# best 09 "Best Packaging"

Somehow, I do seem to keep coming back to the same topics over and over in these posts. Also, I seem not to quite take them the way the author of the challenge may have envisioned...

Am I old enough, at 40, to be eccentric? Or am I still "just weird"?

Either way, I am me, and these are my thoughts on packaging.

I really began to embrace the joys of online shopping this year. such a luxury to sit at home and decide all those little details that tend to flummox me, out in a store. I can stop an online search, here at home, and ponder as long as I need to. I can find things like long-out-of-print Little Toot books for Annalise, and a Nintendo DS that was actually within Jeremiah's budget.

And what we order is often used, which matches our family philosophy of living simply, and not using more resources than needed to attain our goals. And simplicity is further maintained when the ordered items appear, as if by magic, right at our door!

So there have been packages aplenty this year, as we have all give ourselves permission to have the things that most please us, or drive our passions, or make it possible to do what we want to do. I have enjoyed receiving mail from places like Hong Kong and Australia (cool, exotic to upstate NY).

My favorite packages to open have come from Sandra Dodd. Not only favorite, because the book or Thinking Sticks inside were sure to hold treasures for me, but because she always remembered that small people live here. Once we opened a package to confetti ; another brought finger cuffs.

Those little trinkets thrown in made those packages value-added, and had the kids crowding around to receive their bounty! =)

The item with the best manufacturer packaging is here.....




It's Star Trek the Animated Series (voiced by the original actors, well-drawn, and with plots that could do things the live-action series couldn't!). The case is hard plastic, ergonomically shaped, and has a pleasing weight. The inset insignia allows the characters to peep through from the booklet within. It opens easily. The booklet has a lot of great info I hadn't known about the series, and the DVDs have their own sleeves in a boxed-set format.


Now that I've dealt with the literal packaging, I will say that the best packaging of all, this year, is us. The amazing surprise gift of unschooling comes wrapped in a package exactly the size and shape of our family. It fits nestled into each of us, then fills our home and our lives with harmony and joy.

what could be more incredible than THAT?!