Last Xmas, the adults in my extended family (the local ones, that is, the ones who get together at the holiday party) agreed not to give each other presents. Instead, we each bought a $10 gift card from the place of our choice and wrapped it creatively, then had one of those steal-it-from-each-other gift exchanges. My contribution was uniformly judged the winner: I took two pieces of two-by-four left over from when I replaced our back fence, attached them to each other with a hinge on one side and a hook-and-eye on the other, hollowed out a card-sized space on one interior side, and screwed a card from Home Depot to the other side with wood screws and washers. I then put on a bow made of duct tape. It was fiercely fought over and ultimately went home with my brother.
So we decided to do it again this year, and my dad showed up with… my wooden card-container, duct-tape bow intact! This year, we just all closed our eyes and had my 6-year-old daughter place random gifts on our laps; my old gift container wound up on my lap. I opened it to discover a gift card from Victoria’s Secret. :dubious:
I’m thinking of keeping the container all year and using it again next Xmas.
(What did I do for this year’s card, you ask? I got a gift card from the local Half-Price Bookstore and stashed it in a hollowed-out book, which I covered with a phony dust jacket I’d PhotoShopped up. My new title was The Treasure Within, by Ivana Card.)
Unless they have plus-size lingerie, I don’t think that’ll fly either. Maybe they sell perfume or something. Or I can buy some frilly underpants for my mistress, if I ever have a mistress.
Mrs. Chef’s contribution to the exchange was a cute stuffed bunny holding an envelope in which was a gift card to the International House Of Pancakes. I thought that was pretty clever.
And some clothes online - I think the online clothes go up to bigger sizes than the stuff in-store, the prices aren’t bad, either, especially when you catch a sale.
As a plus sized girl myself, I should point out that they actually do sell some plus sized clothing and such- it’s quite cute. Of course, I don’t know your wife’s size or style, so that depends. Their XXL comfortably fits a size 18-20, though.
They also have some seriously killer shoes. Love them.
Tons of perfumes, makeup, etc. Their makeup brand actually isn’t bad, though they also sell others.
I’m plus sized and have bought VS stuff before. The + size stuff is all online though, so you will have to pay shipping unless you can google up a free shipping code. Watch for clearance stuff. They mark quite a bit of stuff way down so that $10 card would almost buy something.
I love your gift exchange idea! It sounds like a lot of fun to come up with creative ways to package the card.
Don’t feel bad. She was going around telling people (who weren’t going to be involved in the exchange) her idea, and it always took a second for them to get it. Once they DID get it, though, everyone agreed that it was clever.
It is fun - a LOT more fun than the usual gift exchange where all the gifts are crap.
Mrs. Chef’s original idea for this year, before she got the IHOP bunny brainstorm, was this: the mall where she works offers gift coins that are good at any store in the mall, called (Name of Mall) Gold, that just happen to be about the same size as your typical gold-foil-covered chocolate “coin.” She was going to get a $10 coin and sandwich it into a roll of chocolate coins, then put it into a nested series of bags from a variety of stores from the mall.
(I think she made the right decision… that “box inside a box inside a box…” thing is fun to contemplate as a giver but is ultimately annoying to the recipient.)
