We’re getting down to the wire, Christmas-wise. Would a $25 Amazon card help?
Even if you couldn’t get the gift shipped by Dec. 25, you could wrap up a “watch this space” card and promise to hand over the present as soon as it arrives.
Or maybe it’ll be a Christmas miracle and the gift will arrive on time. You won’t know unless you try.
Maybe you’ve already finished your shopping, or perhaps you don’t do holiday gifts. That $25 card could still come in handy for:
Welcome back to the “support the local economy” giveaway series. This time around, we’re going for a Valentine’s Day theme. Specifically, a trio of heart-shaped earrings made by Cypher Alaska.
That’s the business run by my friend Linda B., who started out with freeform bead-weaving and has added things like traditional beading, resin capture and metal work.
Once she picked up a bunch of flashing at the Habitat ReStore and turned pieces of it into jewelry (Linda has quite the collection of shapes and punches). Then there was the time she purchased a piece of copper piping at the home improvement center, capped both ends and beaded around the middle.
What I’m giving away this week is a bit simpler, though. Three winners will each get a pair of hammered metal heart-shaped earrings. From a distance, these things look like just metal hearts. When you get up close, you can see they bear multiple divots that add texture to the metal.
That’s not a bad metaphor for Valentine’s Day, or for love itsownself: After all, many a heart has been dented in the name of l’amour.
If you’re lucky, that never happened to you because you met The One and immediately paired up. Or maybe you escaped a heart-hammering because you have the ability to shrug over a lost love and say, “Plenty of other fish in the sea.” Or possibly you don’t have much interest in the whole love thing from the start, living just as long and dying just as happy without romance (shout-out to the aro folks among us).
But back to Valentine’s Day. If you’re interested in gifting a pair of shiny earbobs to your Valentine – or to yourself – on Feb. 14, read on to see the goods and enter the drawing.
(Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Throwback Thursday! In honor of all the food that will be prepared — and perhaps wasted — over the next few days, I’m republishing this piece from May 12, 2012. It’s my hope that a little judicious leftover prep and/or freezing will cut down on waste.)
I didn’t get to the supermarket for a few days after my arrival in Anchorage. Until then, I used the milk and oatmeal my hostess already had. When I mentioned that I’d be replacing what I used, she looked surprised.
“Uh, that’s really old milk. I meant to warn you off it,” she said.
It had tasted fine to me. That is to say, it tasted about as good as nonfat milk ever tastes – like the water they used to wash a cow. All that mattered to me is that it loosened up the oats in the bowl.
I nearly changed my tune when I checked the “sell by” date: April 5. It was then May 6. I was drinking milk a month past its prime.