Gift Swap Stuff Given

So perhaps you might remember (yeah right!) a while back I tried to peer pressure some of you folks into joining me for a rather cool Winter Holiday Secret Spoiler Gift Exchange. Well, part of the bargain is to post what you sent & why, as well as what you received ... since, in my case in particular, my spoilee is still in the dark about who I am. So, without further ado .... I present the present (heeheehee). Late, of course, as always, but that's because my camera software didn't want to cooperate with me yesterday (and, of course, I had to wait till posting day to even download the photos ...).

Did I ever mention I'm a horrible procrastinator? I'm great with the ideas, but follow-through always leaves something to be desired. Plus, if you remember, the last week of school involved a good deal of stress and a great deal of work, and it didn't help that it never quite fully processed with me that, while we think of Canada as just our neighbor to the north, sending packages there still requires such silliness as customs and way-longer-delivery-time. Oops!

I had all sorts of cool thoughts and ideas from reading both her answers to the questionnaire as well as just surfing through her blog .... things like cool paper (don't think she quite mentioned that one enough!), cool pens, popcorn, and other sorts of arts and/or craft stuff, but then ... well ... the whole time thing .....

So, I got to start off by sending an anonymous comment to my spoilee saying that yes, I'm a slacker and no, she hadn't been forgotten, but that her gift might show up a wee bit late (given that it was mailed a good five/six days after the deadline). Fortunately for me, she was rather understanding of the whole thing.

But, I figured .... I needed some major schmooze factor to smooth things over. Thus, I decided to begin with this. Besides, I figured it would provide a nice counterpart to my patented Snowman Soup (with which, unfortunately, I neglected to include the snowman poop, which is what makes it all worthwhile. Hope you survived anyway!) Click the pictures to see a larger and/or more readable version.

The other, not quite so creative, elements that I chose to send in this box o'stuff included such treats as: a variety of random paper (including some really cool kinda fabricy paper, some heavier-than-but-kinda-like tissue paper, some homemade-not-by-me-though paper, and some plain orange squarish paper) .... a funky bamboo-ish paint brush (that looks like three brushes but is really just one), Conté crayons, and a little watercolor squirt bottle .... a coolish black roller ball pen and a necklace pen with a built-in bubble dispenser .... microwavable kettle corn .... Guatemalan worry dolls (most likely direct from Guatemala, since several of our sisters were on mission down there for a long time) .... a nun-made-but-again-not-by-me little paper box containing yet-another-not-made-by-me-item (although I have learned how to make these -- I just don't have the stuff) that is what we call here Benedictine Book Beads, complete with a St. Benedict medal at the end ..... topped off with a little festive post-it note and kleenex set (although they weren't originally packaged together at the store). All of which are photographed and pictured below, but since I'm still just learning the ropes of Flickr, you'll just have to figure out what is what. I think I've got a pretty brainy bunch of blalkers (blog stalkers -- hey, I had to do something to keep the alliteration going), I bet you all can handle the challenge! Or, if you'd rather see it all together, you can check out my spoilee's post and see the overall whole, complete with my big ol' writing on the box.

So there you go, Andrea from the Fishbowl. Glad you liked it, even though you did have to wait a big longer than most. But hey, we weren't supposed to open them until New Year's Day anyway, right? Peace out & have fun! And .... ya want I should send you more Kettle Corn??? :-)