misosouper, a shopping blog, featuring fashion, design, and gadgets

I love Ez; she adores beautiful stuff, she makes beautiful stuff, and she offers it up to us on a daily basis.  Plus, she turned thirty a couple of weeks before I will, so that makes her my (ever so slightly) older, wiser birthday buddy.

Like me, Ez loves the free; her lovely downloadable paperie is full of objects like labels, library cards, and notebooks, including this sentimental bird card that I’m sending straight to my mama.

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Dear Me,

For some reason, you’ve decided that this was the year to host Christmas Eve dinner for 16.  Forget buying gifts; you already worked on that all last week (as evidence, see your holiday gift guide).  What you really need to turn your attention toward is making sure that you a) have enough dishes; b)have enough chairs; and c)have enough Xanax to get through Christmas Eve.

So pull out your great grandmother’s gorgeous old thistle-pattern china (if not now, then when?), and stop freaking out about the fact that the dinner plates have long been broken.  Just mingle your antique stuff in with this delicate, modern pattern, and revel in the mix.  The evening will be beautiful, and most importantly, it will be fun.

You’ve been training for this moment for a long time; isn’t that why you read Domino?

Love,

Me

Am I insinuating that the gifts you usually give aren’t meaningful?  (Maybe I am.  I can be like that sometimes.)   Regardless of how much of a jerk I am, these should go out to the ones you love.

Tiny and delicate can also be a grand gesture.

A container for just one thing.  Your love? Your dignity? I’ll let you decide.

You heard the man. Be somebody, all day long.

While Virginia Woolf insists on a room of one’s own, I’d just settle for my very own comfy chair.

Putting your jewelry in this dish will probably scare the robbers away.

I’m not sure what the metaphor is either, but I think I like it.

Perfect for your new assistant. When he finds a better job, ask for it back and give it to your next one.

Felt is so much sexier than leather. What would you rather rub up against in the subway?

Give this to your mother-in-law.  Then smile like you mean it.

For the more cynical among us. (Hey, I say meaningful, not joyful.)

These honesty stamps allow you to apologize or inflame, all without opening your mouth. Isn’t that what got you in trouble in the first place?

A much better teacher gift than caramel corn or an ornament.

A little handmade book of garden birds for your favorite green thumb.

An elegant home for the most modern of necessities.

Puts those Cartier love bracelets to shame.

There’s someone like this in your life, even if it’s your therapist. A route we do not recommend.

Ridiculously romantic: artist Jessica Marie Lertvilai collected love letters and transcribed them in Braille onto the surface of this vase, appropriately entitled “love is blind.”

Is there a more affectionate term of endearment?

These metal flowers come gift-ready in a long white box. Bonus: they’ll never, ever die.

Acrylic is the new gold. Custom made, so get your order in now.

After all these years, there are still some questions left unasked.

And after all these years, they still deserve some secrets.

Send in your doodle, and they’ll stuff it for you.

An anatomically correct silver heart locket. Go Victorian and enclose a lock of hair.

This therapeutic warming mattress cover, with its six separate temperature zones, could save your relationship.

Remember when you used to go to concerts? (Both a question and a statement.)

Limited edition, just like your kid.

Yes, you could just write out twelve ways you made a difference in a plain journal; but if it were that easy, wouldn’t you already have done it?

Make a wish.  Make it count.

The best gifts to please screeching, barking, tired households like mine, short of free babysitting and maid service.

Sweet felt frames for all the birds in your flock.

Because as long as you’re bribing the kids with hot chocolate, you might as well take that Carnation instant cocoa to the next level.

A trick from my beloved grandmother, who hails from the pre-germ era:  kids love counting and rolling coins.   These colorful metallic trays are also perfect for making change when they play store.

Put your foot down once and for all.

Be the goose that lays this golden egg in their backyard.

The only foreseeable issue with these Lego-handled utensils is that the kids will insist on eating with them stacked in an awkward fork-spoon-knife combination. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Made from densely packed magazines, this bulletin board (no push pins necessary!) is the sharpest I’ve ever seen.

The ultimate rainy day entertainment: a 500 piece “impossible” puzzle based on an abstract illustration by Alex Beard.

These cards make traveling sew much fun.

Why freeze ice when you can freeze the cup instead?

This gigantic digital photo frame (15″!) makes that newborn baby almost lifesized.

While they’re not quite Anarchy in the UK, these punky monkeys are so much cuter than letting them stick a safety pin through their ear.

Bedtime battles be gone:  turn on this constellation maker and snuggle under the Milky Way tonight.

Memorialize the whole family on a stick-figure pillow that Mom and Dad will keep on their bed forever.

Yes, these are bugs encased in Lucite.  Is that creepy?

Feed their Bob Ross addiction with a paint-by-numbers set.  Just make sure it doesn’t end up in the garage sale by “accident.”

Use these spy sunglasses to confirm your long-standing conviction that they are indeed following you.  Even if “they” just happen to be, um, your parents.

Because after all this fun, mom and dad are tired.  Guaranteed.

When Mr. Misosouper and I married seven years ago, we didn’t register for any “fine” china; I zapped a set of Fiestaware with my gun, and figured that someday, when we had a dining room (at that point, we didn’t even own a kitchen table) and a fully-funded 401k, we’d buy something we really loved, price be damned. (Sidenote: I understand that some wedding guests like to purchase expensive gifts. But asking Cousin Tillie for a $278 pie server? Really?)

That day of reckoning, the day of dedicated dining areas and vested retirement plans, has arrived. I want this set of gloriously bird-flecked china, deep down in my soul. Is it too late to register? Never mind. I suppose we’re on our own for that $1450 gilded teapot.