Elastic & Plastic

Oh, man! This 80s era plastic stretchy bracelet would have been such a great X-mas gift for your tweenage niece. You know, the one who likes to wear skinny pants, brag about how much her new industrial piercing hurt, and sext with High School boys on her brand new iDroidberry. It's too bad I didn't post this last week. You're so bummed.

Since this bracelet also looks like sleek, colorful, ambulatory slugs following each other around and around for all eternity, it would also be a great gift for that special someone you happen to believe you'll be spending the rest of your life with at this particular moment, provided that person likes colorful plastic jewelry, has a relatively dainty wrist, and no arm hair. I think this thing would really elicit some "ouches" on some hairy arm skin.

$5

Part of Your World

This bottle looks like a mermaid apartment building! In my dreams I can breathe underwater if I relax myself and concentrate on taking slow, deep breaths. It's similar to learning to breathe while snorkeling. My point is, if I were dreaming, I would love to live in this mermaid apartment building bottle under the sea, but in real life, I couldn't. I would drown.

$10

Here's the Dish

I'll admit, I don't completely get this. I think I understand it on a surface level, but I feel like there has to be something deeper I'm missing. I'm not sure sure I recognize the significance of the various symbols integrated into this supersymbol of... I'm not sure! A lot of these symbols are not pointing the right way, but is that imperfect, or am I supposed to turn the dish? Ugh. I am so not perfect.

$5

Ash Stray

Ashtray the Wheezing Dog just made your nasty habit even nastier. Happy Friday to everyone, including smokers... I guess.

$20

Hot, Hot Sunflower

It's the day after Thanksgiving, loved ones. You're probably making a crazy-delicious leftovers casserole. I'm thinking a layer of turkey bits mixed with gravy and green beans, then some stuffing (although there's something very wrong with you if you have leftover stuffing), then mashed potatoes. Bake that mess and serve it with cranberry sauce and leftover rolls to soak up the Thanksjuices, and you're doing great.

You'll need this item to protect your table from the searing hot underside of your trusty 9x13. I know I should have mentioned this last week or something, but I didn't. Deal with it. Deal with it and buy this for next year. It's called planning ahead, lame-o.

$8

A Bucket for Phuket, Or Wherever

I'm not the world's most intrepid world traveler, but I like to think that I've traversed a fair amount of the planet's surface, not counting watery surfaces. Then I took some dumb facebook quiz that said I had only traveled 6% of the world, and it kind of hurt my feelings. I don't know why, because I'm a homebody who doesn't understand wanderlust and missed tuna salad sandwiches like crazy when she stayed in Guatemala for a summer. I mean, I like my tuna salad. I like it with Doritos in the sandwich. Not only is tuna salad not a dish easily found in Guatemala (I didn't find it), but they don't even have Nacho Cheese Doritos. They have "Queso Atrevido", which means "sassy/daring cheese" and does not taste like my North American uranium-orange chips of choice. I like being home, where I can eat my delicious tuna-chip sandwiches and I have access to all my fashion accessories.

If you are the opposite of me, this is the ice bucket for you. Travel-icious!

$10

Honey Lair

Today is my baby's first birthday. This is no laughing matter. Before I know it, he'll be off at college getting every girl he sees pregnant. But, he will always be my honey, and now that he is one whole year old(!!!), he can eat honey. I love him so. Here he is appreciating a vintage Alvar Aalto table:

Honey Pot - Sold.

The baby is not for sale.

Social Ladder

One day, when I was in Middle School, I decided I wanted to be in the popular group. I wasn't dissatisfied with the friends I had, I just... I was 13. I wanted to be friends with those other girls who someone, at some point, had decided comprised THE popular group, even though my class was so small that there were only two distinguishable groups of girls.

Still, I wanted to make the jump from just OK to like totally popular. I devised a plan. Pay careful attention, because it worked, and it could work for you, and being popular is of the utmost importance.

I thought to my hormonally besieged self, how can I infiltrate this group? I can't just walk up to them at lunch and ask if I can sit with them and eat my turkey sammich while we take turns reading aloud the sexy parts of Forever by Judy Blume. Oh, no I could not. I remembered reading a story as a child about a young warrior challenged to slay a big, scary dragon. The dragon had imposing scales like iron skillets that were impenetrable by any weapon. The young warrior ran underneath the dragon and noticed that a scale was missing, and he shot the dragon with an arrow right there, and the dragon DIED! And that's why we don't have dragons anymore, which is sad but less dangerous. Anyway, I had to find a weak spot in the forcefield of the popular clique. I decided that the weak link was, drumroll, the least popular popular girl. That's correct. She got the least attention of any of those girls. She was just an add-on. Soooooo, I paid her some attention. I befriended her. I was IN. My plan worked.

And then I lived happily ever after and found this collar-type necklace at an estate sale. It looks like a ladder, and it will definitely make you look popular.

$15

Grouch Pooch

Hey, it's Monday, but at least you don't have twins to care for.

Everyone here looks pretty dour.

The pups are chained up. The mom is chained down.

Everyone is wearing a frown.

Someone took the time. Someone made this dog scene.

Affixed some chains. Glazed it green.

Do you need a tsotchke made decades ago?

For the price, please see below.

$8

Open Your Owls

I already used up my amazing owl-pellet-romance-frustration story on another post. What am I going to do? I had such a hoot doing the other one. This strigine object will open bottles for you in style, but only at night.

Having a Fit

I do all the grocery shopping for my household, and I consider myself to be excellent at it. Sometimes though, grocery shopping is tough, especially at the larger supermarkets, and especially if I'm buying something I don't usually buy. Por ejemplo!!! The other day I was looking for canned mandarin oranges. There are wayyyy too many different kinds of canned mandarin oranges. I was comparing price and size, and then there were all the different kinds of liquids they have the oranges floating around in. It was mind-boggling. I just killed someone and left. Don't even get me started on peanut butter.

That's how this candle thingy is. It's modular, so you can have it as two separate candle holders that are upside down or right side up, but what side is down and which is up? ACK! Or, you can fit them together in a trillion billion different ways. And now it's 3am and your teeth hurt. This is just terrible. I need a bath now.

$40

Hot and Cold

It's Fall, so it's getting a little chilly. But, what if you couldn't feel temperature? What if you were born without the ability to distinguish between ice and water? Between a popsicle and cheese sauce? Between sheet metal and your own face? That would be terrible. You would need this thermometer to tell you that it was Fall. Otherwise, you wouldn't know it was Fall... wait for it... at all!

$8

A Happy Lamper

Halloween is next weekend! Spend it with this vaguely spooky lamp, featuring a black shade and violet glass cutouts. Because seriously, otherwise you'd have to hang out with me, and that would be sad and boring, because I didn't buy any candy this year and would have none to give you. With this lamp, at least you could stay home and eat candy by its lovely light.

$60

Wide-Mouthed Wonder

Raise your hand if you like sandwiches! OK, imagine the following situations without a sandwich involved, and you will feel sad:

1) You are with your family and you are on a picnic. The sun is warm. You're doing some amateur bird watching, which your teenage children find fascinating. "Tell me more!" says Trayden. "Can I use your field manual to identify the next one?" says Maddossynne. Your wife is hot. But, you have NO sandwiches. Also, your kids have horrible names.

2) Sitting in front of you are a perspiring can of soda, a bag of your favorite chips, a bunch of cold red grapes (crunchy, not squishy), and... NO sandwich.

3) You really want a sandwich. You can practically feel your lunch meat of choice moving in a chewed mass over your tongue and sliding down your throat, leaving behind only the tang of mustard and pepperoncinis, but you have... say it with me... no sandwich. Not a one.

$2

Year Around

This is the best coke tray I've ever found. It's in excellent condition. It has a really chipper looking young lady on it. The best part is that around the edges are all sorts of fun seasonal things. We begin at the top left with rodeo, moving down around the tray through football, Halloween, and on to skiing, all the way around to wedding cakes and beach scenes. To top it off, the tray invites you to "Have a Coke", politely but firmly informing you that "Thirst knows no season."

This tray is so perfect, it's making me feel pretty bad about myself.

$20

Choked Up

The face here will distract from your own. You're welcome. Jolly, jolly Friday.

$15

Cock a Doodle Doo

What could possibly be better than two people who love each other? Two blue roosters that love each other and are featured on this lovely enameled metal napkin holder. Now if only they could legally get hitched, this whole situation would be near perfect. Imagine it: You have a great place to put your napkins, your guests are impressed, and love knows no bounds.

Also, if you're a Saints fan, you can be Fleur de Lys-ing it up and removing the filth from your hands and face at the same time! WHO DAT?!

Chain Gang

I used to use a wallet like the one pictured above when I was in High School. It was part of my extremely self conscious and over-thought "look". I was a little punkish and enjoyed the chain dangling at my side all day. I was really not cool, and I'm still not, but I know better than to wear all kinds of chains and try to look tough when I'm not, at least not in that way, and especially now since I'm a Jewish Mother.

What if the look you aspired to in High School, the one you decided was definitely, withoutadoubt yours, was the look you had to keep forever? Most of us would be screwed. I'd be imprisoned inside pigtails, deep shades of velvet, handfuls of rings, and carelessly selected thrift store horrors, not to mention gobs of burgundy glitter lipstick and streaks of black Wet n' Wild eye pencil all over me at all times. The Sharpie designs on my clothing and skin. The colorful plastic baby barrettes. The... GASP... exposed midriff.

Yup. I'd be screwed.

$10

Easy Cheesy

I'm not a fan of mice. They ruin my dry goods, they smell bad when they die, and they aren't as cute as owls. Owls are precious. That said, I would still be polite during Chucky Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre. Yes, even though mice are not my thing, I would not heckle, yawn, sigh, spit, cough, tinker, fidget, twiddle anything, whisper to my theatre companion during dramatic monologues, or even hurl old greasy slices of pizza at his obnoxious little whiskered face, because that's just what I do. I'm a very decent person.

This is an insulated backpack for carrying hot pizza. That's what she said.

$5

It's the Tit

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I give you: Boobs of the World Pillow!

All proceeds from the sale of this pillow and anything else sold in October will go to breast cancer research.

$10