I've spent the past couple of days helping my friend Carole move into her new gift shop, which is about five minutes from our house. Pretty sure I saw Dave burying all of our credit cards in the back yard yesterday:) Another good friend, Julie, is also helping, and as the three of us unpacked Christmas ornaments and stockings, holiday platters and pottery, and took turns arranging and rearranging jewelry, purses, shower gel, scented candles, and stunning bathrobes (sure hope I can find where Dave buried the AmEx), I told Carole she had basically created girl heaven. And that got me to thinking about girl stuff in general—the things that just make you feel special. Even as a child, I was a purse nut. I still remember a black one with a gold glasp and a chain for a shoulder strap. It made me feel ever so grown up. In junior high, all of us girls had those portable makeup mirrors that let you adjust your Revlon blush for day, nighttime, or (everybody's favorite) fluorescent light. One time, my much younger cousin Grey was watching me put on makeup in front of that mirror, and suddenly he said, "Before I marry anybody, I wanna see her with her face washed—you don't know WHAT you're getting!" I think I was in late high school or early college when I asked for my first bottle of serious perfume—it was Oscar de le Renta, and it came in a curvy bottle and smelled like delicate flowers. Now that I have a house, Girl World has expanded beyond makeup and purses. I love scented candles—so much so that Daddy once looked around my living room and said, "Well, she's worshipping the devil—that's the only possible explanation for this many candles in a house." All the women in my family go jeepers over pretty tableware. Orange juice tastes so much better from a glass carafe than a Minute Maid carton, and even MY cooking ramps up a notch when there's a little silver on the table. How about you? Got any special memories of your most-favorite-ever-just-had-to-have-it girl stuff? (Guys, feel free to respond on behalf of your wives, sisters, and mamas:)
P.S. Carole is planning to have SOME gifts for guys. I told her we should call that display "the groom's table." Local shoppers, her gift boutique is called A Little Something, and it opens November 5 in The Heights Village, right next to Regions, in Cahaba Heights. I told my mother I was planning to help Carole during the holidays and she said, with a fair degree of alarm, "She didn't ask you to wrap gifts, did she?" I am sort of legendary in our family for poor wrapping skills. My cousin Kathy has been known to laugh out loud at my packages, with good reason. I maintain that I am trainable.
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