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I worry EVERY SINGLE YEAR about teacher gifts. I worry about it twice: once before December vacation, and once at the end of the school year. We’re heading for the end of the school year now, so I’m about a month into worrying about it already.
One of my favorite ideas is Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t know about you, but in my house almost all the gift-giving strategies fall on my shoulders, regardless of the occasion. So if you’re in a similar boat, and you maybe have a hard-to-shop for relative to consider this Mother’s Day, here are just a couple ideas for gifts that fall outside the “lovely framed picture of the grandchildren” spectrum (although frankly, those are the easiest and probably best-received ones):
You know what? I don’t like Valentine’s Day. It seems like there’s too much pressure to have some kind of uber-romantic, gooey day filled with expensive presents and chocolate, all for no particular reason. I mean, I’m not against holidays that advocate doing nice things for people for no particular reason (after all, as a godless heathen this pretty much describes Christmas for me), but there’s just something about the plethora of hearts and cards and ugly cheap jewelry that takes all of the fun out of it.
Since our household is still vibrating from the impact of having a newborn catapulted into it, I declared this year a collective Free Pass on Valentine’s Day participation. No presents, no flowers, no panicky last-minute shopping. However, as I was still languishing in bed yesterday morning feeding the baby, my husband sent our toddler racing into the bedroom to shout “HAPPY BALENTINE DAY MOMMY!” before thrusting a card in my hand. It featured some sweet words from my husband, as well as a few helpful scribbles from Riley.
Well MELT MY COLD BLACK HEART WHY DON’T YOU.
It got me thinking about a subject that’s perplexed me before: what do you do with your kid’s artistic creations, especially the ones you might actually want to hang onto? In honor of the more tolerable aspects of Valentine’s Day — specifically, the part where your children (or someone else on Behalf of the Children) do something cute for you — I’ve collected a few cool ideas for making keepsakes from such things:
Read the rest of this entry »
Well, the holidays are over (THANK GOD), but I thought it would be fun to do a quick round-up of our favorite gifts—no, not the ones we selflessly gave to other people, the boxes that had our names written on the packaging. Let’s share our good fortunes! Or more importantly, let’s give each other ideas for neat things we might want to buy for ourselves in 2008!
A few of my favorite things:
Can you believe Christmas is less than a week away? Man, I feel like this month has just been flying by, and I haven’t even figured out my holiday dinner menu. All I know is that we ordered a ham. Can a person serve stuffing with ham, or is that some kind of horrible Food Faux Pas? How about those Pillsbury crescent rolls, too tacky? What if I just put out like a thousand million black olives, would that work? OH GOD.
Anyway! Given that we’re all busy as hell right now freaking out about various things—or maybe that’s just me but we’re going to pretend like it’s globally applicable mmmkay?—I’ll keep this post short and sweet: what I’ve got for you are some Handy Holiday Links for Various Useful and/or Cool Sounding Stuff. Sure, that’s not really a “theme”, but I’ve got hyperventilating to do, damn it, I can’t spend all my time coming up with cohesive blog entries.
Oh, this time of year is so troublesome when it comes to the many, many invitations to the various holiday soirées one must choose from, is it not? So many dinner parties, so little time. My goodness, I’m glad for my extensive ball gown collection, for I surely wouldn’t want to wear the same bejeweled number out twice in one season!
I know I’m not alone in feeling verily overloaded by the sheer number of hand-engraved cards arriving daily which beg my presence at yet another holiday celebration, and so with that in mind I thought we could discuss the fine art of hostess gifts.
I mean, as long as you understand I’m totally full of crap because seriously, I haven’t gone to a party since my kid was born. Unless you count birthday parties for children. Which, frankly, I think are probably more fun than the adult variety anyway, because at least there’s cake. And BALLOONS.
So, if you’re currently feeling a bit burdened by all the social gaiety and occasions to wear pretty clothes and drink fancy beverages—first of all: what the hell, is this SERIOUSLY a REAL PROBLEM? (answer: apparently so!)—here’s a list of some easy-peasy hostess gifts that should at least take the pressure off that whole ’showing gratitude’ part of the evening.
(If it’s a truly horrendous, crappy party, then may I suggest something a little more . . . organic.)
I’ve never been someone who goes overboard during the holidays, but this year I’m definitely feeling a sense of pressure. It’s hard to believe we’re already halfway through December already, and I have this very un-festive desire to barrel straight through to January—despite the fact that January marks the only-one-month-to-go mark with my pregnancy and holy crap, I haven’t done one single thing to prepare for this baby.
Between fighting off a cold determined to suck all the joy from my life over the last few weeks, dealing with my office moving across town and thus complicating my commute all to heck, and juggling a monster freelance project to which I totally overcommitted myself, I just haven’t felt the holiday spirit this year yet. We got our tree up and I put out a few decorations, but man, I haven’t followed through on any of my ambitious November plans (homemade wreath for the front door! Lights for the house! Gingerbread cookies for Riley! Hand-crafted holiday cards! Advent calendar craft project! FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL).
I’m trying to resuscitate my dwindling jolliness and squelch my inner Grinch, and I’m hoping you guys have some ideas for making the most out of the holidays—in a low-pressure kind of way. You know what I mean? I want happy holiday traditions and memories for my family, but in reality I work more than one job, I have a 2-year-old, I’m five thousand months pregnant (well, give or take), and I seem to be missing some critical Martha-esque gene required for effortless crafty projects.
My own suggestions: this year I used tinyprints for our holiday cards instead of making my own the way I usually do (they turned out great!), and I’ve shopped online for literally every single holiday gift on my list (making good use of Amazon’s Prime program). I also gave up on the homemade advent calendar idea and found a really cute wooden box version at Goodwill, and every day Riley opens a new door to reveal . . . you are going to think I am SO LAME, here . . . half a Flinstone’s vitamin (Riley: “A BITAMIN! YAYY!”). What can I say, he loves those things. Sometimes we shake things up with a sticker or a tiny piece of chocolate, but I’m telling you, the vitamins are the biggest hits.
Okay, this is totally one of those posts where I’m hoping the helpful comments make up for the lack of useful blog content. Please share your holiday traditions, ideas, tips, and anything else that might help the overloaded, overscheduled, and overburdened with mucus.
Okay, one last holiday gift-related post and then I think it’s time to move on to another topic, such as: How To Keep a Festive Spirit During the Holidays When You’re Trying to Work, Raise a Child, Keep the House From Collapsing Under the Weight of Its Own Filth, and Find Thoughtful Gifts for Loved Ones ALL AT THE SAME TIME OH MY GOD.
(I’m hoping you might have some pointers for me on that one. Other than “flop into a fetal position and cry” because I’ve totally tried that and it just stuffs up my nose.)
Today’s gift links are a mixed bag, just some general ideas for those who may be hard to buy for. As always, your mileage may vary, and your own suggestions are more than welcome!
Hey look, it’s ANOTHER holiday gift guide post from Milk & Cookies! Please tell me if you’re getting sick of these, because even though I’m deriving an odd sort of window-shopping pleasure out of finding various things to buy, buy, buy, I’m also happy to change the subject. To things you should buy for me, that is. Like this. (Hee! IT WEARS THE MONKEY AND IS TETHERED TO MAMA AT ALL TIMES OR IT GETS THE HOSE.)
Today’s List of Random Gift Ideas is for the kids on your shopping list, assuming they have been at least marginally more nice than naughty this year. For children that fall into that second category, may I recommend this lovely lump of coal? Look, you can wash out their mouth with soap and give them a crappy holiday present at the same time!
No particular theme here, but I did try to pick out some somewhat unique gifts that encourage creativity and most importantly, DO NOT MAKE NOISE. (No batteries required is my new favorite phrase.) Most of these toys are ages 3 and up.
In my thrilling ongoing series of Gift Ideas That Hopefully Do Not Both Suck And Blow™, today’s post includes some cool homebody-ish presents I’ve stumbled across lately. Okay, I’m not sure “homebody-ish” is actually 1) appropriate or 2) a real word, but the theme here, loosely, is stuff you can use around the home. And by “you” I mean “someone on your gift list”, don’t go being greedy during the holidays and buying any of these for yourself.
(Actually, maybe you could be a little greedy. I mean, what if no one buys you any of these awesome things? And by the time you decide to make a purchase or two for yourself they are ALL GONE? These are the things that keep me awake at night, people. That and the fact that I hate all the remaining players on Survivor so who should win a million dollars, WHO?)