Target owns me

Let’s get this out of the way first.

Seriously, what is wrong with me? I am such a packaging whore. In case you can’t tell in the picture, all of the products are by Archer Farms, who I’m guessing is Target’s generic food brand. And because the packaging is so appealing to me, I couldn’t stop putting more Archer Farms stuff into our cart. It’s a good thing there isn’t a Target closer to me, because I would not have any money, especially since Target started adding grocery sections to its stores. Anyway, I’m going to make the vanilla shortbread mix tonight as my first foray into Christmas cookie making (I know, it’s a mix, but I’m easing my way into this. Don’t judge me.). I’ll give you a review later. There’s a small part of me hoping that the Archer Farms stuff turns out to be bad so I won’t buy a ton of it next time I go to Target.

As much as I just threw my money down the Archer Farms food aisles at Target, I am also incredibly pissed at the store. Why? No frickin’ Legos (cue Elliot Reid: Frick! Frick frick frick!)! We went to two Targets yesterday and at both all they had was the same Spongebob set. I’m all about the Spongebob, but apparently my nephew Tyler (who is going to be 5 in February) has no clue what Spongebob is. Which leads me to the following – 1. Where the hell can one find a decent Lego selection in central Ohio, and 2. When do kids start watching Spongebob? Because I can munch on Krabby patties and watch that all day.

Travis and I had our Christmas shopping day yesterday, and as normal, I think we wound up buying more stuff for us than for others. In our defense, I’m making a ton of Christmas gifts this year. Mainly, besides the Archer Farms Taste Explosion, we bought some more books:

I haven’t finished the first Sherlock Holmes from a while ago, or started the Dickens yet, but my January is going to be spent cuddled up in a warm mess of yarn and words.

Unfortunately, both Travis and I pooped out enough at the end of the day, and we didn’t wind up buying our luxury food item for Christmas Eve. Of course, the one day I’m actually willing to buy the gourmet marshmallows from Whole Foods, their selection was awful. I almost went for the smoked salmon, but I think we’re going to be both better off to go to Trader Joe’s/Fresh Market/Whole Foods one day next week maybe and just concentrate on the food and not everything else.

In addition to the flotilla of knitted gifts I’ve made for Christmas, I also wanted to make some cookies (and yes, actual cookies will be involved, not just fake cookie mixes – although probably not on the scale of Katie’s cookies) and do a little bit of Christmas crafts. I’m going to try and sew up some fabric gift bags later on in the week, but today I made these. They’re kind of homely, but kind of cute, too:

I bought a pack of small ornaments at Target and painted people’s names on them. I’m going to be using them as gift tags.

I was pretty productive today, actually – got the laundry done, did a bit of dyeing which actually turned out pretty nifty, got some knitted items washed and blocked, made my little ornament tags, blocked some handspun (including Sarah Lou‘s Hanukkah Joy, which hopefully I’ll be able to mail tomorrow!), etc. I’m all excited because we bought some deli food from Whole Foods, which means I have instant meals for the next few days. I like cooking, but when I’m trying to get other stuff done, I forget to eat and then all of a sudden I’m starving – and of course then, I don’t feel like making anything that’s more complicated than opening up the toaster oven and sticking something frozen in it. So yesterday we got a bunch of good, no-effort foods – pineapple from Cut Fruit (Hi, Terry!  Sorry we missed you yesterday, Lizzie!), egg salad, blintzes, latkes, couscous, sushi – stuff like that.

Almost forgot to mention that I did knit a random garter stitch scarf. I used the Red Planet Blue yarn I had spun from Dianne’s Creatively Dyed roving. Here’s a bit of it (it’s still being blocked right now):

It was fun and mindless to do.  Which is nice right now.