The Gifts



I mailed individual thank you cards, so I won’t say who send WHAT here, but oh wow, we were SO surprised!! I can’t thank you all enough, not only because I didn’t in the least expect any GIFTS, but as so often the case, most of the lovingly and beautifully packaged boxes arrived from folks where my first thought was ‘oh gosh, you shouldn’t have’ . Well, you SHOULDN'T have (grins), but we were tickled pink, and it meant all the much more….. imagine, a real wedding shower and all, hehe. Oh, wow!!

Jamie and I had our jaws dropping quite a few times, and the debth and thoughtfulness (not to mention the many hours of work and love for many of the crafted treasures) was incredible. How can a bunch of ‘strangers’ become close friends so fast, know each other so well as to create and find gifts that will be used and used and used…. And loved on :) Okay, Okay, I shuddup, here’s the list (photos will be duly added, of course, if and when I can bully my silly scanner into cooperating again)



OUR FRIENDS SEND:


An Ulu :) A smooth, lovely wooden cutting board. This is an ancient treasure used to cut herbs for ions by the Inuits of Alaska. Has a round indention in the middle and a round knife with wooden handle to fit. Whoopee, no more mess :)
And I THINK this box also contained some salmon-berry jam (don’t ask, it tastes good, and not fishy at all, so we weren’t wondering too much what it could possibly be, hehe)




2 Dragonfly wrought iron (but a lovely greenish finish) candle holders with 9 citronella tealight/candles to fit :) (y’all know you can NEVER have enough candles or pretty places to put them in! Jamie and I are both candle-maniacs so I had to fight him for these. Naturally, as with all other items except the majority of the soap – him being soldierboy playing in mud a lot and therefore needing lots of them – I took them home with me. All these will not be subjected to army life, or face storage. We KNOWS what happens to most of the stored items, don’t we?? (at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!)




Swiss chocolate, lots of it (to say more would be to brag. We had some right away, although Penny and Peter protested loudly they couldn’t possibly. We’ll, Penny did, at least. Peter positively salivated methinks, so we overruled their concerns and opened some droooooling away) - I could post a picture of the empty wrappers, alas.... you get the idea :)



Along with some lovely tangy homemade Mead: Apple Cider, ‘scuse me, CISER. Another box of goodies that also contained
2 milky colored glass candle holders complete with rose candles
4 scented candles in interesting multi color/scent design. I can’t wait to find out what they are :)
4 soaps and shampoo bars and (drumroll please)
A stunning hairloom soap dish from Masons (now Miss Penny DID drool)



A lovely Amish cook book: Country Cooking (yeeeehaw! Will actually have to attempt to posh up my non-existent baking skills! Again, Miss Penny sat on needles –grins- I swear, she had as much fun as we did with this one)



A handcarved wooden sculpture, ‘Spiritfaces’. Imagine a big oval piece with two faces, one on each side opposing each other. They are for protection. The wood is smoothed to perfection, many tiny details are carved, and boy, did they ever TINGLE! They’ll go on my altar, that’s for sure :) Amazing work, with lotsa ‘oompfh’ built in.
   



A (teehee. Boy, do these girls know me or do they KNOW me????) $25.00 Walmart shopping card. For fairness sake, we stormed over the next morning and bought our snorkel gear with it :) Just to make sure it would actually be a ‘wedding gift’ thing and not just get used up for whatnots. Jamie was happy as a kid in the candy store and snorkeled around even if the water (on the east coast) was so mucky you couldn’t see a thing. Just like the little engine that could, hehehehe. Kept the empty card too, momentowise.



A homemade quilt. And not just any quilt, mind you. Beautifully stitched (it would kill me to try, the stitches are so tiny you hardly see them) and crafted, blue and white base colors. It radiates peace and warmth, and I suspect quite a lot of happy thoughts and blessings went into the material during the many many hours of it's completion.

When we first opened this box I just sat there for a while, with a bedraggled look on my face, just holding it in my lap. When Jamie asked to see it, I handed it over and screamed, because it folded OUT and doubled in size (or what I had thought it size to be, never before having seen a quilt in my life). Then Penny said well, hold it up, so we can take a pic. At that time tears started falling, because holding it up revealed three gold lettered inscriptions: Sorcy & Jamie, 21 June 2002, Summer Solstice. My beloved DH wants to hang it up on a wall, but I quietly informed him that it would be used. And used. And used. We will wait until our bedroom is ‘cat free’ but on the bed it will go. He can have the wall for a few years until then, and he sez tis to become an hairloom…. But I want to be able to huddle up in it from time to time :)




Original South African Roiboss tea (just the thought has me grinning SO big! We've come a looong way, haven't we? No borders stop us... laws? Phhffffff!) . This one I had to fight Jamie for to only get a few to take. It appears Penny (or Peter?) have made him some roiboss when we stayed with them (hey, where was MINE???) and he fell in love. So I let him have half of the bags, and the 2 roiboss –oh,WOW,this one I was hard pressed to keep- and aloe soaps (hey, at least we know they will be needed and used. At home we already have soaps for the next 150 years or so…. Soapers are crazy, you KNOW every box you’ll ever receive ANYwhere will contain at least one or two….. I would consider sending them out as gifts again, but with my luck they’d end up with the maker – lol – and Jamie so loves them… a few of the fragrant/flowery one’s he frowned at I send back with him to ‘mom’. Mom, connaisseur that she is, goes gaga over every handmade bar I rerouted her way, and as much as I love receiving them, who can use up a few dozends before they spoil? I’d rather put them where they’re needed and loved :)
And, we laughed and laughed, a big box of swedenbitter herb mix. Since there is no way to smuggle THAT through any airport security (boy, does that stuff ever smell fragrant) this is another one Jamie got to keep. I will keep tabs on his progress of ‘first tincture’ although I have a strong suspicion he might enlist his mommie in the process :)



A Neem care packet :) Actually, this did not arrive via mail, since I had said I was going to go shopping all the way at Neem farms. (you know where we went, so there:)
Penny and I went nuts in the product room, and I placed Neem blossom honey, Neem&Emu skin salve (now, that is a killer! It smells awesome and came in ever so handy with my first sunburn! Very light, very smooth, and protective to boot! I have definitely have got to have some more of this one, also Pure Neem oil, and Neem Outdoor gel (well, it's a bug repellent, really, good stuff too, but they’re not allowed to call it that, y’know – stupid rules). Only I wasn’t allowed to pay for it. I felt decidedly guilty of having grabbed so much, but I have to admit it was good ‘business practice’ (lol). I will order all of it again, and soon. The Neem oil, by the way, smells totally different from what I already have (thought to be pure oil). This is light, pleasantly fragrant and not nasty oily at ALL. I wonder what the heck the dark brown sticky goo is I THOUGHT was pure Neem. Guess the old bottle just became horse ointment! No wonder everyone always thought I’m nuts when I said ‘but it STINKS so bad’. I didn't have the real thing until now.



A gorgeous set of handmade paper, stamped/painted ‘thank you’ cards and letters, packed with fragrant herbs in the bottom of the box. That was so much fun unwrapping something where the wrapper itself was a gift (lol). Of course, as much as it pained to USE them, use them we did, hehe. Came in quite handy at the time of course…. Another indication of thoughtful ‘what might they want’ if you ask me, as all of them were, really. Of course, only a fraction of y’all will end up seeing one of those, considering how many we mailed out (giggle), but a few will get to see them. Each one was different, by the way.



A Japanese (who told I was into oriental stuff, hmmm??? Or is the indicator the Taoist connection, I wonder? Dear friend, youse amazes me – grins) Zen Mystic Plaque “Happiness”. Now this, I had no problem with agreeing, will go on the wall :)




Another goodie box that Jamie drooled over:
Net bath sponge, 6 glycerin soaps: Gardenia, TeaTree/Lavender, Rose, Lavender, herbal, and the specialty: Loafaa inside (lol)





Amber hand & body lotion, and Orange bath salts (they’re a bitch to mail, of course, considering the heavy weight, but ooooh, do I ever love bath salts…. And those of you who remember my one attempt to make my own, well, lets just say that’s better left alone, hehe). Jamie didn’t stand a snowball chance in hell.



A lovely gardener’s salve (again, no discussion. I mean, I’s the gardener here, ain’t I's??) and 4 more soaps, much to Jamie’s delight. By this time, I was laughing so hard I almost peed my pants, cause I knows my girls and knew there would be more. He had yet to understand the soap business, hehe.



Another $25.00 paypal (really, gals. Shame on you... But I won’t say we couldn’t use it!!)



Additional thank you's:

Then, of course, there was all the room and board from various friends we stayed with, and the incredible ‘spoil them dead’ cooking going on. And those of you who went out of their way to come visit and meet. All in all, a totally overwhelming experience.

And last, but not least, Father Dave for driving over 100 miles to be in the middle of nowhere to perform an interfaith wedding of folks you’ve never met, mailed with once or twice, just for the spirit of making a difference. For changing the wedding ceremony to a handfasting at the very last minute when the youknowhatpaperwork didn’t mail in on time (but not changing a DANG thing to make it less important).

And to the lovely judgelady in Charleston, South Carolina, who agreed to see us right away upon being called when the paperwork finally DID catch up with us a week later, to make it legal. And who wasn’t in the least disturbed when the rings wouldn’t come off again, and just left of that line to exchange them again. And everybody else who put up with me :) and had the patience to let me make up my mind, let it be what type of flowers and finding shoes. Or not.

THE FAMILY:

Mom and Dad: The honeymoon cabin for our first weekend up in the Rocky Mountains, Medicine Bow National Forest. And the Wedding Cake. And the silverware set I fell for that they got for THEIR wedding. And a new windshield for Jamie’s van (when we still thought we could get it fixed in time to use it for the trip). And lending us the ‘good’ van for the following 3 weeks of cross country trekking when three days later we had to admit defeat. And hours and hours of rushing around, shopping like crazy (this here blondie was in overload, so pre-wedding shopping usually consisted of hitting the same store three times a day for forgotten items. Three days in a row, mind you. Mom could teach some of us serious shoppers a thing or two yet -grins), soothing nerves, cooking meals (or/and catching them, respectively, hehe. Is there such a thing as too much fish? Not in our family there isn’t, hehe.), giving advise, scheduling details, and just being THEM.

Jamie’s Aunt/Uncle: A $100.00 dollar check and a lovely dinner invitation (gods, do we ever love Mexican food…..)





View The New Texas Home - May the Life begin