Ah, good times.
So, funny story, a friend of mine was selling tickets for the Lionesses annual basket raffle, and naturally we stopped to chat, buy tickets (6 for $5) and take her picture (which ended up in the paper and it was just darling, if I do say so myself). That was the only thing we spent money on all day. Minimalism in action! Although I did feel bad for some of the vendors. Turns out Easter weekend is a pretty crappy time to try to sell people your homemade items. Anyway, Eric joked about her making sure to draw our tickets, and she joked about how she definitely would, and we all laughed and said our goodbyes and that was that.
I totally forgot about it until Monday evening, when I got a phone call while trying to eat a rather late dinner of nachos (Johanna had a softball game and Abby and I ran concessions... that's kind of another post for another time, now that I think about it). There's this lady screaming in my ear, and she's apparently got me on speaker phone because there are actually a LOT of ladies screaming in my ear.
Turns out I won that basket. I mean four baskets. It was a lot of stuff. Um, $2,400 worth of prizes.
Holy shit!
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| Abby and I model two of the 15 hats donated by one local manufacturer. My big hair prevented me from keeping any of the truly cute ones. Ah, well. I'm not big into hats anyway. |
Since I hadn't entered to win (and to be truthful, hadn't entered at all--Eric bought the tickets and wrote my name down because he's silly that way), I didn't pay attention to what was being raffled off. It turned to be a lot of hats, shirts, skin care products, coffee mugs, socks, a watch, women's gloves, golf balls, kitchen towels, cute girly toys, cookbooks, jewelry and a boatload of gift certificates.
Just unpacking this made me laugh. It's just so dang much stuff. Eric was like, so much for being a minimalist, but I was like, hey, it's cool. We are going to be really popular with our friends for a while.
And you know what? We have been. Minimalism has taught me that you don't have to keep everything you receive. I've donated items to our school's annual carnival raffle and taken hats and shirts to work (one company donated 15 hats; another, at least 20 shirts. Crazy). I've given things to my mother and favorite mother-in-law. I've had friends pick out hats for themselves and their daughters.
We've made a lot of people happy. It's been fun.
Now, just so you don't think I'm mean, I did let the girls keep a few things of their choice (for Abby, that was a couple of t-shirts, a hat, and hairspray; for Johanna, art supplies and a Webkinz lion)... but you have to understand that they're minimalists, too (well, Johanna is technically a hoarder, but she doesn't require new stuff, she just really hangs on to her old stuff), so they did not require much. That made me very proud, actually.
I found a couple of treasures, too, namely shampoo and conditioner, hand cream, and a funky watch. Since the basket was geared towards women, Eric got snubbed, but he didn't seem to mind. Maybe that's because the best part of the whole ordeal was the gift certificates. We are going to have a couple of fancy date nights, as well as several family date nights, and that is amazing. We love experiences!
P.S. One certificate is to some laser skin care center. My mother pointed out that this meant I could get my upper lip hair zapped off, which sounds kind of painful and really weird. I'm totally in.
Anyway, the remainder of the items will grace future Care Package Projects, birthday parties and showers, and that's also kind of fun. You know how sometimes you hold something in your hand and it tells you the person it's really meant for? That happened.
Watch your mail, people, that's all I'm saying... :)
P.P.S. I'm 98-percent certain I only won because I didn't mean to win. I feel guilty about winning, but excited about sharing. I can't decide if that's irony or just coincidence.
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