Practical Gift Giving (No Taxidermy Required)Follow

I dunno, maybe if it was the Cadillac of snow shovels, something far more than I'd justify buying on my own.. I'd probably find it a bit anti-climatic and usually want to pick out my own shovel since I'll be spending a bit of quality time with it and want to be sure it feels right.

I'd return it and buy a pizza.

On the rare occasion it snows enough here to use it the town is completely shut down and there's no reason to leave home. Besides that's what groundskeepers are for.

inorite!

Too bad there isn't a safe, economical, flame-thrower for home use. It would turn snow removal into fun and games.

I transitioned to practicality gifts over entertaining gifts back in college. In grade school, getting winter clothes sucked as a present. In college, I was all about getting some sweaters, shirts, etc. As much as I like video games, I literally have over 100 games that I haven't even started. What I do instead of asking for a game, is buy my brothers games that I want, so when they are done, I can borrow them.

That's how I got hooked on mmos. I bought my son Everquest.

He took his PS3 with him when he moved a couple months ago. I'm thinking of getting an x-box. Does Play Station have anything comparable to Kinect?

Obligatory.

All my relatives that I must produce a gift for live in snowy climes.

So the assumption is that they live somewhere that basically requires they have snow shovels, yet...we are to assume they would enjoy the gift of a duplicate shovel?

I usually try to tailor a gift to the person, and consider the gift as maybe something they'd like, but wouldn't buy for themselves. For example, I diverted from a wedding gift registry to buy a friend and her fiancée a Tardis cookie jar for a wedding gift. She was thrilled, said another friend had one and she always wanted to steal it.

Otherwise, I'll pick the weird, random stuff that people put on their registries. Like the Jaws computer game for my brother-in-law and his wife when they got married, and the set of golf clubs (cheapish) for my other brother in law when they got married.

For Christmas this year, we will go the heap route and most likely get gift cards to only our immediate family members. However, I did buy some of this soap at the farmers market that is handmade and has the greatest labels. There's "Dirty *****," "Dirty Hooker," "Dirty Mind," and "Zombie" to name a few. I hear the soap is sh*t, but it smells nice and the labels make me laugh.

Edited, Nov 26th 2012 8:50pm by Belkira

They would if the duplicate was the Nimbus2000 of snow shovels. They'd want to use it.

Thus, practical yet extravagant gifting.