Le Creuset 12-ounce pumpkin casserole (photo from Amazon.com). Let’s not even look at the price. Let’s just focus on the cuteness and imagine making each dinner guest their own personal Thanksgiving-leftovers casserole in one of these. They’re 4-for-3, so…. No. Let’s not compute the price. Let’s just daydream a little longer.

Wilton pumpkin-pie-shaped pie tin (photo from Amazon.com). This seems clever AND adorable, especially for families that make more than one kind of pie. Er, not that there’s any confusion once the pies have been cut into. Still. Cute.
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We need a new blender. We are discouraged before we even start, because we’ve never had a blender we were happy with. And because this is a very boring purchase.

Here are the things we use a blender for, because apparently that’s part of the problem—i.e., finding one single blender that does several things well, versus blaming a particular blender because it isn’t good for crushing ice even though it’s the best choice for purees:

1. Hummus
2. Smoothies
3. Icy-slushy coffee drinks

And here are the three candidate blenders (so far):

Ninja Master Prep blender/crusher/chopper (photo from Amazon.com), $70. This is one of the few $100-and-under blenders rated well by Consumer Reports, and it gets good reviews on Amazon.com (4.5 stars average of 40 reviews). Paul is intrigued that the blending seems to come from…above?
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Hanging Flower Pots (photo from Amazon.com). These get such poor reviews, but don’t they look pretty in their picture? (Or you can spend twice as much and buy the same thing handmade! by an artist! on Etsy! This is the sort of reason I’ve been doing fewer Etsy-related posts.)

Sonia Ceramix Planter (photo from Amazon.com). I like the color, and I also like the row of beading.
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In our kitchen right now we have many bins. We have the regular trash can and a second trash can we use for paper recycling. We also have a large ugly cardboard box and an ugly broken plastic bin: the ugly cardboard box is for glass recycling, and the ugly broken plastic bin is for plastic recycling (it pleases me that I’m also reusing an otherwise unusable bin—but it is so ugly).

This is too much ugly. I first thought we should get a line of matching trash cans of the “kitchen” variety that have a little swinging lid on top—but the problem is that the tallness of such trash cans doesn’t work with putting them in the car to bring them to the dump waste management station. Something short and wide like the ugly box/bin works much better. I was shopping for such a thing, and I’d had NO IDEA what a lot of options there were. Some don’t work for our household but might work for yours.

The Neu Home Organize It All Stainless Step-On Recycle Bin (photo from Amazon.com) is clearly gorgeous. It’s also clearly over $100. And, saddest of all, at 12 gallons total, it’s not big enough for our household.
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It had never occurred to me that I would want a vegetable peeler in the shape of a bird—until I saw one, and then I Just Knew.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Same with the can opener that looks like a toucan—or rather the head of a toucan, which is a little disturbing now that I think of it.

(photo from Amazon.com)
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Please please please let it be spring soon. I am tired of complaining about wet snow gear, and would like to switch to complaints about muddy clothes and shoes. In the meantime, a taste of spring for our poor wintered eyes:

Sunny Morning art print by paintedbliss on Etsy ($18) (photo from the shop). Sweet little birdie + sunshine + sunny yellows + spring greens + spring lilac. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.
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Already the requests are coming in: Can you bake for the Valentine’s Day class party? For the Valentine’s Day Family Fair? For the Valentine’s Day fundraising bake sale? For the class parties of your other three school-aged children? For the bake sales of their other two schools?

Why, YES. Yes, I can. I’m not going to make roll-and-cut cookies (I would rather volunteer to be in the fundraising dunk tank, in my bathing suit in front of everyone, YES I REALLY DO HATE MAKING ROLL/CUT COOKIES THAT MUCH), but I can still bake things in heart shapes. (Or, alternately, I can go to the grocery store bakery department and purchase them, then transfer them to baggies so it looks like I made them. But I am not going to get a post out of THAT.)

Wilton heart-shaped cake pan, about $10 (photo from Amazon.com). This is the classic. You can frost the cake in any pastel color, and if you can write with frosting you can write “LUV U” or any conversation-heart message. Or don’t write on it, it’s still pretty. Or frost it white and use red sugar around the edges. If you don’t want to buy a heart-shaped pan, use a round pan and modify the easy bake-sale Christmas tree cake: put it on a red or pink or white paper plate; and instead of a tree, rough out a heart-shape in red sugar. One cake mix makes two bake sale cakes.
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I had such a nice Christmas! Paul gave me these sweet earrings:

(Bird Girl earrings from Marmar on Etsy) (photo from the shop)

and the new Lynda Barry book I would have had to buy for myself if I hadn’t gotten it as a gift, because I couldn’t wait ONE MORE MINUTE:
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It is time to CHOOSE A CALENDAR, and I am not even a little bit kidding when I say this is one of the purchases I most look forward to each year. I had trouble limiting this post to only twenty possibilities, and in fact caved and added one more at the last minute. (All photos except the last one are from Amazon.com.)

1. Charley Harper. I had a Charley Harper last year, and I don’t usually repeat. But if you’re looking for a good calendar, I REALLY liked my 2010 one. Plus, the 2011 one is half off.

2. Master of Illusion. I’m not fond of people calling themselves “Master of” anything, and usually optical illusion is more my kids’ thing than mine. Still, this one appeals to me this year, and it too is half off.
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There are times, like when I’m trying to kick a path through the playroom, that I feel like we can’t add even one more toy to this household and in fact would be well-advised to jettison fully half of them. This creates a problem five times a year at birthdays, and a problem-times-five at Christmas. I like to find gifts that are fun enough to be gifts, but that don’t have to live on the toy shelf (or floor, whatever).

1. Character (or otherwise special) bed sheets (both images above from Amazon.com). Bonus: if the child needs sheets anyway, and you spend $20 on Little Mismatched sheets that would have cost $10 if plain/boring, you’re making some of the money work twice: $10 sheets plus $20 gift = $20. (The Wonder Pets set is probably a better example of the kind of sheets a child would actually be happy with, but I got distracted by the ones _I_ would want for ME, and besides the Wonder Pets ones are more expensive so they don’t make my money-working-twice point as impressively.)
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