Charity Contribution - Heifer International

Well this may not be the most unique idea ever, after all giving money to a charity in somebody elses name isn't an entirely new idea. But it is a popular enough gift that I thought I would share my favorite charity, the one that I donate to as a gift when the occasion calls for it. My charity of choice is Heifer International. There are several reasons why I enjoy donating to this charity. For starters, you typically don't just donate $$$ you either buy some livestock animal or if you can't afford the cost of an entire animal you can contribue a "share". For instance, a heifer costs $500 but a share is only $50.

Why do I like this charity? Because it makes sense to me. Sure, giving cash to people in developing countries helps them, until the cash runs out. If all they bought was food (entirely resonable I admit) then when the money is gon so is the food. If you give them a goat, or a flock of chicks, or a cow, then you give them a sustainable way to provide for themselves (possibly even earn extra money).

A charitable donation gift from Heifer International is also much more visual. Saying that "$100 dollars has been donated to X Chartiy in your name" isn't nearly as visual a gift as being told that a Goat has been given in your name.

There are many different options and gifts avaliable for people of all income levels. From buying an entire community a "noahs ark" for $5000 to helping pay for a share of an animal for as little as $10.

The other great part about a Heifer International gift is that part of the program is for the first offspring produced from an animal is given to another family so your gift will literally keep on giving.

Unique Gift for Tealovers

I'm a pretty big fan of tea, hot or iced (no sugar). While sometimes I am content with your everyday tea bags, sometimes you need to add a little "flavor" to how you make your brew.

One of my favorite ways to find out about unique gifts is when somebody gives them to me. I get to feel the surprise, I get to enjoy using the gift for the first time, and most of all I can write an honest review having used a product. This gift was given to me by a brother and I think it is a great idea for a tea lover that is only used to tea bags.

Gift Idea: Glass teapot with blooming floral teas.

Blooming teas are tea leaves that are hand sewn into what look like small balls or bundles, when you drop them into a teapot the "bloom" often to reveal a beautiful flower. It is usually best to use a clear glass teapot so that you can showcase and enjoy the sight of the blooming tea art.

There are many places to find glass teapots and blooming art teas on the web but one of my favorites is EnjoyingTea They have a lot of great ideas for the tea lover in your life.

One of my Favorite Unique Gift Resources

Sorry for the rant last week, I had just seen a "One Stop Gift Shop" end cap at my local grocery store, it was basically just 500 different gift cards to different restaurants/stores and was claiming to be the ultimate gift shopping stop.

Let me get back to my purpose, sharing my finds for unique gifts and hopefully helping a few people find some great stuff. Today I want to share one of my favorite sites for techie gifts. I found this site a few years ago and have bought multiple gifts from them (some for myself :P ).

Think Geek - For techie, gamer, science, and office gifts this is one of my favorite sites to browse. They have some great gifts if you know who you are shopping for.

My personal favorite is a "gift" I bought, one for my brother and one for myself. I've used this for over two years now with much success. Its the Aeropress coffee(espresso) maker. Its a single cup coffee maker that makes a delicious treat every time. The only problem is that if you drink A LOT of coffee, then making it by the cup can get very annoying. If you only drink 1 or 2 cups a day it is a wonderful solution. You basically get all of the flavor of a french press but without any of the dregs let over (it filters very well).

The picture to the right gives you the general idea of the product. It makes it look more like its glass (the actual product is stury plastic)

The best part about this is there is relatively no cleanup. The plunger cleans out all of the coffee as you push down, you just throw away the (dry) grounds and rinse off the end.

My 5 Reasons for Hating Gift Cards

I'll be upfront, I very much despise gift cards. I could talk for hours about why I think they are a bad idea but here are my top 5 reasons for disliking them.

5. No thought to the gift- A gift card is not the same as you going though the work to figure out what to buy somebody. I hear the line "but this way they can buy what they really want".....that's usually the case anyway, your $50 gift card to Home Deopt hasn't likely opened a whole new world of possiblities to them. A gift is a representation of what you thought somebody would like, a gift card is a bad work around.

4. Easy to Lose/Forget - If I get a $50 Borders gift card and I don't have a Borders Book store within 100 miles of me, I would be willing to bet that I'll lose or forget the card before I get a chance to go to use it. I guess this depends on the type of person you are, but for me I don't keep the best track of everything.

3. 100% Profit if lost - There is a very good reason that every store pimps their gift cards as the "perfect gift", its because a certain percentage of gift cards are never redeemed which translates to you handing your money to a store and walking out without any purchases. Its corporate welfare disguised as the perfect convenient gift when you ran out of time and couldn't come up with anything better.

2. Another Thing to Carry - If I get 3-4 gift cards on a holiday, that's 3-4 more cards I have to carry around in my wallet until I use them (which might be never). My wallet has 1 debit card, 1 credit card, my license and usually a few business cards that I carry until I put them in a desk somewhere. 4 gift cards are annoying to carry around and keep track of.

1. Cash is Better - This is what really gets me. If you aren't going to go through the effort of shopping for and giving an actual gift, why would you prefer to give a gift card instead of CASH. You know what the best thing about cash is? You can use it anywhere and on anything you want. I've heard the excuse of "I want them to buy themselves a gift, not spend it on bills"..... if I need to spend the money you gave me to pay my bills, you have given me a very, very nice gift. Electricty, running water, heat, they are all very nice to have and if I'm ever in a position where I might not be able to pay for one of them, then I would cry "Thank You" for $100 cash as opposed to a $100 Amazon Gift card.

On the same note, I've seen these "American Express" gift cards where you basically give the person a pre-paid credit card with the gift amount on it; unless you're giving that to a teenager who wants to buy something online and doesn't have access to any kind of credit card, just give them cash. At that point its exactly the same except with cash you won't end up trying to find something to buy so you can spend that last $1.18 that you have on your card.

What makes a gift unique?

Well, were still in the heat of summer. Not much gifting going on for most people. I thought I'd take some time and go over what does make a gift unique. I've already ranted about what doesn't count, so here is my rave for what does.

• Functional - I don't consider a gift "unique" unless the person I'm giving it to will actually use it. It is very easy to get some off the wall present that won't ever get used, much harder to find that different gift that the person receiving it didn't know they needed. Above all else, when I'm shopping for something unique I want to make sure the gift will be useful.

• New to receiver -Just because you've used a particular item for years doesn't mean that when you're shopping for gifts you should discount your own experience. If you've found something that is particularly useful that you couldn't live without, that may qualify as a unique gift so long as you buy a new one and the person getting the gift has never seen/used the item before. Your own experiences are the best when thinking about that perfect gift

• One-of-a-kind - If you can get something custom made (or maybe even hand make a gift yourself) that is truly the only one of its kind you have a good step towards a unique gift. Just because there is nothing else like it doesn't mean it is functional, which is an important step, but its a good start.

I usually start to get Ideas for unique Christmas gifts very early, I'll try to post some of the good finds as well as some train wrecks of unhappiness that are the sad attempts at "uniqueness"

Edit-Finished submission to technorati

8 things that do not make a gift "unique"

Gift giving is pretty slow in the summer months, unless you have a birthday to think about or an anniversary coming up most people don't have a reason to exchange gifts until fall/winter rolls around. That's not to say you shouldn't give somebody you care about a gift; random and unexpected gifts are really great. Christmas and birthdays are all fine and good but coming home to a nice wrapped box with a hand written note is 10X more special if there is no reason for it to be given.

I think I'll take this season to explain my methodology around finding and giving unique gifts. So to start off here are 8 things that do not necessarily make a gift unique:

8. Antique
Just because something is old does not mean that it is a unique gift. A truly unique gift is one that is functional and that the person receiving it will actually make use of. Antiques can be great unique gifts but you need to look past an items age and decide if it has value beyond being a few years older than most products.

7. From a different country
Your aunt picked up a bar of chocolate at a gift store when she was in Europe, sure you might not have had the brand/flavor before, but you've had chocolate. The fact that it came from a different country can make it nifty, but it doesn't make it unique.

6. Something you've never seen before
This one should be obvious. Just because you've never heard of something doesn't mean that the person you give the gift too hasn't. You might think that the push reel mower you found is the coolest thing you've ever seen, but you parents probably don't have fond memories of them.

5. Expensive
The uniqueness of a gift has nothing to do with its cost. A 52'' LCD Screent TV is nice, its expensive, but its still a TV and those haven't been unique since the 1950's

4. "Cutesy"
Making something "cute" is does not transform that into a unique gift. Its like companies putting "green paint" on their corporate image to make them seem more environmentally friendly. As an example, a pink colored set of pots and pans might be "cute" but they are still pots and pans and unless there is some revolutionary new design involved they are as unique as the ones your grandma used.

3. Gift Basket
Gift basket's are a tough one. There are multiple ways that you can make a gift basket unique. There are two ways that I know of, the first is to only include items in the gift basket that are themselves unique. The second way is to give a gift basket full of ordinary things for a unique purpose. The main example that comes to mind (at least I thought they were unique at the time)was when my mother would put together a basket for a family that had recently lost a loved one. She would include lots or ready to eat foods/snacks and instant drinks because when people going though those times often find it hard to sit down and eat a meal. I think I've seen this type of basket elsewhere but in my small town and at the time it was pretty unique.

2. Eco Friendly/Organic
I have nothing against eco friendly products, I quite enjoy them actually. I think recycled consumer goods and orgainc foods are perfectly lovely, I just don't think that they get a free pass on "Uniqueness". An organic fruit basket is still just a fruit basket (well, its alot more expensive but see #5). Recycled materials are great but if the products made from them are just standard then they probalby don't qualify as a unique gift. Upcycled has a better chance most of the time because of the creative process involved.

1. Monogrammed
This is a pet peeve of mine. Let me start with this, I have nothing against monogrammed gifts, but don't try to convice somebody that because you had their initals put on something that its "unique". A monogram tie is still a tie (which is never really a good gift :P ), a monogram flask is still a flask, and a monogram keychain is something you bought at the store when you ran out of all other ideas. If its not a uniqie gift before you put three letters on it, its not one after.

Post-Fathers Day Gift Idea

Father's Day has come and gone. If you're like me, you racked your brain for a month trying to think of that perfect unique gift that dad would actually use. The problem with dads (mine at least) is if they need something, they tend to buy it. This leaves us kids the unenviable position of determining what dad doesn't know he needs. So if you got your dad a coffee mug, tie, or sweater, its time head back to the store and buy dad a gift that is both unique and useful.

Introducing - The wallet Dad doesn't know he needs. If your Dad carries credit cards in his wallet, and if those cards are relatively new, there's a good chance that at least one of his cards has a convenient RFID chip for "contactless" credit card payments at the store. RFID credit cards are convenient for both stores....and identity thieves (who have some know how and proximity). This might seem a little tin-foil-hat-wearing esque but protecting financial information like credit cards is important. You can secure dads information by buying him an RFID blocking wallet. This first walled is from ZenWallets and at $15 should be in everyone's price range.

If your looking for something a little bit, shall we say "sexier" you can go for finely woven steel wallet from Stewart/Stand. Not only does this wallet protect against RFID hacks, but it looks damn sexy doing it. For $75 you may have found your dad the last wallet he'll ever need.