Since most of my relatives live on the East and West Coasts, gift giving usually includes shipping presents to both ends of the country.  When I first moved to Wisconsin, I was pretty organized and had my gifts ready and shipped by mid-December.

Once I had LJ, my life started getting a little more hectic and my packages were often not ready to ship until much later in the month.  Last year, I made the huge mistake of waiting until that day where more packages are shipped than any other throughout the whole year.  I pulled up to the post office and wondered why there were so many folks hanging around outside.  It was cold and didn’t seem like great weather to be standing around and visiting.

Turns out, they weren’t standing around, they were standing in line. And I soon joined them.  For over 90 minutes.

It seems that, while most stores have extra staff on hand when they know they are going to be busy, the post office does not believe in such things. They also believe that a person’s scheduled break supersedes the need to actually have two people working the counter.  But I digress…

So what have I learned from my many years of procrastinating and standing in post office lines??  Come closer..I will share a secret.

It is totally worth it to find places to shop online that offer free shipping and have the packages mailed to the recipients. I know, it seems like common sense, but it’s only taken me (how long since I moved here???)  twelve years to figure this out.

LJ looks so young!!

I had never heard of See’s Candies until I began taking LJ to get his picture taken with Santa at our local mall.  Part of the visit consisted of each child receiving a “gift bag” of sorts with a coloring book and a coupon to get a lollypop form the See’s kiosk in a different part of the mall.  The nice people at See’s would not only give a lollypop to the child, but also to the frazzled mom.

This quickly became one of my favorite parts of the Santa visit tradition. II’m probably sounding like a really bad mom here..) Yes, the look on LJ’s face as he told Santa what he was hoping to get was priceless, but those lollypops were something else! They were not like your typical suckers, they came in different flavors – vanilla, chocolate, butterscotch, and latte and slowly melted in your mouth. I was in love.

Fast forward to this year when the folks from See’s contacted me to see if I would be interested in reviewing some of their products. Um, is the mall crowded the weekend before Christmas? Heck yeah!!

It was a very happy day at our house when that particular package arrived.  We received not only a HUGE box of my favorite lollypops…

But also a Festive Favorites Gift Pack. This contained a box of assorted chocolates, truffles, peppermint patties, and peppermint balls (these are like the delicious buttermints that dissolve quickly, not the hard candycane-like ones).  This would be a great gift for a co-worker, hostess gift, or even a corporate gift from your company!  The chocolates and mints were just as amazing as See’s lollypops!!

Be sure to check out the Countdown to Christmas Sweepstakes See’s is running right now!
Can you imagine winning a LIFETIME OF CHOCOLATE?????

I am a sucker for flowers. I guess maybe I am just a typical girl, I don’t know. The one thing that probably isn’t so typical is that I actually prefer just about any color roses over red ones.  Pink, yellow, sterling, or cinnamon – I love them all.

The only thing that bums me out is how quickly they go by. I guess that is part of  what makes them so precious – if we had them all the time, we wouldn’t appreciate them as much. I recently had the chance to try out ProFlowers.com and got to order a gorgeous cinnamon rose bouquet to review.  The flowers were delivered just when they said they would be and were packaged so carefully that nothing was crushed and not a single petal fell off.

The bouquet was absolutely gorgeous and looked perfect with the fall decor in my home.

I loved that ProFlowers.com included tons of “flower food” and clear directions on how to keep my roses looking their best.  So what tips did the pros at ProFlowers share?  Here they are:

• Cut at least 1 inch off of all of the stems.
• Add room temperature water and a packet of flower food to a clean vase.
• Be sure to remove any leaves that fall below the water line – this will cut down on any bacteria.
• On the 3rd day, recut each stem and change the water. Add another food packet.
• Put your flowers in a spot away from direct sunlight, heat, and drafts.