Have You Started Your Holiday Shopping Yet?

Nannie taught me well:

If you see something perfect you should buy it, even if the event (birthday, wedding, Christmas) is months away.  

One year, when the Cuters were young, I had finished my entire holiday shopping by the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  I spent a blissful December wrapping and baking and shipping and not shopping.  But that was only one out of 5 decades of holiday seasons which have left me in a frenzy, creating and locating up until the very last possible moment.  


This year I began even before the MOMA Holiday Catalog arrived.  There is nothing contained within those pages which would disappoint me.  It's hard for me to shop anywhere else once I've looked through it.  


But even the NYC marketers must think that August is just too soon for Santa.  I am the only one who's focusing in that direction right now.  Or so it seems.


Take last week, for example.  I followed link after link, being amused and amazed.  I saw it, I liked it, I ordered it.  It was August and I was on my way.  


Now, you may not want to be that well prepared.  You may like running around the mall.  I get it. I go one Saturday in December just to feel the energy.  But I've taken to doing my shopping in small local stores and on-line.  I just don't have the endurance right now for mega-shopping. 


The hard part about on-line shopping is that browsing is either impossible or overwhelming.  At least it is for me.  I find myself going back to my old favorites: Mental Floss t-shirts and tchtchkes from Uncommon Goods.  But you probably know about them even without my pithy analysis.


So, denizens, I am going to share my on-line shopping secrets with you.  Every Friday from now til Thanksgiving I will be offering gift giving advice/suggestions/links.  No one is paying me for this.  I've just found them and want to share them.  I promise to sprinkle the goods with words of wisdom and whimsy, because that's what the header promises.  But these are just too good to keep to myself.
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I bet you don't know about Garish Rubbish.  Longtime readers may remember Mei-Mei's MoyaToyas.  My childhood friend describes herself as a fertile imagination married to a warped sense of humor. I just think she's fun.

From pink pigs to blue fish

to an up-cycled birdhouse with an attached mother-in-law apartment,

Mei-Mei makes me smile.

She's selling her goods on etsy.  Click on over.  Even if you don't shop I know you'll have a giggle.