For those of you with unwanted gift cards, or with a bunch with a small amount on them, there are websites that will let you sell them for cash, usually for around 90% of face value. I unloaded something like 10 AMC movie gift cards (none of those anywhere near me, which is information that has fallen on deaf ears for years) to Cardpool.
Great idea, but MeanOldLady already bagged the good stuff!
Anybody want this sushi book?
My mother gave me scented soap. Again. I have chronic eczema, and I’ve been using a soap-free alternative since I was a teen, and my doctor basically went “What the hell are you making your daughter use soap for? That’s highly damaging to eczema prone skin! It’s in all the info you’ve ever got about it from us!” In my presence. I casually remind her that I can’t use soap at least once a year, but she always gives me some. She also gave me (and the bro) Hopi ear candles. The daft hippie woman she buys daft hippie crap from said they’re ‘really good’, apparently :rolleyes:
I also got a so-very-nearly-good present; I’m planning on getting bees this year, and my aunt and uncle got me a beekeeping veil. It’s designed to attach to a jacket, or the bees can just climb up from underneath. The jacket was not included. You can’t buy the jacket without the veil (though you can, apparently, buy replacement veils). It has no label, so I doubt I’ll be able to even find the correct jacket to fit it, even if said jacket wouldn’t already come with a veil.
Are the frames worth salvaging? I’ve scored some pretty nice frames this way.
Mum gave me a bar of soap last Christmas and said “Keep it in your lingerie drawer so your underwear smells nice”. Might be an option? Use those bars of soap to add a nice fragrance to storage boxes, things in the linen cupboard, etc.
Serving bowl for Brussels sprouts.
I got something off my Amazon wish list that turned into a funny/shitty present. It’s a Bluetooth speaker with completely incomprehensible instructions. Do not beat product. Do not throw product in fire. I got two books I’d already bought, but they’re amazon kindle books so that means I get to go shopping on Amazon tomorrow. Other than that, everything was hunky dory. Now my mother was puzzled by the precision lighted screwdriver she received as was my brother by the women’s size small pink and purple pajama set, but we figured it out.
The fun part was my visually impaired father calling me two days before Christmas asking me to buy stuff for my mom on Amazon. He gave me a credit card number that was in her name, so she got the card notifications. Plus the email notification had my name since it came from my Amazon account: you had to read the to from card enclosed.
I got influenza A and a major asthma attack.
My actual presents were great, but these two little extras suck. I’ve spent two days trying not to cough, or breathe, or, um, move, because it really, really hurts.
(Yes; I’ve seen the doctor, and gotten prednisone, more nebulizer meds, Tamiflu, and cough medicine. I’m also not allowed to even THINK of going in to work until next Monday.)
Would it work if you poured the hot water over the tea-filled insert, instead of filling the cup and then putting in the insert?
That’s the way I’ve always done it. Though in this case, sounds like it won’t be much water. The only ceramic insert I have is for a whole teapot (8 cups or so). Ceramic would be a bit too displacing for a single mug. The mug one I have (from David’s Tea) has a steel mesh insert, doesn’t displace much at all.
My mother made a donation to some charity that gives jackets to soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force because they apparently aren’t issued jackets by the IDF. 
I don’t have a problem with a charitable donation being made in my name in lieu of a material gift. I just object when the message she sent just told me she made the contribution; I think she made a standard end-of-year donation and decided that was a good-enough present. She later bragged to me that she had done it, thus irritating me further.
That aside, I was under the impression that, if you’re going to do something like this, the proper thing to do is to make the donation to a charity that is meaningful to the giftee and to actually make the donation in the name of the giftee; most charities are happy to send or provide a card or some such to inform of the donation. Am I correct?
No point. My parents tell me that even as a kid they would ask me what I wanted for Christmas and I only ever made two requests - a bicycle and a typewriter. Every other year I said I didn’t care what I got.
Gah, my dad is a hopelessly bad gift-giver. He calls me up to find out what kinds of things to get for my boys. That’s a good first step, but the problem is that his pride won’t let him just buy exactly what I recommend. HE has to pick it out. So I try to give him categories. But the man just does not listen. I tell him “the boys are really into Skylanders and Legos. They haven’t gotten any Lego sets this year, and Skylanders Trap Team is new and they don’t have much yet, so you should be good if you get either of those.” Now here’s another problem – he will NEVER call me from the store and check “is this a good choice?” – his pride won’t allow it. So he buys some stuff and then LATER calls me and says, “Here’s what I got, do they have this already?”
This year he called me and told me he got a Star Wars Lego set, a game unrelated to anything I recommended, and a Skylanders Trap Team Adventure pack. This is actually better than usual for him, but I let him know, “They have a lot of Star Wars legos, so they might have that already. You could get LOTR or Hobbit Legos, they don’t have many of those. And that Skylanders pack would be perfect, but I know they are already getting that one from their aunt. And that is the only new pack, so instead you should get a Trapmaster character. I know he wants these specific ones – (named 3 trapmasters)”
So now he goes BACK to the store and does he call and check in about his choice again? Nope he just takes a stab at it. And what does he get? An adventure pack from 3 years ago, that the boys have had for ages. Despite me telling him NOT to get an adventure pack and telling him exactly what he SHOULD get if he wants to delight my son with something new. My 5-year old was grumpy when he opened it, since he has had the pack for years. I told him he needed to be polite and say thank-you, but on the inside I was glad he was giving my dad the crap-attitude. Because the man refuses to take advice and this is what he gets. Oh and the lego set was indeed a duplicate and the game was not at all age-appropriate for my other son. So all the gifts are going back to the store.
Last night we went to the store and returned the gift my daughter had bought for my husband. We made a complete hash of it! Turns out my daughter hangs around this bookstore so much all the employees know her, and it’s a small town, so some of them know us as well, and worst of all, one girl that knows all of us well was working there and had used her employee discount to help purchase the gift. :smack::smack::smack:
We went and confessed to my daughter immediately and gave her her money back and did what we could to let her down gently. I think we smoothed it over, but OMG.
We’re still going to return my stepdaugher’s gift too.
At least tell us what the gifts you’re returning are, c’mon that’s what the thread is about! Besides we all want to know!
The family has for the last few years done a gift steal to reduce the amount of shopping (and oddly junky gift receiving), so no horrible gifts there. I managed to snag a great new tabletop game that I suspect my game guru nephew put into the pile.
The gang has a lot of fun with the gift steal at work. This year one of the new employees was curious about why there was so much gift stealing and so little unwrapping - “Don’t you people like unwrapping presents??” “Well yes, but we like messing with each other more”. As a result our Christmas parties are loud, entertaining and full of trash talk. Now many people buy gift cards. The coffee shops near the office and the LCBO (liquor store) are both popular choices. When I opened mine however there was a little circle of silence around me as all the people who could see what it was just stopped talking. From the other end of the table my impatient boss yells out:
B: What is it, you have to tell us so we know if we’re going to steal it
Me: It’s a … gift card.
B: To where?
Me: (name of store, our biggest competitor)
B: HR ISSUE!!!
Now this competitor carries items that we do not and we all shop there but the none of us are dumb enough to admit that at work. I used the gift card within a week 
The one from my daughter was the sushi book/dvd/mats/chopstick set I mentioned above.
The one from my stepdaughter was a coffee-steeping thing that sounds similar to Morbo’s tea-steeping thing. I mean, somebody might want it, but we’ve got plenty of coffee-making methods at hand already. The funny part was that it’s a ceramic cup with a thick wooden stand that probably weighs twelve pounds all together. Stepdaugher thought we might use it when we go camping. 
In case of bear attacks, you can whack the bear upside the head with the mug. See? She was just looking out for you!
I hear you. My request for a Keurig for a combined birthday/Xmas present caused draaaama with my dad about getting “the right one”. (I told him, “just buy the cheap one; I make one cup of coffee a day.”)
Anyway, a lot of people who don’t have children have NO idea what these things are (I don’t know what a “Trapmaster” or a “Skyalander Trap Team Adventure Pack” is). My nephew told me he wanted a “new RCA blah blah blah blah”. The words were English, but I really didn’t know what he meant or where to buy it. So I gave him money. (He’s 15. He liked the money.)
Next year, why not ask your dad to give the kids a gift card, and take them shopping and maybe to lunch after the holidays?
Years ago, we agreed to quit exchanging gifts among us 5 sibs, but one sister not only refuses to comply, but she insists on buying us dollar store crap that truly is crap. The last 2 or 3 years, we got crappy ornaments, despite me telling her, and everyone else, that we don’t do a tree and haven’t put one up in 10 years. (In fact, this is the sister to whom I gave all of our ornaments and decorations.) One year, she “personalized” the ornaments by writing our names on them with a Sharpie, so I couldn’t donate them.
This year, she gave both my husband and me mugs with hard candies in them. Neither he nor I drink coffee and I’ve been doing my best to get rid of excess mugs (as all my sibs know, because I email them and ask if they want any of them.) When we got home, I took the candy out of the mug, only to discover that most of the mug had a cardboard spacer in it, and the bag of candy held maybe 8 pieces. No biggie - I don’t need candy, but they were wrapped in gold paper, so I figured they were butterscotch. Um, no. In fact, one sniff convinced me they should never be ingested by anyone EVER! And into the trash they went. The mugs will go to the local thrift store.
How do I tell my sister to quit giving us this crap?? <headdesk>