All Entries For gifts

Poll: Did You Ask for Any Healthy Holiday Gifts?

Many of us have gift-giving on the brain right now, whether you're done shopping or still have some items you want to pick up, or you're wondering what gifts you might receive yourself!

I enjoy giving gifts to others, especially homemade ones. Most of the time, there are not many items on my own wish list, but with my newfound love of running, I am realizing that I need a lot more "stuff"—especially now that it's colder and darker outside. Healthy new gadgets are always on my radar, especially since I'm always trying to learn new cooking skills or exercise ideas.

This led me to wonder: What healthy holiday gifts did you ask for this year?

Posted 12/23/2009  6:25:21 AM By: Nicole Nichols : 349 comments

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When It Comes To Holiday Gifts, Don't Forget About Yourself!

If you're like me, you've got a Christmas shopping list that you're slowly chipping away at as the 25th approaches. My planner has a list names with notes next to each one- what I've gotten already, what I still need to get, and a few with question marks (which means I have no clue what to get them.) But one person that's missing from the list is myself. It's easy to get so busy that we forget that we deserve a treat now and then, too.

Posted 12/18/2009  6:14:30 AM By: Jen Mueller : 68 comments

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Save 10% on Fruit and Flower Gifts for the Holidays!

Is your holiday gift list growing by the minute while your free time is dwindling before your eyes? We hear you. Online ordering is one way to cut down on holiday shopping stress, and now the SparkPeople Store offers several new gifts that you can buy for your friends and loved ones this season!

Posted 11/20/2009  6:36:09 AM By: Nicole Nichols : 15 comments

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Healthy, Homemade Gifts: Vision Collage

Here at SparkPeople, we're big fans of vision collages. What's a vision collage?

A vision collage is a collection of photos, magazine pages, words, or anything else that you can use to help visualize your goals.

Why would you give one as a gift?

Posted 12/14/2008  3:56:18 PM By: Stepfanie Romine : 50 comments

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Gift-Giving: Is It Really the Thought That Counts?

Have you ever had one of those awkward moments where the gift you gave didn’t compare very well to the one you got?

Maybe your gift was a lot cheaper than the one you got, or vice-versa. Or the present you gave was very nice, but pretty impersonal, while the gift you got was obviously selected with a lot of care and thought.

I can still vividly remember quite a few times when a gift I thought was pretty cool got me in the doghouse, for reasons I didn't understand. Maybe this happens to men more often than women, but it definitely takes a lot of the fun out of gift giving for everyone.

If you have a few of these bad experiences in your gift-giving history, the upcoming holidays might be a real source of anxiety and trepidation. Are you going to blow it again? How do you figure out what gift to give? You can’t go overboard just to make sure your present is the best, because that will make the other person just as uncomfortable as you are when your gift is the “inferior” one. Somehow, you have to figure out how to get it just right, and that can be pretty stressful.

Sure, people may say “it’s the thought that counts,” and act like it’s no big deal when a gift comes up a bit flat. And usually, that’s what we actually want to believe.

But obviously this is one of those situations where our thoughts and our feelings aren’t playing by the same rules. Mismatched gifts often do make people uncomfortable. What’s going on here?

Posted 12/9/2008  7:00:00 PM By: Dean Anderson : 101 comments

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