I wrote The Great Gift Giving Guide just before Christmas, but I had been working on it my whole life. I have been known as a fantastic gift-giver, and have even written a number of Gift idea posts on my blog over the years, my most popular one being for dialysis patents.
How did I become a great gift giver? I used to keep a small notebook where I kept notes on friends and family. If I heard them mention something they collected or liked I wrote it down. If I saw them kick off their shoes, I'd take notice of what size they were because who doesn't love a nice pair of cozy slippers on Christmas -- as long as they are the right size?
When I got married and my husband's family lives four hours from us, my legend of giving great gifts kind of fell flat, and I knew I needed to do something, but what? That's when The Great Gift Giving Guide was born. I decided I was going to make questionnaires and tell his family what I was doing and ask if they would fill them out with what they feel comfortable with. (For instance, I don't need the pants size of my mother in law, but my teen brother-in-law always can use clothes, and of course I want to spoil my niece, so I need her clothing sizes!)
After having my in-laws fill this out, I saw where the gaps were, and I changed things up. So I decided to make my forms available to everyone. I put in 25 sets of four pages (two pages front and back) where you can take notes about people you buy for -- or ask them to fill it out. I also wrote 10 pages of how to use the information to give gifts that they will not only love but likely remember for years. (Think back to what you received last Christmas. Can you even remember it? What gifts do you remember that were special over the years?) This helps you make your gift giving go from ordinary to EXTRAORDINARY.
It is available on Amazon and eBay in perfect bound and on Etsy as a downloadable PDF (This is great if your family is spread through the USA and you are doing a gift exchange -- it allows for someone you rarely see to get a great gift from you.). I mean, Walmart and Amazon gift cards are something everyone buys. But if you want to stay with gift cards, not many people know that Long John Silver's is my favorite place to eat. I would certainly mention that if I were filling out my pages and hopefully would get a LJS gift card because while Amazon is great, I love fish!
If you click through to Amazon and then click on "Look Inside" you can start reading the pages about how to use the book.
I highly recommend getting this now so that when the holiday shopping season comes around you will have plenty of ideas for shopping for even that difficult to buy for person!
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