I have a thing for the color green. You're about to be green with envy because I had the best santa of all time this exchange.

Warning: The following is a wall of text. But you should read it anyway because it's a great ride.

So a little bit about me...I enjoy making art, drinking copious amounts of tea, and am running my first half marathon this spring. With that said, I came home to a 6-pound cardboard box covered in a colorful Reddit mascot. Overjoyed I carefully cut through the tape to find a bunch of smaller boxes beautifully wrapped in jolly shades of green and meticulously tied in sparkly, pretty green ribbon. Words cannot begin to describe my excitement. I almost forgot to take un-boxing pictures because I wanted to see what was inside ASAP.

I decided to open from top item to bottom. The first was a package of drawing pencils with green coating and packaging along with a gorgeous green pencil case to fit them all. Let me just take a moment to describe this. So inside the pencil case are elastic bands sewn into the casing. They keep the utensils snug and organized so you know where exactly each one is located. To close the case there's this zipper with a button on the end. I love this part--the button actually snaps to the end to keep the case closed and the zipper from flopping around! It's such a small detail but wow, I absolutely adore it.

Okay, okay. The next one was this cute, small sturdy marbled green box--which is incidentally the most adorable thing ever. I don't know why, but I appreciate nice boxes. You can fit all sorts of trinkets inside. So inside this particular box was a smaller red box. Nested in that was a felt pouch with a stunning silver necklace complete with sneaker pendant and green bead accent. No one knows this, but I've been wanting to get a symbolic running accessory for a while now so this necklace really meant something to me. All the hours, sweat, occassional injury/set backs, and the progression from each week as I work towards pushing my body to a goal that seems bigger than myself is captured in this one necklace. That might sound silly but I'm sentimental like that.

Next up is a green tin canister of organic loose leaf oolong tea. Aside from water and soy milk, tea is my most consumed beverage. I have this really bad habit of sticking to my usual brands so I'm grateful to have something new to try. But wait, there's more! I also received a gunpowder green tea from Twinings to try. No lie, I'm pretty excited about this. What's absolutely amazing is that the next package was a pair of tadpole tea infusers for my loose leaf tea. I love them! I had to laugh when I first saw them because they made me think of spermatozoa--which is related to what I worked with in my research.

I pick up the long marbled green box next. After untying the ribbon I'm absolutely flabbergasted. There's a SanDisk mp3 player and a wireless bluetooth headset. The headset is so light and fits so well. Music motivates me through my miles but after a while the sweat pours everywhere and the earbuds start falling out because your body's all disgusting. SO. I'm especially ecstatic for these earbuds/headset. I've been using the mp3 player for my baseline training runs where the clip keeps the device on my person and it's small and light enough that it doesn't pull my pants down (thank goodness).

At the bottom of the box is a sketchbook with a dark olive green cover. OMG, the pages. You need to feel them to understand how lovely they are--so weighted and primed for graphite drawings. (I also have a strong appreciation for paper products.) After sorting through the mess I made I found that I had missed a package of charcoal in a green box. MAKING ART FOR DAYS!

In closing, if you're not yet convinced that my santa is the greatest person ever, then I don't know what to tell you because this is a real fact. Not one of those alternative ones. Seriously though, thank you. My santa went above and beyond with this exchange. Subsequently I had one of the best days in a while. This was all incredibly thoughtful and generous. And you can be assured that they'll all be put to good use. (Even the ribbons that I'm keeping for crafting.) Thank you so so much.