I have two "cubes"--one at home in my small studio apartment and the other in lab, which I recently started working in. Both cubes are fairly lacking in decor with the latter extremely devoid of much, if any, personality. (I blame the lack of windows on that one.) So I'm immensely overjoyed when I find two packages in my post box. My Santa gifted me a billion colorful magnetic butterflies to bring some nature inside my white-washed brick walled and fluorescent lit cube. (I've since stuck some on the fridge because I think they're beautiful.) There was also a Frozen sticker in the packaging that I'm not sure was supposed to be mixed in with the butterflies, but I happen to love Frozen so you bet that's going somewhere special.

But that's not all!

I love photography, taking pictures of everything, and just plain preservation of memories. So what does Santa do? Santa gets me this banner with a bunch of frames, twine, and colorful clothes pins. Is this fun or what? It looks like something straight out of Pinterest and I love it. (Just gotta find some good nature photos to hang up.)

There's also some Scotch brand reusable stickies for the walls (so I can finally stop using lab tape to stick dilution scraps on my desk) in a beautiful shade of blue and in happy shapes. (How are shapes happy you ask? Because they made me happy so there. Logic.) Speaking of happy shapes--I can't get over how cheery the tissue paper is.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this, but you know those plastic tape dispensers you get with the tape in them? They're flimsy but sturdy enough that you can get use out of them and be done with it once you're through. Well I've been reusing that dispenser. Here's the caveat--my new roll of tape was larger than the tape that was originally in the plastic dispenser so it would not load on to the mechanism. So I did what any natural person would do. I broke off chunks of the plastic so the roll of tape could be snapped on. Let me tell you, shards of plastic can inflict more pain than you think. Once it snapped on you'd think my plight was over but no. The darn thing wouldn't turn! My roll of tape was still too large for the dispenser. Round 2 of breaking off chunks of plastic. Needless to say I was enthralled when I saw a brand-spanking new tape dispenser in my box of surprises. I could not for the life of me figure out how to open the dispenser (so I YouTubed it--thank goodness for the internet), but once that was remedied, I now have an adorable new addition to my cube. He even changes shades of green when you touch him!

I spend a lot of my time in lab working with mice. So what does Santa do? Santa gets me a mouse. Good riddance miniature computer mouse that makes me feel like a giant! Hello gorgeous wireless mouse that contours to my hand and has a cool secret stash in the body to store the USB adapter. Did I mention I'm in love with the design? Seriously, Santa was on point with the color scheme. The mouse even has this neat feature where you can go back and forth on webpages by toggling the wheel! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!

I didn't know this, but apparently Quirky is a company where you can help others fine-tune ideas for new products that have the potential to become mass-produced. Or you could be the inventor for a new product. Santa sent me one of those products and it happens to be a small item that turns out to be extremely useful. It's a weighted block that hold your cords and keeps them on your desk. Right now it's being used just for that with three of my cables being held where I like them instead of falling to the floor like they did before Santa came to the rescue. Innovation is so amazing.

If you could see my work station you'd see colonies of scrap paper and Post-It notes with numbers scrawled in ink and reminders of experiments I need to do next. It can get a bit crazy. What does Santa do? Santa gets me a snazzy notepad that will let me write down exactly what I need to do/their priority and let's me know when I've completed it. Can you say life-saver??

In school I got so much heat for liking the Backstreet Boys but I still listen to their harmonious voices because...I want it that way. Eh-hem. Anyway, it turns out that my Santa is also a BSB fan! Now I've unfortunately never seen them in concert, so Santa sent me photos from her concert adventure. I love it. This was such a nice touch. To add on to this incredibly thoughtful and generous display of decorating-cube-spirit, Santa tells me that there's another something to keep an eye out for next month.

I'm seriously floored. I love it all! Thank you so so much for this, Santa. You're amazing.