you may have read a couple weeks ago about our plans for christmas gifts to each other for this year. without further adieu, here’s a recap of what we ended up getting each other!

1. a handmade gift
his: i saw a bottle opener similar to this for sale online awhile back, but thought it was something i could make pretty easily. we actually already had the opener piece, but hadn’t hung it up anywhere yet, so i used a piece of scrap wood we had lying around, screwed it on, made some stencils and painted on the letters. voila! we can’t wait to hang this up right next to our bar!

hers: k made me a weekly calendar using indesign that was similar to something i had liked on pinterest. i love making little to-do lists all the time, so i’m looking forward to using this!

2. a local gift
his: many of our omaha friends already know about the amazingness of lucky bucket, but those of you living elsewhere/under a rock in omaha, lucky bucket is an awesome craft brewery out in la vista whose beers we love. we’ve been to a couple local bars that serve their beers in these adorable mason jars, and a couple days before christmas, i happened upon these for sale at beertopia and thought it was the perfect local gift!

hers: the grey plume is an upscale restaurant in midtown crossing that roasts their own coffees. we’ve never been to the restaurant, but we’ve seen their beans for sale around town and have always talked about trying it. i was actually a little afraid that k and i were going to both get each other the mason jars for this gift, so i was so happy to see that i got coffee! we’ve already enjoyed the majority of the bag of coffee and it’s delicious!

3. a gift you can read
his: as you can probably now tell, all of my gifts to k were beer-themed. i was hoping to find two different beer magazines to gift him for this category, but i could only find one i liked, so the other half of the gift came in the form of several different beer apps for the iPad (they are: beer wizard, beer citizen, today’s beer, mybeernation, and beer trivia, in case you’re interested).

hers: k got me the iBooks version of “grow your handmade business” by kari chapin. i’ve been wanting this for awhile, but wasn’t expecting it as a gift because the paperback version would have exceeded our price limit. i was very happy to receive the digital version and can’t wait to read it.
*yes, we did wrap each others iPads for this gift :)

4. a date
his: i saw a blog post about a couple’s beer tasting party awhile ago and since then have always wanted to recreate that for kevin and i. i modified it a little bit to include pretzel making and beer tasting, created a little invitation in illustrator, and even made place cards for us and attached them to little tasting glasses that we already owned. i can’t wait to have this date sometime soon. i’ve been salivating about fresh baked pretzels for weeks.

hers: for k’s date to me, we’re going to have a wine + cheese night! (can you tell we love food + alcohol?) again, the price limit for each date was $10, so i love that the invitation specifies that we’ll be buying $2 chuck from tj’s. when we do cheese plates, we usually go to whole foods where they have smaller pieces of lots of their gourmet cheeses so that it’s a little cheaper. super excited for this date, too!

5. a donation
his: i was a little worried that i wouldn’t find something beer-related to fit into the charity category, but as it turns out, charitable breweries and bars are sort of the new thing (WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?!) i decided to make a donation to finnegans, a brewery in minneapolis that donates 100% of their profits to food security and hunger programs. i love that their mission statement is simply, “turning beer into food,” and event though they don’t distribute in nebraska yet, i’d love to visit and try it out if we ever  take a trip to minnesota.

hers: k took a really different, but really cool approach to this gift. he went through a website called zidisha.org that allows others to help microfinance small businesses of low-income individuals in developing nations. together with many other lenders, we’re now helping a woman from kenya keep her cosmetic business open!

already can’t wait to do this again next year! anyone have any other unique or new ideas for categories?

last year, k and i spent our very first christmas together as a couple, and were so excited to start some of our own traditions. one of the traditions (and perhaps my favorite) was what we decided to do for our christmas gifts to each other. instead of spending lots of money on one big thing or just a couple things, we decided to each get one another 5 small gifts, each with a $10ish price limit. to make it a little bit more fun and challenging, the gifts had to come from 5 different categories; last year they were: one handmade gift, one gift purchased outside of tucson, one recycled or reused gift, one gift that could be shared, and one gift as a donation to a charitable organization in the other’s name.

this year, we’re continuing the tradition but doing things a little differently. some of the categories are staying the same, and we’re adding a couple of new ones. here are this years:

1. a handmade gift. last year i attempted to diy a chess board with our faces as the game pieces for k’s handmade gift, but i sort of ran out of time and ended up gifting it to him halfway completed. oops. this year i’m determined to make up for it; this is actually the only gift i have planned so far and i’m pretty excited about it!

2. a local gift. last year we did a gift that had to be un-local, so this year we are switching it up and doing a gift that must in some way come from omaha. i have a few ideas for this already but not sure which direction to take yet.

3. a gift you can read.  i’ve seen another gift idea going around on pinterest where each person receives four gifts: something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. we thought about doing this version, too, but kevin wasn’t quite as excited about the “something to wear” as i was. we decided to instead just adopt the “something to read” portion.

4. a date. we’re adapting the “something to share” from last year to be an inexpensive date or experience that we can have together. we joke that being married, pretty much anything one or the other of us gets ends up being shared in some way, so instead of k buying nintendo games for us to “share” and pretending that i’ll like it just as much as him, we chose to gift each other a date instead. one added rule for this one: there must be something physical to represent the date that the other person can open for christmas.

5. a donation in the other person’s name.  we really enjoyed this one last year, so i think it’ll be one that stays. i have a great idea for this one that i hope works out!

i really love this tradition that we’ve started, because it’s so much more about the thoughtfulness and love behind each gift than the gifts themselves. i’ll be sure to do a post after christmas to share what we each came up with!

are you doing anything unique for gifts this year, or do you have any favorite christmas traditions in your family? a big one in my family (and probably lots of families) was opening one small gift on christmas eve after mass. my parents & sister will be here in omaha this year, so i’m looking forward to celebrating this tradition with them AND kevin for the first time!