Weekend warm

Crazy warm weather we are having for our area the past few days. Mid 40's and rainy last night and today. It needs to snow so dh has something to do (ie plow) LOL. 

What a pain trying to order flowers is. I wanted to send a Christmas flower gift to 2 friends. My work payroll company is always sending us emails with discounts with various companies offered through them, so I thought I'd check and see if I could get them cheaper that way. First I logged into one of the flower companies online. Picked what I liked. One said $48. The other was $37.50. Then I logged into work so I could get my login info with our payroll company and link to the flower store through there.

When I logged into the flower store the $48 item was showing as $45. Nice, I'll save a few bucks. But, I thought I should log in through the payroll company from MY desktop, so I can activate the Rakuten offering 15% cash back. Well, that was a hassle. I needed to open my Outlook so I could get to where I have my payroll login and password saved. Email isn't opening. Finally, I got the log in and password, so I could open the discounts page and get the link.

I log in via my home desktop and the $45 price is now showing. I put the 2 items in my cart. Then I activated the Rakuten cash back and the prices in the cart changed! They basically increased to offset the Rakuten cash back! what the heck?! 

Then I tried a different flower company. Why do these flower companies (FTD, ProFlowers, etc) websites all look exactly the same and offer the exact same photos/items? This second flower company had the same prices, but the delivery day options were better (are supposed to deliver Wed instead of Thursday) so I decided to go with this one. I got it all in my cart and then decided to try activating Rakuten's 10% cash back offer for this store and see if the prices went back up in my cart. They did not, so that was good and after an hour of all this, I finally had an order placed. Now I have to hope both get there before Christmas. I have my doubts, but my fault for waiting so long. Honestly I was kind of hoping not to have to figure out something to send them, but the one friends just sent something again this year (gift basket of snacks) and I see in my USPS informed delivery the other friend has something on the way. I'm kind of like Sheldon Cooper on the Big Bang Theory Christmas episode where he's explaining to Penny why he doesn't like exchanging gifts "Then I have to get a gift of equal or commensurate value to give them!" LOL

I got my Christmas sugar cookies made yesterday. These are a recipe my mom made every year (until several years ago) and they are so good and melt in your mouth. They are made with powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar. In my 30-ish years of making them they have never turned out perfect like hers always did. Mine always tasted good, but rarely turned out a good shape from the cookie cutter design. They always puffed way up so you couldn't tell it was a tree or a bell LOL. Finally, this year is about the best they have ever turned out for me. Who knows why.

Sometime today through Wednesday I need to give my vanilla extract gifts. They do seem to be smelling less like vodka now that I added some more vanilla beans. I think I'll deliver to my 2 neighbors this afternoon. Our friends in town, I think I'll text her to ask for best time to stop by and catch both of them home (dh wants to visit too) between now and Wednesday. The other bottle goes down to some neighbors about a mile down the road. They stopped by last year and gave us some homemade kahlua (I had just made doggy biscuits, so I gave them a bag of that), so this year I feel like we should take them something (even though I don't think we've seen or talked to them all year!) - you know....the Sheldon thing....not to mention I'm such an introvert that I have to work myself up to wanting to go see/talk to people, LOL.

Well, I'd better get in the shower and get to it.