My brother is hoping to get a stamp dispenser for his birthday. More specifically, he wants a “totally rad” stamp dispenser for his birthday.

Well. We all know that when we want hip and happening and totally rad, we turn to our mid-to-late-thirties sister who only relatively recently switched from the 1990s glasses still featured in her photo above!

Post office box stamp dispenser (photo from GiftsForProfessionals.com), $29.75 plus shipping. Is this totally rad? I’m thinking no. But it has a certain charm that might be radness. Picture it on my brother’s solid-wood pleasingly vintage Guy Desk.

Hummingbird pewter stamp dispenser (photo from MooseHarborGifts.com), $19.95 plus shipping. Hummingbirds are awesome. But are they RAD? One problem we might be facing here is that many of the people who buy stamp dispensers are also still buying stamps they have to lick (not all, not ALL—there ARE self-adhesive stamps sold on a roll), and that those people might not be on the sharp cutting edge of technology and radness.
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Hanging Flower Pots (photo from Amazon.com). These get such poor reviews, but don’t they look pretty in their picture? (Or you can spend twice as much and buy the same thing handmade! by an artist! on Etsy! This is the sort of reason I’ve been doing fewer Etsy-related posts.)

Sonia Ceramix Planter (photo from Amazon.com). I like the color, and I also like the row of beading.
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It is time to CHOOSE A CALENDAR, and I am not even a little bit kidding when I say this is one of the purchases I most look forward to each year. I had trouble limiting this post to only twenty possibilities, and in fact caved and added one more at the last minute. (All photos except the last one are from Amazon.com.)

1. Charley Harper. I had a Charley Harper last year, and I don’t usually repeat. But if you’re looking for a good calendar, I REALLY liked my 2010 one. Plus, the 2011 one is half off.

2. Master of Illusion. I’m not fond of people calling themselves “Master of” anything, and usually optical illusion is more my kids’ thing than mine. Still, this one appeals to me this year, and it too is half off.
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I have noticed that a little whimsy goes a long way to keep my mood good. In the kitchen I have a bird peeler and a porcupine scrub brush and a toucan can opener. In the bedroom I have a squirrel platter and a picture of owls cuddling. But on my desk I have…clutter and utility. Here are some of the things I’ve been looking at to increase the whimsy around here:

Woodpecker scissors (photo from Amazon.com).  I have a pair of these already, actually, but I’m considering a second pair because people are always stealing my scissors HELLO CHILDREN I AM TALKING TO YOU.  These cut really well (they glide through wrapping paper), but I also like that they have a lock (the tail flips up).  This lets me make the scissors safer, but also lets me, um, pose the bird.  Like, close its mouth.
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My third grader doesn’t want a ticking clock in his room, but we need a clock in there for several reasons, one of which is to tell when story-reading time is over in the evenings, and another of which is because I always seem to be dressing/diapering someone on the changing table in there when we are in a huge hurry and I need to closely monitor Appropriate Panic Levels. So my current quest is for a clock that doesn’t tick.

The problem so far is that there isn’t a good way to tell if a clock ticks or not, unless it says “quiet sweep” or “silent movements” or something like that. The clock I bought for the kitchen is silent—but it didn’t say so on the packaging.

What I might do is move that kitchen clock to the bedroom and get a new one for the kitchen. But the kitchen clock really LOOKS like a kitchen clock. I’ll be looking at actual stores so I can read the packaging, but here are a few online options I’m considering:

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Do you tend to carry the same things in your bag, whether you’re heading to the office or to the playground? I know this isn’t really a thrilling topic for a blog post, but I was noticing recently as I shoveled the contents from a milk-stained “casual” purse to my fancier “work” clutch that no matter where I’m going, I drag the same inventory along with me. Here’s my can’t-leave-home-without-it list:
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I took Rob and William, entering fifth and third grade respectively, to buy school supplies last night. My heart was pounding. My hands were sweating. It was difficult for me to let them choose their own colors/designs, rather than pressuring them into buying what I liked.

Relief came from the realization that I could buy school supplies for myself anytime I wanted to, even if I didn’t have my own list to consult. The nice thing about school supplies is they’re PRACTICAL. I bought two packages of Hello Kitty pencils, but I USE pencils. I bought a large package of many-colored Sharpie markers, but I USE Sharpie markers. I bought six 1-subject notebooks in assorted colors, six folders in colors to match the notebooks, a 3-ring binder with unicorns on it, and a Hello Kitty lunchbox, but I USE….uh.

Some more justifiably practical choices:
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Business are going through layoffs, freelance clients are cutting back on their budgets, and sitting down to balance the checkbook has never been so depressing. Short of outfitting your office walls with Xanax-dispensing pellet guns, is there anything you can do to make your work environment more tolerable?

Well, maybe so. A little extra organizational happiness can’t be a bad thing, right?

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Picked your 2009 calendar yet? It’s one of my favorite shopping trips of the year. I shop the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when calendars are 50% off at most bookstores. This started when we were younger and poorer, but now it feels like the sporting way to do it.

Shopping as sport makes me more open to unusual choices:  I might not choose a calendar of baby pigs if I’m paying full-price and choosing from the full line of options, but I might do so if I’m choosing from the picked-over shelves—and sometimes a calendar of baby pigs is the very thing I never knew I needed in my life.
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I am not saying that good things don’t come in small packages, because of COURSE they do.  But sometimes a $20 CD can look, well, smaller than $20.  And sometimes a $20 throw blanket can look bigger than $20.

If you’re cutting down on gift spending this year, you might want to get more bang for your buck, as it were, by saving yourself money—and also giving the recipient a way to save some money themselves.  Or you might be trying to snow your in-laws into thinking you spent more than you did.  I’m not going to look too closely at your motivations, I’m just going to give you some big-looking, small-costing ideas that happen to go along with all the things people say they’re doing to save money these days.
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