Secret Santa...My Dilema

Lately I've been having something on my mind. Every year since I was little my family has done Secret Santa gifts. I wish I could remember what year we started it, but it was a long time ago. Around the beginning of October we would draw a name from someone in our immediate family and give them a gift. This is the gift that we open Christmas Eve night, and we look forward to it as much as Christmas morning!

My ornament from my sister Tasha. It's a picture of me and my Grandpa Parent that was taken at Sarah's wedding.

When we first started, we would buy each other a $5 or under gift. When we were old enough, we changed the rules: you now had to make the gift. At first this stipulation was daunting! Make the gift? Are you kidding???? Well, the first year for that arrived, and we all survived it! We did pretty good too. I can't remember what anyone made, but I remember being impressed, so impressed that the making the gift rule stayed. I believe the first year for that was about 2001, and it remained that way until 2012 when the rule changed yet again. I'll get to that in a minute.

What we found when we were to make the gift was that we put more thought and effort into thinking of the idea and you thought more of the other person and what they would like. Year after year the gifts got better and in some cases bigger. So as we continued this practise, it seemed that no matter what, you always received the same person's name every year. It may have been like this because of how long we had been doing this. Ideas of what to make the person you drew were getting harder to think of and as we were one by one leaving the nest and beginning our lives elsewhere and our lives were becoming busier with jobs and new families, we decided that the rule again needed to change.

 

So in 2012 we again changed our rule, with much thankfulness from my brother-in-law Jeremy since it was his first time with this project. My sister Sarah had just recently been married in 2011 and so they had decided to not participate that Christmas as life was chaotic. Well they didn't get to skip out in 2012! The new rule: instead of making anything you can think of, we were to make an ornament for the person. Doesn't seem too hard, but do you know how many styles or ornaments there are???? That was the hard part!

 

Within this blog have been pictures on last year's ornaments. Again, I think we did pretty good!

And now it comes to this year, 2013. This year I'm the one who changed the rule, yet again. This year since we will not be together at all before Christmas to draw names, it was decided to just make an ornament, and on Christmas Eve we will draw names and you'll find out who it goes to. Now the challenge is even bigger since there's no one to think of to base your ornament off of. I guess that just leaves the possibilities open.

What brought this blog post on???? Well, today I'm hoping to narrow down what kind of ornament I want to make. Thank goodness for Pinterest secret boards! They're a life saver! Now to sit down and write up a few possible ideas. This is going to be a great year! If you have any, let me know! Let the brain power start working!

Merry Christmas!