Gift Guide #8 – Last Minute Clean Up

~ Laura

We’re under a blanket of snow here in Jersey. Virtual school was cancelled, so that means that I’m taking a day off — sort of — from work, too. Ian and I spent the morning shoveling the driveway and making the obligatory snow day breakfast — waffles and bacon. This afternoon, I’ll finish my holiday online shopping, while he does his homework. Here are some last minute items that caught my eye:

I like this scarf. It’s cute and only $6! I bought one for all the women in my family.

Gel pens are addictive. I’ve even gotten Jonah hooked on them.

The dudes are getting lots of warm, flannel shirts this year.

NEST candles and smelly sticks are super popular this year.

Steve and I are continuing to personalize our office. He’s going to get maps from Mapiful of New Jersey and Cleveland. I’ll frame them with frames from Amazon and some double-stick tape. I’m thinking about macrame wall hangings.

With everyone glued to their screens, blue light glasses are mandatory.

Snow Day necessities: Waffle Iron, boots, and ski gloves.

Published by Laura

13 thoughts on “Gift Guide #8 – Last Minute Clean Up”

  1. Note that, this year, there are non-buttondown flannel shirts being sold. That isn’t true every year, which makes my life difficult, since I think buttondown shirts are effete and I never wear them.

    Like

  2. Did you know you blogged snowing seven years ago, too? (showed up as a sugested post) I do enjoy the glimpse bag on the blog.

    Like

    1. Ha. I’m looking at old pictures right now to find baby pictures of Ian for his senior yearbook. I’m in full nostalgia mode right. And self-hatred. God, I got so fat.

      Like

    1. Funny how different we are. I find waffles *much* easier than pancakes. Even Mr 13 happily makes them for a weekend breakfast.

      Like

  4. My 10th grader had me order a gaming mouse for his dad for Christmas while his dad was out. (10th grader’s cash, my Amazon account.)

    Like

  5. Your Mapiful link reminds me I have a map to frame. One of my nieces is a geographer and she made me a map. It deserves a good frame.

    Like

  6. Oooooh! Snow for Christmas!

    Forgive my excitement – but from semi-tropical Auckland where we never get snow, even in the winter – and are having a tropical heatwave at the moment – this is totally foreign and magical.

    Have just cracked the whip and made Mr 13 bake some Anzac biscuits (translation NZ cookies) for his Big Buddy for Christmas. [He actually loves cooking, but needs to be pushed to get going]

    Last of the Christmas shopping done. Just wrapping to do (which I’ll do while he’s out on the weekend).

    And, my Christmas treat to myself – I went to one of our fabric outlet shops (about 30 minutes drive in vile traffic) But! Found some utterly gorgeous silk fabric to make into floaty kaftan style tops for our holiday season (summer). A subtle one in khaki with patterns in a slightly darker shade, and a totally over-over-the-top tiger one – which I fell in love with. Also some heavy peacock blue silk at $3 a metre [wondering what truck it fell off at that price!] (1 metre = about 1.1 yards) – which I’ll make into a dressing gown. And some chinese print cotton (in red and cinnamon) which I’ll give to my Mum to make cushions.

    [Sorry people, no point in linking, they don’t sell online…..]

    Doing a happy dance!

    Like

  7. I also love all the materials you describe and glad you got materials that spark joy! Had just a little moment of envy over the traffic!!!

    We do not have snow here, though we did twelve years ago on this date — a persistent, cold snow (unusual for us) that had flights cancelled throughout the area. We traveled on Christmas to get to our planned Big Island of Hawaii trip with an adventure to remember: our plane turned back right before the middle of the ocean because it turned out that the reassigned plane did not have some communication device required for over ocean travel. But, they gave us another plane, another crew, and we got there at 3 AM (the airport and rental cars stayed open late for us, on Christmas).

    Like

  8. bj said “Had just a little moment of envy over the traffic!!!”

    How funny to be regretting traffic jams, of all things!

    But I absolutely know what you mean – it was eerie here in full lockdown, with maybe 1 car every 10 minutes on a major arterial road.

    But how quickly we bounce back to normal – though rush hour traffic (in normal times – not everyone and his cousin doing last minute Christmas shopping) is still about 20% down on pre-Covid. Still a lot of people working at home (at least some of the time), and the CBD shopping is in serious strife – and this is 6 months after we got out of full lockdown. [I have been grumpy this week, because I’m supposed to be working 4 days from home & 1 day in the office – and that got reversed due to meetings and clients and tenders this week. Humpf!]

    Our overall economic situation has bounced back really quickly – 14% up on the September quarter – which brings us to a tiny 0.4% growth for the year Sept 19-Sept 20 – but it is plus rather than minus – when the economic forecast was for 1.4% decline.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/nz-economy-bounces-out-of-recession-with-14-gain-in-gdp/YQCAXB65VFYBPEIJL2UKFQWJPE/

    I believe it’s led by the ag sector – with a boom in demand for our produce internationally. Certainly most tourism-based businesses are in serious strife – though Kiwis holidaying at home have done their valiant best! They are hanging out for quarantine-free travel to Australia – though the recent Sydney outbreak has cast doubt on this, again.

    I’m interested to know about vaccine uptake. Many international airlines have already said – no vaccine, no travel. I strongly suspect that the NZ Government will require tourists to be vaccinated as a condition of their visa (just as we used to have to do for smallpox when we travelled to India 30 years ago).
    We have pockets of anti-vaxers – who refuse all vaccines – and, at least some of them, will refuse this one as well. I guess they just won’t be able to travel outside NZ.

    I know that there are areas in the US with strong anti-vax communities. Will they take up this vaccine (because social pressure)? Or refuse. And, if enough refuse, what does that do to the herd immunity?
    What will happen in schools? Can they require vaccination to attend in person?

    Like

    1. Ann said, “I’m interested to know about vaccine uptake. Many international airlines have already said – no vaccine, no travel.”

      The problem is, you can’t get vaccinated immediately even if you want to, so the pool of boarding-worthy people is going to be very small for months.

      The airlines may need to just stick to making toddlers mask up and maybe require rapid testing.

      I’d still really like to see more rapid testing in the US, while we’re all waiting for more people to get the vaccine.

      “What will happen in schools? Can they require vaccination to attend in person?”

      We do with other vaccinations, although there are sometimes issues with religious and conscience exceptions. And of course some people can’t be safely vaccinated (at least with some vaccines).

      Like

Comments are closed.