WSUAS #3: What I Won't Shut Up About, Holiday Gift Edition! 🤶

Meaningful and fun gifts for everyone in your life, including the hard people (hairdressers, MILs, BILs, dads, teachers...)!

Dec 02, 2023

Are you sick of these round up guides? Personally, I can’t get enough of them!

I tried to skip the usual suspects (gifts for tweens! gifts for dads!) and instead focus on the genres I excel at - meaningful gifts and gifts that are a slightly quirky, but still cool.

90% of these I have actually purchased and given with great success - I’ve let you know if I haven’t actually seen it in real life (I’ll update this once I have!).

Hopefully, there’s something here that eases your shopping woes a bit, and, puh-lease, add your fave ideas in the comments! The more ideas, the merrier!

Gifts with your face on them:

I love a good face gift. It’s meaningful, but not overly hard to put together. The kind of gift that your mom or mother-in-law will proudly display, but you didn’t have to stay up all night on Christmas Eve, gluing together (I have been there more times than I can count…)

Here are some winners:

yes, that’s a pillow of my husband’s face

🎄 Our family is big into doing puzzles on holidays and there’s nothing quite as satisfying as doing on with your face on it. We went with Puzzle You because you can upload multiple photos rather than just one, plus you can create one with lots of pieces to make it hard.

🎄 Photo books and calendars are the sweetest presents because they keep giving all year. My fave company to use is Artifact Uprising - they started out using Colorado beetle kill trees in their calendars and now have expanded to 100% recycled materials, plus their designs are stunning. One of my faves is this easel calendar for your desk.

🎄 My parents had a love / hate relationship with this gift, but the rest of their family LOVED it. We gave them a Storyworth subscription, which sends a question a week by email that they have to answer. At the end of the year, Storyworth complies the answers into a book.

All of us kids loved it because we found out totally random things (who they dated, family gossip) and we have a true record of their life, but they both felt like it was a lot of work while it was happening (I think they were happy with the result though!).

🎄 I love this gift because who wouldn’t want wrapping paper with my face on it?!?!? NO ONE, that’s who.

🎄 My husband and I have this weird thing where we gift each other presents with our faces on them (it started because I said I loved him so much I wished I could carry his head around at all times so he gave me his face as a pillow). This year I’m giving him a shirt with my face on it so he can wear me with pride.

🎄 You know how you can turn your dog into a royal? Well, you can do the same for your relatives! I feel like this would be the perfect gift for a just married couple or a big anniversary.

🎄 Have a Simpsons’ lover in your life? Turn them into a version of the iconic TV show (one of our friends did this for their holiday card and it was EPIC). Or, there’s this version, which is an adorable cartoon illustration.

Games:

I thought I wasn’t a huge game person, but then I realized it’s because we were playing CANDYLAND all the time and THAT GAME IS THE WORST. I feel like I should like it (candy! colorful game pieces! princesses!) but there’s something about it that makes me simultaneously want to fall asleep and run through the house screaming.

Instead, turns out games are fun! Here are a few of our faves:

🎄 My kids are 10 and 12 and we still play these two games on repeat - Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza and Sleeping Queens (in fact, if I had to give a gift for someone between 4-8, I’d bundle these two).

WARNING: TCGCP is LOUD. But really fun and you can have a ton of people play at the same time. Plus, it’s short. Really the perfect game! And Sleeping Queens is so CUTE. It’s truly the ideal, first card game, and even involves Math! (It was created by a little girl and it’s exactly what young kids love.)

🎄 Did you know Cards Against Humanity has a kid version called Kids Against Maturity? This is my go to gift for the 8-12 year old range and, listen, the jokes are gross, the laughs are all about farts, and is TOTALLY WORTH IT.

🎄 Snakesss is one of my kids’ faves. You have to basically convince the other people to choose your answer and YOU GET TO LIE. For me, it’s been an interesting exercise in how good they are at the whole fibbing thing (pretty good 😳).

🎄 I keep hearing about Ransom Notes (I haven’t actually bought it yet), and it looks HILARIOUS. You have to write “ransom notes” using random word magnets to describe various scenarios like “ask the child behind you on a airplane to quit kicking the seat.”

🎄 Okay, I haven’t actually played Secret Hitler but we gave it to my brother-in-law who’s a huge game player and he LOVES it. Actually, everyone I know who has played it loves it, which makes me think maybe it’s time to play it on my own?

Subscriptions:

I’ve gotten really into giving subscriptions lately, because

they’re perfect for that group of people who you really care about, but really have no idea what to buy
everyone I know has a lot of stuff and / or buys what they want and I like the idea of an experience
they think of me every time they use it (the real reason)

Here are a couple of the best ones:

Over half are BOTM books - my fave gift!

🎄 If you want the perfect gift for EVERYONE - I’m talking teachers, your hairdresser, family, friends, clients - give them a Book of the Month subscription. Each month they get to choose from a list of 5 - 7 curated, new books. If they like to read, this is the THE GIFT.

🎄 This was an inspired gift last year, if I do say so myself. I gave my husband and brother-in-law a Masterclass subscription and they both really used it! My husband learned cooking from Thomas Keller, writing from David Sedaris, and guitar stuff from a whole buncha people I’ve never heard of.

🎄 Last year, I gifted my bestie and myself a subscription to the Waking Up app, which features daily meditations, longer think pieces on what it means to be human, and inspiration. The fun part was talking through what we were learning and listening to.

🎄 One of my favorite gifts, maybe ever, was when one of my besties gave me several months to Bouqs, a subscription flower service. Each month, a gorgeous, seasonal bouquet would land on my doorstep and brighten up my day.

🎄 This one has been all over my Instagram feed and I’m going to give it a whirl. It’s called Dear Holmes and you have to solve a mystery that is mailed to your house over the course of several weeks. (There’s also a kids’ version called Mail Order Mystery that I ordered for the kids - I’ll let you know what they think!)

Random gifts that are cool for lots of people:

I just put everything that I love for dads, BILs, teachers, neighbors, hostesses, grandmas, kiddos into one big list.

Ready? Here we go!

It’s definitely something to see it in black and white…

🎄 I love this gift, but I think a lot of people might be weirded out so do what you will with that info. The 4k Weeks Poster has one small dot for each week of your life, which gets colored in once you’ve lived it. It’s a great kick-in-the-pants if you’re into that kind of thing.

🎄 This could be the perfect gift for a new mom or grandma? It’s a ring with two names that make up the band. Or if they only have one kiddo, this necklace is so sweet.

🎄 Oh, I have a ton of ideas for this gift. It’s these cute little pills that have secret messages inside! You could write inspirational quotes, jokes, things you love about that person, memories, what you want to do together… The options are endless!

🎄 The hardest people to buy for? DADS. You can only give a man so many wallets and t-shirts before it seems like you’re not really trying. Well, I got a winner. The New York Times put together collections of all their articles related to various subjects and put them in a lovely book. They’ve got every football team, baseball, the history of World War 2, Star Wars, history of comic books… You’re welcome. 🤩

🎄 A couple of years ago, my parents and in laws moved from our childhood homes. This gal created watercolor versions of their houses and I gave them to everyone who had grown up in the homes and, basically, won Christmas that year. 👊🏼

🎄 The year we moved into our new house, I bought one of these ornaments of our new house. It’s also the perfect, thoughtful gift for new home owners!

🎄 Here in Colorado, it’s basically a given you’re going to talk about 1. how dehydrated you are and 2. how dry your lips are. I’m embarrassed to report the Stanley tumbler is totally worth the hype and keep you hydrated in style, while this lip mask has transformed all of our lips from cracked to supple in less than a week.

🎄 This one is totally random, but if you know someone who will like it, you know. We gave this cash machine to my kiddo’s yearbook teacher last year and it was a hit.

🎄 Other ones that fall in the same category: this disco ball can opener (please, someone buy it for me!), this plug in disco ball (to add atmosphere), this “no” button (I like to use when the kids ask me to do things for them), and this 30 second dance party (highly controversial - kids and I LOVE it, it makes everyone else in my family want to pull their hair out).

Okay, whaddya think? Any winners? Anything I missed? Put it in the comments and let’s create the most epic guide of meaningful / quirky gifts on the internet!