com/amazon" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #3b6eae; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Amazon wish list or
Netflix queue? Snoop around to find out what he or she likes.
Ask a Third Party: If you're playing Secret Santa and don't know what to give, ask the person's closest friends and colleagues what he or she might like.
- Now that you have a general sense of what the gift recipient's general areas of interest are, you need to come up with a few killer gift ideas. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Visit Gift Idea Websites: Several websites exist just to generate gift ideas according to a person's interests or relationship to you. Check Mahalo's own Guide to Gifts for ideas.
- Create a Package Gift: A package gift is a collection of related items. For instance, a bottle of wine, a fancy corkscrew and a pair of goblets. A package gift doesn't have to be expensive, but it shows that you put some consideration into assembling the gift.
- Buy Novel Gifts from Unexpected Places: There are lots of great websites that sell unique, inexpensive gifts that you can't find anywhere else. Who doesn't need a tub of mini ninjas or a Transfarmers t-shirt? Check out Threadless for hip, well-designed t-shirts; Etsy for handmade crafts; Archie McPhee and Fred Flare for fun, novelty items and, of course, eBay for everything else.
- Make Your Gift: Nothing shows your love more than baking it into a homemade pie. There are dozens of great gifts that require more time than money. Why not whip up a mix CD, write a heartfelt letter or dream up a holiday scavenger hunt for your friends?
- Give the Gift of Experience: Who needs more stuff? Consider giving theater tickets, singing lessons, restaurant gift certificates or an action sports outing as gifts.
- Do Cool Things with Photos: Has your friend ever done anything with those 1,000s of photos in his or her Flickr account? Print and frame the best shots. Make a cross stitch pattern from them. Create an online scrapbook or comic book. Check out all the cool things you can do with photos at websites like Photojojo and Moo Cards.
- Buy Artwork: You can purchase one-of-a-kind artwork for very little. Check out thePerry Bible Fellowship for signed prints of surreal comics, pop culture-inspired prints from Brandon Bird or original $20 prints from 20x200.
- Get Geeky: If you're technically inclined, check out MAKE Blog's Open Source Gift Guide and retrofit an old gadget for new gimmickry. Or, try downloading a program which records streaming audio, and put radio shows like This American Life, theSModcast or NPR's live concert recordings on CDs for friends.
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