Sunday Donut 18

Intro in case you don’t know about the Sunday donut:
(it’s sort of like that chapter at the start of every Babysitter’s Club book that you can skip if you know the world already! If you know, just scroll down to the donut pic. That’s where it gets started!)

Ok, I just had a blast reading my friend Jackie’s blog.
She borrowed something she loved from another blog:
A heart to heart sort of post about life,
as if we were sitting down to have coffee together and just chatting.

Um, I LOVE THAT!
Except I can’t drink coffee.
I mean, I CAN,
but the world is not ready for that.
It would be like this:

So instead I’m going with donut.
I used to be a paper carrier, and we would get donuts EVERY Sunday!
So I’ve sort of been conditioned.
I’ve even got a nice little donut shop within walking distance!

So, imagine that we meet at my house, walk down to get donuts, walk back (chatting the whole while!) and then sit in my kitchen, chatting some more and snacking.

Here’s my donut for today.
My absolute favorite, strawberry frosted!  Which is funny, since my capoeira name is strawberry…

If we were having donuts, I’d tell you I had fun creating this for my bookclub. In this little present there are 4 layers of wrapping paper, including the top one, with things taped to each one or hidden under each layer. The last two layers are books! I’m going to bring it to bookclub and two lucky people will walk away with a book! We are doing a bigger version of this for our little Christmas get together, so it was fun to “warm up!”
Those Dove Mint Chocolates are SO GOOD. I may have let a few fall off accidentally. Only a few though.

If we were having donuts, I’d tell you that last Sunday I was staying up late and completing some photo books on Shutterfly. They were running a 50% off deal, and I made FOUR books! One for us, one for my mom, one for my dad, and one for Danny’s parents, all with photos from the wedding.

And they’ve already arrived! Since our families are on the East Coast, we sent them directly to them, with directions to not open until Christmas. (My mom opened hers up early because, she says, “It didn’t say WHICH Christmas to not open until,” which doesn’t make much sense but I guess she’s a grown up she’s going to do whatever she wants!)

When ours came, I just kept looking at it over and over. Danny looked at it the first time with me, and kept saying, “Wow, I can’t believe I have such a beautiful wife,” and then, after I looked at it for the fifth time in a row, “you’re still looking at it?”

Each one took some major time to set up (I did A LOT of photo collages to get a bunch of pictures in there!) but I’m so happy we have something and we could give something like that to our parents. I want to make one that includes the stories behind all the stuff we made for the wedding too, but this is a good start. Next up, one for the CA wedding!

If we were having donuts, I’d tell you that this was a FULL week. Only one half day, and the half day I had I was then working at the bookstore. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but it was tiring.

While I was working at the bookstore I got to recommend a bunch of books and people BOUGHT THEM. Immediately. I was so excited and can’t wait for these real life kids to get these books that I love.

If we were having donuts, I’d do this crappy spoiler thing where I’d tell you that I found out something really exciting but just can’t tell you until it’s ok to tell you. I’m not a good secret keeper, so don’t ask me why I chose to be in a career where sometimes things happen and you can’t talk about it.

Let’s just say this thing is going to make my life even more awesome. I promise I will tell you when I can, but just know for now that there was a lot of excitement in our house this week. Like dreams coming true excitement. Ok. Enough of that!

If we were having donuts, I’d tell you that I was sort of addicted to playing the Settlers of Catan game on my husband’s tablet last week. I was playing two or three games a day (that’s about 1.5 hours a day of staring at a tablet) and I was getting a little bit worried.

I was having fun, but I knew I was wasting my time, so I promised myself that I would not play at all during the work week. I stuck to my word and didn’t play, and felt way better. I’m that way with things that I like; I go all in at the beginning, sometimes way to far in, and then have to pull back. It’s good to be conscious of that; now I watch out for it.

If we were having donuts, I’d tell you that we had the most fun weekend in a long time. Full, but fun. First, we went to donate a toy for Toys for Tots in Livermore and watch Elf with some work friends.

We also got to meet Santa while we were there, which is always a bonus. I told him I already have everything I want for Christmas. He was happy to hear it.      Us and the big guy  Us, the big guy, my co-worker, and her husband.

We had a great lunch with more co-workers, and then my co-worker Erin asked if we wanted to come to their house and play games. They were another 30 minutes away, putting our return trip at 1 hour 40 minutes, but we could not say no. I couldn’t think of any other stuff we had going on, and we really LOVE GAMES. I also thought it was important to hang out with our friends when we could, so we did.  One of the games we played, Partini.

We played mostly party games, including Smart A** and Partini, then played Clue two times and we showed them a little bit of Settlers of Catan on Danny’s tablet. Finally, Dave (my co-worker Erin’s husband) and I had an epic Backgammon game that turned into best two out of three. Each game one of us only won by ONE chip. They were very close games, which surprised Erin. “I don’t know ANYONE who can get that close to Dave in backgammon!” (he won, two games to one.)

We got home late but it was so worth it to try out new games and have a good conversation with our friends. We rarely EVER get to see them.

Sunday was awesome as well.
First, I got revisions done and off to my agent, which was
SUCH A GOOD CHOICE. It left me feeling like the rest of the day could just be super fun because I did the important thing I had to do.

Second, we picked up our friends’ kids and sort of busted them out of the house. Their parents were working a catering gig all weekend, and we wanted to do something special for Christmas for the kids, so we picked them up and drove them up to San Jose to pick out their own Christmas presents at the awesome bookstore, Hicklebee’s. I also happened to be working a wrapping shift, so they had about three hours to kill with my husband, Danny.

They hung out at the store almost the entire time!
The oldest helped me with the wrapping.
The middle one wandered around looking at everything.
And the little one played with the toys in the back.

We thought they would be bored but they had so much fun!
Here’s what they ended up buying:

10 year old:
Harry Potter 6 and 7.

8 year old:
A Snap Circuits Electric circuit board playset
A geode
A ridiculously small pack of cards

almost 3 year old:
A stuffed dog.
Two spiky small balls that light up when you bounce them.

I bought some coloring books and colored pencils,
and they bought some
Step Into Reading books and a geode for their 8 year old friend, and two board books for his two year old sister.

After I was done work,
we took them out for pizza and ice cream.
They were so happy, and their parents were thrilled that they got some time out of the house. (They had been home with their Grandma, which of course was fun, but they were getting restless.)

Yes, we were tired after this epic weekend, but there were so many great connections and memories made. I have to remind myself that yes, I want to spend my time making things, but I also want to spend my time making connections and memories with people.

I hope to make things that inspire people, but I know I can also inspire people and myself by the connections and memories I make as well. It’s all about balancing the two.
  The oldest working on some ribbon cutting.  The younger two and Danny, just chillin’ in the bathtub in the back. The oldest said, “Do you like how I organized the ribbons? Rainbow colors!”

A full week.
A good week.
How about you, friends?
Thanks for having a donut with me.
Now let me know what’s going on with you!
What are you up to? What’s making your heart sing?
and most importantly, what kind of donut are you eating?

Until next time,
bye for now,
KE