According to the screamingly massive display of barbecue-and-football-themed cards I saw at Target last weekend, Father’s Day is coming up. We’ve covered some gift ideas in the past, so if you’re looking for inspiration, check here and here.

This time around I thought I’d focus on a few keepsake-type Father’s Day gifts that incorporate photos. What father can resist photos of his own adorable children? Sure, he may have preferred that fancy stainless steel infrared grill, but hey, it’s not like we got diamonds on Mother’s Day, IS IT?
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I have only two kids in elementary school, but between them they’ve gone to a couple dozen birthday parties so far. When the other three are in school—-whooooo, that’s a lot of parties to bring gifts to.

My goal is to spend about $10 for a party gift, and I can get a pretty good gift for that, even though I’m a somewhat fretful person and so my mission is complicated by my wishes to please the child and to please the child’s parents; to give a gift that won’t make a huge mess or end up with little tiny pieces lost all over the house or require intense parental involvement; to avoid sending the message that we watch too much TV and/or that we make inappropriate gender generalizations and/or that we are cheap cheap cheap. Ideally, I like the gift to be the child’s favorite present from the whole party, but also to send the message that we are a Quality Family.  And did I already say I want all that for about $10?

Here are some gifts that have been pleasing successes:
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My three youngest children have their birthdays in the same week and a half: this year, twins Elizabeth and Edward will turn four, and youngest child Henry will turn two. STAY WITH ME, because I need your help with Henry’s presents.

I am not much worried about the four-year birthdays. I idly asked what they were hoping to get for their birthdays, and Elizabeth answered that she wanted
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Oh look, May 10th is just around the corner! My favorite time of year, the day I get pampered, served breakfast in bed, showered with gifts, and . . . what? Sorry, was my sarcastic snorting and eye-rolling distracting you?

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More and more often I turn to Etsy.com when I need a special gift but don’t want something too corny.  When Paul and I had our 10-year anniversary, he chose me a pair of earrings from Etsy, because he knew I’d like just about anything he found there—and that he’d be likely to avoid the dreaded heart pendant the stores are always pushing on bewildered guys.

For Mother’s Day, Etsy is a great place to find a gift that doesn’t suggest that the giver chose it at random from the “Mother’s Day Specials!” flier that came from the department store.
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Baby books get filtered over time:  they come into the house via shopping and gifts, and then some of them become favorites and others get donated to the library.  Here are the ones that have been most successful at our house (through FIVE children now), and which I may or may not have purchased for my impending niece (she was due YESTERDAY, and doesn’t seem to care about the 10-cent-a-day overdue fee):

Maisy’s Bedtime, written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins.  We’re on our second copy of this one:  the first copy finally fell apart.  Maisy puts on her pajamas, loses and finds her stuffed Panda, reads a story, and pees on the potty.  Heart-stopping drama!
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Oh hey, another holiday is looming around the corner, BLEAH. I mean, oh, Valentine’s Day, my FAVORITE, I choo-choo-choose YOU!

(BLEAH.)

Please just tell me I’m not supposed to send in Valentines to my 3-year-old’s preschool. The teachers would warn us about this, right? Or is it just one of those Things that Good Parents Know About? ARRRGH.

While I’m stewing over the possibility of needing to make cards for a classroom of kids whose names my son cannot be trusted to accurately pronounce (one girl has been known in our household as “Prafarsha” forever, because that’s what he said her name was. FALSE), please enjoy some Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Guys, should you be shopping for the occasion.
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It’s December 22nd, and I’m feeling a little festive, a little sappy, and a little . . . tense. I mean, I’m trying to get my fa-la-la-la-la on, but either I need to get my entire house cleaned and the kitchen stocked for the grandparents’ impending visit and host the Best Darn Christmas There Ever Was this week — or they’re going to be unable to make it at all due to the crazy Seattle snowstorm. Between the two scenarios, I greatly prefer the first, but they both require at least twelve cookies to even consider.

(I have eaten a LOT of cookies over the last few days.)

In between fretting over holiday-related tasks and being snowed in (FOR FOUR DAYS AND COUNTING) (WITH TWO SMALL CHILDREN MIGHT I ADD) (SORRY FOR THE CAPS LOCK BUT I ASSURE YOU, THE SITUATION WARRANTS), I’ve been thinking about 1) kid-distracting activities, and 2) handmade gifts for certain people on your list who you were going to buy a gift for but hello, SNOWED IN FOR FOUR DAYS, etc.

So! If you’ve got some last-minute gifts to pull together and you’d like them to be of the homemade variety, here’s a list of easy, non-lame crafts you and the kids can whip up in short order.
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Do you realize that Christmas Eve is one week from today?  I’m making a list of gifts that have been given to ME in the past year, gifts that were a success and that you might want to consider buying for someone on your list.

My brother and sister-in-law gave me several pairs of earrings from the Etsy shop Kneehighs-n-Pigtails, and I LOVE them.  They’re so classy and dressy if you’re looking classy and dressy, but they look chic and awesome with t-shirt and jeans, too.
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This year my husband and I have decided to make holiday gift-giving easy on each other — we both have Amazon wish lists propagated with a selection of inexpensive items. Choose gift, add to cart, kerblam: spousal shopping is done.

I suppose it doesn’t sound very romantic, but we’ve got a budget to stick to and about a thousand other holiday-related things to do, and really, the Amazon wish list is a genius invention, anyway. How else would I know that he wanted an actual ant farm? (Note to my husband: I am SO not buying you that thing, because somehow I have the feeling I’ll be cleaning up after eighty billion escaped insects if I do so.)

For those of you who have a dude to shop for and no wish lists on hand, I’ve got a few suggestions from past gifts that have been super successful in our household:
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