and every year since, I have filled in several of the recipe cards with personalized recipes. Old family favorites as well as things I know each household will like: Wheat and gluten-free for Lynn, as well as Jamie Oliver inspired recipes for Chris; lots of meat-and-potatoes for Susan's Jim, Kid's favorites for Dave, Lyn, and Jaycie as well as low-sodium for Jaycie's Popop.

I have recipe software that allows me to input recipes from scans, online sites, and word documents, as well as my own personal ones, including pics. I test-cook the recipes, tweak them, and take pictures with my phone, as you may have seen on the LC's other fun page at Homes and Gardens, "What did you cook today."

Every few minutes I can find during December, I set up new cards, and wrap a little box of them to put under the tree, along with refills (by popular demand) for jars like these that I gave them a few years ago:


Not lots of dollars to spend these days, so I try to make that up with "thyme."

Ann

Dear Ann,
Your love is and you show it beautifully. I love those kinds of thought filled presents. I try to do them myself. The Lables are lovely. . .

One day, someone in your family will write a story that includes you, my friend. I hope they do your spirit justice. You are one of a kind.

Love,
Betty

How thoughful.

I have been ordering stuff online. Will see the doctor Tuesday and if he gets me adjusted better I will go shopping in the stores.

Dear Alice,
I pray for the adjustments and that you are unleased upon the stores to buy lovely and beautiful presents without care. I can imagine going Christmas shopping with you. I am sure I would feel that I was in Las Vegas! You are something, dear Alice. I admire you from top of your head to your feet. I shall make a character of you in my next story. You shall be a ground dove, the most peaceful of birds, who struggles and overcomes terrible trials to hatch her two little white eggs.

Love,
Betty

Betty,

You have given me something to live up to. I will have to work hard to attain that description.

You are the best!

Thank you.

With love,

Alice

12/5/2011

Ann........


I bought one niece a Hematite Necklace with a Bird as the
center piece. Plus I got her a table top fountain. A sister-
in-law a turquoise and coral necklace plus turquoise earrings.
Another sister-in-law a several colored stone necklace. Another
niece I got a Hematite necklace with hearts. A nephew a car
model, another nephew an electric shaver. I had sent to a
friend in NYC a glass engraved friendship plate, another friend
cheese and sausage. All were sent out on Saturday at the Post
Office because the Postal guy told me that today Monday will
be hell, people will jam the post office ! Me, so far I bought me
a 5 foot Washington Naval Citrus Tree, it's loaded with flowers
and fruit, it's in my living room in front of my window, it's
cheerful because right now we're having a snow blizzard ! It
started late last night.....


Cheers..Joe...

Sounds like you and yours are set for a very merry Christmas, Joe.

Ann

Betty Fasig wrote:

Dear Ann,
Your love is and you show it beautifully. I love those kinds of thought filled presents. I try to do them myself. The Lables are lovely. . .

One day, someone in your family will write a story that includes you, my friend. I hope they do your spirit justice. You are one of a kind.

Love,
Betty

Bless you, Betty

I'm really very selfish, because putting things like this together is total fun. One of my bliss things.

Ann

alice wrote:

How thoughful.

I have been ordering stuff online. Will see the doctor Tuesday and if he gets me adjusted better I will go shopping in the stores.

It's hard to think of you as needing adjusting.

Hope it doesn't change you too much and just makes you feel better.

Ann

Dear Joe,
What a nice friend you are to everyone. You are one of a kind, Joe. So is Dusty.

To put thought and love into each present, and do it without spending more than you are able makes Christmas shopping the trial that it is. Today, I went off in search of the perfect presents for under ten bucks.

I wondered about the necessity to do that. I thought of myself and what under 10 bucks would make me happy.

I am easy. A bunch of flowers. flour sack dish cloths, I am easy.

Love,
Betty

Betty,

I wish more folks were like you. The whole gift giving thing gets difficult with grown-ups. Children are easily pleased.

My wonderful mother-in-law loses her halo at Christmas time.

She buys the kids Fred Meyer brand socks every year--what a surprise!

Anything we give her is wrong, wrong, wrong.

It doesn't fit, or she has one or doesn't want one, or it's the wrong color. Dave keeps trying I say, "Give it up. We give her money--that is all she wants or likes."

One year she needed a watch, I got her a beautiful Seiko--her grandson gave her Timex. No way could she have two watches.

Guess which one she kept?

Funny, but not funny. I never want to be that way.

My mother was like that. She also gave her gifts with the same attitude. I remember a period of time when Bill and Sharon would get Waterford for Christmas, and I would get clothes that were at least a size too small, "for incentive," she would say. I noticed, on one of those Christmas mornings, every time Bill opened another monetarily valuable gift, he would give me a funny look. A few days after Christmas, he called to say that he had been upset about things that happened on Christmas, and wanted to talk about it. Finally, I thought, he's beginning to see. Boy, was my radar off. What he did was lecture me about being cruel to our mother. It seems that, at Thanksgiving that year, she had cried on his shoulder about how I hated her for something, and treated her accordingly.

All I could think of was that, the last day I taught before the Thanksgiving holiday, she called me at work. The school secretary, worried that something might be wrong, had me pulled from the classroom, finding someone to cover my class while I went to the phone, only to have mother ask me to stop on the way home for some tenderized round steak. Now, that year, Mom had talked Dad into coming early, so she could take care of the house and my kids, since I had to work. When she told me, I went to the supermarket and bought the ingredients for everything I could think of that she might want to cook. I hadn't thought of chicken-fried steak. So I suggested, perhaps a bit strongly because of the circumstances, that I was sure she could find plenty of things to fix for dinner from what was on hand, and she burst into tears, saying that she knew how much my children loved her chicken-fried steak, and she was only trying to please. So, I stopped at the store on my way home, but wasn't too happy about it, but did my best to keep that to myself. That was the only thing I could think of that might have set her off. A few days after my brother's lecture, I noticed that my journals were out of order. I realized that she had been reading them, which meant she would have come across some "venting" entries where I wrote about my relationship with her. Aha. that was what prompted her outburst with my brother.

It was at least ten years later before I managed to deal with that issue. She was preparing to move in with me, mostly because my brother and his wife had made it clear to her that she would not be moving in with them. I told her that one way to deal with the frustrations she was feeling might be to write about it. I went on to say that I found it to be an excellent way to work through and let go of anger. She suddenly got very quiet, and didn't speak for a good while.

Sometime after she moved in, I, as most of you here know, sought therapy, and realized that I had spent my life carrying the responsibility for her, call them frustrations.

I love this place and the people I have met here. I remember when Betty was brave enough to talk about her childhood, and how I thought that there was no way she could be held responsible for her parents' treatment of her, and finally completely got what my therapist had been telling me. Not that my circumstances were anywhere near as serious as hers, but I finally understood that it is not OK to blame the victim. I was able to let go of the last vestiges of guilt, and reach a point where I could let go of my own anger.

I am only relating this now because it might help others. Yes, as adults, it is important for us to accept responsibility for our lives, but that does not include accepting responsibility for other people who may have negatively impacted our childhood perceptions. Mother's problems were her own. I don't have to carry them, or worry about them, because I have given them back to her.

Ann

Good for you, Ann, I am not worried either.

I am making my final attempt at a suitable gift. A car, in her favorite color-- green!

I am dying to see what she won't like about it.

It will be funny.

12/7/2011



Just got back from my Credit Union to
deliver Christmas gifts to three children,
they have a Christmas tree with names
you pick, made me feel good. Then I
delivered six Christmas gifts to our local
mall for seniors, Kitchen Angels sponsors
this for seniors through The Salvation Army.
I think I'm done for the Season except for
Dusty...


Cheers..Joe...

Why do I get the feeling that Dusty is going to have a very merry Christmas?

Ann

Joe,

Your relatives are very fortunate.

Off I go in the morning to the Brandon Towncenter Mall. It is the only time of the year that I go there. It is a maddness beyond words. At either end of the mall is JCPenny and Sears. It is all that hoopla between that sets the eyes to dancing. The animated shop window displays are comforting and cheerful.

I wonder that no one has written new Christmas songs in such a long, long time.

Write one!

Love,
Betty

You do it.

I was thinking the same thing, Betty. On the other hand, the oldies are memory triggers. I enjoy hearing the songs that take me back to my childhood or trigger a memory of romance.

Speaking of songs, another of my gifts arrived in today's mail.


I've wanted to get a CD of these two for some time, now.

Several years back, this duo came to SA to perform one of the Fine Arts Series at the little Episcopal Church near my house. We had a Director of Music from New York for a few years. He had been a concert pianist in that city, and new many artists there. He would con them into giving free performances for us by offering them a tour of San Antonio and paid hotel rooms.

I especially liked this brother and sister couple, because they reminded my of my son and his wife. Lyn is a flutist, a professor of music at the same university where Dave is a physics professor. Before Dave discovered calculus during his freshman year of undergrad school, he considered a musical career. He played both acoustic and electric guitar. He has several old friends who think he made a mistake in not pursuing his music. (His mother is not one of them.) Still, when I first heard these two, I wanted a CD for Dave and Lyn, but at the time, they didn't have one. Something reminded me of them a few weeks ago, so I went online, and sure enough, they had a website and albums for sale. The music on this one reminded me of their concert here.

If you follow this link and scroll down the page, you can hear a free preview of the CD pieces.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/arcduo

I am looking forward to seeing their faces when they hear it for the first time.

Ann

Dear Ann,
Lovely present.

Last year, I copied all my John Denver, Dr. Hook, Creedance, the list goes on and on ...

records for my son. He said it was the best present that he had recieved. He was on the road a lot. He called me and said, "I have laughed, I have cried, I have sung out loud for 300 miles".


Back in the days when one could select songs and record them for free, he and his wife had made the original cd's for me. Since that time, with crashing and changing computers, they had lost all of that music.
20 years later....
It is such simple things that make happy people.

Love,
Betty

Creedence Clearwater Revival; yes, that does bring back memories, doesn't it?

This was the first song David taught himself to play on my old acoustical guitar. Us and our sons and serendipitous synchronicities.




Ann

More gifts arrived today: the gift cards to an online department store that will go to each of the kids and spouses. I have a little bit of shopping left, mostly stuff for stuffing stockings. (Isn't that an erudite expression for a writer? )

Still working on collecting recipes for the cookbooks.

What about you guys? Are you finished yet?

Ann

I am just about through--ordered some cashmere lined, leather outer gloves for mother -in-law to hate.

They are very elegant dress gloves from Nordstrom and

if she takes them back fine! We tried. LOL

I shop all year as I run into things I think family members will like. I just found a pair of house slippers I had purchased for Mother and a pretty necklace for my niece. My house has very little storage space and I tuck things away - and I had these tucked away. I'm glad I found them!

My gift exchange is getting smaller every year as I no longer report to a work environment. I always bought little gifts for everyone who worked for me - sometimes as many as sixty people. Buying those gifts was fun. Many had children and I loved to buy little wooden puzzles that children put together and paint. I still pick them up when I see them just in case I need something when I visit a friend with children or grandchildren.