rings711

Looking for a unique last-minute gift? In search of a gift that keeps on giving long after the Return to Tiffany Heart tag choker fire consumes the bows and wrapping paper?

How about ballroom dancing lessons? The Division of Continuing Education at Southern Illinois University Carbondale suggests dance lessons could be a most memorable gift for the 2009 holidays.

There are actually two sessions for each of two different experience levels. The first session runs Jan. 19 to March 2, 2010, while the second session is March 16-April 27, 2010.

During each session, the Tiffany Notes Pendant Ballroom Dancing Class, which meets from 7:30 to 9 p.m., offers a quick introduction to the basic steps of various dances including the waltz, tango, foxtrot, rumba, cha cha and swing. Participants will learn lead-follow and proper dance technique. It's also a great refresher course for those who haven't danced in a while.

The "Beyond Beginner Ballroom Dancing" class meets 6-7:30 p.m. during each session. Instructors Jeremiah Linson and Crystal Hodges of Paducah, Ky., will provide advanced technique instruction in the various forms of dance during this class.

All classes meet in Ballroom A at the Student Center. Couples or Tiffany 1837 Ring are welcome.

Running out of time and gift ideas? If you are like many other stressed shoppers, you Elsa Peretti Open Heart earrings decide that a gift card from a favorite store is the perfect solution to the holiday gift-giving challenge. No colors to choose, no sizes to remember, no allergies to take into account and the recipient gets to select the ideal gift. Although gift cards are easy to buy, easy to use and can accommodate almost any budget and gift preference, the Office of Consumer Affairs (OCA) in the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) recommends getting the facts before making the purchase.

"We realize that consumers like the Tiffany Key Oval key pendant and flexibility of general purpose gift cards, but we want to make sure they are aware of their terms and conditions," said VDACS Commissioner Todd Haymore.

In Virginia, each gift certificate issued by a merchant in the Commonwealth that has an expiration date must include a statement of the expiration date of the certificate or display a telephone number or Internet address where the holder of the certificate may obtain information regarding the expiration date. Also, if the gift certificate diminishes in value over time, the gift certificate must include a telephone number or Internet address where the holder of the certificate may obtain information regarding the diminution in the value of the certificate. This information Return to Tiffany Oval tag ring be clearly and permanently imprinted on the certificate.

This American classic (the recipe is from Jerry Thomas's 1862 How to Mix Drinks, the Paloma Picasso Loving Heart bracelet first bartender's guide), pictured, is a foil for the fruity swill that so often passes for holiday punch. Dry, rich, and both smoky and lemony, it leverages the healing power of whiskey to create something that's masculine enough for your uncle but not so intense that your coworkers won't lap it up.

PROCEDURE: Forty-eight hours before your party, put a gallon bowl full of water in the freezer. The day of, use a swivel-bladed vegetable peeler to peel a dozen lemons, trying to get as little of the white pith as possible. Put the peels in a 2- to 3-gallon pot (one with a cover) and muddle them with 1 cup sugar. Let sit for half an hour, muddle again, and add 2 bottles smoky single-malt Scotch (Bowmore Legend is good and affordable, but Laphroaig will work well, too) and 2 bottles straight rye whiskey. (The Sazerac rye is particularly fine here.) Stir and then add 1 gallon boiling water. Stir again until sugar has dissolved. Cover and let cool. To serve, unmold your bowl of ice (you may have to run hot water over the bottom of the bowl) and put it in a punch bowl. Pour the punch over the ice, add 4 thinly sliced, deseeded lemons, and grate half a nutmeg over the top. Serves 48.

FOR A THRONG SHERRY Return to Tiffany Double Heart Pendant

Since eggnog isn't for serious drinking anyway, we suggest a low-alcohol version that concentrates on deliciousness and lets you supplement with shots of the Famous Grouse at will.

PROCEDURE: Separate a dozen eggs into yolks and whites. Beat the yolks together with 6 oz sugar and half a nutmeg, grated, until smooth and creamy. Stir in a pint of rich oloroso sherry, such as the excellent Lustau Don Nuño. Then beat the egg whites separately in a plastic or ceramic bowl until they form soft peaks. Fold these into the yolk-and-sherry mixture and stir in 1/2 gallon whole milk. Keep refrigerated. Serves 24.

FOR AN ASSEMBLAGE SEEHUND

We dug this one out of a 1900 book titled Bowls and Punches for the Cupcake charm and chain of the German Army in the Field and on Maneuvers. It makes typically Teutonic use of pyrotechnics in its construction. Fun.

Holiday shopping is a challenge. Stores are crowded; people are stressed and rude...Paloma Picasso Loving Heart ring exactly the spirit of the season. Save yourself the hassle (and money) and make these gifts at home. Your friends will love them way more than anything with a price tag.

Chocolate Chip and Dried Cherry Cookie Mix in a Jar

Perfect for the baking-challenged friend. Print the instructions on a card, and attach.

2¼ cups all-purpose flour

¾ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 cup coarsely chopped dried cherries

2/3 cup brown sugar

8 ounces chocolate chips

In a bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Tiffany 1837 Hoop earrings add the granulated sugar, cherries, flour mixture, brown sugar, and chocolate chips to a jar in layers. Seal the jar, and tie with a ribbon.

Attach this recipe to the jar:

To make cookies: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Using an electric mixer, beat 1 stick of room-temperature butter until creamy. Add 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in cookie mix. Drop by the tablespoonful onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until golden. Cool. Makes 36 cookies.

Raspberry and Lemon Vodka

Toast to friendship!

1 pint raspberries

1 lemon peel (no pith)

1 (750 milliliters) bottle good-quality vodka

Place raspberries and lemon peel in the bottom of an airtight Tiffany 1837 Hoop Earrings. Add vodka. Seal, and let sit at room temperature for a minimum of two weeks.

In this, her first monograph. Emma Campbell observes that Old French hagiography is a Bead bracelet medium for examining how relationships function. She endeavors to show how saints' lives depict social and sexual relations in order to see how these texts represent a move beyond human systems, connecting human and divine, and strengthening communities of belief. In these texts, saints articulate a point of contact between the human and heavenly. The subject of the text, the saint-to-be. stands at the threshold between the earthly and celestial and is transformed and becomes holy. providing a connection between the authence of the saint's life and God.

Campbell reads a variety of saints' lives to analyze how this transformation occurs and argues that it is affected by way of the saint's participation in and renunciation of social relationships. Campbell explicitly chooses a theoretical rather than a historicist approach, using a variety of theories to lay bare these relationships and examine how they are transformed. These include anthropological theories of the gift, kinship, and community in addition to queer theory. The book's first half is dedicated to this analysis of the saints' negotiation of human and divine relationships. In the second half, Campbell focuses on the reception of the lives, examining how larger religious communities are built and strengthened by their relationship to the text. In the final two chapters, Campbell looks at how the saints' lives collected in two manuscripts might relate to one another, this time imagining a more specific authence: the possessors of the actual Tiffany Notes ring.

The first section of the book, "The Gift," relies on anthropologist Marcel Mauss's work on the economy of the gift and argues that saints often demonstrate their withdrawal from human society and their commitment to God by refusing gifts given in a social context. This idea is already familiar to readers of the Vie de Saint Alexis. Campbell's first example text where Alexis rejects the earthly father and the attendant social relationships, goods, and honors in favor of the heavenly Father and attendant spiritual gifts. Campbell explains that Alexis not only refuses human exchange but also engages in spiritual exchange instead: his self-denial and gifts to others act as gifts to God. Campbell shows that Guillaume de Berneville's Vie de Saint Gilles similarly demonstrates the "renunciative gift," as Gilles, too, abandons his inheritance, lands, and social role. Instead of distributing his wealth as a lord in an earthly social and economic system, he relies on God's generosity for his survival. Again, the refused human gift performs as a gift to God, affirming a spiritual relationship that imitates and replaces the social relations abandoned by the saint. The ensuing analysis of the Vie de Saint Jean l'Aumônier shows that the system that enables one to interact with God requires not only "remissive gifts," but ultimately the reassessment of how one perceives materiality itself. The believer must learn to see the material world in spiritual terms and recognize that the gift was never Elsa Peretti Open Heart ring saint's in the first place, but rather a gift of God. By returning what was never his, the saint acknowledges divine sovereignty. The second half of the chapter applies this approach to lives in which saints face literal rather than figurai martyrdom, including Saints Lawrence, Alban, Foy, Andrew, and Georges. Here the saints' self-sacrifice performs as the remissive gift. In chapter 2. the second half of "The Gift" section, Campbell looks at the role that the saint's gender plays in the economy of the gift, pointing out that although all possessions are gifts of God, in order to give them up. the saint has to first be seen as possessing them in the human sense. As female saints have limited claims to social position and possessions to renounce, they often function more as objects than subjects of exchange, specifically as marriage objects. Refusing this social role often takes the form of virginity. Gender and sexuality are thus inextricably bound.

Toy catalogs offered something for every budget. There were the pricey: FAO Tiffany 1837 ring and Hammacher Schlemmer ("If you have no account with us, and desire goods to be charged, please give references.") There were the moderate, from department stores such as Omaha giant Brandeis ("watch their faces beam, when they find some of these under the tree - prices start at $1.50"). There were also the downright inexpensive. Fuller Brush offered Woodcut Rope Soap ("just like Dad's, but just Junior's size") at 99 cents, and "Miniature Character Dolls" from Sun Ray Drugs, ("8 inches high, with moveable eyes, head, and arms, and wavy, lifelike hair"), were even less - just 98 cents per dolly.

Even more economical - in fact absolutely free once you'd compiled enough books - were toys offered as saving stamp premiums. Among the 1956 holiday bargains available from Gold Tiffany 1837 concave ring: a "Pee Wee Reese Baseball Glove," just 2 books, and a "Murray Champion Auto Pedal Car" with "new 1956 body styling and fabric seat, just like the big cars" - a steal at 5 books.

Of course, gifts from the heart were always appreciated too, (if perhaps not as much as a pedal car, or a pair of Mouseketeer ears). During the Depression years of the 1930s, children found joy in presents lovingly handcrafted by Mom or Dad - a carefully sewn rag doll, for instance, or a miniature carved pinewood racing car. That can-do spirit extended well into the 1950s and '60s, as annual "special gift idea editions" of such publications as Better Homes & Gardens offered plenty of suggestions for Tiffany 1837 Money clip holiday gifts to augment, if not supplant, the wonders on view in commercial catalogs. Not into cotton, cardboard, or papiermache? As Mother may have gently - or perhaps not so gently - reminded you from time to time, "it's the thought that counts."

After World War ?, and particularly with the advent of television in the early Return to Tiffany Oval tag bracelet, toys with Hollywood tieins became particularly popular. A marionette was nice, but a "Howdy Doody" marionette (particularly one with "Unitrol one hand control to simplify operation") was even better. There were holster sets, and then there was the "Lone Ranger Genuine Leather Holster Set" (complete with "cutouts, jewels, gold rivets, and official 'Lone Ranger' insignia.") You could dress up as a plain old cowboy or a cowgirl, or you could dress up as an "Official Wyatt Earp" or "Official Annie Oakley." The choice was yours (and it wasn't a difficult one.)

Then, as now, the Walt Disney organization was particularly adept at this sort of cross-promotion. The mid-'50s TV popularity surge of the Mickey Mouse Club led to the Mickey Mouse Club Magazine, which led to in-print tie-ins for such holiday must-haves as "Official Mickey Mouse Shoes" ("just like the Mouseketeers wear on the Friday Talent Roundup!"), "Official Mouseketeer Hats" ("made of black felt with permanently attached molded plastic ears. Bow easily removed for boys"), "Official Mouseketeer Shirtees" ("some Mouseketeers have been getting them by the dozens"), and even "Official Mouseketeer Roller Skates" ("I sure hope I get Elsa Peretti Open Heart ring for Christmas!")

when Santa Claus Gcets Aour Letter

For those - mainly parents - who felt that every toy on a Christmas wish list should serve a purpose, (besides keeping the kids entertained, that is), the "Toy Guidance Council, Inc." had the answer. These toy manufacturer compilations were provided to local dealers, for their own cover imprint. Toys in each year's Toy Guidance Council Catalog looked the same - in fact, they were the same - as toys in any other catalog, but now their reason for being came with added justification. Operating under the mantra "There's a Right Time for the Right Toy," the Tby Guidance Council Catalogs offered an age-based "Will Contribute To Development" chart for all toys listed.

A boy of 4-6, receiving Wyandotte's "Heavy Duty Rider Fire Truck" could look forward to developing "Mentally, Socially, and Physically." Girls between the ages of 6 and 8, gifted with Transogram's "Little Play Nurse Kit," would find it contributed to their development "Mentally, Socially, and Return to Tiffany Heart tag bracelet." Both boys and girls in the 8-10 age range would be firing on all four cylinders with the "Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab ("see Paths of Alpha particles speeding at 10,000 miles per second!") Immeasurable, of course: the quota of fun provided by each and every toy in the Guidance Council Catalogs.

Prized by today's collectors for their festive colors, imaginative layouts, and eye-Return to Tiffany Heart tag necklace graphics, vintage Billy and Ruth Catalogs are among the priciest toy catalog collectibles - from $50-75 in hard-to-find mint condition - but are well worth the investment. Each catalog captures the essence of a specific era, with vivid images of what young folk then found appealing, as seen through the eyes of their designated representatives: perennial kiddies, Billy and Ruth.

For Billy, one of the hottest items in the 1953 catalog was Emenee's plastic, silver-finish saxophone. Noted the catalog copy, "Billy's really hep when he's playing on this." Ruth, meanwhile, "spends hours beautifying her new Harriet Hubbard Ayers doll - learning Return to Tiffany magic of make-up with a beauty table and an 8-piece harmless cosmetic kit." Both tykes teamed up for great fun with Remco's "Two-Way Electronic WalkieTaIkIe": "every morning you can hear them ringing up each other, and then you know they have a chance for secret messages all their own."

For would-be Billys and Ruths across the nation, with plenty of their own secret messages to share, what was good enough for "America's Famous Toy Children," was good enough for them. The arrival of each year's Billy and Ruth Catalog, ("available only from your local Billy and Ruth dealer"), was an event worth celebrating. As an added bonus, Billy and Ruth, just like Elsa Peretti Open Heart pendant, never seemed to age. Their illustrations in the 1953 catalog are eerily similar to those in Billy & Ruth Catalogs dating from some twenty years prior.

Initial depictions of Santa offer us a thin man with a long, scraggly white beard, clad in what Paloma Picasso Double Loving Heart ring to be a hooded, floor-length red bathrobe. Even Clement Clarke Moore's memorable 1822 poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," which cemented in the popular consciousness such images as "stockings hung by the chimney with care," "eight tiny reindeer" (plus their names), and unannounced entrances via chimney, referred to Santa as a "right jolly old elf." Early illustrations accompanying Moore's poem accented Santa's gnomish, elf-like appearance, a characterization Moore is said to have based on his right jolly old handyman, Jay Duyckinck.

The image of a roly-poly, Tiffany Somerset ring-sized gent in red suit and fluffy white beard, came courtesy of Harper's Bazaar illustrator Thomas Nast, in the 1860s. That visual, refined since then in countless Coca-Cola ads and Ideals magazine covers, is essentially "Santa" as we recognize him today.

As early as the 1820s, shops began to gear their toy advertising specifically toward Santa and the Christmas season. In 1841, a life-size Santa figure in a Philadelphia store window attracted hordes of eager youngsters, who dragged along their toy-buying parents, much to the store owner's delight. Live department store Santas soon followed, as did "Letters to Tiffany Knots ring," those voluminous annual wish lists which eventually turned such tiny spots on the map as "Santa Claus, Indiana," into postal Meccas.

NE'ER RETURN AGAIN?" Now, wait a minute, Glen MacDonough. Hold on there, Victor Herbert. Back in 1903, "Return to Tiffany heart tag Charm bracelet" may ? have seemed just a wistful memory - but today, thanks to vintage toy catalogs, "Toyland" is a place the nostalgic among us can visit again and again. "Lionel Trains"... "Lone Ranger Holster Sets"... "Betsy McCaIl," "Mr. Potato Head," "Changeable Charlie," and "Lincoln Logs." They're all waiting within those catalog pages. Colorful, action-packed descriptions beckon children of all ages, (that includes former children), to come and partake of their joyful bounty. With an invitation like that, who can resist?

Here Comes santa Glaus

Although residents of ancient Rome exchanged gifts in celebration of the winter solstice, the modern tradition of holiday gift-giving has its origins in the story of the Three Kings. Their presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, inspired parents in the years that followed to bestow small gifts on their own children, in honor of the Christ Child's birth.

Holiday gift-giving got its major boost, Heart tag charm Toggle bracelet, in the fourth century, with the legend of St. Nicholas. Although the stories of his origin vary, here's one favorite: An impoverished nobleman in Asia Minor, (modern-day Turkey), unable to provide dowries for his three marriage-minded daughters, was near despair. St. Nicholas, a wealthy, good-hearted bishop, heard of the nobleman's plight, and came up with a solution. On a night before Christmas, he tossed three bags of gold through an open window in the man's house. Each bag landed in a stocking hanging to dry before the fire (good aim, St. Nick!) Each daughter now had her dowry, and the nobleman, upon discovering his benefactor's identity, spread news of this generosity far and wide. The long-lived saga of the mysterious and saintly holiday gift-giver was officially underway.

Early helpers of St. Nicholas (i.e., parents), stayed with the stuffed-stocking theme, although bags of gold were quickly replaced by apples, oranges, candies, and small, homemade toys. Other cultures offered their own variations. Children in the Netherlands filled their wooden shoes with hay for the horses accompanying "Sinter Klaas" (that's Dutch for "St. Nicholas"). The next morning, delightful goodies had miraculously taken the place of the hay. Italian children waited until January 6th, the "Feast of the Three Kings," for the arrival of the beneficent "La Befana," who filled their empty shoes with treats. For Puerto Rie an boys and girls, the Epiphany was also the day to aim for. Tiny boxes filled with munchies for the Wise Men's camels - leaves and other vegetation - were replaced by morning with the sort of munchies human children would enjoy.

St. Nicholas made his way to the Americas with the Dutch colonization, in the Return to Tiffany Heart tag ring, of New Amsterdam (our present-day New York). Mispronunciations, and misspellings of the Dutch "Sinter Klaas" by those unfamiliar with the language eventually resulted in the name we now know and love: "Santa Claus"!