gifts that you give for yourself

Everyone has heard the cheesy shopping line that talks about "the gift that keeps on giving." I generally equate this to a magazine subscription, but it's been used time and again for a number of products over the years.

I've also recently picked up on a new angle being pushed by marketers - gifts that you give someone else which are really gifts for yourself. While this gifting concept isn't new, marketers typically left it untouched over the years, aside from perhaps the granola bar marketing that states that "chewy stops the chatter". Some typical examples when it comes to Christmas shopping would be when you buy your wife a new piece of lingerie, or a nice set of cookware for the kitchen. Sure, it's a gift for her, but she'll be (hopefully) wearing that sexy new teddy for you, and if she can cook, you're bound to reap some benefits for gifting a new set of designer pots and pans. Granted, you could easily take the concept too far. For example, if you buy a housewife a new vacuum cleaner, you're probably asking for trouble.

Other uses of this gifting tactic include gifts from parents to their children that relieve the parents of child-induced noise and aggravation. We've already touched on the granola bar approach. iPods also come to mind, particularly for long roadtrips. My parents used this one with us, and it worked very well for our frequent trips to the beaches of Florida. You just need to make sure to stock up on batteries before you leave. It's not exactly a novel idea, but I would hope that by now American consumers would be past the whole "selfish" phase that got us into this economic mess, and that they might be reassessing what types of gifts are truly necessary and worthy of being called a "gift" for someone else. In fact, one might think that giving gifts during a recession is a rather ridiculous idea. Instead, wouldn't it make more sense to give the gift of time, especially when we're likely to be working more of it to pay our bills?

new anniversary ideas?

On a more positive note, my wife and I have a big anniversary coming up, and I am trying to come up with some truly new ideas on how to celebrate. Sure, we could do the typical dinner and a movie, complete with roses and champagne, but its all been done before.

I could cook her a dinner myself, but I've done this before, too, and I could our dinners quite often so it wouldn't be as special. My wife had the forethought to arrange for a babysitter so at least we don't have to bring the kids along to wherever we decide to go (if we decide to go anywhere). I thought about booking a night at a fancy hotel in town, or I could use a bed and breakfast gift certificate that we had received some time back, but our babysitter is only watching the kids for a few hours, so that won't work.

Sometimes I think that I'd like to just stay at home and have a long evening of intimacy, but you know how most women will react if they hear that form their husbands..."all you want to do is have sex?" Haha.

But I do feel like we would enjoy the time alone and away from the kids. My wife gets away when she goes to work, but when it comes to alone time for just the two of us, we've only got late nights after the kids are in bed, and one (or both) of us is usually too tired to stay up at that point.

So what to do? What to do? I am open to suggestions...we could take a carriage ride in town, although it is a bit pricey. I could get her a nice gift but she doesn't need or want anything that I can think of. We've done massages before...maybe I'll look into that and see what kind of specials they may be offering.

chocolate strawberries

Well, I managed to create two pounds worth of chocolate dipped strawberries today, for a fraction of the price that I would have paid online. I can also guarantee that they'll be fresh now, since they were when I bought them and they are now sitting in the fridge waiting for Mother's Day.

All in all, I think it cost me about $6 for the two pounds of strawberries, two bags of chocolate chips, and a bag of coconut flakes (which I added, since my wife loves coconut). Not bad considering most of the floral shops online wanted about $50-$60 for one pound of them (sans coconut). Best of all, my daughter helped me to make them, and we were able to enjoy an hour or so together this afternoon, laughing as we got chocolate and coconut all over the kitchen. You just can't put a price-tag on that.

Who says that fathers don't get anything for Mother's Day?