present

good thing for y'all those cupcakes were cute, since i made you look at them for so freakin' long! it's been a crazy couple of weeks, as i am sure you can imagine. i won't go into the gory details, but let's just say i have been painting. a lot. and packing. and when i am not doing those two things, i am...um... oh yeah! spending money on paint! i am in the early phase of home-ownership when it seems that $200 leaps from my pocket into the lowes cash register every time i set foot outside the house.

so anyway, sometime last week (the days, they are running together) i went over to the new house to do some things, and i found THIS is my mailbox!

a package! my first one at the new house! flaurella, who rocks, sent me something as a little housewarming present. i LOVE getting stuff in the mail! wanna know what was inside? OF COURSE YOU DO!!!

i may have mentioned before that my friend flaurella has a shop called eclectica that sells vintage costume jewelry--she has all kinds of great stuff on her site. in fact, the hippie bought me a beautiful charm bracelet i wanted from her just last fall--i LOVE it and wear it all the time. and i am not the only one who loves her--she was recently featured in a new york times article about cameos, which is just awesome. but anyway, back to MY package! look at this beautiful wrapping--even the plain white tissue paper looks good. i love the little victorian stamp and i think that the little rosebud on the box is a lovely touch as well. inside, there were three little charms to add to the bracelet the hippie gave me or to start a new one. one is a ball of yarn. flaurella seems to think i might have a thing for yarn or something. the second is a little house in honor of my first house, which about made me cry. and then the third is a tiny currituck lighthouse which was our favorite out of all the lighthouses the hippie and i visited last spring about this time. such lovely and thoughtful gifts--i was, and still am, blown away! i know i am a sap, but sometimes the small gifts have the most punch to them, expecially when they come out of the blue and are so well-considered. so thank you, flaurella! thank you SO MUCH! and i am really very sorry that all my thank-you notes are packed up in a box somewhere in the madness so that i can't send you a proper Southern thank-you. i'll get to it, i swear!

4 days till move-in day. trying to keep the panic at bay...