smorgasbord

Did anyone read the Babysitter's Club books? Do you remember that one family they babysat for that had about a gajillion kids? They used to always talk about how once a week instead of preparing a regular dinner the family would clean out the fridge of leftovers and one of the kids always called it 'Smorgasbord night' or something like that...

... well this is a smorgasbord post. Where I have little bits of things to mention, so I'm going to put it all in one...
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...Winner winner chicken dinner! Kimba of A Soft Place to Land sponsored a fabulous giveaway from Rowena of RubyRedRose etsy fame. I won my choice of one of her FABULOUS clutches. While it was nearly impossible to be patient for the mailman to deliver my blueprint clutch all the way from England, I'm happy to say it has arrived and already accompanied me on an evening out for my sister's birthday. Of course I'm not on top of things enough to take a picture then in all of its 'going out' beauty, but I did snap a few pictures this morning. On my desk. Holding not so exciting things (I could actually fit quite a bit in there- my cell phone, car keys, wallet, and a ziploc baggie full of pretzels)... isn't it lovely? Don't you want to zip right on over to Rowena's etsy shop and buy one for yourself to match every outfit? I'm sure she'll be accomodating!

Thank you Kimba for the GREAT giveaway and Rowena for your beautiful work!
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...Chris at Just a girl has a great post on scrounging up some extra Christmas decor in a low-budget kind of way. I stole... errr... borrowed the idea of getting some scrapbook paper to decorate a candle... here's my version

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Also, I'm posting a picture of one of my favorite Christmas gifts I've ever received. Ya know how when you're a kid, you can kind of romatacize your parent's jobs? You think about how important they must be that their job takes them away from being at home 5 days a week. You wonder if the entire world would come to an end if they didn't show up. Well, my dad worked for a company that made parts for pumpjacks. For those of you who don't know, a pumpjack pumps oil out of the ground, and we have a lot of them here in Oklahoma. So, one year, when I was about 5 I told Santa that I wanted a purple pumpjack for Christmas. Well, believe it or not, pumpjack toys are not super easy to come by, even in Oklahoma. But somehow, Santa managed to find one. Don't ask me how he did it. Now, it came in black and red, instead of purple, and he must have gotten his elves to make it at the very last second and they just simply didn't have time to paint it a spectacular color like purple, but here it is in all its glory. I still pull it out around Christmas time to think back to simpler days... not to mention the trouble Santa went through to find it...

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Finally, who doesn't love a good 'kid who hates Santa' picture? Well, we took the girls to see Santa, and this was the best I could get...

hope you're all enjoying these last few days of Advent. Christmas will be here before we know it!