Once again, BlogHer 2011 swag comes through — this time with logo items from the online coupon site Retail Me Not. Some other odds and ends, too.
Year: 2011
A note to Santa.
My great-nephew is 10 years old. I expect this is his last year of believing in Father Christmas. No doubt he’ll return to school on Jan. 3 saying, “Santa Claus brought me a Kinect and two of the ‘Heroes of Olympus” books!’ and some cynical fifth-grader will reply, “Dude, your mom bought those gifts.”
This year, though, he still believes. Witness the note he left on the kitchen table.
Who wants to go to the movies?
“War Horse”? “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”? “We Bought a Zoo”? “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”? “The Adentures of Tintin”?
Let me buy the first two tickets.
The $11.5 million Christmas tree.
No, I am not kidding. Picture a 43-foot-tall artificial tree draped with more than $11 million worth of jewelry and precious stones.
If you want to get a closer look, you’ll have to travel to the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. But not too close a look — the tree has four guards.
Downloadable treats from All You magazine.
The winner of the two subscriptions to All You magazine has been chosen, so if you didn’t hear from me it wasn’t you.
The response to the giveaway was so enthusiastic that I plan to do it again at some point — and in the meantime, the magazine is providing a little holiday consolation prize.
Gran? Grandma? Grandiose? Grandiloquent? Which do you think best describes me?
Great news on the home front: My daughter and her husband are expecting a baby in August.
Some women freak out when they’re told they are soon to be grandmas. They think it means they’re old, or something.
Two thoughts about that:
Up for grabs: Two subscriptions to All You.
If you’re a couponer and/or in the market for inexpensive recipes and easy-to-achieve life hacks, then All You magazine can help.
This week, you get a chance not just for a one-year subscription but also a second subscription for a friend.
Strategic pizza.
Last month I was fried extra-crispy: too many things to do in too little time before I left for a seven-week trip to Alaska. Will Chen over at Wise Bread did a telephone intervention, i.e., I sort of melted down while he was on the line.
Bless his heart – he didn’t start to make bad-cell-reception noises and say that he couldn’t hear me so we’d have to talk some other time. (Like, um, never.) Instead, he listened to me whirl and howl about so many things I wanted to do, so few days until my plane left, so many professional plans but no time in which to bring them to fruition.
Then he gently encouraged me to think about how I’m spending my time.
Why gift cards work.
My friend and former fellow MSN Money columnist Liz Weston really, really dislikes gift cards. She despairs of a world in which a shopper grabs a dozen plastic rectangles from the supermarket’s “gift card mall” and does a mental butt dance: Woo hoo! I’m all done my holiday shopping!
That image bothers me, too. Gift-giving should not come down to, “How fast can I get this over with?
Yes, I know you’re busy. So are a lot of people. But must generosity be reduced to a time trial?
That said, I think that gift cards can make good presents. It’s the intention that matters.
Giveaway: Ceramic ion flat iron.
Got any hair freaks on your holiday list? This week’s giveaway, sponsored by Folica.com, can help you out.