Well, folks, it’s almost that time of year again.  I am sure I don’t need to remind you because you have it in RED on your calendar: MY BIRTHDAY IS COMING!  You have 10 shopping days left, so in case you’re stumped about what to get me, I thought I’d give you a few ideas, like I did last year.  Because that worked out pretty well for me!  So, because I’m always trying to make life easier for you, here ya go.

JENNY’s BIRFDAY LIST:

1) New styles from Lands’ End.  Oh em gee have you SEEN the new catalog? Me want!  And don’t think it doesn’t KILL me that I am too pregnant to wear much of it right now!  But as I will be un-pregnant in just a few short months, I would like these for my birthday anyway.  They are so pretty they will distract from my baby fat!   I would like this cardigan and shell from the Blissful Knits collection. I will need at least two different colors in each, pleeeeeaaase:

Also, I will need a couple of each of these fab comfy tees. Love the feminine details! Surprise me with the colors, I trust you! Just make sure you get a size medium in everything!

2) Speaking of clothes…one of my FAVORITE retailers, Shade Clothing, is going out of business.  I can hardly imagine why as Bobby claims that SURELY I must have bought enough to keep them in business…but they are.  So that is the bad news.  The good news is that they are liquidating EVERYTHING so you can get some really great prices on stuff for ME!!!!!!!!!  I would like one of everything they still have available, in a medium please.    Especially this Embroidered Cami and V-Neck boyfriend tee.  Multiple colors in the tee would be SUPER!

Ok, so, moving on from clothes (bottoms are JUST gonna have to wait til I lose all the baby fat!)…

3) I need a nice pair of everyday earrings.  My suggestion are these Effortless earrings from Lia Sophia.   They are only $22, they are perfect for what I need, and they are sold by Melissa Ballweg who has supported our last two Dayton Mom’s Night out parties.  Really, you cannot go wrong!

4) Maternity Clothes. Seriously I have no shirts.  And the world does not want to see me pregnant and t*pless.  So do the world a favor and give the birthday girl a gift certificate to Old Navy, Motherhood, Gap, or somewhere else I can get something to put over this bump!  Sadly, I already bought out the *two* maternity shirts that Shade has left in my size. They are hopefully on their way to me as I write this!  If you really want to get me a *specific* item, go for this tee from Old Navy (ahem, it comes in two colors, *cough*Medium*cough*):

5) Finally, let’s talk shoes.  I mean my butt may be larger for awhile in 2010 but my feet I expect to retain their size 7.5 as they did in previous lives.  And mama wants these Exitosa black boots from You by Crocs for the winter.  My old black boots died a sad death when the heel broke off at BlissDom last year. SO it seems only fitting to move on to wedges, yes?

So, how do you like my birthday choices? I’m pretty much in love with all of them…I need pretty things to cover the grief I feel at getting to be such a GEEZER!

P.S. This is not a sponsored post. Oh, how I wish it were.  It is however, part of Things I love Thursday at the Diaper Diaries! Go check it out!

Once upon a time, a dad bought his 17-year-old daughter a car.  More specifically, my dad bought me a 1987 Toyota Camry station wagon. At the time it was only 8 years old, but had been kind of abused by it’s previous owner so it was in rough shape.  My dad nursed it back to health, and I named it Desmond.  Oh, how I loved him!

Desmond. Oh how I miss him!

He wasn’t the coolest looking car in the school parking lot, but he and I were total buddies. He got me through the rest of high school, all of college, and the early years of my marriage.  Many, many memories were made in Desmond.  Like when I was a freshman at Asbury College and wasn’t really supposed to have a car on campus and did and my friends talked me into sneaking out to town to Fazoli’s so we could all get 99 cent salads and all the breadsticks we could eat and avoid the college cafeteria for once!  Or when Bobby and I and my friend Lori drove him to the Cornerstone music festival SO packed full of a camping gear you had to use both feet on the brakes to stop him! Oh, those were the days!  When Desmond finally breathed his last in 2003, he had about 304,000 miles on him.  Bobby and I were actually pretty emotional about “putting him out to pasture” so to speak.

So we bought this:

Our current Camry wagon, a 1992 (fully-loaded with SUNROOF thankyouverymuch! AND power windows, ahem, Emily)  that even has the third pop-up seat in the back.  That’s right, it seats SEVEN baby, SEVEN!  It’s great for trips and for hauling Bobby’s sailboats in the summer.  It’s really Bobby’s car so it doesn’t have a name (only chicks name their cars, right?) but we love this car to pieces.  It has been SO dependable and gets us and all the crap we can pack in it everywhere we need to go.  And? It’s got 257,650 miles on it!  It’s finally to the point where it’s needed some major repairs, but that’s where having a mechanic for a husband comes in handy.  We bought it for a very small sum back in 2003 and it has paid for itself many times over!

So, you heard Em’s Toyota story, and now you’ve heard mine – if you didn’t already share yours with us (or if any of my friends have any particular stories you want to share about MY Desmond!) please share today!

I LOVE my Toyotas!  To see what other bloggers love, check out Things I Love Thursday at the Diaper Diaries.

*******

This post was written as part of the “Every Toyota has a Story” campaign. To share your story, visit Toyota’s Facebook page – although there is no way your story is going to be as good as mine.