White Elephant Gift Exchange

We hosted our first White Elephant gift exchange at our house last night.  I dare say it was a rousing success!

I've had many different experiences with white elephant gift exchanges over the years ... it seems that often times my first experiences end up being bad/traumatic ones, so let's get the first story out of the way.

At my first white elephant gift exchange, I received a bag of pencil shavings.  I still remember the girl who brought the present.  At my first non-school white elephant party, I had to leave early, but instead of keeping the gift I had at the time (some DVD that looked mildly interesting) they kept trading and my husband ended up coming home with the gift he brought to the exchange, and DVD of a truly HORRIBLE 1943 film.  I think I was mostly disappointed my husband came home with his own gift and didn't say anything.


Then it was followed by a few hilarious and awesome White Elephant/Ugly Sweater parties, and it restored my faith in white elephant exchanges.  Yes, Virginia, there CAN be hilarious white elephant gift exchanges that don't end in bitterness and tears!

When Carmen was a baby, some friends hosted a white elephant gift exchange and we brought a HUGE 2 gallon jar of pickled jalapenos.  We brought home a Barbie, and one of the most interesting gifts there was some warming massage lotion from the dollar store.  Hmmm ... highly suspect ... we would all know what happened when, late some night, our neighbor busts out the front door screaming, "IT BURNS, IT BURNS! OH MY ... BACK!!  MY LEGS!"


So we wanted to host a party where, generally, everyone could go home with something they didn't hate.  I'm sure it helped that our friends were more familiar with what kinds of things were appropriate white elephant gifts (ie. NOT pencil shavings) ... and we invited kids, who I think can be excited about ANYTHING if you say it's a gift. ;)

I decided we should pack some extra presents so that either people could go home with a gift if they didn't bring one, or they could take home an un-lame present along with a lame one, or whatever.

So we packed a present I've been wanting to do for YEARS - a goofy autographed self-portrait.  I had an 8x10 photo I printed of Mark earlier this year.  There is a long backstory behind this ... in short, I have a friend whose little brother went on a mission, so they made this huge blanket of his face and had the blanket with them when they took family photos of major events while he was gone.  Imagine something like, there's a wedding, and one of the wedding photos would have his face in it, or he's at a baby blessing, or whatever.  I thought it was hilarious so I copied it.  Mark was unable to come to a family reunion because he had very little vacation time from work.  I ended up never using his photograph in a real picture, but hey!  It was a funny thought!!

~~~AAAAAAANNNNYYYWAAAAAYYYYY.  I had Mark autograph the photo and wrapped it up.  My friend Kirsten opened it and was a very good sport and jealously hugged the photo all night long.  She was even upset when her stepson stole the picture from her, and after they brought it home she told me her husband wanted to display it in the bathroom.  That is probably the BEST place to display Mark's photo.

We figured if whoever took it didn't like it, they could always take out the photo and have a nice black picture frame!!  Mark would never know. ;)


Carmen also has way too many bottles of nail polish.  So I took a handful of the brightest neon-colored nail polishes and put them in a bag.  SOME little girl would LOVE to have bright neon nail polish, right?

Last Christmas, we got TWO copies of the movie "17 Miracles".  So the unopened one got wrapped up in pretty paper.

Several years ago, we went to DI and bought a whole bunch of Living Scriptures movies on VHS.  We still don't have a VHS player, and ordered DVD sets of the Living Scriptures.  As much as Mark makes fun of the movies, I LOOOOOOOOOVED the Living Scriptures movies as a kid!!!  They made me the smartest kid in my Primary class because I knew all the stories!!!

When I was in high school, I had a weird obsession with scented candles.  I have a ton of half-used scented candles stored in Carmen's closet ... so when I was at the dollar store, I saw a Skittles Cherry-scented candle and thought, "I HAVE to get one of these!  Because I always think scented candles are nice, then I take them home and go WHAT WAS I THINKING?!"  And since it was only a few dollars, I decided I had to include some kind of crazy fruity candy with it, so I found one of those fruit-flavored Twizzlers licorice things that is that nasty bright yellow color.


So that was our 5 weird presents we contributed to the gift exchange.  Here are some of the things that got passed around:

~A metal combat helmet that looked like it was from WWII.
~A 4000 piece puzzle.  It measures 98 cm x 138 cm.  It probably weighs 5 pounds.
~A multi-purpose grater (it grates cheese and stuff).  There were 5 or 6 of them all together in the bag. LOL!!!
~A set of 4 pretty sake glasses
~An abacus
~A corkscrew
~A set of pink measuring cups/spoons
~A Winnie-The-Pooh puzzle
~A checkers board




We ended up with a puzzle, the checkers board, and the Skittles candle/Twizzlers.  Carmen wanted the candle and candy SO BADLY that she hid them under a pillow on the couch and sat on them.  When one of the little boys came over and tried to steal it from her, she started crying until he decided to change his mind and take something else. ... Oh, three-year-olds, you are so funny ... At the end of the night, we traded the abacus for a 500-piece Kodak puzzle, because he would probably make better use of the abacus RIGHT NOW than we would.

I figured it would be fun to teach Carmen how to play Checkers.  And the Checkers board is perfect - all of the pieces are plastic and cheap and the board will probably disintegrate in a year or two because it looks like it just laminated card board.  Whoever brought that gift is a genius.  Actually, ALL of the gifts at the exchange were genius!  I'm so thankful for all of my friends who made this party AWESOME!!!!


Another great memory from last night is that we invited our next-door neighbors and they were gracious enough to come.  When it came time for Richard to open his present, he opened the "17 Miracles" DVD and it was kind of hilarious to watch him read the back of the DVD, which proclaimed, "THE BEST FILM YET FROM MORMON CINEMA!"

"Oh, great," our friend Jonathan chimed in, "We are setting the bar pretty low here!!"

Ultimately, some Mormon who didn't own the movie went home with it.  Phew.  Glad it's found a new home!!

And our friend Tyler opened up the nail polish.  He painted one of his nails neon green.  His girlfriend, Gretchen, took home the measuring cups.  Everyone was such good sports.  I AM SO HAPPY.  HAVE I TOLD YOU ENOUGH TIMES THAT I AM SO HAPPY OUR PARTY DIDN'T SUCK?!




But today I have a cold.  I am staying home and hoping to rest and drink enough water that I can get better soon.  Mark's sitting in with my Primary class (the other teacher is teaching today!) and I'm at home with the baby.  Mace always cries during church because he usually takes a long nap after breakfast and wakes up around 10.  (This year, church is from 8:30 to 11:30.  It was good until Mace developed a sleeping schedule that involved a nap from 9ish to 10ish.)  He just woke up from his nap and is happily playing on the floor, so I'm feeling pretty good despite my hot, scratchy throat and general exhausted-feeling-ness.