Category Archives: Gift

Gift, Personal, Whimsical

Still a Mystery

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A Thanks:
Someone surprised me with two packages from the Mysterious Package Company. As the name suggests, the giver isn’t identified. Each shipment is a weirdly-themed motley assortment of clues, information, curios, and puzzlements.

The first package definitely threw me out of the boat with curiosity. Usually, it’s me being the circumspect eccentric catching everyone else off guard. This time, though, whoever sent me these put me at a disadvantage.  Trust me, I was as confused as a dog jumping up to catch a frisbee, only to find I’d caught a porcelain plate in my teeth. I used the newsletter from the first one (after reading it and piecing together the disparate pieces) to decorate a birthday present. It was a big hit. I made ornaments out of a couple of the pieces. There were a couple of the items which bedeviled me endlessly, such as the paper and cardboard wind-up birdhouse.

These things are difficult to describe. The company making them has full-scale complicated stories which come in stages – and stand-alone surprise boxes. (You can google The Mysterious Package Company if you are interested in what craziness I’m describing here.)

If you received a strange postcard, it is because I thought you might have been the person who surprised me with these. If you didn’t get a postcard and you are the guilty party, thanks. Some of them are mailed from the future, by the way, which makes things exceedingly complicated, given that we are living in the present. I assume we are, anyway.

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Gift, Whimsical

Fairy/Pixie Doors – Not Just For Kids

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I surprised Dawn yesterday with a magical fairy door from someone in Quebec who makes them. It came with a corked vial of fairy dust and a magic key allowing the pixies/fairies to come and go as the whim suits them. Even our cat Güino knew that magic had entered the house. Dawn would have never guessed in a million years that I had ordered her such a whimsical gift. I think we both grew 10 years younger in spirit laughing about it. (I can think of 100 ways one of these would make a child’s life a lot more imaginative and interesting, with the right crazy adult leading the charge.)

 

(PS: The portrait of my wife and I in the above picture is still probably my favorite. It confounds people to this day when they see it.)

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The websites are on this instructional card, both the Etsy and regular website.

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The vial of fairy dust is corked and has a fairy emblem on the side. I can imagine just how inspirational one of these would be in the hands of the right kid.

 

 

Gift, Whimsical

111242014 Creative Wrapping and Decoration

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Each of these packets is actually individually wrapped layers of envelopes, with each containing cash and pictures, bundled together into two separate packs.

I wish I had done a better of keeping pictures of all the hundreds of crazy wrapping and decoration jobs I’ve done over the years.

“The Dirty Sanchez.” My friend Chris got a surprise, using a funny picture I had drawn on the table at a mexican place where we had shared a meal. His wife asked me to quickly wrap it to conceal what it was, so naturally, I dragged out my picture of my on-the-fly artwork.

An example of a personalized letter envelope I made. I have made 100s of these over the years, usually in bright colors. For some reason, I liked this one in negative colors. When I was much younger, I once made weekly payments for a used car by making a different decorated envelope for each week’s payment. The lot manager had a display in his office with my payment envelopes on it.

A holding/storage box. Probably 2,000 strips of tape, a few hundred stickers, paper slivers, etc. The inside was completed decorated, too. One time, while working at Cargill, I had made one of these for someone’s son. As hard as it is to believe now, it took me about 60 hours of work, had several compartments, 2 of which weren’t visible and wouldn’t work if you didn’t know to press the inside corner to drop the extra compartments open. I don’t have pictures of it anymore.

Simple newspaper wrapping paper, shrouded in 4 8X11 color pictures of the recipient.

I wrapped this box with special photo art paper, then used a couple of dozen personalized pictures to cover the box on all 6 sides. Inside the top paper, there was an entire layer of about 60 wallet-size individual pictures, too.

From a few years ago. I used pictures after making them appear as pencil outline drawings. He loved the box!

This present is wrapped in special red paper, then covered with 200+ bandaids as a decoration. (She used to be a nurse, but the real reason I used them is because it’s cool and no matter how you apply the bandaids, it looks interesting.

From a few years ago. You can see that I used both color photos and outline pictures on colored paper to wrap many of the presents.
Gift, Holiday, Whimsical

11212014 Great Kid Ornaments

The picture above is an example of xmas ornaments I used to make out of color photos, stickers, paint/fingernail polish, and tape. By putting the year on the photo, I could indicate how old the child was, as well as the year. After a few years, any tree begins to tell a story of who is in the family. It was something that I could get one child to help with another child’s ornament.

Gift, Holiday

1116204 Picture Blankets

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This picture demonstrates the lack of “pillow control” my cousin suffers from.

 

Whether you choose Wal-Mart or Snapfish, or some other photo service, they offer an interesting ability to have photos printed on blankets and pillowcases. I always encourage people to actually use the ones I have made, but many prefer to use them as “throws” or decorations. You can have just about any picture or picture printed, too.

As a minimalist, I don’t need a lot of pillow cases. But I would prefer that all of them were personalized and interesting like the one above, using a goofy picture of me and my wife taken at a children’s birthday party.

12008 jimmy noah at his apart (15)(4)This picture is of my cousin Jimmy and his son Noah. That pillow case was Noah’s pride and job for years. One of the funny stories of Jimmy’s cancer is that he accidentally put it in the microwave to heat it late night to heat it. It caught fire.

I don’t have pictures of many of the others, but I’ve had several sets of pillow cases made for the children of friends and co-workers. They’ve always been met with absolute joy and glee. Many of the kids uses them as sleeping bags when they are small.

I’ve also had many more blankets made than this. Unfortunately, I either don’t have pictures or the recipients didn’t pose with their gifts. There were a few really crazy blankets that I should have sent to myself after having them made to get a picture. One, for example, was a blanket intended to be used as a lap blanket at a Razorback’s game, ridiculing opponents. The other had 96 smaller pictures on it and looked bizarrely pretty when I designed the picture placement.

Gift, Minimalism

11142014 Canvas-Size Photos – Great Wall or Gift Idea

Wal-Mart Link (I hope it will continue to work…)

Wal-Mart, among other retailers, offers some very nice photo canvases for reasonable prices.

If you want to save a lot more money, you should scroll down or search for “faux canvases.” These are much cheaper than the canvas alternative. Like most Wal-Mart photo merchandise, you can crop and customize some aspects of the canvas.

For my own living room, I have several different sizes, creating a staggered pattern that not only fills the space better, but breaks your line of sight away from focusing on a specific picture canvas at the expense of the others.  

I’ve had many of these made for other people. You can choose from faux canvas to real canvas with wood frames. 

The above picture is probably my favorite, at least in terms of style. It’s a portrait of my wife and I, expect we posed backwards for the picture. When people see it on the living room wall, it baffles many of them.

Gift, Minimalism

07062013 Gift Hoarders and Re-Gifting

“If it is a gift, the best way to use it is to use it yourself or find a great home for it where it will be used or appreciated.” -x

I would never choose to be offended if anyone were to give a gift from me to another person. Once I give it, it is yours to appreciate or give. No questions asked. If I were to paint something for you and later you decided that you didn’t want it (or it looked like a 90 year-old cocaine user painted it) you don’t have to hide it and then throw it on the wall before I come to visit.If I give you an expensive collection of Japanese Toenail Clippings, give it to someone else who has an appreciation for that sort of thing.There’s no reason to dedicate a corner of your house to things given to you that you can’t dare give away or discard. Truthfully, as people age, the accumulated clutter of gifts over the years might reach the ceiling if people didn’t tactfully rid themselves of old gifts.

We might have less complicated lives if we could all look at each other and agree that some of our gift choices are just plain crazy. Since people’s tastes change and sometimes we just get tired of looking at the same stuff all the time, there is no shame or crime in recognizing that we no longer really want something that was given to us. If you are a weirder person than average, it is statistically likely that you are going to guess wrong more often than people you know.

All of the above is part of the reason I enjoy trying to give personalized gifts, whether they be picture cups, or blankets printed with family pictures, calendars or anything else weird or fun I might think of. Most of the time, though, I spend more time and effort decorating the box or packaging the gift is being put into for giving.

I don’t mind if you re-gift presents I’ve give you. Only you know if you were genuinely appreciative when I gave you something. It’s not my job to judge your state of mind or whether you cared that I gave you a gift. We can do our best to surprise those we love with interesting and beloved gifts. But let’s face it, most of them are going to the the equivalent of a 6-foot Elvis robot.

 

Gift, Whimsical

10102013 Jesus-Zach Galifianakis Picture and Its Many Uses

Take a look at this picture. It is the iconic picture of Jesus that many of us stared at while growing up in our grandparent’s houses – the one which made the hair on the nape of our neck stand on end when we were trying to get by with something forbidden.

Or is it?

No, it’s actually a very clever morphed Jesus-Zach Galifianakis hybrid picture. This picture makes me laugh out loud, literally, sometimes.

I’ve used many times to wrap presents with. Those who don’t look closely think that I’ve used a picture of Jesus. Those who look really closely and who also follow pop culture really get a laugh out of it.

I’ve used this picture on personalized coffee mugs that I’ve had made.

I’ve used this picture as a centerpiece on xmas decorations and things of that nature. Many people never notice that something isn’t quite right about the picture.

I tried to convince myself to make a large framed version of this and sneak it into the church I most often attend. I couldn’t quite do it, although I’m certain that the pastor would have laughed until he cried. It’s not like any of us old fogies can see well enough to catch the tomfoolery at first glance, anyway.

It’s not so much that I’m subverting anyone’s beliefs, but that it is a great example of subversive humor.

Gift, Holiday

08032014 Xmas Wish

Personally, I’ve never been a true believer in how we celebrate Xmas. I’m referring to the secular aspect of it in this short post, not the religious aspect. It’s difficult to get into the “true” spirit of Xmas when you don’t think of Jesus in the way that religion wants you to – which I don’t.

I wish that we could find a way to get away from the mad rush of consumerism. Everyone says it and I’m sure I’m not much different for repeating this trite-but-true cliché. Trying to get away from it would evidently cause our economy to collapse, too, if you listen to the news.

I can easily imagine a world where, instead of waiting until a designated approved day, each of us was encouraged to surprise our friends and loved ones with heart-felt gifts, anytime, throughout the year. This would not only allow us to get away from yuletide consumerism, it would also allow us to individually get gifts without pressure, when we can afford to do so, and to anticipate and plan surprising each of our friends and family as people.

No one would then know when they might be surprised and treated. It would truly be a better way of acknowledging people as people
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It would kill the growing trend to ruin everyone’s holidays with insane shopping, stress, and pocketbook madness.

I much prefer the ‘surprise’ method of gifting. I periodically do it to remind myself that I’ve always wanted it to be that way.

Maybe this coming year will be the year I finally just do it without concern for how everyone decides to follow the herd?

After all, the person I love the most, my wife, has a xmas eve birthday, so I can easily get by with my alternate plan and still make her happy around xmas.

A thought to consider…

Gift, Minimalism

02122013 It’s Not the Thought That Counts

If someone took enough time and creativity to box and package your gift like this, would you feel anything other than happy? It’s not only colorful and crazy, but shows that a significant time investment was given. I would rather get an empty box like this than something obligatory. That’s just me, though.

I don’t want to get gifts that aren’t heart-felt or worthwhile. The minimalist in me doesn’t like it.  : ) I don’t need knick-knacks, clothes or books on fingernail painting. If you are my friend or family you don’t need to prove it to me. Let’s go eat and skip the normal gifts.

Notice I said “normal.” If it’s something humorous or crazy, go for it. But not a set of coffee cups or bath set, unless the bath set contains exploding bath salts or the cups are filled with caribou dung.

If it were the thought that counts, truly, instead of many of the gifts, I would get a note or a picture of something I COULD have had under different circumstances. Take a picture of a new car and tell me that if you win the lottery that the car would be mine.

Give money to your favorite charity. Better yet, give it to my favorite charity.

Better still – surprise me at a random time throughout the year. That suits me just fine. Collective holidays can sometimes surprise me and add meaning – but mostly, the obligatory nature seems to kill much of the “a-ha-ness” of the gifts.