“Help, my dining room is full of gift baskets!”

So I got yelled at recently by a customer who said, "I have been waiting two months for your blog on the dining room full of gift baskets thing, what happened?"

Ok, fair enough, but its not all that funny when its happening. Every year my wife takes on the task of making ALOT of gift baskets for the winery. Its a lot of work, of course, because she is picky about what she puts into the baskets and how they are put together.

Begining in around July, she starts looking for baskets and stuff to put in them, although I have seen her sneak bags full of items in throughout the year with the explanation, "There was a closeout!". These items are socked away in our guest bedroom (thus no overnite house guests September thru December) and brought out in early October for assembly.

From that point on, the dining room in the center of our home is piled high and full of grass bedding, baskets of all shapes and sizes, ribbon, plastic wrap, and do-hickies to jazz up the baskets.

Oh, plus candy and snacks too. See, I have been known to snack on my way through the dining room and this results often in me getting yelled at for eating the basket goodies. True enough, but first of all, I see it as compensation for the inconvenience and secondarily, she should factor in my "grazing" as I have done this for years!

At times, its a real obstacle course walking through the house as the piles spill into the walkway or path through the dining room. This huge "mess" casues another interesting development: my wife does prefers to not have any visitors see her home looking "this way". I say, we will explain what this pile of stuff is and they will understand. Uh, no! We greet family and other personal visitors in the winery instead of our home and we take them out to eat instead of offering my wife's great home cooking.

This is one of the many sacrifices one makes for owning a small winery. I guess its a fairly small one in the greater scheme of things, losing a dining room while gaining a winery. Maybe we could add on to the winery? Hummmmm???