35 Gifts: Day 9

I'm writing this the next morning because I was too tired yesterday, but I'm going to write it as if I wrote it last night. So "today" in here means "day 9". I hope you're now as confused as me.)

I gave away a TV today!

OK, so it wasn't actually my TV. Mum and Dad had bought a new TV so they had one they didn't need and nobody they knew needed it so they brought it over here. I didn't need it but I figured I could find a friend who needed it and I did! It was wonderful to be able to offer and give it to the person I gave it to, and she was so very pleased. I was very happy.

I spent some time sorting through the fine print of the "click to give" websites and finding ones which seemed worth it and I've saved the folder of bookmarks so I can open them all at once. It'll only take a minute or two to click on all the pages, which is a very small amount of time and I can do it when I'm busy procrastinating anyway :).

I finished another keyring this evening which was satisfying. I'm still hanging them on my Christmas tree (you can see my Christmas 2009 photos if you haven't already) to give away but it's the 8th of January so I do rather need a different method of displaying them! Perhaps I can find a gum branch to hang them from instead? I have, as I wrote this, added "New keyring display method" to my "To Do" book, so I'll think about it at least!

I can't remember if I wrote about this but I've also been thinking of finishing this 35 Gifts project by giving away 35 individual gifts on my birthday day. I won't be able to make 35 keyrings by then - I can do about 2 every 3 days so there isn't time. Something I could do is make 35 of the flat origami hearts and write messages from Operation Beautiful on them and give those out and ask others to distribute them for me. I have some quite large origami paper that I'd like to use up and it would be perfect for this. So I think I'll do that.

Very tired day today (which is why I'm actually writing this the next day - I fell asleep). Couldn't do all my physio which is depressing. I think it's the heat - even though I'm in my air conditioned cave it still somehow has an effect ... whether it's the constant noise and air movement from the air conditioner or what I have no idea but I still feel worse on hot days.

More resting now. I'll try to write day 10's report on the actual correct day :)

Cheers,
Ricky

35 Gifts: Day 10

Wow, up to day 10! I'm more than 1/4 of the way through this ...that seems quite odd, the time's gone fast.

Biggest gift today was a monetary gift I gave to the Australian site I Give A Buck. It's a very new site that I learned about because Mum mentioned in a comment on a previous post (thank you!).

I can also reveal the seekrit gift I alluded to a few days ago which was for my brother's engagement party. He's really not the gift-oriented type, and has been living with his girlfriend for several years so they don't need the sort of "setting up home" stuff I believe is traditional at engagement parties so Mum was saying "What do you want for a gift" and he was busy saying "Nothing" a lot. That's no good, we like giving gifts, so Mum persisted eventually he said that he would love a box of Maltesers.



I'm told Maltesers don't exist everywhere in the world but basically they're spheres of not-very-dense honeycomb candy [ETA: dammed_colonial tells me this is called "sponge candy" in the USA] about 1cm across covered in low quality milk chocolate. I hate them, personally, but evidently my brothers have less taste than me.

Mum didn't think a box of Maltesers was a suitable engagement gift so she persisted with a request for something a little more complex and he finally said that he would like a dog made out of Maltesers, not being at all serious of course. I think at this point Mum realised she wasn't going to get a sensible answer out of him and gave up. But Mum mentioned this to me and as you might have realised by now I am both insane and have an excess of creative energy... I tried first with florist's wire and Maltesers and completely failed to make a three dimensional dog that would stand up for more than about 3 seconds. A lot like me, really ... standing up is easy, staying up's the problem!

Anyway, I redirected my efforts and ended up using a base of butter icing (I asked for fondant but my carer bought the wrong thing. Luckily it set OK) and sticking Maltesers in a dog shape into it and created this:



The ears are the corners of a Cherry Ripe because I couldn't make balls pointy enough to look like ears. All the rest is just Maltesers on an icing base. It was presented to him today along with, apparently, enough Maltesers that he's going to be eating them until he has eight kids. I hope he really does like eating them!

Today is hot hot hot and STICKY and I feel gross and hot and ick and I am resting now. The cat has been clinging to me like a limpet because he thinks I'm trying to freeze him to death by putting on the air conditioner so he needs to share body heat. This is not helping but he's nice to hug!

Cheers,
Ricky