Wednesday 7 January 2015

The Tightwad's Choice

The last gift I'll tell you about (maybe) is one from Lucy. I wish I'd photographed the package before unwrapping it. We could tell it was a basket with items poking out of the top, but I was astounded at how simple the presentation. The whole thing was wrapped in what I would guess to be organza - perhaps starched organza? with the two long ends twisted and twisted until they formed what looked like a flower. I've seen 1980s belts twisted this way...

Anyhow, the items were astonishing until I read the book titles: a bottle each of olive oil, CocaCola ('full fat', so not something I'd ever drink) and vinegar; also a couple of tea lights, some dental floss and a small bag of kitty litter. Bill turned to me and asked why on earth anyone would give us kitty litter!

I found multiple uses for each of these in one of the books included:



The other book, a wonderful reference from Readers Digest, Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things, pulled me quite a long way into it before I realised I had about six books on the go at once and needed to finish one or two if I weren't to live with the whole stack beside me on the love seat. (Though now that I've typed it, I can't think of a better use for my love seat...)

I'm sure, as with Vivien's gift, pulling this together gave Lucy a lot of laughs and I'm really appreciative of her thoughtfulness. As I mentioned to her in my note, I now worry that (a) I'll never again throw anything away without first checking this reference and (b) we'll start buying odd things like cat litter and denture cleaning for their myriad uses in spite of having no cat but still (most of) our teeth...

Did you get anything 'special' for Christmas?

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