elfing it

Friends of Elfster,

I am very excited to announce the new design of Elfster.com! 

Our mission is to make the joy of giving fun and easy to experience.  The team at Elfster is passionate about evolving Elfster.com: through the services we offer, through the look of Elfster and through our users' experience - in pursuit of our mission. 

Our goals in this new design are simple:

• Embrace our history and our roots as a festive and fun Christmas Secret Santa planner
  
• Set the stage for new group gifting services that can be helpful all year round
  
• Make the site easier to read, use, and navigate
  

We hope you'll love the changes we have made and what we have in store in the months and years ahead!   As always, please let us know what you think.  It is our generous and active user community that feeds out passion!

Best wishes,

Peter Imburg

Founder & Head Elf

It seems I have wine on the mind, along with droughts, as my county in Northern California is in the middle of one and residents have been asked to reduce water consumption by 20% - but I just read about Terracycle (www.terracycle.net) and their many cool recycled products. The one that caught my eye is a rain barrel - I've wanted a couple of these for my (sunny, parched) garden for some time. The barrels modified by Terracycle are actually wine barrels repurposed from Kendall-Jackson; really attractive oak wine barrels that are now great for collecting water (www.terracycle.net/rain_barrel.htm).

Other than Terracycle, I haven't been able to find other companies that are reusing wine barrels except for a few tiny local shops. There's a ton of information online about how to position the barrels for best water collection. For example, This Old House has good information (www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/article/0,,1180779,00.html).

Ordering an item this large online was a bit daunting, but then I discovered that Home Depot and Walgreens carry the Terracycle rain barrels. So, if you're looking for an extra bit of help in conserving water, this seems an easy, inexpensive and green idea.

June 15th is coming right up ... are you ready to celebrate the dads in your life? I usually have at least 3 to think about. This year it will be my actual dad, my son's dad (my husband), and my brother, because we usually get together with his family on Dad's Day-types of holidays.

I'll confess right now that I haven't decided what gifts to get - but at least for one of the dads (my husband), I know the direction I'll probably be taking: Wine. Yeah, we're winos. One year I got him a case of Bordeaux - all hand chosen for us by an exceptional local wine retailer in DC. In fact, I'll just give them a shout-out right now: Calvert Woodley (www.wineaccess.com/store/calvertwoodley). If you live near DC, these guys are expert-experts.

We'll get back to local wine retailers in a moment, but first, if you have a wine lover in your life my suggestion for today is: consider giving them a wine club subscription. In California, it seems like every winery has a "club" and if there's a special winery that he adores, then this route might work. But I recommend a club that includes a selection of wineries, and I'll list a few great options below.

My personal favorite is the Wine Garage Club (www.winegarage.net). The Wine Garage is a very cool retailer in Calistoga (Napa Valley) that is dedicated to uncovering spectacular, undiscovered wines for less than $25. Check out their web site and philosophy. I'm a cheap wino and I love to explore, so I'm a very big fan of these guys.

• Gift certificate to Wine.com (www.wine.com), the top online wine retailer in the US and one that gives you an incredible ability to sort wines based on preferences, regions, cost, ratings, etc. Full disclosure: A friend of mine is the CEO here - but this is also a fantastic retailer. (Say "Hi Rich" and tell him Sarah recommended you. So far he's never offered me any discounts, so maybe this will help.)
• WineQ (www.wineq.com)
• Bottlenotes (www.bottlenotes.com)
• There are also clubs featuring wine regions, like Santa Cruz Mountains Wine cCub (www.santacruzmountainswineclub.com)
• Sunset Magazine Signature Wines (www.signaturewines.com/sunset), a selection of thier favorites
• I also just read about Great ide Wine Unleashed (www.wineunleashed.com)

However, if you have an excellent local wine merchant, getting the dad(s) in your life a hand-picked case of special wines is also a great idea. Give the merchant a budget and have him put together a selection of unusual wines that your dad (husband, father-in-law, etc.) might never try on his own. We're still enjoying that case of Bordeaux, 7 years later. (Did I mention that it can be kind of a self-serving gift?)

We recently wrapped up a round of Elfster's Green Gifting.  For the month of May, our guideline was a used book.  The Green Gifters set off on a voyage to find a buried treasure in our bookshelves, and give that treasure a new life in new hands (probably a complete stranger!). 

As a gift, I was pleasantly surprised to find in the mailbox, a very fine treasure from Evan of Redlands, CA.  The book is Blue Latitudes "To Boldy Go Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before."  I am currently only a few chapters in, but already I am finding myself fully engrossed.  The book tells the story of Captain Cook, as the author participates in a recreation of the one of Cook's journey's on a replica ship. 

After a very shocking introduction about the death of Cook, there is a passage in this book that describes the influence of Captain Cook on our modern pop phenomenon, Star Trek.  It is funny that in a chapter of this book, I *finally* gained an appreciation for Star Trek which in all my years working in technology, living and studying in Berkeley, and generally being surrounded by Trekkies, that I could never muster in even the slightest way (I don't think I have even watched a full episode).

 So far so good, and I'm looking forward to reading through the rest.  Thanks again Evan.  And who knows, if this book sounds intriguiging to you, perhaps you'll get lucky and I'll draw you in a future Green Gift Exchange :)

Peter 

Here is a little gift exchange idea that I love - this is one I do pretty often, such as this past weekend. We just visited friends for Memorial Day, and we both have toddlers. As parents of young children know, there is a constant need for books. Or perhaps I should say, from your kid's perspective, it's a piece of cake to keep them well stocked in books, because hey, they like to read the same (darn) book every single time. But from the parent's perspective keeping well stocked can be a challenge ... homicidal thoughts may arise when that chubby little hand gives you Elmer the Patchwork Elephant for the 12th time that morning. There are books I have "lost" for months on end. And I don't feel bad about it.

In any case, when I get together with girlfriends whose kids are a similar age, we just trade children's books - sometimes temporarily, but usually we gift them, and they eventually cycle through our entire social circle. It's great for everyone. And used children's books are the BEST idea for an Elfster gift exchange. I live on a cool street with many families that have young children, and we're going to be doing a huge kids book exchange this summer. Those with older kids will clear out the shelves, and those with little ones will reap a bonanza. And everyone will be thrilled.

Try it in your own neighborhood, school or preschool - the process is a wonderful learning experience for small children. They can choose which of their books to gift, and help wrap it. Then they receive a new book, all wrapped. It's fun, teaches generosity, and is green.

Hi, it's Sarah, and I'll be posting on this topic a lot. It really is true that "one person's trash is another's treasure," and this is a philosophy that we really embrace at Elfster. We love our Green Gift Exchanges, and we'll be running them throughout the year for everyone who's interested. In fact, we're running one right now - for those of you in the exchange, those gifts should be in the mail!! Isn't it cool to think that in a few days you'll not only be giving one of your great old books new life with a stranger, but you'll also be receiving a fun "new" book yourself? (New to you anyway, since the Green Gift Exchange is all about creatively reusing and regifting items you already own.) I can't wait to see what I'll be getting ... and I'm headed off to the post office this afternoon!

In addition to posting specific gift recommendations, we want Elfing It to offer thoughts and ideas related to all kinds of gifts, gift giving, and gifting occasions. And since everyone on the Elfster team loves getting and giving gifts pretty much all the time, we'll be offering ideas that we think are fun for every season, not just the winter holidays. We're big on year-round gifting and year-round gift exchanges.

The whole Elfster team is going to be contributing to Elfing It, though some of us will be doing it more than others. Last year you heard a lot from Kristine, and this year you'll be hearing more from Sarah and also Peter (the head elf). We also really want to hear from YOU - customers send us thousands of thoughts and ideas every year, and before we had the blog we had no easy way to share these with the world. But now we do, so send them in! We know that many of you are fabulous gift givers and party planners - we'd love to hear your tips and ideas, and so would other elfsters.