The Empress Creates her Goodwill Insta-Jolly Kit for $11.13

The Empress feels your holiday pain. Mostly though, she only feels her own pain, and driving home from the orthodontist today (the Empress left middle school forty years ago but kept the pre-teen level vanity), she was overwhelmed by the excess of holiday gewgaws and Jingle Bell Rock (bring back Wham!). Luckily, her Ouija car pulled a few blocks to the San Mateo Goodwill Store. Since the Empress has purchased a number of gifts at the San Francisco Goodwill eBay Store (just click on link!), she needed wrapping stuff, and a whole lotta of holiday spirit. She got both.

The Empress decided she needed a Jolliness Kit to make this season more fun. So since she doesn't have the Five Thousand Dollar Martha Stewart gift wrap and craft center (yikes!), she needed to create her own jolly space for Eleven Dollars and Thirteen Cents. Recipe follows:

1. Go to your local Goodwill store.

2. Buy a festive vintage sweater ($5.49) to wear or use as a bed for Gidget.

3. Get Gidget off the sweater and put it on.

4. Put together your emergency provisions: International Coffee for the Sophisticate in You, your favorite mug (from my Aunt Pearl - bless you), home-made sweets from my duchesses Gillian and Melissa, best book ever, and vintage ornaments from Goodwill last year.

 

5. Add wrapping paper ($3.96) and sparkly snowflake ornaments ($1.99) from Goodwill,
and beckon your royal assistant:

6. Look at this wrapping paper!! It's Ralphie! Do a one-leg lamp dance!

I can't put my arms down!

It's amazing! 

Go get a Red Ryder BB Gun with a compass in the stock,

and "this thing which tells time"

 7. No, don't look, you'll shoot your eye out!

8. Get out the gifts in the Empress' Gift Fortress (she trusts no one):

9. Then let Elvis get in the act, he's camera shy but loves his gift wrap.

10. DO try this at home. You'll be more jolly (okay, I added brandy to my Swiss Mocha), and you'll be providing training and jobs to people in the Bay Area, which increases the jolliness factor of the season ten-fold.

Grab a mug, hug your dogs, hum a Wham song,  and know that Goodwill is out there wishing Good Will to All!