Holiday Gift Guide 2012: For People Who Spend Too Much Time on Pinterest

Hey, y'all!  There are only a few days left until Christmas, but I know you haven't finished all of your shopping.  And so the guides continue.  (Unless I get sick again, in which case stop at the Sev and grab some beef sticks.)


Today's guide is for those lovely ladies in your life who spend A LOT of their time online.  You know the ones I am talking about.  They pin and pin and pin, but never actually sew.  Fear not, loyal readers--I have got some gift tips for you.

A Pallet
Pinterest Beezies be loving the pallet crap crafts.  You can make so many things with these termite-filled, splintery, shadily-aquired bits of lumber.  Like a splintery end table!  Or a splintery couch!  Or a splintery sign that says "All Because Two People Fell In Love!"  Or, my personal favorite, a splintery wall that you have to vacuum:

Really, though, *YOU* don't have to make anything with this gift--just .present your lady friend with a pallet.  She will know what to do.  (Maybe attach some tweezers and Neosporin as package ties.)

 Chickens
I understand that eggs are delicious.  But in no world is keeping neighborhood chickens fun.  UNLESS YOU ARE ON PINTEREST.  So bring your pin-crazy aunt some chicken wire and an egg.  She will undoubtedly know how to grow it and prune it and whatever.  Because Pinterest will tell her.

An Old Sock and Some Creme Rinse (Handmade)

Just put it in a nice bag.  She will instictively know that she is to wrap her hair up with the sock to create AMAZING curls that are LIFE CHANGING. 

Dangerous Quiet Toys For Special Snowflakes

 Does your Pin Princess have children?  How about gifting her supplies to make stuff for her "kidlets" that might choke them and will definitely make her bleed when she steps on it at night.  This one is super Eco-friendly, as all you need is junk from your trashcan. 

Skinny Jeans and Super Expensive Chunky Knits.  

Sure, they won't fit her, and won't look good AT ALL, but she will know you understand her "Style."

Mac lipstick in Twig.  

Seriously, though, this one is a good pin.  

Vinegar

Yes, Pinterest, there are Thousands and Thousands of Uses for Vinegar.  All of which you will tell us about Right Now!

 

Whatever you choose to give your Social Media Sister, don't forget  to hand-make your wrapping paper, card, and bow, preferably out of some sort of "re-purposed" vintage thing.  And be sure to attach some cake pops stuffed with bacon and glazed in cookie dough--she will know you really care!

2012 Holiday Guide: Gifts for Your Wife

Today's gift guide focuses on the most important person in our homes--the wife.  Specifically the wife who lives in my house.  Maybe this guide could be forwarded on to someone you know?  A tall soldier, maybe?

Silhouette 
The wife may not know what she will do with this, but she KNOWS SHE NEEDS IT SO SO SO BAD.

An additional mixing bowl
If the wife in your house observes the Holy Tradition of Waffle Fridays, an additional mixing bowl for her Kitchenaid Professional HD mixer would be really handy.  You could also throw in an ice cream maker attachment.  


A Trader Joe's Gift Card and a Full Tank of Gas and No Children in the Car
Sometimes the closest TJ's is 2 hours away.  And sometimes she is out of delicious things.  And wants to hear no whining.

A Picasso or a Garfunkel

Remember that time she saw this Kershisnik for the first time and felt compelled to purchase it, but talked herself out of it because it was a few thousand dollars and that seemed superficial and didn't buy it and still thinks about it, like, ten years later?  You could save up for an original.  She would wait until the children were grown.  But in the meantime, how about a print?  (Or a postcard.  She knows y'all are broke).
And if you wanted to make her feel like you were super spiritchal you could go with a LE print from J Kirk Richards, another of her favorites:

Gift Cards 
So you put the giving off, and UPS is not going to get here in time, never fear:  She likes cash and cards.  Maybe get a sitter and go with her to an after-Christmas sale at a fancy store.  Buy her something.  But do yourself a favor and write down the plan and wrap it around a toblerone and stick it under the tree.  So it looks like it was on purpose.  Because WE know it was, but Christmas morning she sometimes forgets that you are busy 364 days of the year.  Just saying.

Hope this helps!

2012 Holiday Guide: Gifts for Borderline Agoraphobics

Sometimes people don't ever leave the house. Hypothetically. Maybe because their meds don't work, or maybe because they have two toddlers. Maybe a little of both. Those people want gifts, too. Gifts they can take to bed with them while they sleep for eighteen hours.

Kindle and ebooks
 Just because one happens to spend a lot of time in bed does not mean one is always sleeping. And lots of books are hard to sleep around. Maybe a Paperwhite and some book downloads--I recommend The Bloggess' Let's Pretend This Never Happened. Maybe your crazy loved one will find some comfort. Under no circumstances should you gift them any Sylvia Plath.

 Toms 
 She may not leave the house, but her feet will be cute and comfy. And if she DOES go outside, Toms will suggest to people at Wal Mart that she is a hipster, and smelly on purpose. I like these ones because the math suggests "eccentric genius," not "unkempt."

 Really Soft Towels
This is just a good gift for anyone you know. Everyone wants a soft towel. Spray it with some Gain Febreeze for an extra bonus.

Game Downloads 
 Hypothetically, your generalized anxiety disorder sufferer may spend a lot of time trying to turn off the panic/sadness. Stupid video games may, hypothetically, do this. Big Fish Games has credits for gifting. (Do not give facebook credits, because then you will have to unfriend them after thousands of status updates about milking and farming and mining and gemming.)

Pebble Ice from Sonic.
Best friends give each other giant bags of pebble ice.   It is much harder to be sad with delicious pebble ice.  And when they have to take a ton of meds, a refreshingly cool glass of water says "I am thinking of you and your crazy."

 Buster Makeout Sessions
These pretty much make everything better, even crippling panic and depression. Luckily he is pretty cheap--he trades besos for ipad time.

Cash
Because being sad is sad, but being poor and sad is just  awful.

2012 Holiday Gift Guide: Nerds and Dudes

I like telling people what to buy other people.  I think of it as a gifty Karma, and hope that someone buys me stuff later on.  So for the next little bit? Gift guides. 

Today's gifts are for the nerds in your life.  And the dudes.  They may be different, but in my house they are the same.

Loot Crate $20/month
A grab-bag subscription service for nerds.  W has one and every month he giggles like a schoolgirl when he opens it.  And says things like "Yes!  More caffeinated gum!"  One time he got his new signature scent, Iron Man Cologne.  I wish I were making this up.

His Other Timepiece




Word on the street is that ballers wear Invicta.  I don't even know. 

 Slightly Obscure, Goofy T-Shirts
 Does your dude/nerd want random stranger dude/nerds to approach him and say "Nice shirt, dude" when he goes out in public?  Then you need to visit shirtwoot.
 Ones that get the most attention out here?  Drunk Cookie and  Bazinga,   Our Target also has some nice Arrested Development and Saved By The Bell ones.  Not just any goofy shirt will do, however; the key is the slightly obscure nature.  The wearer should project the following statement: "Yeah, I follow Wil Wheaton on Twitter, but I was following him WAY before he was on Big Bang."

Dress Shoes  He Did Not Own in College
You know what I am talking about.  Update those bad boys.

A nice French-Cuffed shirt and some slightly obscure, goofy cufflinks.

I like these ones a lot, and you can have them personalized with a name or dirty word.  (I'd go with dirty.)  If he doesn't read binary (you are so, so lucky) there are some fun ones at Think Geek, or just browse around Etsy.

But your nerd is a lady, you say?  Never fear:  I've got you covered.

A Tiara

"Is TV? In Store????!!!"

This post is sponsored by Gymboree. Bring a friend to a Gymboree store and sign up for Gymboree Rewards together and you'll both SAVE 25% off an in-store purchase.

Part of the holiday experience is the traditional taking of Christmas Photos to put on the Card Containing the Letter Full of Lies.  Now that my boys are approximately the same size, we have no clothes that are not destroyed.  Enter Gymboree.

I went with my friend, Shalynn,  in the morning when we thought our children would be best behaved.  We were such fools.  Almost immediately Buster fell down while playing "chase the girls and scream loudly" and cracked his head and things just got more awesome from there.  

But we perservered and our reward for shopping together?  We signed up together for Gymboree Rewards and saved big-- 25% on top of the sale prices--and got GymBucks.  Which are like gold.  And now my kids have a matching look for the cards. And I saved enough to ALMOST be able to afford stamps to send them out.

Moral of the story?  It is worth taking the children out in public to shop with a friend.

PS: Ordering this online for a certain fat someone...

 

Holy Crapballs, it's Time to Spend Money!

**Jooj has recently started saying "Holy Crapballs!"  I honestly don't know where she got it, but it sure is catching.

For the price of a cup of coffee a day, you can give these urchins a magical Christmas.

Welp, it's that time of year--the time when we pull out our Christmas Club savings from which we have dutifully stashed away at least $100 a month, so that our families can have a truly magical season of receiving. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Yeah, we used our "Christmas Club" on car repairs/house repairs/car repairs and car repairs, too.  Our mechanic is getting a boat this year.

I'm not going to lie, 2012 is tight for almost everyone I know.  And it makes me sad, because that means almost everyone I know is not going to get me anything for Christmas.  (Also it makes me sad for their children, but not as much.) 

Last year I posted about how I save money for Christmas, and I am doing the same things this year, too--Swagbucks (at least $50 in Amazon cards so far!), paid surveys (don't laugh, almost $80 in measly $3 checks this year!), and homemade meth (I save money by cutting it with homemade laundry soap!).

How do you save money for holiday spending?  Past January?  What tips and tricks can you share?

Last year's Christmas Giving posts are  here, here, and here.

If You Haven't Got a Penny, a Ha'penny Will Do

I don't know about you, but I am flat broke. This is not an unusual situation for me. Sadly. We try our guts out to get debt-free, to build up an emergency fund, and EVERY DAGNAB TIME we get some significant savings we have an emergency. Not an "I need new boots to walk around Disneyland" emergency, but an "the car has stopped running and the baby is out of Pedia Sure and diapers and, somehow, we forgot to pay the electric bill three months in a row and if we don't give them $500 today we will get cut off" emergency.

January 1 last year I set up an allotment from W's paycheck to go directly into our savings account, figuring that with the money we put aside we would have a stress-free Christmas, as well as be able to hit our emergency savings goal.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HA.

Ten months later? We have six wooden nickels and an old ten pfenning coin. And three tokens for the car wash in Orem.

But it's November! That leaves two months of savings to pay for Christmas!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Tears of a Clown, Ha.

Two weeks ago W's car decided to stop working. We borrowed a friend's auto sensor and it informed us that the problem was most likely a busted thermostat. EASY. $10 fix.

Except once we fixed it our friend said, in his best I'm-sorry-that-you-have-twelve-kinds-of-prostate-cancer-and-only-three-minutes-to-live-voice "Yeah, I don't think it was that thermostat after all. I think it is the (something else I don't remember). You are looking at about $600 in repairs."

Except when we called our shop they said "Yeah, if it IS that, and it sounds like it is, you are looking at $1800 in repairs. Unless the whole thing is cracked, in which case you need a new engine. For $5000."

Did I mention we are still paying on this car? And tears of a clown? Hopefully when we take it in there will be a tender mercy on our family and everyone's predictions will be wrong. But in the meantime, there is NO money for Christmas.

But that's okay, because we don't need very much. And I am not implying that we give each other pinecone art and coupons for backrubs--we do Amigo Gifts. And here are some of the ways we afford them.

Swagbucks
Do you use swagbucks? Because you should. At its essence it is a search engine that gives you rewards for using their site instead of google or whatever. Every few times you search you earn a few swagbucks, and when you have enough you can trade them in for merchandise or gift cards or what have you. In addition, you can earn them for trading in old video games and cell phones, for taking surveys, for just turning on your computer--all sorts of things. Just by using the toolbar this year we earned enough for quite a haul on Amazon. About $100 in gift cards. Which I have saved to use for Christmas.

Klout
This one was unexpected, as it is very new to me, but I am a sucker for free. And with klout you can earn "perks" by tweeting or something. Sometimes the "perks" are crap. Other times they are Subway sandwiches or boxes of Sharpies. I am not sure what, really, klout does or measures or how it really works, but I do know that, for nothing, I got $25 to one of my favorite websites, Ecomom. Which purchased one of Buster's toys, and a bunch of lunchbox snacks. And then I used my budgeted grocery money to purchase diapers.

Babies-Backwards-R-Us
I used to only purchase diapers from Costco, thinking that they were the cheapest around, but every now and then BBRU has deals where if you purchase giant boxes of dipes you get $20 gift cards. And the dipes end up being about the same price as from the warehouse stores, so they are a pretty good deal. The great thing about the gift cards is that they can be used at TOYS-BACKWARDS-R-US. So I saved those cards and bought the toys for the cousin gifts and for Buster.

World Market
Our World Market is right next door to our BBRU, and I love it there. In El Paso our organic and free range food is pretty limited, especially in my neighborhood. So I get a lot of sauces and chocolate and cocoa and tea and things from World Market. If you sign up for their "Explorers" club (free) they reward you with incentives and coupons. At your birthday they send you a $10 gift card. And for every $100 in food you purchase they send you a $10 gift card. And World Market has lots of candy, ornaments, toys, jewelry, stationary, and stocking stuffers in the under $10 category. Which takes care of the little hostess and teacher gifts.

Kohls
I love me the Kohls. Mostly because they want to give me their merchandise for free on a pretty regular basis. They are always sending me coupons online (when you sign up they send you a $5 gift certificate) and--even better--$10 gift certificates just because. They figure that if I come in with a free $10, I will spend $100. Instead, I go in and use a 30% off coupon and purchase that stupid Justin Beaver watch Jooj is dying for and only pay a few dollars. Take that, Kohls! And thanks for the money!

Pinecone Research
This is my other favorite way that we are paying for Christmas this year. Pinecone is a marketing research survey site. (I KNOW.) But instead of being lame and giving you nothing, they pay you with actual checks. A survey takes less than ten minutes, and in return I get paid $3. Which is almost stupidly irrelevant, except that they send me three or four surveys to do a month. Which makes it $10 a month, on average. And those little checks go right into the Christmas account and add up to well over $100 by the end of the year. Thanks, people who want me to tell them my opinion!

Scholastic Books
The final thing I have done this year to stretch our ha'penny of a budget is shop through Scholastic. You may remember them as the ones who do the book fairs and book orders at the elementary schools. Well, they still do the book fairs and book orders. But they also have warehouse sales a few times a year. The prices are ridiculous--up to 80% off of books and pencils and junk. All you have to do is get on the list and go down to the warehouse. You can also shop online, and if you are interested in shopping this month, check out the book fair Jooj's school is holding--if you live in El Paso they will ship to the school for free, even. Stocking stuffers and fun books for the kids. Check.

So that is it--that is how we are paying for Christmas this year. All told, out of pocket, I think we will spend less than $300 on food, stamps, and little incidentals that I couldn't get for free. What do you think? Any good tips I can use? (And don't say Black Friday. I'd rather gnaw off my arm than shop Black Friday.)

Tomorrow? My gift guidelines. Same bat-time, same bat-blog.

A Brief Interlude Between Decent Posts

Check out the button on the right-hand-side (or below for your Google Readers). It is for Swagbucks. Which is an awesome internet search engine. Download the toolbar (or just go to the site) to search, like you normally would, but for every few searches you earn Swagbucks--which can be redeemed for all sorts of things. Like Amazon giftcards, Delta miles, and cash. Serio. Three Christmas presents already paid for. Just from searching! I love it. And so should you.