Last Minute Gifts for Wives

It's always been a secret hope of mine that my best friends' husbands will ask my advice about gifts for their wives. Occasionally, I make mental notes about potential gifts... just in case.

But I've never been asked.

Until last week.

I was given a mission from a friend's husband to find out if she wanted the Item That Shall Not Be Named.

I was pumped. I loved the idea of going under cover, so I started contemplating how I could work the Item That Shall Not Be Named into conversation in such a way that would indicate whether she would like The Item.

Sadly, I failed.

I only saw my friend in short spurts over the past week, and we didn't have time for any real conversation. I thought about working it into a text message, but I wasn't sure I could pull it off without her getting suspicious. Face-to-face I could have done with no problem, but it just didn't work out. Technically I still have a week left, but the Item is something that wouldn't be obtainable by Christmas.

Anyway, all of that is leading up to this: I mentioned on Facebook that I had this secret hope, and that I had finally been asked to help, and I had failed. A few minutes after I posted that status, someone texted me for help! He gave me a chance to redeem myself. I gave him a few ideas, and then I got really excited and decided to make a list of ideas here.*

I definitely can't speak for all wives. I know women who hate gifts from their husbands that I would love. We are all different, so hopefully you know enough about your wife to read this list and know if it's a good idea or not. If your wife hates it, please don't hate me. If she loves it, though, feel free to take full credit. You don't even have to tell her if you got the idea here. I've got your back!

Some of these things might be too late to acquire in time, but most of them you can get this week in time for Christmas!

Here are a few ideas:


For the LDS mom who likes to document by hand:

The Mormon Mom Planner

(Locals can buy them at the Quilted Bear)

(Want something similar without the religious theme? Try an Erin Condren planner).

DO NOT BUY THIS FOR: The wife who already has a really good calendaring/planning system in place. You don't want to mess with something that is already working for her.


For the overwhelmed mom who needs a break:

Book a hotel room for her and some friends to have a night away


For the LDS wife who needs a break or needs spiritual nourishment:

Two tickets to a Time Out For Women in your area - she can take her mom, her best friend, or her sister and enjoy a weekend of uplifting messages


For the wife who needs some time with YOU:

Tickets to "Date Nights With Dr. Matt" (hopefully she takes YOU!)

Plan a day date where you take off work and spend the day together - just make sure this doesn't end up being a lot of work for her. Make babysitting arrangements, if necessary, so she doesn't have to worry about the kids.

A copy of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman - which you will then read together (and therein lies the catch!) Set aside one night a week to read a chapter and complete the exercises


For the pregnant wife:

A grabber tool (they have them lots of places - mine is from Harbor Freight and is about $10)

A long handle dustpan

DO NOT BY THIS FOR: A wife who might think you are implying that she is fat or incapable (I happen to not be like that - I love these things, but I think there are some women that would be offended. Use caution).


For the wife who likes make-up and/or beauty products (or the wife who would like make-up and/or beauty products but doesn't like to spend money on herself:

A subscription for Ipsy or Birchbox - for $10 a month, your wife can get a sampler bag of beauty products in the mail each month. You can cancel any time. She will need to fill out her beauty profile for her subscription, so perhaps you can present her with a homemade certificate and then have her fill out her profile to get things started. As with all recommendations, just make sure the work on her part is minimal

A sampler box from Ulta - the selection for these changes all the time, but Ulta has boxes for around $10 that have some several sample-sized beauty products (I love the hair product sampler boxes but also wouldn't mind a skincare box). Just walk into an Ulta and ask an employee if they have any sampler boxes that your wife might like.

DO NOT BUY THESE FOR: Women who have sensitivity or allergies to beauty products. She probably won't appreciate a stockpile of things she can't use.


For the wife who's always cold:

A heated blanket

Warm slippers or fuzzy socks

A plush robe

A long coat that covers her bum (The Sam's Club on 300 W. has some right now for $45)

A space heater

A THOUGHT: If your wife is always cold, there's a good chance she already has some of these things. Avoid duplication unless you know she loves having multiples. For example, if she can never get enough fuzzy socks, you're good to go, but if she has ten pairs, she might be set already.


For the wife who loves to cook and/or entertain:

Any of the Pioneer Woman products from Walmart - I have my eye on some of the serving bowls and casserole dishes


For the mom who loves to display her children's artwork:

Front opening picture frames from IKEA - these frames fit a standard sized piece of paper and open from the front, so Mom can swap out artwork daily if needed


For the woman who loves to write:

Adhesive pen loops


Other ideas:

Gift certificate for family photos (locals might want to check out Fotofly or Camera Shy. They are not the highest quality, but they are convenient and affordable. For around $100, you can get photos taken of your entire family, plus individuals of all the kids, and you can get them on a flash drive THAT SAME DAY, and have them printed wherever you want. Just keep in mind that your wife might want to buy clothes for everyone for the photos, so that will add to the expense.

Hair wrap towels - somebody gave me these for my birthday a few years ago, and I thought they were ridiculous until I tried them. Now it's all I use! If your wife has longer hair and walks around the house with her head wrapped in a towel every morning, these are a great idea. If she has short hair, she probably won't use them.

Terry cloth robe - this is a towel-like robe. I use mine right out of the shower (with my hair wraps, of course). I don't use bath towels. A plush robe is comfortable but doesn't absorb water well. Terry cloth can sometimes be hard to fine. Amazon has them for around $30, and right now, our local IKEA has a nice white one for $19.99.

Custom jewelry from Emily J Design on etsy.com. You're too late to have it in time for this year, but just in case you need something in the future, this Etsy shop makes jewelry with custom engravings. You can have your wife's favorite saying or a short inspiring message engraved on a ring. You can even have it done in your own handwriting! Another idea is to have your children's drawings made into a pendant (necklace). The ideas are endless! If you order the wrong ring size, they will adjust it for you for free! I ordered something from this shop this year, but I haven't received it yet. I'll update this post with more information after I have seen the product. Normally I wouldn't recommend jewelry, but customized jewelry that is meaningful is different.


*I am not affiliated with any of these companies or products and am not being compensated for sharing them.

20 Months

Eva's age is one of my favorites. There's a time between when children start walking and when they start hating you (around age two) where everything they do is adorable, even when it's infuriating.

Speaking of walking, I adore the way Eva walks. It's more of a gallop, really. Her arms flap all over the place, and she looks like she'll topple over any second, but she somehow stays on her feet.

Eva is starting to combine two words together here and there. Mostly things like, "Hi Mom." One of my favorite things she says is "Nay Nay Dude." Which is what she calls Nicky (Nicky taught her to call him Dude). During the day she'll say "Nay Nay Dude?" and I'll say, "He's at school." She can't say any of the other kids' names, so everything is Nay Nay. Sometimes, when she gets mad, she yells in an authoritarian voice, "NAY NAY!" like Nicky is to blame for all her problems. It's quite hilarious. She won't be writing a book any time soon, but I'm fascinated by every word she says.

Eva loves her dad. She gets super excited when he comes home from work, and even when she's half asleep in the middle of the night, if she knows Scotty is near, she calls out, "Hi, Dad!" 

She's also mischievous. She has a radar for candy and make-up. It's not uncommon for me to find her with make-up caked all over her face. No matter how well I hide stuff, I can't seem to keep her completely out of it (she is currently sporting a thick layer of Daisy's red lipstick she wears for dance performances. It's the kind that lasts for ten hours, of course. Eva looks like a murderous clown). 

Eva recently learned how to jump, and she has been very amused by her new ability. On the day she first jumped, she did it over and over again and looked at me with delight every time. Now she's trying to figure out how to jump off the bottom step of the staircase, but she doesn't understand that she needs to bend her knees when she lands.

Every night, Eva makes the rounds from bedroom to bedroom to tell her siblings goodnight. It's a fun little ritual which includes hugs and kisses and the pitter patter of tiny pajama-ed feet.

I love watching her explore the world and learn new things. Eva truly is a joy!

This Post is Brought to You By...PIE BREAK

It's 9:00 am. on a Thursday, and my two babies (I call the littlest ones the babies even though they aren't actually babies - they will resent me for this at some point, but that's their rite of passage - to be able to resent me for all the various reasons) and I are having a pie break.

Marie Callendar's Chocolate Satin, if you're wondering.

I am gearing up to take my last final for the semester this afternoon (Family & Community Relations), so pie seems like appropriate mind fuel.

Like I said yesterday, I feel like writing, so I have given myself 15 minutes on the timer to write whatever flows out of me.

I have really been enjoying this Christmas season. It's been relatively funk-free thus far. I've felt a lot of joy through the month of December. My only complaint is that Scotty's work schedule has been a bit of a beast. He gets phone calls all night and comes home from work later than expected. I miss him, but this isn't the worst that can happen at Christmas time, so I am handling it okay.

Scotty's job hours are affected by alcohol consumption.

I better expound on that a bit - Scotty works with the state's liquor. As you can imagine, there are a lot of alcohol sales this time of year, and thus... Scotty works more.

This week I finished my statistics class and took my final. I haven't checked my grade yet, but I think I walked out of there with a B+. I'm pleased. That is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) class in my major, so being done with it feels really good. In fact, the night I finished my final, I was so excited that I became quite hyper, but it was late at night, and everyone in my house was asleep, so I was all by myself in the dark with boundless energy and nothing to do with it. I just sat there grinning from ear to ear with my eyes nearly popping out of my head.

Well, my pie is gone, and my timer has sounded, so off I go to tackle the next item of business. Of course, Eva pooped during pie break (I told you this always happens!)

UPDATED TO ADD:

I just finished my last final and turned in a final paper. I am a free woman for two whole weeks! Let the bucket list begin!

Improvising

Today is a little bit stressful. I feel like one of the most important skills a mother must master is the ability to improvise. To be a mom means you have to be able to completely change directions at any moment. You can make a plan, you can have a mission, but you have to be at peace with the fact that you might not make it to the end goal.

Take eating lunch, for example. Perhaps the plan is to eat a BBQ chicken salad while listening to a recorded lecture for school while your baby naps. But then the baby decided to offset her schedule and fall asleep at 10:00 instead of 11:00 and only sleep for an hour instead of two, and then as soon as you sit down at the table with your salad, she drops a big old deuce in her diaper.

I should know by now that someone will ALWAYS poop when I sit down to eat. It's been happening for ten years, and yet, it still throws off my plan.

But I've learned to improvise. I still get frustrated, but I'm at peace with my life not truly being my own.

So why am I writing this?

I wish I could remember...

I just really needed to write, but I haven't been able to fit it in lately, so I set my timer for 15 minutes and decided to just let the words flow.

And you know what?

Eva is rolling around on the floor under my chair screaming, and by the scent in the air, she most certainly dropped that deuce we talked about, and I'm not even eating lunch yet!

So...

Off I go to do more improvising.

Christmas Break Bucket List

In about one week, my semester ends, and I will be free to enjoy the Christmas season. I'm really excited to have a break. Maybe I am tempting fate, but I've been formulating a Christmas Break Bucket List.

Here's what I hope to do in the short two and a half week recess:

Organize the storage room

Read a book

Try  new recipe or two

Paint something (I have my eye on a wooden sled or a jewelry box)

See the lights at Temple Square

Help Daisy with chaine turns

Host a Planner Prep Night (already in the works)

Check out Poldark

I'm pumped!

But I mustn't jump the gun. First I have to write a few papers, take a few finals, and run a hypothesis test on the proportion of crunch berries in Cap'n Crunch cereal. 

(Have you ever counted 2,173 pieces of cereal?)

The Gilmore Girls Group

In anticipation of the Gilmore Girls revival last weekend, some friends and I got a hotel room so we could get away from our responsibilities and binge-watch the series.

Check-in was at 4:00. My friends couldn't come quite that early, but I decided to take advantage and head to the hotel for a couple hours of solo time. When I arrived at the hotel, I was surprised to recognize the lady at the front desk. We frequent the same neighborhood park, and she's a person that I just happen to see everywhere (we all have those people, right?)

I debated pretending not to recognize her, but I realized rather quickly that that wasn't going to play out. She pulled up my reservation and then said, "Don't you live, like, five minutes from here?" That led me to confess that I was there to watch TV. She thought it was awesome and insisted on a high five.

We had some technical difficulties with the TV... it didn't work, so Front Desk Lady got us a new room. Then we had some more problems, and my friend's husband had to come help us get the laptop connected so we could watch Netflix on the TV. We started a lot later than planned. We got through two episodes. I had to keep standing up and doing lunges to stay awake. We also had a brief intermission to do facial masks, which resulted in this amazing photo:

 

(Those are my grandpa's sweatpants)

Things went a little unexpectedly with the masks, though. They were menthol-y, so it felt like we'd rubbed Icy Hot on our faces. We couldn't keep our eyes open because they were burning and watering. When I washed my mask off, my face looked like it had been sunburned where the mask had been. No one else's did. I guess I'm just special!

In the morning, I woke up at 5:00 and sat in the dark by myself and read for four hours. Then we went down to check out the continental breakfast where we found out that we had become famous. People knew we were "The Gilmore Girls Group." (Apparently Front Desk Lady was really excited about us, as she asked any woman who walked through the doors and looked the part if she was with the Gilmore Girls group).

We were able to squeeze in one more episode before check-out, which left us to watch the final episode in our own homes.

After I got home, I got a text from my friend. Her husband had stayed up all night and watched all four episodes of the Gilmore Girls.

We got a good laugh over the fact that he beat us to the finish!

Adam vs Carrie

Back in October, we went to the Maroon 5 concert. The tickets were my Christmas/Birthday present.

For our anniversary, I bought Scotty tickets to Carrie Underwood. We went to that concert earlier this week. 

Scotty and I joked all year that we were going to see both our crushes in concert in 2017 - Adam Levine for me and Carrie Underwood for him. 

Now that we've been to both, I have to say... Carrie wins!

I loved the Maroon 5 concert. It was amazing to hear them live and have their music pumping through my blood. I love their songs, and Adam's voice... oh my.

{Maroon 5}

(Side note: Have you heard this cover of "Dream On" by the judges of The Voice? You need to listen just to hear those final notes by Adam Levine. Like I said... oh my!)

(Another side note: I really want Maroon 5 to do a cover of "Take On Me." Can you imagine Adam singing "In a day or twooooooo?" Is there anyone reading right now who can make it happen?)

Anyway, the Maroon 5 concert...

As much as I enjoyed it, it felt a little like a chore for the band. It was like - Salt Lake City? Check mark! Move on... And I was a little surprised at how long it took Adam to get into it. I don't know if I can describe it well, but I guess you could say he lacked energy. It took about three songs before it seemed like he found his groove. 

But Carrie...

From the second she came on stage, she was so powerful. She sang to the entire audience. It was amazing how she was able to reach everyone in the arena. Her energy was there immediately, and it held up through the whole performance. 

I'm not really into Carrie's music, but I really like her as a person, and I completely respect her talent. And that made her concert so enjoyable because, even if her songs don't make me want to jump up and down and go crazy, I can not deny the amazing performer she is (this is actually the second time we have seen her in concert). 

 

{Carrie Underwood}

Carrie had a really impressive set-up. She had a a 360 stage, and there were platforms that would rise up and down. The lighting was super cool, and the special effects were awesome. Carrie gave a heartfelt concert, and she was very sincere and present. It probably helped that it was the last stop on her tour, but I felt the same way about the last time we saw her when we weren't her last stop, so it's just the way she is!

Scotty and I haven't had a lot of opportunities to go to concerts since we've had children, so these last two months have been very exciting. We've been bitten by the concert bug now.