Early holiday shopping

While enjoying my morning tea, I was browsing through the Toys R Us ad in the Sunday paper. They're advertising this year's "hottest toy"--some sort of Elmo doll that won't be on the market for at least another two months. However, for just $10, you can reserve your doll today. What a brilliant idea, I thought. Nothing like declaring something as the best thing since sliced bread and then charging people only $10 to avoid the crazy hunt and fistfights that have defined holiday shopping, huh? I'd do it in a heartbeat...well, not for this toy. I mean, Sophie LOVES Elmo (she'll be having an Elmo birthday just one month from today), but she doesn't know enough to WANT anything right now. Anyway, I digress. Back to the economics of holiday shopping. Another big advantage of pre-ordering is that it tells the manufacturers how many to make. That way, a toy company could maximize their profits rather than maximizing the chaos around demand for it.

Of course, you don't need to go crazy looking for the hottest toy when there's already all kinds of cool stuff to play with in your house! I mean, just look at what Sophie decided to play with this morning...POST-IT NOTES!!! Oh, she was in her glory, carefully pulling away each little sheet of bright blue list-making material! Being the little organizer that she is, she carefully arranged them on the floor in nice rows and columns and then put them all back together again. Of course, you can see from the photos below that it looks as though she rolled around in them first!


As I was chasing her through the family room to snap some photos, I decided to take a shot of the library card catalog that I bought at a yard sale a while ago. This is only about half of what I bought - the other 60 drawers are still in the basement, but will hopefully make their way up to a corner in the finished side of the 3rd floor to hold craft supplies this weekend. This unit in the family room is still empty. I'm afraid to put anything in it yet, as Sophie is fascinated opening all the little drawers. Perhaps I should put some of her little treasures in it...just think, I could have little labels on the fronts of the drawers for red crayons, blue crayons, yellow crayons! The thing on the wall above it is an antique typesetter's tray. I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find all sorts of little things to put in my makeshift shadowbox, but the squares are so tiny that it's hard to find things!