Calendar Notes

Three important calendar notes as we move into the new week (and the new month):

1. Monday, November 30 is now referred to as “Cyber Monday” -- the online equivalent of Black Friday, with retailers revving up to offer great deals to deskbound shoppers. Get your mouse fingers ready (and don't be surprised if overwhelmed online retailers encounter technical difficulties).

2. Ready or not, December is upon us. If you are into advent calendars, it is worthy to note that Trader Joe's sells chocolate-a-day calendars for 99 cents...you can create a sweet tradition for less than 4 cents a day.

3. 12-month photo calendars for 2010 make a wonderful gift for grandparents, adult kids (pull up pics from their childhood), pet owners or friends of great photographers (like you?). Bonus points if you customize your calendar(s) with birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates. Super-bonus points if you order now to avoid the rush! I always create my calendar gifts at our local Kinko's (Fedex Office, whatever), but a friend of mine has had great success ordering calendars online via Snapfish. Compare for yourself. Cost is less than $30 for a year's worth of lovely gifting!

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Fit to a tee...

Tee shirts are an easy, practical, personal gift -- especially for kids, teens, athletes, and anyone who thinks Hanes = comfiness = fashion.

So...know your giftees' color preferences, know their sizes, know their sense of humor...then get creative!

I like tee shirts that are a little obscure or ironic. If someone is a fan of the TV show Gray's Anatomy, for example, don't just go to the ABC website -- instead, get him or her a tee shirt from a Seattle coffee shop or restaurant. Your friend who is planning a trip to Australia might appreciate a shirt from an Australian pub or rugby team. The UCLA fan might love something that refers to Bruins or Johnny Wooden or Westwood...see what I mean?

My favorite source for random, seemingly customized tee shirts is CafePress.com. Just enter your key words there, and I bet you will find some choice gift options.

If you can't find the perfect tee shirt for your giftee, jot down any ideas or catch phrases and we'll talk later about ways to create (actual) custom tees.


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Trawling for ideas

If you have been a good detective and figured out what make your friends/loved ones/co-workers happy, now you can use that knowledge to start honing in on some great gift ideas -- best of all, you can do so without waking up at 5 a.m. and battling the hordes of people who choose to shop the day after Thanksgiving.

Here are two steps to get you going…no guarantees that you will find your gift yet, but this can help rev up your creativity to help you come up with some up with something exciting.

1. Make a list of key words for the giftees on your list: their names (first and last), kids’ names, pets’ names, hometown, their passions, their histories, and their futures (what they are looking forward to?).

2. Go online (aka shopping in your jammies) and use those key words to search. You are just trawling at this point -- gathering ideas and options, and getting the creativity started. Some of my favorite sites for this kind of research are CafePress, eBay, Amazon and the favorite search engine du jour (Yahoo, Google, Bing, whatever).

Once you start trawling, one idea will lead to another…and you just might get lucky. Think (carefully) before you buy anything -- if you find a cute “Jerry’s Pub” t-shirt but Jerry doesn’t wear t-shirts or drink beer, that’s not a good gift idea. But if you find a vintage model of the 1968 VW he drove and loved when he was 16, you could be on to something good.

Happy searching!

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