Clutter-free gifts for all your best girlfriends
- Chocolate! Charles Chocolate (E-ville local!) calls their monthly club the PMS assortment while Vosges (inventors of the bacon chocolate bar) call theirs the Lunar chocolate (truffle) of the month club. Yes please.
- Challenges: “the gift of experience” provides inspired customized challenges for a new year (perfect for list-makers like us).
- Adventure: A service called MyPunchbowl offers hot air balloon rides, puppy parties, and antique fire engine tours. Invent an adventure (or just book something fabulous with them). I haven’t tried it yet, but I would be happy to get this in my stocking [hint!].
- Spa: pedicure, massage, facial, scrub, anything but a body wrap!
- One-time class: a new type of yoga, beer-making, knife skills. Whitney would like a class at The Paper Source.
- Wine tasting: if you live near Napa or Sonoma, make an afternoon of it. Otherwise, bring the wine party to her!
- Tickets to a show: take her to a show, concert, or just a movie. Tickets in an envelope are so exciting.
- Lift tickets: Promise to take a snow day together.
- Your time: be her challenge buddy (“let’s run a 5k” or “lets walk every Tuesday to the cafe roundtrip”).
- iTunes Credit: provide the credit and bring the ice cream for girls night in with shows like Mad Men or Friday Night Lights.
- Coolness: help her stay current and discover new bands with an emusic subscription.
- Kindness: Sponsor a goat or flock of chicks from Heifer International; help children and families around the world receive training and animal gifts that help them become self-reliant. No livestock will come to your door.
Clutter-free gifts for another rookie mom
- Babysitting swap: but you have to really do it, not just say you will.
- Excellent Family Photos: Offer a gift card from your local photographer for a professional family portrait (tip from The Organizing Diva). We love ErinLeigh in the East Bay, who took the picture of us above.
- Food delivery: Fill her entire freezer or bring over dinner for tonight. Create a DIY kit (like dry cookie ingredients in a jar or fresh pesto with a bundle of dry pasta and parmesan) or hire a fancy food delivery service (like Cook SF).
- Hug coupons. Ok, I’m kidding. But if you can score “no whining” coupons from your toddler, those would be priceless!
A few words on shopping for your wife
She might actually like clutter. And she probably doesn’t want to stuff her own stocking. If so, you can check out a list of our best ideas for gifts that are things.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Chocolate of the month club? Sign me up!
(P.S. Beautiful picture of you too.
OK so I am with you on almost all of these great ideas, but if someone tried to give me the “gift” of training for a 5K with me (#9) , I’d be all “damn, at least you coulda got me some lotion!!!” But not everyone is as lazy as me.
Anything spa is a treat. Also – an afternoon of (child free) high tea: Scones and clotted cream…
ha…my mum always says candles and lotion are the new fruit cake.
Great list
I love the babysitting idea!! Trustworthy babysitting is like gold. It’s so expensive, and the cost can be really prohibitive to parental event planning. And it truly is clutter free (unless… you use it to go shopping 
MyPunchbowl just contacted me to share a FREE Premium upgrade when our readers create a new account (valued at $30/yr) — if you sign up for MyPunchbowl before the end of the year. You can use your upgraded account to send ad-free holiday eCards (with Premium designs) or plan a New Year’s party. To get this special promotion, just head to rookiemoms.mypunchbowl.com.
LOVE these – Perfect for any Mom – who would not enjoy getting any one of these – Mmmm Chocolate any/every day for me
LOVE these! I also wanted to add that friends do not buy friends heaps of decorative journals from the dollar bin at Borders.
Thank you for these wonderful suggestions. I especially appreciate your thinking-outside-the-box link to heifer.org. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year Everyone!