Monday, December 8, 2008

Holiday Gift Exchange Ideas

Okay, I'm sure there are some of you out there who are facing a rapidly approaching office or school or club holiday party with some sort of a gift exchange, and I'm sure there are some of you out there like me who had no clue what to bring. So I'm going to share with you the results of our office holiday party gift exchange at work today.

Our office holiday party gift exchange had the following up for grabs:

- Chia Shrek. There was some debate in the conference room on whether this was a re-gift from last year's office holiday party.
- Snowball fight kit. It was a snowball maker and a mold for snow-bricks to make snow forts.
- Sampler of four different types of hot sauces.
- Gift box from Starbucks with an assortment of coffees and chocolates.
- Jar of Jelly Belly jelly beans.
- A pair of DVD's (one was "As Good as it Gets", I forget what the other was).
- Christmas ornament.
- Gift card for Starbucks.
- Digital watch.
- A magnetic dry erase board with premade magnetic boxes with the names of the people in our office to post an office org-chart-du-jour.

So what do you think? Which items do you think were the "hottest"? In other words, which items do you think changed hands the most?

Unlike most previous holiday gift exchanges I have been to where there was a limit on how many times any individual gift could be stolen, during today's gift exchange, there was a two-steal PER ROUND limit.

The hands-down winner of in terms of being stolen from one person then another back and forth across the room was the hot sauce sampler pack. Each time it became someone else's turn, they took the hot sauce, then the person who had the hot sauce would get something else, then the person who lost that would take the hot sauce again.

The runners up were the gift card to Starbucks and the Starbucks assortment gift pack.

I suspect the jar of Jelly Bellies might have been stolen a few times if it wasn't opened so late in the game.

Likewise, I thought the dry erase board with the org-chart-du-jour magnets was an awesome idea, but it was the very last gift opened, so it didn't get stolen at all. If you work in any sort of a large organization that goes through frequent reorgs, I highly recommend it!

I brought the snowball fight kit. I thought it was a neat idea for building a snow fort and quickly making a bunch of snowballs for a snowball fight. Nobody else in the office seemed to think it such a fabulous idea though. Oh well.

The Chia Shrek was opened fairly early in the game, and it never got stolen. For as much as the guys sorta rolled their eyes about it, it sure provided a good deal of JO entertainment for the rest of the afternoon. Two of the JOs, being the good nukes that they are, immediately opened the Chia Shrek and dutifully following the procedure, they commenced searching for some form of container that would hold water to conduct the soak of the Chia Shrek head. They had their own little science project going on. Next thing you know, I'm going to find a watchbill posted for who's supposed to water and care for the Chia Shrek over the Christmas stand down.

Well, there you have it.

In summary, if you're headed to a holiday party with a gift exchange, and you're not sure what to get, then I recommend hot sauce or starbucks*.

* Note that observation is consistent with LAST year's blog post on gift exchanges.

7 comments:

Ruth said...

I'll have to do with the hot sauce, then. I may live in the one part of the U.S. where there isn't a StarBucks on every corner. In fact, there isn't one for 30 miles. That's a bit far to go for a cup-a-coffee.

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Caffienated Cowgirl said...

Wait...did I completely miss it? What did you end up with?

Anonymous said...

"MY" first instinct would be to say I thought the Starbucks would be most popular. But I know at least on the 740, Tony Chachere's and hot sauce were the all meals condiments of choice for the guys. So that doesn't surprise me!

We've always had good luck when I take a cookie and fudge tin with it changing hands too.

Nereus said...

The Chia Shrek, Who can pass such a wonder gift up???

The JO's need to "Graph" the progress of the Chia plants.

When I was on "Ustafish" we built a rotating Christmas tree out of greenies, colored white line, and silver balls from a shipmates "Go to hell" chain (Dog tag ball-chain for count down) and a motor from a cassette player. We would then time the rotation every half hour and graph the resulting RPM and therefore AA battery discharge rate. Our skipper ( Now ADM Sullivan ret) came into NavCenter and professed his dismay that he couldn't get the nukes to graph the((Fill in some NUKE term)) but the NAVET's were graphing the Christmas tree.

blunoz said...

Nereus - That's pretty funny. Thanks for sharing the story.

Sam - I don't doubt something like your cookies and fudge would have passed hands SEVERAL times during the gift exchange!

CC - Well, funny you should ask. When someone opened the Christmas ornament, they said it was the White House Christmas ornament. When it came my turn, I asked, "is that THIS year's White House ornament?" Yes, it is. I said, "I'll take that!" LW had recently asked me to go by the gift shop and pick up this year's White House ornament, so I thought I had scored pretty good on that one. Then I got it and opened it. Nope. Not the White House ornament. Just a pretty Christmas ornament in the same style as the White House ornaments. Oh well.

Aunt Ruth - Since Starbucks is so far away, that would make it that much more special to get the Starbucks gift box with the assortment of coffees and chocolates, right?

Hilary said...

A timely list! Our family does this kind of exchange every Hanukkah.. our party is coming up on the 21st. Food is always the big draw.. chocolate in particular.

The most popular gift ever stolen repeatedly was a musical toilet bank. Yup. A coin is placed in the slot. The lid opens. A hand comes out and takes the coin. Silly and immature.. and right up our alley. ;)