Gift & Gourmet - Seguin's Own Glamorous Shopping

Oh my - WHERE DO I START?! I L-O-V-E our new G&G shop down on the square - it gives me the same feeling and impression as when I walk into a Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and William Sonoma. And now I can shop here in my own town and not drive 40 miles away. This is so great for our community and I am so proud to have G&G representing us all. I don't even know that I can write enough about how wonderful it was to see the new location finally. I will miss it being across from us on Austin Street but once I saw how well the shop fit downtown, I knew they found a good new home. The work that has gone into the shop is visible before you even walk in. The windows along the front of two sides of the shop let in a great light and the spaciousness is fabulous. I think I could seriously live there. Seriously. That's how beautiful the shop is and how much I love what Mary and all her team have down with the building and space. GREAT JOB!

Mark and I went on lunch to find his mom a gift for this weekend and we did. Too bad I can't show you what it is yet. :) Guess what else we found - Gretchen Bee Ranch honey AND Mark's book on the Seguin slave trade. At the same display! It was so awesome and gave us a great feeling. We are working on the display in the hutch we'll deliver to G&G soon but it was so sweet of Mary and her staff to put the honey and candles out on the tables. We loved all the accompanying bee-oriented baking accessories. SO CUTE. You can tell I love it, can't you. I won't lie. I really do. Go check them out and support a local business. They have never let us down with their high-quality products and customer service. And do you need it giftwrapped? They do that, too!

Did You Have a Nice Easter?

I hope so! Bonus for you! I am getting in a SECOND post in one day. Normally I don't have time to ride around and spot events and such for the blog. Working two jobs is getting in the way of photoblogging. :) So I'm tickled I actually got three different opportunities for cool shots. I want to share this one since it's specific to Easter. We were driving to church and saw this great scene at Emanuel's Lutheran Church around the corner from our house. Loved it. Reminds me of the egg hunts we used to have when the kids were younger and when my nieces and nephew came to visit one year from the East Coast. Fun. Easter Bunny still visits me and Mark as well. Really. Yuummy.
Updated 7/31/13: Thanks to Woody for catching the church name, which I originally mistakenly put at Faith Lutheran, which for some reason, I often do.

Gift & Gourmet's Future Home

Today after work, I drove home, saw Mark was not yet back from the bee yard so I swung by my favorite gift shop in Seguin. I just love that shop! This is a look at their new location down on the square. Soon, the space will be finished out and then the gift shop will move. We are thrilled G&G will be on the square. It'll be very visible during downtown events and it'll certainly add a touch of class down there.

Here's my favorite thing I saw at G&G today right before Mark walked around a shelf and surprised the heck out of me. Okay, you can get the extra small size or the extra large size. Holy moly! I have never seen a GALLON of Tabasco in person. lol

GBR at My Favorite Gift Shop

If you are a fan of Gift & Gourmet (best gift shop in town, hands down), then check out our Gretchen Bee Ranch honey and bee skep candles! They are now available at the store. I'm tickled pink to have our stuff there since it's my favorite shop for gifts. I also am a lucky gal because my honey bee knows I love pretty much anything from that shop so I got a little something for Christmas from there that will come in handy when I hop over to Virginia in a few weeks. :-)

In the picture above, the shop owner has packaged the honey and candle together in cellophane and it is there in the center of the picture, middle of the middle shelf.

Countdown to Christmas

We are busy, busy, busy - making candles, wrapping gifts, prepping our honey house for Open House on Saturday, watching the Spurs, washing jars for more honey, etc., etc., etc. I bet you're busy, too! :)

Here's a shot of my favorite gift shop in Seguin - Gift & Gourmet. Went there this week to show the owner some of our honey and candle products. If you haven't checked out this shop, you should. It's a wonderful little gem in our community and I'm so glad they are here!

Boxed & Shipped

We made it to the post office today during lunch so that we can get these boxes shipped off to family and a friend. Today was the last day to ship in time for Christmas using parcel post and even with that they couldn't absolutely guarantee it'd get there in time. This year, we noticed that with priority mail, if our box exceeded certain measurements, they were going to tag on some surcharge. WHAT?? When did that happen?? I guess I should have thought to read the US Postal Service site or something. I just had not heard of that and on some of our boxes, it more than doubled the priority mail cost. Needless to say, those went parcel post. Hmm...might be time to look at FedEx and UPS next year. :-)

Gift wrapping trappings

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! Well, I finally finished all my wrapping! Hooray! And I made a little time to finish off my David Balacci book I've been reading for about a month. The Whole Truth, it's awesome. I hope everyone is ready for Christmas and enjoying time with family and friends.

This is a gift tag that was on a gift from my sister's family to our daughter Melissa. I L-O-V-E beautifully crafted things such as this and it's always hard to decide if I will keep things or not. I have about 7 or 8 hatboxes of old letters, cards and other mementos that I have received and I love going through them once in a while. I may put this in a box. ;)

I am so blessed with all that I have in my life. I lack for nothing materially; I have a career I am passionate about at a company I have grown to love as if I've been there 20 years. And most importantly, I have a wonderful man with whom I share it all. I could not ask for any more or for a better person to be my partner. I just want to give thanks for all I have.

Christmas Activities

Well, I finally got into the spirit. Normally, I am all about Christmas but this year was a bit different. So, I am behind in terms of shopping, wrapping and decorating. Mark boosted me along last week by bringing down all the Christmas boxes and we got started sorting through things.

Here's one of my favorite things to do this time of year...fixing stockings for family members. I love finding little goodies to put in there! We kicked off gift-giving yesterday by spending time with my stepdaughter with dinner and a gift exchange. She will be headed up north for a few weeks so we did an early Christmas and had a really, really nice time with her.

December is almost here!

Sorry! I'm being bad about blogging...I know it. I'll try and get back into it soon. We've had a great four-day weekend! I don't know the last time I had so many days off. I have enjoyed seeing family and friends, watching a ton of college and pro football and basketball (despite losing to the Rockets last night....badly), exercising, reading (Baldacci's The Whole Truth), talking photography and digicams with my best friend Sonia (I hope you get the Z1015 too!) and preparing for Christmas. Fun stuff.

And nothing like a little pressure. The bags of gifts have been sitting in our office, right by my desk since JUNE!!! My sisters are so industrious, they get together during the summer in FL and do their Christmas shopping (most of it) and then they even wrap 'em up. We happened to be visiting last June so Mai sent the gifts back with us. Can you imagine? June. Sigh. I am still working on figuring out some gifts for several family members. LOL

Home Sweet Home

Hello, hello. I'm home now! Been busy trying to catch up on things --- work, house, emails, blogs. LOL. Busy. Since I've got home, we've done the following:

1. Watched a movie, had pizza and enjoyed a nice evening together.
2. Went to Sams in San Marcos, which is about 20 minutes from here.
3. Went to HEB for "regular" groceries.
4. Watched NC State beat East Carolina. Go Wolfpack!
5. Swiffered (we like to go barefoot, we have hardwood floors, I do not like walking around on dust).
6. Prepped ingredients for King Ranch casserole for a lunch meeting tomorrow.
7. Currently watching the Texas-Rice game and baking a chocolate cake for a bake sale tomorrow.
8. Did NOT take any naps as I planned. hee hee

The compass is a gift from one of my new coworkers from Fontana. It reminds me of all the travels I've had, especially lately. Four weeks is a really long time and we had some great times as a group but I'm sure our families are all ready for us to be home. I'm lucky Mark has not minded my being gone so much (thanks again honey!) and I'm also glad that he postponed his own business trip so that we could have next week together. Then it's off to New Jersey for me and Rosenberg (TX) for him!

I'll try and get around town this week and catch up on the pics and bloggging. Hope you are all having a great weekend so far!

Family Night

Tonight has been so nice. My sister came by to have some dinner with us and we had some pretty good pho (Vietnamese noodle soup), followed by a relaxing evening of talk, coffee and dessert. And celebrating Lan's birthday a bit belatedly. Really wonderful evening.

When I'm happy or when I'm sad from missing someone, I like to look at some of my favorite things. These are some of them. People give you things and sometimes you keep it and sometimes you don't. I try to not be too cluttered but I keep things that bring fond memories and smiles. Like that frog. When I miss my niece, I like to look at it. It's just a button to some people but when my 6 year old niece gave me one of her favorite things, it meant so much to me. I am sure feeling mellow tonight. :)