The Life, Designs & Crafts of Marie Haigh
Life is what happens while I am busy planning my next knitting design.
Last night, our dear neighbor joined us for dinner, cookies and gift exchange. As soon as she walked in the door, Elly was ready to unwrap the presents. Our neighbor barely had time to take her jacket off and sit down before Elly was ripping the paper off the presents.
She opened her gifts.
She opened our neighbor’s gifts.
She opened our gift.
She is a girl who loves presents.
It is true. Every time I ask Elly what she wants for Christmas, she tells me that she wants a ball. She also wants to buy everybody else a ball. Mind you, she has a collection of balls and we always have at least one balloon blown up for her. Yet, Elly is consistent; she wants another ball. They are great for playing catch, soccer, baseball and tennis.
Thankfully, Elly doesn’t want any toys that her friends have or that she has seen in the stores we frequent. I don’t think it has occurred to her that a toy she likes playing with elsewhere could be purchased and brought home. It’s a good thing because I imagine the first discussion we would have is why a train table could not fit into our small house. Oh how she loves to put the tracks together and run the trains along them.
I am actually surprised that another baby doll wasn’t on Elly’s Christmas list. She went through a phase just a few weeks ago where we couldn’t leave the house without a baby.
Even today we had to take Baby Pearl to the garden store. Her favorite thing to do with her baby dolls is to pile them all up on the couch or the chair and cuddle with them. So more is merrier.
Occasionally, Elly asks for wings to help fly around the house or to pretend she is a bird. She had a pair, but they were damaged several months ago. She hasn’t forgotten.
As mentioned on Monday, Elly’s love for books as increased lately. Even after unpacking all the books I had in storage for her, I didn’t feel that Elly had too many books. Is there such a thing? So naturally, I bought her a book for Christmas. It’s not your typical picture book. It’s a picture book about knitting called Annie and the Swiss Cheese Scarf. How perfect is that?
What else did I get Elly for Christmas? As you can guess, I didn’t get her a train table. I didn’t even get her a new pair of wings, mainly because she gnawed on the last pair. Perhaps when she outgrows her need to put inedible things in her mouth. Instead I got her a dollhouse, a Lite Brite, a toddler laptop with mouse, and stocking stuffers. Shopping for kids are so much fun. Basically, I buy them whatever I loved playing with as a kid. I adored my dollhouse and Lite Brite.
Before Elly, I would just stack all the Christmas presents on the floor in our guest bedroom.
Last year, I had to hide all the toys in the china cabinet and the guest bedroom closet to keep Elly from playing with them.
This year, I needed to hide all the Christmas presents because Elly is remarkably curious and wants to play with anything new whether it’s a toy or not.
With the china cabinet stuffed to the gills with sewing notions and fabric, there was no room to stash presents. The closet was quickly filled and more presents were arriving weekly. Oh how I love to shop for Christmas!
Something had to be done.
Noticing that the oil room was underutilized with just canned produce and mountains of empty boxes, I set about to claim the space for storage.
A little sweeping here plus a few boxes broken down there and I was left with enough room to install metal shelves.
It is out of sight to Elly. Thus, most people should receive their gifts without little tears in the packaging and without any Elly artwork.
Although this shelving unit is helpful to let me see at a glance what gifts I have already purchased, I rely on an app, the Gift List Manager, to keep me on budget and on target. It sure beats the excel spreadsheet system I had before.
The Life, Designs & Crafts of Marie Haigh 