Christmas Gift Love

To our families, we made the call and you definitely answered. We asked for tools to take this house, and blog, to the next level. We were delightfully surprised when these were our Christmas presents.

My mom parents answered with so gorgeous decor that we did not expect. My mom being the deal hunter she is, said she found this pair of lamps at her local Goodwill for a steal. On her way to check out, she saw they also were selling brand new lamp shades in a different section. Double score for Mama Shelly!

She also got us this great neutral striped throw blanket from Lands' End (no longer available online, check stores). I love it because no matter how many pillow changes might happen in this living room, this blanket will always match. We received it in khaki and not navy so there is a slight difference from the photo.

Moving on to Max's parents, we received some things to really help with whatever projects we want to handle. As you remember from his birthday, he received some pretty sweet power tools to help us. For Christmas they really helped us out. Max received a new Wet/Dry ShopVac. We have had Mark and Ellen's on extensive loan for the last four months. I'm pretty sure they just wanted their's back.

For myself, they were more than generous. I have been going crazy pinning sewing projects on Pinterest with  two problems. No sewing skills and no sewing machine. They fixed both of those! They gave me a new Singer 3116 Simple sewing machine. Included is a learn how to sew DVD. With 18 different stitch types, I'm sure I will be crafting up a storm very soon.

Last, but certainly not least, I got Max a new GreenWorks Leaf Blower/Vacuum with a mulching attachment. After hours of unsuccessfully racking and missing the last of city's lawn clipping collection date because our trees did not fully shed in time, we were done. When I found this leaf blower though, I knew we had found a winner.

After blowing all the leaves into a pile, instead of racking and bagging them, we can use the vacuum attachment and suck the pile up while mulching the leaves into a smaller bunch. We can either turn 10 bags of large leaves into one or throw them in our compost bin and turn them into mulch. It also is runs on electricity making it completely green and surprisingly light since there are no batteries or gas to haul around. Here is the proof.

Max's first impression of his new leaf blower, "This thing is fricken amazing!" He approves. Funny part about this video, this is January in Wisconsin. It should look like this:

We really can't thank our families enough. They really make this all happen. Hope you all got some tools to make your projects go that much better.

Snow photo from here.