Gee Thanks - Gee Thanks – Sponsored by American Express® Gift Cards

Submitted by Uncrate on January 2nd, 2009

Your brother-in-law plays semi-pro baseball. So you get him a neon yellow outfielders softball glove. Your aunt is a master chef (or likes to think she is). So you get her a $9.99 64-piece knife set from the shop-at-home network. Your dad is a Corvette nut. So you get him a Ford hat. Your kid brother lives online, playing WoW and blogging as long as his eyes remain open. So you get him The Internet for Newbies hand guide. You get the idea. Let the experts get their own gear. That’s why they’re the experts and you’re not.

Submitted by Uncrate on January 1st, 2009

Unless you’re buying for a 9 year old, gag gifts shouldn’t even be a consideration on your next gift buying journey. The stuff may sound funny enough –  Fake Wining Lottery Tickets, Remote Control Fart Machine, Fake Parking Tickets, Electric Shocking Pen, Super Fart Spray, Embarrassing Fake Receipts, Snotty Nose Egg Separator, Farting Santa or Mooning Santa — but come on. Nobody really wants this stuff. Well, Ok. We actually would like to have one of those egg separators. Hey, we’re only human.

Submitted by Trend Hunter on December 31st, 2008

Each year my eccentric grandmother knits or creates clothing and accessories for the other members of my family. When the parcel arrives from Germany, we all know the contents risk being horrific, but we also understand the love that went in, not to mention the hours spent with her “craft glasses” on. When we were younger, she would knit us sweaters with cartoon characters which we had clearly outgrown – the year she sent us matching Tom and Jerry sweaters (we were about 12 and 13 years old) my mother told her that while we appreciated the gifts, we had reached that ‘complicated’ stage of life where we wanted to choose our own presents. For a while she sent money (which made thanking her so much easier), but for some reason, she switched back to handmade gifts a few of years ago. Two Christmases ago she had made some jewelry which was actually beautiful, and we told her how much we genuinely loved it, and even sent photos of us wearing it.

Well, perhaps we expressed too much enthusiasm, because the following Christmas she sent an enormous parcel full of the most eccentric jewels and baubles we had ever seen. There were earrings with long vibrant feathers, necklaces with colorful plastic beads, some the size of golf balls and childish bracelets that looked like they’d come out of a vending machine. To humor her (and entertain each other) we draped ourselves in the jewels, snapped a few photos and sent them off to her, with no intention of ever wearing them in public. Well, when we phoned to thank her a few hours later, she told us she had specifically designed the jewels to wear to a fancy ballet we had tickets for (and which we would know a lot of people at) the following night.

We gently had to tell her we had already chosen our outfits, including accessories, and while we said it with kindness, it didn’t stop the hurt look in her eyes. It’s a complicated scenario that many people are likely familiar with. We’re still not sure what the right way to handle moments like these. I love the thought behind the gifts, and am so appreciative of the effort, but after already asking her not to send those items, what else can we do to  avoid this annual awkwardness? To give her a hint, this year we gave her a gift certificate to her favorite department store, and another to a coffee shop she likes to frequent, and she loved the concept of the cards so much, we hope it inspires her gift for next year.

by Bianca Bartz of Trendhunter

Submitted by Alison Storm on December 30th, 2008

You’ve got one. Everyone does. That person on your gift list that is absolutely impossible to shop for. Mine is my mother– she’s the woman who has everything and anything she doesn’t have she just buys for herself anyway. She’s a collector of stuff– bird houses, antique door stoppers, stuffed animals– so you’d think that would make her easy to buy for, but it doesn’t. Here’s an example.

As a kid I started to buy her Snowbabies. They are tiny cherub-like figurines taking part in winter-time activities like building snowmen, pulling a sled or making snow angels. Their $20 price point makes them the perfect “mom” gift for kids whose income is comprised solely of a weekly allowance. So for a few blissful years Snowbabies were my go-to gift. I don’t know if the collection was growing too slowly for my mother’s impatient taste or if her passion for the chubby statuettes was just too intense but the little things started multiplying. Soon my mother’s collection rivaled that of the inventory at the gift store in the mall that sold them and I could no longer tell which ones she owned and which ones she didn’t. So I gave up. Snowbabies were no longer my thing– they were hers. READ THE REST…

Submitted by Alison Storm on December 30th, 2008

Fifty bucks doesn’t go that far when you’re a newlywed shopping for your husband. I really can’t blame anyone but myself because that $50 limit idea– it was mine. I just figured with all of the expenses of the wedding and the honeymoon and starting our lives together that $50 would be plenty. But when you throw in the pressure of trying to find the perfect gift for our first Christmas as a married couple, well, let’s just say $50 may as well be a nickel.

I settled on a pair of clearance snowboarding gloves, marked down to $30 since they were last year’s style. That left me with just enough money for an ab ball. I know– not very romantic but it seemed like a good gift given my husband’s passion for working out. Since we were flying across the country to spend time with my family out west, only the compact gifts were allowed to come along. So he opened the ab ball before our departure. The gloves would be his Christmas morning surprise.

Somewhere between South Carolina and Seattle my husband’s bag was lost. READ THE REST…

Submitted by Alison Storm on December 30th, 2008

Have you ever noticed how tough it can be to buy presents for people outside of your own age bracket? I never quite know what my 80-year-old grandfather would like. Does he really want another pair of slippers? And since I don’t have children myself, I find it hard to tell what toys are just right for my three-year-old second cousin. Is he too young for an ant farm? Well, I don’t think I’m the only one with this problem. In fact, I know I’m not.

Let me take you back to my freshman year of college. The year is 1998. Google just launched. The Euro made its debut and boy bands had reached the peak of their success. I was living the life that most college kids enjoy: sleep, class, eat, Jerry Springer, class, eat, sleep. I lived in a mint green house with five roommates. Our kitchen was invaded by fruit flies and the dirty dishes often outnumbered the clean ones. The shower pressure rivaled the flow from a drain pipe on a drizzly day. A Dawson’s Creek poster was our featured piece of living room artwork.

When Christmas rolled around I was likely hoping for more baby doll t-shirts (with slogans like, I’m here, what are your other two wishes), a Ricky Martin CD, and if I was really lucky, a laptop complete with a floppy drive and 64 megabytes of RAM. Maybe my grandma never got my wish list. Or maybe she was just trying to help me into the world of adulthood. READ THE REST…

Submitted by Outblush on December 29th, 2008

You wouldn’t tell a friend that she needs to drop 40 pounds as quickly as she can, or inform another friend that her anger-jealously problems need to be taken care of in a timely fashion. So why tell them with a gift? Trust us, no matter how hot a diet is (South Beach! Atkins! Hamptons!), it is not cool to buy someone the accompanying diet book. And believe us when we say that no one appreciates getting a self-help book. It doesn’t matter if it’s on “Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior” or “Breaking the Emotional Bad Habits That Make You Miserable,” nobody likes it when others think they need improving. Just be a friend to these folks, ask if there’s anything you can help them with, and buy them a damn candle set already.

image by tanakawho