Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Christmas Tree Shopping, Sans Car

After deciding to buy a giant Christmas tree this year, then walking to the location where we wanted to buy the tree only to find an empty lot, and then taking the bus to a lot quite far from the house, we finally found the tree.

Of course, the tree was at least 20 blocks from our apartment, it was rather heavy, and all we brought with us to help move the tree was a laundry cart. And, as fate would have it, once the stand was nailed into the bottom of the tree it would no longer fit in the laundry cart standing upright.

So how do you walk a Christmas tree home in San Francisco? Lay it across the shopping cart, and have one person push while two people guide the front of the tree. Rotate spots every so often so nobody gets too tired, and be sure to take lots of pictures along the way.

Even though it was the most trying, this is probably the most fun I have had getting a Christmas tree in years.

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Friday, December 07, 2007

More Reasons to Love Etsy

My friend Christina turned me on to Etsy last year, and this year when I started my Christmas shopping I started surfing Etsy again. I forgot how awesome this website is! The items are homemade (most of them), they are sold directly by the people who make them (most of the time), and they are funky and fantastic (all of the time!). But, this year, I found a few more reasons to love Etsy.

1. Toy recalls got your Christmas panties in a bunch? Etsy has great gifts for children that are lead-free. Check out this adorable doll, this awesome logging truck, or this great robot craft kit. (Is a robot craft kit gender neutral? That's what I was going for. Personally, I really want that logging truck!)

2. If your family is anything like mine, the post-present-opening paper carnage takes over the living room. Not only is wrapping paper expensive, it's not exactly the best solution for the environment. But the funnies from the Sunday paper (my stand-by solution to a lack of wrapping paper) don't exactly put me in the holiday spirit. So this year I am wrapping all my gifts in cloth gift bags. The OleBagLady has a bunch of great cloth gift bags on Etsy, and plenty of bags with Christmas prints. Save these bags and reuse them year, after year, after year.

3. Everybody loves unique gifts, and on Etsy you are sure to find something unique. But what if you don't find something your gift-receiver will absolutely love? Send somebody on Etsy a message and ask him/her to make something for you. This isn't The Gap, people! You can go straight to the top and make special requests. OleBagLady and I (Tami is her name) tossed around ideas and she is making me gift bags in a custom size for the gifts I am making in my pottery class.

Ok, enough procrastination. Time to go finish out this semester, so it can finally be Christmas!

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Sunday, December 02, 2007

Retro Sara in San Fran

Sara in San Fran started as an email newsletter that I sent to my family friends my Freshman year of college. It was published quasi-weekly, and it had a list of sections that appeared in each issue. One of the sections was "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Here's one edition of that section.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Good: The best thing about the school cafeteria on weekend mornings is that you are almost expected to arrive in your pajamas. I can get up, put a sweatshirt on over my jammy top, go get some pancakes, walk back to my room, and still have plenty of time to watch cartoons in my pajamas. I don’t think that sleep attire is accepted in any restaurants other than the ones on campus.

The Bad: Struggling to turn the knob on your heater so the heater will turn on, finally getting the heater turned on all the way, and then not being able to turn it off. Second to this is having an idea on how to fix the heater, but not having the tools with which to do it. Why doesn't anybody bring a large wrench with them to school?

The Ugly: The fact that the garbage in the hallway (less than 10 feet away from the door of my room) perpetually smells. However, it never smells of the same thing, as the mixture of food and trash in it changes from day to day. Today it smells like old cat food. Not dry cat food, wet cat food. I actually sprayed some Glade air freshener in the hallway. Now it smells like a mixture of fresh apple scent and wet cat food.

**I should mention that shortly after this issue got sent out, I received a toolkit in the mail from my Nonna, which of course contained a wrench.**

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