Adam (yes, a guy): just trimmed 65 friends from Facebook. I can fit into those pre pregnancy jeans again

I swear, I could dedicate an entire column just to Alistair’s updates. Hilarious!

Two satellite dishes meet – fall in love – get married. The ceremony was rubbish but the reception was brilliant

Oh Cara, you didn’t!

Cara caused her first golf cart casualty: a chipmunk. RIP Alvin.

Recycle one of his favorite old shirts

I like personalized gifts (if you hadn’t noticed). If you have a wee one at home, how about this? Send one of your hubby’s old t-shirts to Rene at the JumpOff and she’ll turn it into a onesie or dress for your little one. I had her take my husband’s softball t-shirt and make a matching onesie for my little guy. You could also do this with a sentimental shirt from your dad and make something special for your baby. The possibilities are endless. Maybe your husband was a Dead Head. Got an old concert t-shirt hanging around? Recycle it into a cute outfit for your cutie.

Make him a Father’s Day Photo Book or a Mug (great for Grandpa)

OK, not exactly original but you can make it original! My sister staged a bunch of fun photos with her 3-year old, wrote great captions and made an adorable photo book for my brother-in-law. It was all the stuff that his “Dad-o” was teaching him. My sister took pics of my nephew pretending to read the paper, wearing his dad’s favorite sports team shirt, pretending to work the remote, etc.

I use Shutterfly but Snapfish and others have similar services.

They also make photo mugs. I’m going to make one for my dad and my father-in-law. I have a great photo of each of them holding my son that I’m going to put on their respective mugs. Shutterfly has a nice gift package where they send a mug and Ghiradelli chocolate or a mug with a $10 Starbucks card. The mug/chocolate set is on sale for $15.99 right now.

If your dad (or husband/father of your children) is a baseball lover, consider a personalized Louisville Slugger baseball bat, which we’ve blogged about before.

These custom books from I See Me are the best gift for a young kid ever. The book spells out your child’s name, one page at a time. And each letter corresponds to a fantastic animal or fairy (you pick the theme) that teaches your child and inspires their little imaginations.

I’ve bought these for a niece and nephew and they were big hits with both.  They also sell personalized plates, artwork, puzzles and more with the same animals or fairies. I bought the fairy plate for my niece and she loved it. (Of course, it went great with the personalized fairy book I’d bought her the year before.)

 

Another classic from Alistair:   x+y=z where x=(over 40 and skipping exercise for 3 weeks), y=( boot camp), and z=(sore as a *&^&*&^%^%&!*&#)

I can relate! Only I’m not brave enough to try boot camp!

I was just reading Arianna’s post (at Becoming Mom) on her 10 must-have items for newborns and was reminded of how much I hated creating my baby registry.  My sis was in town and we walked into the Baby Industrial Complex that is Babies ‘R Us and I began to break down.  It started on the bottle aisle.  Yes, there is an entire aisle with various shapes, sizes, and materials — not to mention the assorted nipple types and sizes.  There are brushes (all different sizes again), sterilizers that go in the microwave or plug in, insulated bags, breastfeeding tubes/gear and a lot more that I have simply blacked out. How the hell did I know what kind of bottle “system” (and make no mistake, it IS a system) I needed?

Amazon, take me away! I needed recommendations, reviews, advice . . .

So I skipped the bottle section. My sister was very helpful but I still had too many decisions to make (and trust me,  I’m generally not afraid of making decisions), with too little information to go on. I remember standing in front of the activity mats. My sis said “you need one of these.” There were EIGHT different kinds and I had absolutely NO idea what made one “better” than the other. What would my baby like? How was I supposed to figure this out? I mean, for fifty bucks, I ought to think this through, right? <sigh>

When we got to the heavy gear (strollers, car seats, play yards), I had a complete and total melt down. Fortunately, my husband arrived then and I put him in charge of researching those items. With my sister’s guidance, we narrowed things down, then sought out a sales person for help.  Wrong! They knew NOTHING and I mean NOTHING. My sweet husband went online the next morning and researched strollers for hours. He’s a keeper.

OK so there I am, feeling like a bad mother already because I have no idea what to get my baby, and my pregnant feet hurt worse than usual cuz this stupid store has CONCRETE floors, and I need to pee again, which is inconvenient because this stupid store has bathrooms IN THE BACK of the store (who puts bathrooms in the back when most of your customers are pregnant and are going to want to hit the bathroom the minute they walk in the store), and so I just handed the gun to my sister and told her to do it. I won’t even tell you about the problems we had trying to return items to this — did I mention they’re stupid — store.

Right before I handed the "gun" to my sister

If they hired my company to do their marketing, here are some things I’d suggest:

• Put a chair or bench at the end of every aisle. Let the mommas sit while the daddies drag stuff out for us to look at.  And can we get a foot massage while we’re at it?
• In fact, have a section with massage chairs where we can just simply take a load off. Better yet, hire some masseuses to do seated chair massages.
• Make it fun. If it’s someone’s first time setting up a registry, ring a bell, make an announcement, sing a song, celebrate!
• Put carpet everywhere, not just in the clothing section.
• Train some folks to be personal shoppers, knowledgeable on all this stuff.  Hey, if Home Depot can do it, why can’t you?
• At the very least, have some signage that compares the products in each category.  Simple visuals that tell me which item has which features so I don’t have to drag all the boxes out and try to read the backs.

Of course, I’d also suggest that they carry cuter clothes, like Zutano, but that’s a conversation for another day.

So that’s it. I hated every minute of it. After that day, I did most of my research and registering online. And most of my registry was with Amazon.  I’ll save my how-much-I-hated-maternity-clothes-shopping for another day (and how I saved that experience).

Richard lost his mind. Found it in a box and then put it back where he found it. 5 second rule: denied.

In my household, I start about a month before a holiday or birthday on my husband’s side, peppering him with questions (“What’s your dad into these days? Does your sister have pierced ears? Is she allergic to surgical steel posts?”) and sending him gift idea links. Invariably, I get this short list for his dad: baseball, grilling, history books, and stats.  Yeah, stats.  <sigh>  OK, so a grilling gift it is.

Have you ever had cedar plank salmon?  Smokey, delicious, and super easy to make.  It’s one of those dishes that people rarely have with a slightly mysterious air.  It just sounds complicated.  We served it at our wedding and order it just about every time we’re at Seasons52 restaurant.  I did a little research (shocking!) and discovered it’s not too hard to make.  If you come over to our house, it’s a good bet we’ll make you some.  We’ve made it for both our dads.  They loved it.  So for Father’s Day last year, we got them both plank grilling cookbooks ($12.89) and a set of cedar planks ($13.85) to get them started.

You can buy the planks at your local grocery or Whole Foods.  I bought them on Amazon and had them shipped directly to the dads.  The brand I use is a local Georgia company (Fire and Flavor) that is a member of the Sustainable Forest Initiative.