My plan was: home-brewed soda and fudge. Tried it today, soda tastes like cough syrup. i’m leaving town tomorrow morning and the celebration starts before I get there. I need ideas now! I really don’t want to get a gift card. Its already turning into a gift card exchange without my help.
I’m getting tempted to box up my old textbooks and calling them my exchange gift. 
Limit is $20. Go, Dopers, go!
This is what we took to our $20 gift exchange: Black and Decker electric scissors and a large magnet on a stick. Both were available at our local small town hardware store.
The magnet on a stick was incredibly popular as soon as people realized what it was and that you can clean up nails in all kinds of places with it. Nobody wanted to open it originally because of the way I wrapped it–everyone was sure it was a hoe. I kept telling them the handle was too short to be a hoe.
$20 will probably get ya a bottle of drinkable booze. Or one of those flashlights-with-a-kickstand shown in the nifty commerical with the aliens (Made by Stanley, sold at Wal-Mart, runs on 3,6, 0r 9 AA batteries, and is smaller than it appears on TV. Oakiedad and Oakiebro will be receiving same, along with other things, this year).