Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens: My Favorite Things Party!

April 3, 2014 Book Club, Personal 38

Greetings Bookworms!

You know how I’m always raving about my IRL book club, My Neighbors Are Better Than Your Neighbors? I’m about to rave some more.  This month, in addition to our discussion of Reconstructing Amelia (my review) we decided to do a “My Favorite Things” party. We took a page out of the old Oprah handbook and decided to share stuff we love with each other. Each member purchased enough of her “favorite things” for everyone attending.

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Smile for the Internet, ladies!

Fun right?! Since none of us live on Oprah’s budget, we couldn’t go around buying everyone cars. We decided to cap the spending limit on each favorite thing to $10. Each participating member purchased 6 of her favorite $10 things to share, and got 6 of the other’s favorites in return. Soooo… You wanna know what we love, right?!

  • “A” is a big fan of bubble baths, so she hooked us all up with some delightful Ulta bubble bath… But what bubble bath is complete without Ghirardelli chocolate squares? No bubble bath I want to be a part of, I’ll tell you that much. Aaaand because our book club apparently has a severe lip balm addiction (more on this later), she added a tube of Burt’s Bees to the stash.
  • “C” is super adorable right now, with her teeny tiny baby bump. One of her favorite things was a colorful paring knife. (Don’t piss off the pregnant lady, she will cut you!) She also included a big old Ghirardelli chocolate bar, because, well. Chocolate. (I should probably mention that “C” is pretty much the sweetest gal ever, she would not, in fact, cut anyone. That’s part of why it makes me giggle so much, her tiny-ness and her Southern accent… The idea of her wielding a knife against anything other than a vegetable is pretty hilarious.)
  • “K” hosted this shindig in style! Her choice of favorite thing is a set of wine sealers– they seal out the air and keep the leftover wine fresh! Because leftover wine… That’s a thing… I think? Seriously though, these ROCK.

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  • “E” is as big a flower nerd as I am, so I wasn’t surprised she brought in something that grows. Her favorite thing was lucky bamboo, which is the most difficult house plant to kill. I swear. Leave it in a vase with water and it will live FOR-E-VER. I’ve had a stalk in my office since 2006, yo!
  • “M” loves her some lip balm, as do the rest of us. Her choice of favorite thing was a 4 pack of Burt’s Bees lip balm. As luck would have it, nothing in the 4 pack was the same scent as the tube “A” brought everyone, because variety in lip balm? That’s like getting a new pack-o-Lip Smackers when you’re 13. (Or 30… Joules sent me a set of Disney Princess Lip Smackers last year for my birthday that I use on the regular.Un-ironically.)
  • “J” is all about the hidden talents. She’s a flipping scientist (no lie) who plays the harp, sews, and knits like a boss. She knitted each of us a little blue bag made of THE SOFTEST YARN EVER. (I think she said it was silk bamboo yarn, but I’m no yarn expert.) It took her a week to knit each one, which shocks me because it’s got some really impressive fancy stitches going on. Girl’s got skills. She also included a container of Bath & Body Works foaming hand soap, which THRILLS me, because that’s the only hand soap we use in the Gingerbread House.
  • Oh yes. And then there’s ME, isn’t there? Well. I love having fancy finger nails. I’m not great with the fine motor skills, so I suck pretty hard at painting my nails. It doesn’t stop me, but sometimes I want my nails to look great and artsy. When I do, I bust out some Sally Hansen nail polish strips and go to town with the nail art, so I brought a package for everyone. I also included an EOS lip balm (I told you we have a problem) because I’m OBSESSED with it.

Have you ever done anything not-so-bookish with your book club? I want to hear all about it, Bookworms! Spill!

*I linked to some of our favorite things on Amazon, in case you want to check them out. I’m not sure I got everything perfectly right, but I tried. If you decide to buy anything I’ll get a small commission, but mostly I just want to push lip balm at you. LIP BALM!*

38 Responses to “Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens: My Favorite Things Party!”

  1. Jayne

    I love those knives! And I know from personal experience that you CAN kill a bamboo plant. Someone who hadn’t heard of my brown thumb gave me one and I would forget to water it for months then finally remember and it would perk back up when I ended up watering it, but after a couple years of that it finally died. Ooops.

    Reply

    • Words For Worms

      LOL! Yes, I suppose you can kill bamboo. The one I’ve had since 06 is in a clear vase, so I can see when the water level is getting low… That’s probably the only reason I’ve managed to keep it alive so far!

      Reply

  3. Shannon @ River City Reading

    This is such a cool idea! I love buying little gifts for everyone in book club. Over Christmas, we did a white elephant gift exchange (and decided to get bookish gifts)…and my group must be pretty boozy, because 3/6 of us chose that cocktail book Tequila Mockingbird. It was a really fun night.

    Reply

    • Words For Worms

      That sounds like a blast! Around Christmas we’re all so frazzled with other obligations that we forgo even a book discussion in December and just go out to dinner. I love that half your crew chose Tequila Mockingbird, that’s hilarious!

      Reply

  4. Jenny @ Reading the End

    What a fun idea! I’m trying to think now what I would bring if I had an event like this to go to. My instinct would be a book but I would resist and get something adorable instead — I’m awfully fond of dark chocolate peanut butter cups, so that would definitely be one of my favorite things.

    Reply

  6. Megan M.

    That sounds like a lot of fun! I would be paralyzed with indecision about my favorite thing, though. Can’t I bring… a book? LOL

    Reply

    • Words For Worms

      You know, I’m really awful about giving books as gifts (unless they are children’s books.) I’m so indecisive. Not only is it impossible to know everything a person has already read, but I have too much anxiety about them not liking it. If I’m just giving a recommendation or loaning a book out, I’m not as worried if someone will like it, because, you know, then I’m not responsible for giving them their WORST GIFT EVER.

      Reply

  8. Ashley F

    That is such a cute idea!

    At Christmas every year my book club IRL does a book swap. You wrap a book, no tag and then everyone draws a number for the order in which you pick your gift. Cool thing, and where it gets crazy, is when it’s your turn to draw, you can pick an unwrapped or you can “steal” one of the one’s someone else has already unwrapped. It gets fun.

    Reply

    • Words For Worms

      We play that at my office, but with white elephant gifts. This year I got a Tim Tebow DVD. It was swell. (Actually, it was really funny, and one of the guys in the office traded with me because he wanted to give the DVD to his Tebow-hating brother as a gag gift.)

      Reply

      • Ashley F

        Bahaha that’s awesome. We just made sure that the one dude in our book club got stuck with the girliest book. And then were nice and gave him a proper dude book.

        Reply

  9. Charleen

    I have a friend who uses a jumbo-sized Lip Smackers. I don’t know if it’s jumbo sized because she likes that for using it, or just so she can find it easier in her purse.

    Reply

      • Ashley F

        A friend and I once dumped our purses out over lunch and between the two of us we had like 12 lip balms and close to 20 “hair things”, hair ties, clips, bobby pins, you name it. It was obscene.

        Reply

  10. April @ The Steadfast Reader

    This looks like it was a total blast! Bamboo fabric is AMAAAZINGGG. I have pajamas made out of that stuff – and you never get hot OR cold. That’s very cool there’s a yarn. Also I love wine toppers but yeah, leftover wine… LOL.

    When the three year old Girl sings this song, she gets up to the part “and then I don’t feel…” instead of ‘so bad’ she ALWAYS sings ‘like having things!!!!’ I don’t think that she’s mine.

    Reply

  13. Katie @ Doing Dewey

    What a fun idea! I’ve just joined a book club so I might have to steal some of your book club’s ideas when we’re looking for ways to spice things up. Our next meeting is going to be at a winery, so I’m definitely looking forward to that 🙂

    Reply

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