I'm Totally Making Coleslaw This Weekend

I was one very lucky gal this Christmas. And my MIL totally upstaged my husband, who, God love him, refuses to hold Christmas in as high of a regard as I do.

When I made my Mock Christmas List a few weeks back I did so more as a joke than to be serious. Hubs tends to approach any gift-giving occasion semi-oblivious to hints and after ten or eleven years of having him skip over my none-too-subtle prods, we've settled into an easy and predictable pattern. He asks me what I want, I make a list, and then he ignores the list. It's a fun little game we like to play (*rolls eyes*, LOL).

So with that in mind, I purposely exaggerated my list. I wrote down things like a big screen TV, new (expensive) perfume and a hard-disk DVD player/recorder to fulfil the joke component, as well as reasonable items such as Amazon spending money and candles, just in case this was the year he was going to surprise me by paying attention :P Scattered amongst these things were also ideas I knew he'd never buy for me in a pink fit, including the DVD Anne of Green Gables trilogy (when I mention my love of All Things Anne his eyes roll so fast and so severely they come close to dropping out of his head, LOL). So, I had all my bases covered, really.

But I wasn't at all surprised (or upset, I should point out) to discover Hubs had forgone the shopping for me this year. In all fairness, we are looking to upgrade our TV in the short to medium term and that will bite a big chunk out of our already-yuletide-depleted wallet. I did, however, make one concession. I bought myself a spoon and told Hubs it was his present to me.
Yes, that's right. A spoon. Clearly, it doesn't take much to keep this mama happy!

I have been on a quest to find the perfect mixing spoon for what seems like a million years. This is where one of my little idiosyncrasies pops up that I must tell you about in order to make sense of the spoon-buying saga. Most people use wooden spoons while they're baking, right? Well I can't stand the feel of the wood on my hands. In actual fact, I'm pretty particular about my hands in general - I can't stand the feel of dry skin on them, and I use lotion several times a day to combat this. Using a wooden spoon feels like I'm rubbing them all over with fine grade sandpaper. Hubs and nearly every other person I dare mention this to either look at me like I have two heads or they laugh outright! And do you know how hard it is to find a NON-wooden spoon sturdy enough to cream butter and sugar together? They're virtually non-existent! I thought I had it in the bag when I discovered wooden spoons with rubber grips, but alas, when I'm mixing up huge quadruple batches of cookies in my super-dooper mixing bowl, even those weeny offerings don't help much. I finally found the above spoon on Christmas Eve, doing last minute shopping in my inlaws' town, and I paid $10 for the privilege. As a Christmas present, Hubs got off lightly (LOL) but as a spoon, it's horrendously expensive. It had better work!

And then. And then folks...

I was handed a very large gift on Christmas morning, from the inlaws. I was that dumbfounded at the size I actually expressed concern over it being for me. It's not that I didn't expect something from the inlaws, but I'm used to smaller (but equally thoughtful) gifts and this was one of the biggest boxes there. Imagine my delight when I found this inside:
This was one of the 'higher-end' gifts I put on my list, the ones that were supposed to be mock ideas! How spoilt am I? I've wanted a food processor for ages, but it's always been one of those things that were just beyond my reach - it didn't seem worth the $100+ to purchase one when we'd gotten away with using a knife and a stab blender for gosh-knows how many years beforehand. I actually had a sudden urge to go home and make coleslaw, just so I could test the cutting blades. I know - sad.

But what do you expect from a gal who is perfectly happy getting a spoon for Christmas? LOL.

Cheers,
Lizzie