Whenever I see something that seems like it would make a good gift, I make myself a note. Sometimes these notes clump into categories, and sometimes not. This is post of gift ideas I’ve been meaning to mention, but they keep not fitting with other posts.

Marmar Magnetic Necklace Sets (photo from the shop). Wait, because these are even neater than you think. FIRST, they’re neat because to change the pendant on the necklace, you just click a new magnet into place. But THEN, they’re ADDITIONALLY awesome because they work with all the Marmar refrigerator magnet sets! So, like, you get yourself a necklace, and you have magnets all over your fridge, and in the morning when you’re getting ready you can PICK A MAGNET OFF YOUR FRIDGE AND PUT IT IN YOUR NECKLACE. A squirrel one day, a cupcake the next! A famous scientist one day, a Santa-hatted cat the next! This idea appeals to me so much, I really really wish I wore necklaces. I would buy ALL THE MAGNET SETS.

Sons of Anarchy temporary tattoos (photo from fxnetworks.com). (I mean, clearly the photo is from fxnetworks.com. Clearly I do not have this nice young man in my living room posing for a photo for me.) I saw a mention of these in an interview with one of the cast members, and I immediately thought “OMG THAT WOULD BE SO COOL FOR A FAN OF THE SHOW.” Or for the partner of a fan of the show. Ahem. No-judging zone.
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Recently I’ve needed to buy baby gifts for two people in the “casual acquaintance” category. This category includes anyone where (1) it seems like it would be a nice thing to buy them a baby gift, but (2) you don’t really know them well enough to know what they’d like/need, and (3) you don’t want to make things awkward by getting something too large for the relationship. In other words, you want a token that shows your general good wishes, but this is not the time for engraved silver baby cups or a $100 baby swing.

I find in these cases I fall back on the same five basic ideas:

Idea #1: A set of board books. (Photo from Amazon.com.) Books with dust jackets and paper pages make good sentimental gifts and are a fun baby shower idea, but many of them can’t be enjoyed by the baby for years; baby board books can be used almost right away, and they’re less sentimental and more practical. I read this particular set to my particular babies one million times, and they were also good for propping in front of a baby suffering enjoying tummy-time. They’re good basic “a picture per page” board books, nice and bright and durable. And they’re $10ish for four! Perfect.

Idea #2: The sleep-and-play. (Photos from Carters.com.) Many new babies wear these around the clock at first, changed not for “daytime” and “bedtime” but instead with every diaper leak and spit-up. Such changes can happen many, many times a day with some babies. I know some parents report getting way too many baby clothes as gifts, but even with handmedowns I was still buying more of these with every baby in the first two sizes (newborn and 3 months). They’re easy, comfy, cute, and no one has to try to match colors on too little sleep.
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I don’t usually focus on one particular shop like this, but Lands’ End is where I happened to be browsing when I saw that there was a deal for $40 off purchases of $100 or more, plus free shipping over $50 (code ILOVELE with pin 3316, through tomorrow night). So I scrambled to make a list of the deals I found, in case you want to get them too. (Lands’ End didn’t ask me to do this, and they’re not giving me anything for it.) (Well, except the order I ordered, which I paid for with money so they will give it to me as per the usual store/customer relationship. But you know what I mean.)

Boys’ 5-pocket corduroy pants (photo from LandsEnd.com): $14.97 down from $29.50; sizes 8, 14, 16, and 16 slim; colors khaki and brown. This whole thing started as a quest for size 16 boy pants, and this is where I found some. Rob already has a pair of these and they look great, so I ordered a couple more pairs.

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There are things that I hear people talking about for ages, about how great those things are, and I’m too Anxious About New Things to try them. And then one day I DO (or else someone does it for me, as when I was 21 and my dad signed me up for an email account, knowing I wouldn’t have done it until my thirties otherwise), and my life is REVOLUTIONIZED. My parents use the expression that something “has improved the quality of our lives.” And while that sounds like the kind of thing people might say about a new vaccine or an economic upturn, they use it for things such as a new shower caddy.

Ever since I had my second child (and, perhaps more importantly, moved to a house no longer within walking distance of the post office), I’ve been whining about how hard it is to go to the post office: the lines, and the limited hours, and hauling children in and out of the car for what ought to be a 2-minute errand, and why don’t they have a DRIVE-THROUGH?? My dad kept saying and Saying and SAYING that I could get a pre-paid label online and have my mail carrier pick up the package, but I felt like…maybe I couldn’t. Like what if that cost more money? what if I weighed it wrong? what if my mail carrier hadn’t heard of it and thought I was being presumptuous? what if I had to print it on special label paper instead of regular? what if there was a pick-up fee, or or or?
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My dad says it’s been weird to read his alumni newsletter over the years, as his graduating class goes from a nice long Marriages column, to a nice long Newcomers column, to a nice long Deaths column. I’m noticing the same slow gradual shift in my own alumni newsletter (the Newcomers list is getting alarmingly sparse), and in the kind of news I get from family and friends. I had so many wedding gifts to buy for awhile, and now almost none—or sometimes one for a second wedding. For awhile I had a large “Baby Gifts Box” in the basement: I could confidently buy good baby stuff on clearance, knowing I’d have a recipient for it. But now it’s rare to need a baby present.

And for a huge part of my life I had no need for sympathy cards, but now I need them regularly enough to get frustrated with the skimpy selection. It’s hard to find the right one for the situation. Some of them are way too light, like “Oh, pooh, someone died! Hope ya feel better soon!!” Some of them are too heavy, like “The light has gone out of your world; I wouldn’t be surprised if you never recovered.” Some of them are way too elaborate: $5.99 worth of gilt script and big flowers and tissue lining. Many of them have the wrong tone for my relationship to the bereaved: I’m not going to say things the same way to my grandaunt who lost her husband as to a friend who lost a parent. Many of them make unsubstantiated claims about how things will turn out. Some of them have gaggingly cheezy text.
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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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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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So. November. About seven weeks left until the winter holidays. TIME TO PANIC.

Or for those of us who lovvvvve gift-buying, time to YAY! Time to start spending time every day prowling around looking for deals. Time to start placing orders and squirreling them away, and forgetting what’s already there, and ending up with too much for some people and not enough for others! Yay!

And this means I only have about seven Tuesdays left to share gift ideas and great finds with you, and
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I’m the spit-up covered, booger-wiping mother to both a toddler and a baby, which means that the majority of the surfaces in my house are coated with . . . well, actually, it’s probably best you don’t know the details. Especially if you’re planning to visit. Have a seat! Never mind that sticky — wait, where are you going?

We all know parenthood is messy (and smelly, and gooey, and smeared with various bodily substances), so without getting too Martha-y about cleanup — can anyone without a full-time housekeeper and nanny really expect that their home will remain sparkling clean in the wake of small children? — what are your tried-and-true methods of dealing with the inevitable catastrophes? Here are a few of my favorites:
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I love my handheld vacuum cleaner. My regular vacuum cleaner is almost completely unemployed, while my handheld vac is called into service half a dozen times a day. The regular vacuum has to be hauled out, plugged in, set up; the handheld just has to be grabbed out of its perch. The regular vacuum has choked on a coin, a piece of dental floss, a small flat metal star; the handheld can eat all those things AND an entire crayon and not even flinch.

I have the Black & Decker 15.6V Dust Buster. (Me to my mother, when a sale on the 15.6V brought it to almost the same price as the 14.4V: “What’s the difference?” My mother to me: “Larger number = noisier”) I like it a lot; it’s been a great vacuum. But we broke the piece that keeps stuff from falling back out of the hole it gets sucked into, and so I’m in the market for a new one and looking for input.
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