My Santa took my love of travel and food right to heart! He sent me a great box full of patriotic goodies from the Netherlands!

When I received my box, I was instantly excited, even though the mailman had bashed it up a bit (hooray, USPS). As the mailman handed it to me, a card fell out! Immediately, I knew it was from my Santa, who even included his business card. (As a business owner myself, that was a fun touch to receive, especially because I'm in the printing industry - it's always fun to receive a business card from another country!)

Anyways, although my outer box was a bit bashed up, the gifts inside were not! Inside my box were two great gifts, wrapped up in those paper printed bags you only get at touristy shops (and you know tourist gifts are always fun to receive!)

The first bag held a tin of stroopwafels and a note from my Santa about how DELICIOUS they are, and also a souvenir pair of ceramic blue & white Dutch clogs. The clogs already have a place in the shadowbox my husband and I have hanging in our living room to collect fun things from our travels.

The second bag contained two books. The first was a travel guide from my Santa's hometown of Eindhoven, to which I've never been. The guide was printed in Dutch and English, which is great because I don't speak Dutch, but now maybe I can pick up a few words! My Santa also wrote a fun note pointing out the building where he works!

The second book in the back was a Dutch cookbook! I love to cook, so this was not only great because of that, but because my Santa took the time to write more notes! He not only marked the pages in blue & green tabs to denote traditional Dutch dishes and also some of his personal favorites, but he also slipped in a couple of notes on other pages with fun commentary relating to the particular recipes!

I really enjoyed opening up this gift, and I can't wait to make a few of the dishes in the cookbook - and hopefully one day, I can visit Eindhoven! Thank you, Santa!