December Daily - December 27

This is the December 27 assignment from the Holidays in Hand class I took from Jessica Sprague.

Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.  ~Peg Bracken

What is the best gift you received this year?  Why?  As I posted on my Facebook status on Christmas night -- I'm such a mom!  My favorite gift this year is a 7-quart programmable CrockPot!  It's huge, it's programmable!!!!  The reviews I've read for this one are about half and half good and bad - so we'll see how it does Creamy Italian Chicken next week and I'll let you know if it's still my favorite. 

Photo today is of the gift or the giver.  The givers were Brad and the kids.  The gift?  It's already taken up residence in the cabinet and at this point I'm not going to take it out to photograph it - so here's a picture of it from the website (copied to my PC first - not stealing bandwidth)

All of our "do" things right now are to take down Christmas decorations. I'm ready to get it out of here!  We are playing Wii some (we got a Wii the day after Christmas) as well as SkipBo, Go Fish, Sorry! and Trouble.  We're having fun playing games!!! 

Remember some memorable gifts you were given through the years. What made them special to you?  I remember the year that my mom grabbed my arm and said, "When you open your gift from your brother, you'd better LOVE it.  He chose it himself."   He was six.  I was eighteen.  What could he possibly have chosen that Mom thought I'd hate?  They were these big, raspberry-colored, plastic "gemstone" earrings (clip-on).   She said he kept going back to them on the table at Dillard's saying I'd really like them because they were purple.  She kept trying to redirect him and he was adamant that I'd like these.  So, she bought them.  And you know what?  I loved them.  And because my baby brother chose them himself, I loved them even more.  I also got a navy blue wool sweater that year that had multi-color flecks in it -- teal, green, and...raspberry.  The big earrings went *perfectly* with the sweater and every time I wore the sweater (which I had for years) I wore the earrings.  Eventually, the sweater was way too out of style to be worn any longer - and the clip on the earrings broke.  So, I stopped wearing both.  However, the earrings are still in my jewelry box because they are still precious to me and if I could get the clip fixed...I'd totally wear them!  They scream 1980s but I don't care.  :)  They're FUN.