I’m putting together a few holiday care packages for some family and friends, and it occurred to me that rather than eating all the extra stuff myself, I could easily make one more package. And then I said, “Yes, but I ALREADY ate all the extra stuff myself,” and I answered myself, “Yes, but you also ate some of the stuff from the packages, so you have to make some more ANYWAY.” And I thought I had a pretty good point there, so that’s what I decided to do.

Then I got kind of excited about it and starting riffling through my gift closet seeing what else I could put in there. Some possibilities: baby spruce tree kits, a St. Jude’s ornament, little stocking-stuffer things for kids. A cute little bird decoration that I bought three of thinking I’d keep one for myself and give two away, but so far I still have all three on my desk so maybe I won’t give away any of those after all. A Christmas version of the mother-in-law-dishes mug, a twin to the one I use all season.

But I don’t know, because it depends who wins. Like, maybe the winner won’t have kids, in which case I’ll leave out the kid stuff (well, but are you sure? Those sticker sheets are pretty awes). Or, like, maybe the winner will have food allergies in the family, in which case I’ll want to avoid sending a Box o’ Holiday Poison. Or maybe the winner will celebrate a winter holiday that is NOT Secular Christmas, and so then I’ll want to avoid sending a Box o’ Sacrilege. And so on. Anyway, if you win, we’ll talk.

To enter, leave a comment on this post by…well, should we say by Sunday December 14th, noon U.S. Pacific time? Does that give everyone enough time? And that still gives me enough time to put together the care package and get it sent to you in time for whatever holiday is coming up for you.

Remember to keep checking Want Not: she combs through ZERLLIONS of Amazon toy listings every day and posts the really good ones. I’m only posting the stuff I get distracted by while I’m browsing around looking for things for my kids.

I have NO IDEA if most of these are any good, but they are marked way down. If you have any of these things and can comment on their suckitude/awesomeness, please do. I’m only looking at items that qualify for the free shipping, so if you get your total up to $25 and order before the 16th or 17th, they (1) ship free and (2) arrive before December 25th. But double-check, because if Amazon.com sells out of their free-shipping quantities of something but it’s available from a non-free-shipping source, the link will go to THAT.

(image from Amazon.com)

Hannah Montana Deluxe TV game. The hell? But it’s $15 down from $50 (I doubt that $50, since other sellers have it for $40. But $15 down from $40 is still nice).

(image from Amazon.com)

Barbie used to look kind of bad to me, until I saw the more recent dolls. Now Barbie looks like a senator’s wife. Here’s a Barbie house playset for $14 down from $40. Cheap piece of crap? Quite possibly. But CHEAP is a GOOD word.

(image from Amazon.com)

Jakks Pacific Girl Gourmet Cupcake Maker, $13 down from $30. The problem with this kind of thing, of course, is that the replacement mixes will KILL you. I saw an Easy-Bake Oven mix for FIVE DOLLARS. Five dollars! For a tiny little mini-mix! But I remembered seeing make-your-own Easy-Bake recipes online so I looked to see if there was something similar for the cupcake maker, and found this post, where in the comment section she says you can use regular cake mix (at $1 for about 24 cupcakes, and I’ll bet you could freeze the batter in little portions for other days) and regular frosting.

(image from Amazon.com)

High School Musical sing-along microphone, $8 down from $25. Hey, whatever, it’s YOUR house it’s going to be living in. There’s also a matching dance mat at $15 down from $50 (or down from $25-30, according to the other sellers—I hate when Amazon inflates the original price), so the child can step on his/her idols’ faces while he/she sings.

(image from Amazon.com)

25th Anniversary Cabbage Patch Kid, $13 down from $30 (but I’ve seen them for less than $30 at Target, and you’d have a choice). Outfits are $5 down from $10 but it looks like it’s totally random what outfit you get. Wait, it’s been TWENTY-FIVE YEARS? Do you realize that your own Swistle was ALMOST TOO OLD for Cabbage Patch Kids, because she was in something like sixth grade when they came out? And NO, I do NOT want to hear that you were not yet BORN. SAVE IT.

(image from Amazon.com)

My advanced age may be why I have never heard of these “DVD game” things. Here’s a Disney Princess DVD Game for $9 down from $28. It looks like it’s….like a computer game? but really simplified? and you “play it” on the television so you don’t have to hog Mommy’s computer? There’s also a Disney Pictionary one for $10 down from $30, a Hannah Montana one for $8 down from $26 (poor reviews on that one), a Deluxe Disney Scene It one for $14 down from $40, and a High School Musical one for $9 down from $30.

(image from Amazon.com)

This is not such an amazing steal, but it’s what I would have wanted as a child so it grabbed my eye: the Melissa and Doug deluxe bead set (with alphabet letters) is $12 down from $15. There are several other sets in a similar price range: playful pals, happy hearts, gleeful garden.

(image from Amazon.com)

Or, okay, here’s one of those things where you put a bunch of plastic thingies in a pattern and then weld them together: the Magic Beads Deluxe Playset is $9 down from $30.

(image from Amazon.com)

Littlest Pet Shop pig toy, $7 down from $15. I don’t even know what this IS. But there’s also a big-eyed dog for the same price.

(image from Amazon.com)

This Dressy Daisy doll looks like a sweetie, and the description says she’s easy to dress. She’s $7 down from $15, and there’s an African-American version for $6, but if you want the little blonde she’ll cost you $8 (she does have dark eyes, which is a plus: I’m always looking for non-blue-eyed blonde dolls for my brown-eyed blonde daughter). I’d get at least two dolls, so they could be friends and share clothes, because the outfits are t’expensive.

Hey, if you have an Etsy shop, would you send me your URL? It doesn’t have to be Etsy, but it should be Etsy-like: a shop where you sell things you make yourself. I try to keep track of my Etsy peeps because I love Etsy so much, so if I don’t have you below, EMAIL ME (swistle at gmail dot com). Here are the ones I have so far, and I’ll keep updating this list here. (Also email me if I’ve got the name of your shop wrong.)

Amy Quarry
KaraRee
Elephant Ears
Minnie
Small Grapes
Haworth Handmade
A is for Beautiful
La La Lollipop
Mixtape
Crocheted by Katie
Gracie May
Tutus for Toddlers
Secret Snow Bird
Bunny Bear Patterns
CMF Photography
The Little Stinker Store
Miss Grace’s Disgraceful Shop
Gem From Jewels

A Girl and Her Blog is showing the giftie she got and starting a new contest which has unfortunately already ended, but you can go see the giftie anyway!

Dream_To_Me is showing the giftie she got and starting a new contest.

The winner of the Kiss Up To Swistle Contest “Work It, Mom” drawing for the $25 Amazon.com gift card is CAQuincy! Yay! I’m emailing you right now! And by “right now” I mean “in a few minutes when I find your email address and compose an email”!

This is going to be a LITTLE CONFUSING, because I have TWO reasons to persuade you to click through to another site today, and the two reasons can be combined, but I have very different reasons for the two reasons, if you follow me, and it is a little tricky to organize my thoughts when I am trying to be persuasive. Did I ever tell you about the temp job I took in sales when I was about 20? HA HA HA HA HA. I could not manage to (1) give away (2) free things (3) to people who wanted them.

Okay, okay. So, okay. The first thing is that I have a post up today at Milk and Cookies, which is the column Linda and I co-write for a site called “Work It, Mom.” Occasionally I tell you to click through a particular Milk and Cookies post (like if there’s a giveaway I want to let you in on), but usually I don’t: I figure you’re either reading it or you’re not, and product-related blogs aren’t everyone’s jar of coins.

But today I want to PUSH you a little, because I wrote a post on a subject we’ve been discussing here, which is gift ideas. The concept, like this post, is a little split and confused, but the basic idea is that these are gifts that (1) look big, helping to camouflage any cutbacks you may have made this year, and (2) are useful gifts for recipients who are ALSO trying to make cutbacks this year. YOU save money and THEY save money!

The second thing is that this site I write for has revamped their whole site. They want people to come visit it, hoping that people will like it better now. And as an incentive, they are dangling a $25 Amazon.com gift card on a stick. What you have to do—and pay attention now, because it is just a teeny bit tricky—is: (1) go visit “Work It, Mom”; (2) come back here (HERE, not THERE) and leave a comment saying something you like about the site (hey, how about “I just LURVE that Milk and Cookies column! It is teh fab! And the authors are so charming and lovable and I just want to SMOOCH them!”). You have until Friday the 5th, and then I’ll draw a winner in the evening sometime, assuming I remember, and if not I’ll do it on the weekend. I hope. …Maybe I’ll just write myself a note right now while I’m thinking about it.

Even though “Work It, Mom” is my boss, they’re not making me post this, and in fact they made it very easy for me to say no if I wanted to, and also I’m not getting anything out of it if you DO click through, so I won’t be all sad if you don’t. I’m doing it because I follow a lot of blogs and I know a ton of you are fretting about how to afford the holidays, and this seemed like a nice way to add $25 to one of us.

So to sum up: I have written a gift-ideas post elsewhere that I think it is worth the pain of clicking the mouse button for. And if you WANT TO, you can get a little chore done while you’re there: find something nice to say about the site (the colors are pretty! the banner is cool! I like the font! I like your earrings!) and type it here in this comment section, and that’ll enter you in the contest to win the Amazon.com gift card.

My mom said I should do a post on larger gifts that people could go in on together. She came from a family with four siblings, and she says people from bigger families are often looking for ways to reduce the sheer number of packages under the tree. But it soon came out that this whole idea was just because she wanted to talk more about her Roomba.

My mom and dad got a Roomba a while back, and they love it. And I don’t mean “they love their vacuum cleaner,” I mean they sent me MORE THAN ONE digital picture, of the Roomba, POSING. Not to show me how it looked in action, but just to show how cute it was. Like it was a new pet or a new baby. And they refer to it as “she.” My mom told me that the other day when the Roomba “climbed back into her perch,” she (and that “she” refers TO THE ROOMBA, not to my mother, and so does the “her” of “her perch”) “made her sad sound, meaning she needed attention.” And, continued my mother, “I checked her brushes and I went ‘EEEEEE!’ She needed a good cleaning!”

Well, okay. I mean, is anyone else thinking these people are good candidates for a lap dog or something?

But then this morning I saw that Amazon.com has the Roomba for an additional $110 off (it was already $90 off, and anything that can be reduced $90 and then reduced another $110 and still just be “on sale,” you KNOW you’re not going to like the price of it) (it’s STILL $250), until 10:00 a.m. U.S. pacific time or until they run out of them, whichever comes first. So, fine. I will tell you about the Roomba, even though I have NO INCENTIVE to do so. The person asking me to talk up the Roomba is MY MOTHER, not a wealthy corporation slipping me a couple of crisp Roombas under the table.

I have seen the Roomba in action, and it’s like a large, serious, bustling ladybug. It radiates an attitude of “SOME of us have WORK to do, so if you wouldn’t mind LIFTING YOUR FEET for a second—unless that would be TOO MUCH TO ASK.”

Seeing the prep work my mom did before using it, I realized I would probably never buy one. You have to get all the clutter off the floor, and if you want it to vacuum under things like endtables (where it can’t fit), you have to get those off the floor too. Since to me the WORST part of vacuuming is the prep work, the Roomba seems like it’s just doing the fun part, like when a certain SPOUSE thinks he should get POINTS for putting IN a load of laundry, when he doesn’t do the folding or the putting away.

But for my mom, who is one of those automatic decluttering people who will put your book away on the bookshelf while you are in the bathroom, it’s great. Her house is always decluttered anyway, and she hates getting out the vacuum cleaner and hates using the vacuum cleaner, so for her it’s perfect: she sets up the Roomba and goes and does something else, and when she comes back to the room (this time the “she” is my mother), the room is freshly vacuumed and the Roomba is back in her (the Roomba’s) perch, recharging herself and sending out self-satisfied rays of “THERE. THAT’S better. *sniff*”

So. There. My mom likes her Roomba. And she recommends it as a gift that siblings could all chip in on to give to a parent.

Hey, what do you do with holiday cards when you receive them? I put them up with poster putty around the wide doorway leading from our living room into our kitchen, so that I’ll see them a million times a day and can admire them from my favorite recliner. I look forward to the mail every day in December.

Okay, so I am a little behind, and Black Friday is almost over. [Edit: I’m clicking through on Saturday and still finding the deals active.] But geez! I’d think TWO adults with five children would be easier than ONE adult with five children, but actually it is not turning out to be. We did get the tree up, though, and decorated (with children’s help, so it was an Excedrin Afternoon), and I put lights on a tree outside, and also I ate a lot of leftover pumpkin cheesecake, so I guess it was a productive day after all.

I like to give books as gifts for many reasons. Actually, I’m not going to waste time talking about those reasons, I’m just going to list some of the books that look like good gifts from the Amazon.com sale. Get $25 or more of them and the shipping is free.

(image from Amazon.com)

Castle, $8 down from $20. We have this ourselves, and I also have one on the gift shelf for the next birthday party one of the kids gets invited to. It’s an AMAZING pop-up book: I’m not even interested in knights and castles but I’ve looked through it several times.

(image from Amazon.com)

The Mitford Bedside Companion, $11 down from $27. My mom says she finds the Mitford books very soothing—good, happy, mild reading. I might get this for my mother-in-law, since she likes that kind of book.

(image from Amazon.com)

America at Home, $16 down from $40. Photography books make great gifts, and they’re fun to pass around during awkward family gatherings. Keeps the conversation going. This one looks like the heart-warming kind you could give to ANYONE.

(image from Amazon.com)

New York Vertigo, $16 down from $40, an EDGIER coffee table book than America at Home. Apparently this one will make you dizzy: the description says the photographer “scaled walls and scoured rooftops”—or something like that, I’ve lost the page and don’t feel like double-checking.

(image from Amazon.com)

Return to Fairyopolis, $8 down from $20. Ooooooooooooo, I want this myself. (If the child you’re buying it for hasn’t read Fairyopolis, you can get it for $13.50, so that’s both books for close to $20.)

(image from Amazon.com)

The Annotated Secret Garden, $14 down from $35. This would be great for anyone who loved The Secret Garden as a child. Paul has The Annotated Alice (same idea, but for Alice in Wonderland) and it’s a beautiful gift-book-looking book.

(image from Amazon.com)

Pirateology: Guidebook and Model Set, $7 down from $18. I wish my kids would get into these “ology” books, because they really appeal to me.

These deals are just for today, it looks like, so if you miss them—well, that’s what you get for spending QUALITY TIME with your FAMILY. [Edit: The deals are still working today, Saturday, in the morning.]

Do you realize it is, like, four weeks until the winter holidays? Ha ha, like I know anything about any winter holiday except the one we celebrate in our house (Secular Christmas). But they’re, um, at approximately the same time of year, right? And so all of us can unite in our common panicky feeling, because The Holiday is coming soon for all of us?

I find the panicky feeling MOSTLY pleasant, because I enjoy shopping and I enjoy buying gifts. I spend kind of a lot of time doing it, and feel disappointed when I’m done. I’m afraid this means a lot of SHOPPING TALK around here in the near future—but fortunately, only about four weeks of it! Because there are only about four weeks left! No, sorry, don’t panic!

I have several general suggestions to start with. I do almost all of my shopping at Amazon.com, so I’m afraid the tips are mostly SKEWED in that direction.

1. Visit or subscribe to Want Not. Mir keeps track of the deals and who’s got free shipping and who’s got coupons. I’ve gotten so many good buys because of her.

2. Put anything you’re considering buying at Amazon.com into your shopping cart (or the “saved items” area of the shopping cart). Whenever you go to your cart, it’ll let you know which things have gone up or down in price since the last time you went to your cart. This has gotten me some unexpected good deals: sometimes the price of something drops very low for a day or two and I never would have noticed if it hadn’t been in my cart.

3. A bunch of Amazon.com items (certain books! certain kitchen items! certain other assorted things! there is no way to predict it!) qualify for a “4-for-the-price-of-3” discount: mix-and-match any four of these items and you’ll get the cheapest one free. Well, that means you want to be a little careful not to order items costing $20, $20, $20, and $4, because you’ll get the $4 one free. Furthermore, if you are ordering EIGHT items that all qualify, you’ll get the cheapest TWO free: if you’ve got items costing $20, $20, $20, $20, $10, $10, $10, $10, you’ll get two $10 items free. But if you place two separate orders, one for the $20 items and one for the $10 items, you’ll get one $20 and one $10 free. So LOOK SHARP, people!

4. Many Amazon.com items qualify for free shipping if you have an order totaling more than $25. So, you know, don’t place a $22.47 order and pay $12 shipping on it. Depending on how much shopping I need to do, I might place an order every time I hit the $25 mark—or I might let it pile up so I don’t get stranded at the end with a small order that I can’t get to $25 without adding, say, four pounds of chocolate-covered dried cherries. Just for example.

5. Also, the free shipping option can be slowwwwwwwwww. Like, 2 weeks slow. So it’s a good idea to order early if, like me, you hate paying for shipping.

There. I had one more Amazon.com tip, but I’ve forgotten it. If I remember it, I’ll mention it in one of the next million shopping posts.

Also, this morning I got an email from The Land of Nod, which is Crate & Barrel’s kid store. They have a free shipping deal through Monday on all non-furniture items: use code RUDOLPH. A lot of their stuff is not in my price range ($30 for a “stocking stuffer”?), but I’m planning to sort through anyway. It’s hard to resist free shipping, and this personalized ornament would be a cute teacher gift, and even I like playing with these six puzzles in one puzzles. Here are the gifts under $10 and here are the gifts $10-25, and here are the gifts $25-50. (But watch out: you can buy this Melissa and Doug birthday cake toy from The Land of Nod for $24.95, or you can buy it from Amazon.com for $11.99.)