Christmas is always something of a blowout for my family, and I'm ashamed to admit that I've yet to find a place for all the sweet little odds and ends and trinkets bestowed upon me by loving friends and family. This is unfortunate, since my mother gave me quite a few knick-knacks by "Nature's Sketchbook," including this Guest's Greeting Frame, which is a small frame with a little greeting, flanked by flowerpots, a nesting bird, and a birdhouse. I was really happy to get it, since I'm redoing my guestroom, and I think it contains the perfect little welcome message I'd like guests to see when they tuck in for the night.

As luck always has it, on Saturday (in the midst of my organizing, cleaning, sorting, and putting away, we got an unexpected call from a friend, saying he was going to stop by and hang out with us for the day. I proceeded to become a cleaning tornado, picking up this and that, finding temporary homes for all the stuff I had out and was trying to organize. Thinking that my Guest's Greeting Frame wouldn't be seen in the guestroom, I decided to put it in the guest bathroom, on the intelligent guess that it would be seen by our guest and maybe bring a smile.

Sure enough, after many hours of eating, drinking, movies, and video games, our guest excused himself to the restroom. While I was doing some straightening up and my husband was frantically trying to get Mario to beat the third level boss on Wii's "Paper Mario," we heard an absolute explosion of laughter from the bathroom... When he came out, our guest took my hand and led me to the bathroom, and pointed at my Guest's Greeting Frame, and then broke off into hysterics. I looked at him like he was nuts, and then I stopped to re-read the message in the frame. Suddenly, it came to me why he found it's placement in the bathroom so uproariously funny, and why maybe why it probably doesn't belong in the bathroom.

The message written in the frame is:

"Stop a minute, rest awhile. Sit... breathe... relax... and smile."

Once I got beyond the initial mortification of poor design placement, I also thought it was absolutely hilarious. It did bring a smile, which is what I wanted... That said, the frame is now happily situated in my guestroom. It's a great message for drifting off to sleep, probably best suited for bedsides and not bathrooms.