December 2008 Archives - Gift Giving Guy: Gift Ideas & Advice

Archive for December 2008

Dec

2008

The One Second Gift on My Birthday

I enjoy the gift of time. Today I received one more second on my birthday. To keep measured time in sync with a slowing Earth rotation, we experienced a one-second pause, a leap second. That pause in time occurred between 5:59:59 p.m. and 6 p.m. Central. I spent my leap second while I was documenting a quote toward the end of the NBC news. After a couple of DVR replays, here’s the story.

“There is also word that one of the best selling gifts this holiday season was the old-fashioned piggy bank. Stores say there was strong demand for coin banks as we go from a nation of spenders to savers.”

— Lester Holt, Anchor of NBC Nightly News Weekend

So we can give gifts of time — and even gifts that reflect the times.

Happy New Year!

Tags: birthday, christmas

Dec

2008

The Gift of Words for My Birthday

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Posted by Gift Giving Guy in gift ideas

Happy birthday to me! My wife acknowledged my love of the written word with great birthday gifts.

Mad Gab game from Mattel
Consumer Reports magazine subscription for one year (with online access)
I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert
Stalin’s Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel by Martin Cruz Smith
The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging

The Mad Gab game offers a different kind of reading. You receive a series of jumbled phonetic puzzle phrases like…

Wyatt Al
Infant If Hex
Chain

…and you must translate three phrase puzzles within two minutes. Have you solved the puzzle above? Hint: It’s gift-related.

See the puzzle and its solution at Play Mad Gab Online.

Tags: birthday, books, games, gift ideas

Dec

2008

2008 Report Card for Gift Giving Guy

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Posted by Gift Giving Guy in blog, giftology

Pencils down. It’s time to turn in the blog for end-of-year grading. On January 1, 2008, I chose five New Year’s resolutions for Gift Giving Guy. With 2008 coming to a close, I’m grading each blog resolution on a pass/fail basis.

Resolution 1: More posts on “gifts for guys”
Pass. I wrote a dozen guy gift posts in 2008, but I’m deducting points for late entries. I started a series in January called Seven Guidelines for Guy Gifts. After Guideline #3, I let 10 months pass before returning to finish the series. (Darn MBA classes.) So the following posts are really new, but backdated to February to fit in with the flow of the Guy Gifts series.

Resolution 2: More posts on anniversaries
Fail. I covered anniversary gifts just once this year, describing my own eighth wedding anniversary. Perhaps I took the “once a year” meaning of anniversary too literally.

Resolution 3: Seek a few more reciprocal links
Pass. GiftStumped.com, ScottFeldstein.net and Katrina Lynn, Inspired kindly link to this blog.

Resolution 4: Use more of Blogger’s new features
Pass. I added the new blog list gadget. I switched to Feedburner for RSS subscriptions and added a contact form. I also tweaked the design to use a label cloud and Lightbox 2 for image zooms. While several of these improvements are not from Blogger, the changes meet the spirit of the resolution.

Resolution 5: Try different online stores for gifts
Pass. It’s hard to shake the monogamous love I have for Amazon Prime. Still, I did sneak in a few non-Amazon online stores in 2008. Carol Vanacore at HaveaBath.com was a lifesaver for expediting my niece’s baptism gift, a “Monday’s Child” colorful wooden plaque.

I wish I could say the same for the Something Store. Instead, I found delays and disappointment. But thumbs up for these online gift sites I used in 2008: PajamaGram, Perpetual Kid, Z Gallerie Home Furnishings, Wine Country Gift Baskets, Heifer International and ProFlowers.com.

Bonus Points:
Pass. I spent my summer vacation compiling 1,517 links to online stores of 1,300 U.S. four-year colleges and called it College Gift Finder.

Tags: blog, gift sites

Dec

2008

Christmas Gifts for Kids

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Posted by Gift Giving Guy in gift ideas

I love choosing toys for kids, especially for Christmas. As a tween in the mid-80s, I accompanied my dad to Toys”R”Us and helped pick out Christmas gifts. I still remember the astonished joy when my younger brothers received Transformers toys. One unwrapped the green-and-purple Constructicons that formed one super-robot, Devastator. Another beamed when he opened his Omega Supreme Transformer. (Okay, I’ll stop regressing now.)

This year, my wife and I chose Christmas presents, mostly from Amazon.com, for our young nieces and nephews.

We gave the boys…

Alex Toys Dunk and Score (ages three to seven)
EyeClops Bionic Eye Multizoom (ages six and up)
IlluStory Make Your Own Story Kit (ages six to nine)
Matchbox Mega Rig Squid Sub (ages three to eight)
Webkinz Christmas Reindeer (ages five and up)

We gave the girls…

Baby Girls’ Cotton Cable Dress (pastel pink) from Lands’ End (newborn to 24 months)
Judy Moody & Stink: The Holly Joliday by Megan McDonald and Peter H. Reynolds (ages four to eight)
Memory Game – Disney Princess Edition (ages three to six)
Pinkalicious by Victoria Kann and Elizabeth Kann (ages four to eight)
UNO Flash Game (ages seven and up)

I credit my wife for bringing balance to our Christmas gifts for kids — not all toys, all the time. Design Mom blogger Gabrielle Blair might agree. She suggests that parents follow a three-gift guideline for kids: “Santa brings each child at our house three gifts. Something to read, something to wear and something to play with.”

One more guideline: Check with the parents before you finalize kid gifts. You do not want to disappoint with a present that a child already has or just received from Santa.

Tags: books, christmas, for kids, games, gift ideas, guidelines, toys

Dec

2008

Amazon.com’s Christmas Bestsellers for 2008

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Posted by Gift Giving Guy in gift ideas

Defying the economic trend, the magic elves at Amazon.com scored their best holiday season ever. On its busiest day, Monday, December 15, 2008, Amazon.com processed a record-breaking 72.9 items per second. That’s 6.3 million items ordered worldwide in a single day. The online retail juggernaut also released its top three bestsellers in several categories for the 2008 holiday season.