holidays

Holiday 2021 giveaway: Alaska art jewelry.

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I’ve been doing intermittent giveaways of Alaska-made items, in order to support the local economy. Today I realized that Hannukah starts on Nov. 28, and that we have only about five more weeks before Christmas and Kwanzaa. Clearly it’s time for a holiday 2021 giveaway, no matter which holiday(s) you observe.

My friend Linda B’s jewelry has done so well in the past that I’m putting some of it back up for grabs. You can read more about her backstory in the first giveaway write-up. Short form: She’s talented in fields other than jewelry, and she’s also awesome.

As is her jewelry. She started out with beading, and has lately become entranced with metalwork and resin capture. If you want to give gifts to a spouse, lover, friend or, heck, even to yourself, I can guarantee that these are one-of-a-kind pieces. Linda never repeats herself, so every jewelry work is unique and never to be repeated.

Her work is arresting, and it’s hard to pick favorites, but here are the items I will be giving away this time around.

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Thanks, Dad, for useful life skills.

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(Note: A version of this article was published in MSN Money’s Smart Spending blog in 2009. I am re-running it for Throwback Thursday, because tomorrow is the first anniversary of his death from COVID-19.)

Years ago my dad had two teaching jobs: elementary school all day, and an evening gig with adolescents deemed too unruly for regular high school. One evening, a student flipped a penny at him. Dad picked it up and put it in his pocket. The teens laughed, and another one flipped a penny. Then another one.

When my father had 12 cents in his pocket, he said, “Guys, I want to thank you. All I need is 38 more of these and I’m going over to the Fairfield and have a draft beer – on you.”

He could see the horror in their faces: Man, I’m not gonna buy the TEACHER a beer! Not another penny was flung.

That was an example of what he would call a “useful life skill”: realizing that sometimes nontraditional tactics are needed to solve nontraditional situations.

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Win a $100 Walmart gift card.

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Win a $100 e-gift card from Walmart.

Sorry to have maintained radio silence since Oct. 23, but I’m on vacation in Phoenix. More about that below, however, because I want to focus on the topic at hand: Why five of you should win a $100 Walmart card.

My old pals at Savings.com are giving away five $100 e-gift cards in what they’re calling the #LiveWellWithWalmart giveaway. I see no reason that all five shouldn’t be won by readers of this site.

After all, the holidays are upon us and due to supply-chain and pandemic-related issues, there’s no time like the present to start looking for your presents.

(Disclosure: I get a small affiliate fee for each click on the links in this piece.)

And if you’re in a position where all your needs are currently covered? Consider entering anyway, and then using the $100 to do some good. Buy diapers and donate them to a diaper bank. Purchase gloves, hats and wool socks and drop them off at a shelter; if you live in a temperate climate, then substitute cotton socks and maybe some underwear.

Buy pet food for a no-kill rescue group. Choose some puzzles and stuffed animals to help out your local Toys for Tots drive. Get a hundred bucks’ worth of coffee and tea and deliver it to the senior center. 

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Giveaway: Alaska aurora calendar.

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As I noted recently, it’s high time you started any holiday shopping you plan for the year. Due to supply chain/pandemic issues, it’s going to be harder to find what you want and it will almost certainly cost more than you hoped. 

Here’s one solution: Win your gifts!

I post those e-gift card giveaways from Savings.com whenever I hear about them, in the hopes that one (or more!) of my readers will luck out. Regular readers also know that I give stuff away myself fairly often.

Lately I’ve been trying to focus on locally made items. This week’s giveaway is the Aurora 2022: Alaska’s Northern Lights calendar from Fairbanks-based Greatland Graphics. 

Who’s in?

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Holiday shopping hack: Unused gift cards.

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I give a lot of gift cards for birthdays and Christmas, because I like the flexibility* they provide  to the recipients. Generally I get them from rewards programs, which means that most arrive as e-gift cards. I print out two copies: one to give and one as backup in case the cards get lost.

Which isn’t me being paranoid. Lost gift cards are a thing. According to a Bankrate.com poll of nearly 2,400 adults, U.S. residents have an estimated $15.3 billion in unspent spending power just lying around. The average amount is $116 per person.

On the bright side, it was $167 per person back in January 2020. That’s progress.

These numbers are sobering – and unnecessary. That’s why I’m proposing that we all go on an unused gift card hunt. Mine happened on Sunday, quite by accident.

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5 ways to ruin the 2021 holidays.

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The pandemic has messed with my sense of time, and maybe with yours. Certainly I was startled today when I did the math and realized that Thanksgiving is just 77 days from now.

Three days after that is the first night of Hannukah. And if you’re a Christmas person, that happens in 107 days.

Some of us prepare throughout the year. If we see gift bags and/or holiday wrapping paper on deep clearance (or waving at us from the mixed-paper bin at the recycling center), we stock up.

Yard sales, thrift stores and Buy Nothing Facebook groups yield us holiday décor, serving pieces and gifts. We stash points from rewards programs/apps, planning to cash them in for gift-buying.

Not everyone is as vigilant (or hypervigilant). To those who prefer a more laid-back approach, I hereby offer some helpful tips on completely screwing up the 2021 holidays.      

1. Wait until the last minute.

So what if supply-chain issues are predicted to get worse in the coming months? Maybe they won’t!

And so what if retailers like Walmart and Amazon are struggling to get space on shipping vessels, or if the continuing microchip shortage has affected manufacturing? Surely they’ll have that all ironed out before Christmas.

You’re a busy person, after all, so it’s fine if you wait until Dec. 23 to start your shopping.

2. Relax about the mailing.

The U.S. Postal Service plans both a temporary rate hike and a first-class mail delivery slowdown starting in early October. If you don’t wrap and mail early, you’ll pay more and the stuff might not get there on time. 

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Gift card giveaway (quick one).

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It’s a gloomy, overcast day here. Maybe it is where you are, too. So I just decided to do a quick-turnaround $20 Valentine’s Day gift card giveaway, to brighten everyone’s mood.

My mood, because I like to give things away.

Your mood, because you might win. (It could happen!)

Maybe you’d use the prize to brighten your day: getting that book you wanted, or picking up some really good lip balm and lotion to deal with winter dryness. Or to brighten someone else’s day – either a “just because” gift or a Valentine’s Day (or Galentine’s Day) present.

Instead of making an executive decision about this gift card giveaway, I’m going to give the winner a handful of options and let them decide. The card will come in part from the Shopkick app, so I’ll be pulling those options from the app’s rewards center.

A quick word about Shopkick: It’s one of my favorites now that I’ve finally gotten a smartphone. Pretty simple to use: You get points for scanning UPCs from certain products in drugstores, department stores, supermarkets, pet emporia and other retailers, and then trade them in for Fabulous Prizes. (Specifically: gift cards, PayPal, or contributions to Feeding America or the American Red Cross.)

If you actually buy any of those products, you get a bunch more points. You can also get points for watching very short videos in the app. (Think: 10 to 30 seconds.) Although I don’t buy all that much, I am having a lot of fun with this app. (If you’d like to join, go to https://www.shopkick.com/ and fill in the referral code WIN358965.)

Now: On to your choices. Although 47 options exist, I’m gonna limit them to the following:

 

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Giveaway: More Alaska jewelry.

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This is another in my “support local artists/local economy” giveaway series. It’s the second giveaway of jewelry made by my bestest buddy Linda B.

The response was so great the first time that I thought, “These folks like jewelry. Maybe I should give more of it away. How about for Valentine’s Day?”

It’s a bit early to be thinking about gifts of love, but I think about things differently than most people. (Boy, do I ever…) Seriously, though: Since the U.S. mail system has been struggling lately, I want to allow plenty of time to get these delivered so they can be given as gifts.

Not that you have to give them away. If you love jewelry, then keep it all. As another Donna would say: Treat yo’self.

Or keep some of it, and give the rest to your mother, sister(s) or friend(s). There’s enough to share: The winner will get his or her choice from among the six pendants shown below plus four pairs of earrings.

Linda began with beads and has branched out into resin capture and metalwork. The “work” sometimes means texturing the stuff. When I moved back to Alaska I originally lived in Linda’s house. She’s a night owl and would stay up late working on jewelry. Sometimes I would fall asleep to the teenk-teenk-teenk of her using a texturing hammer on the metal, which made me think of a steampunk version of “The Shoemaker and the Elves.”

(Revisit the first giveaway write-up for Linda’s full backstory. She is a kick-ass Alaska woman and I am proud to be her friend. Humbled, even.)

Once again it was hard to choose from among her many works, but here’s what I settled on: 

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Monday miscellany: Debt hangover edition.

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About one-third of U.S. residents took on debt for the 2020 holidays, according to a study from the Magnify Money personal finance site. Breaking it down further, there’s good, bad and worse news about these findings. The good news: Fewer people (31 percent) borrowed this year than last year (44 percent). The bad news: Those … Read more

Extreme Frugality: Post-holiday sales edition.

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Each year retailers set out millions of dollars’ worth of holiday presents, décor, cards, wrapping paper and foods. And each year there’s always some (or a lot) left over. Hence the annual post-holiday sales, where we can save some (or a lot) of money.

I wish I’d written this for Dec. 26, when stores were fairly bursting with red and green bargains. But it’s not too late. While holiday retail inventory is down, it’s not out: Sales are still happening both online and in-store. The discounts are deeper, too.

Sure, some of what you’ll see went unsold for a reason. It was tacky. It was garish. It was expensive. It was mystifying (see “corgi-butt bottle opener”). But plenty of perfectly good stuff simply doesn’t get bought, and post-holiday sales can stretch next year’s holiday budget and certain year-round needs as well.

For example, if your winter boots have started to let in snow at every step, you’ll likely find screamin’ deals on replacement footwear at this point. Or if someone you know is going to graduate from college, get married, move into a new home or have a baby in the coming year, now is the time to go shopping.

As always: If you don’t need it, it’s no bargain. Why buy another 10 rolls of wrapping paper when you’ve already got two dozen? Or extra holiday ornaments when every inch of the tree is already crowded? And you can display only so many nutcrackers or old-time Santas before your family stages an intervention.

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