A few weeks ago I held a last minute contest to try and figure out what the hell to get Violet for Christmas. Our only rule was that it had to be $20 or less. So, I asked you, my fabulous people, for help and to no surprise at all, several of you responded with mind-blowing, creative, romantic, thoughtful, amazingly personal, touching, original, fabulous gift ideas. In return I promised to report back, let you know whose idea I went with and that person could either 1. Get a Cherday dedication which I will either tailor just for you or you, the winner, can decide who and what song is played that day –OR- 2. The wonderful Seal will balance the (reasonable) object of your choice on her head.

Now, before I announce the winners (because several ideas made up my gift) I just want to reiterate, until you are utterly annoyed with my gratitude, how grateful I am to everyone that participated and how seriously impressed I am with all of you. Like, really, really impressed. Oh, and I will continue to use bits and pieces of all of these amazing ideas for future gifts. So, thank you in advance for the stock of super-fabulous-and-romantic gift ideas.

Ok, here we go: This year, for Christmas, I gave Violet a photo album with every single photo I could find that had just the two of us in it. I dug through the house and my computer for photos, printed and gathered them all and made it as chronological as my memory serves. I found a good looking photo album with a ton of pages to leave room for pictures to come. If you aren’t Violet or me it might not be a very interesting gift to look through, but for us, it is a way to look back at all of the adventures we have been on together. And right smack in the middle of the album, all of a sudden, a lot of the photos have this really cute black dog in them. And then there were three…

Ready!?! (drum roll please)… The winners are: (in order of comments)

  • ~k
  • zach
  • Amber

So, ~k, zach, fg, and Amber- send in (email me) your requests! And, again and again and again, thanks to all of you creative geniuses! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

(Coming up on jljj: Stay tuned for verbose rants about serious Holiday family stresses, sudden snow storms to trap me in a car with key stress makers, Christmas day sunburns and how two margaritas, a text from Violet and a new car with front weel drive saved my sanity…)