Holdiay shopping and relections on my most surprising gift ever…

Posted on Dec 11 in get involved, personal storiesby TalinaPrint

TwitterMoms and Target want to know about the most surprising holiday gift I’ve been given. My answer (I wish I had the photo they took of this morning):

A car! The Christmas after I turned sixteen my parents wrapped a key and a steering wheel cover for me and had them under the tree.

I opened the steering wheel cover and made some smart ass remark about how it would be nice to have a car to put it on…You know sixteen year old sarcasm and bitterness in full force. Ha!

Then I opened the box with the car key in it and the gears started turning, I was still a bit confused and just thought they were messing with me though. Then my parents opened the front door and told me to start the car. They had a old-school Chevy Nova parked in the lawn with a bow on it, my first car!

I so wasn’t expecting that at all and didn’t even put two and two together when they gave me the steering wheel cover first. LOL! Then there was the day I left the car unlocked and they pushed it around the corner to make me think it was stolen… That’s a story for another post though.

Speaking of holiday gifts, I am kind of peeved with some online retailers! Holiday shopping has been frustrating for me this year. Like I said in the last post, I do most of my holiday shopping online. I typically use amazon.com but am willing to branch out to other retailers if the deals and products are interesting.

This year I’ve shopped at Etsy, Amazon, Target, Kohls and Buy.com. I tried to shop online at Old Navy, Walmart and Macy’s but didn’t end up buying anything because their sites were either jacked up, products weren’t available or sales weren’t impressive. I’ve also been known to changes my mind about a purchase if the shipping charges are insane.

This week has been the week of “just kidding about that order you placed” because two different stores have “modified” my orders because their items are out of stock or just wont ship until like Feburary. Seriously? You have the item listed on your site and on sale but you forgot that you only have a limited number of them in stock?

If they can’t keep those online inventories in order I don’t want to suffer the consequences. Oh, don’t even get me started… Wait! I already am!

Kohl’s is especially craptastic because their shopping cart dumps like every 10 minutes. I spent all this time browsing and picking things out. Got them all added to my cart and went to checkout only to learn that my cart was cleared due to inactivity… Even though I was still browsing the site and adding to my cart.

Oh and Old Navy? Well they are advertising all these sale items and on their site the items aren’t at the sale price and they too have a pretty limited inventory this season. I tried to check out three times with them, each time I got another notification about what item was not longer available. Eventually I just stopped trying to place my order, I’ll just buy something elsewhere.

I wonder how everyone else’s shopping has been. Is your shopping done? I’ve still got to find some stocking stuffer type things somewhere. I know N has a list of stores and items he still need to get locally. Are you shopping online much this year, have a favorite store? Wanna share your story about the most surprising gift you’ve been given?

No, this is NOT at paid post just me blogging and trying to get an entry in for their contest. I love contests! You can enter too. Just follow the TwitterMoms link at the beginning of the post.

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6 Comments

• Sally says:

  December 11, 2009 at 3:32 am

  Hey, my favorite store is Amazon when I shop online. If anything is out of stock on Amazon, I’ll just add them to watchmyitems.com to be alerted when Amazon restocks. To face the “just kidding about the order you placed” issue, I always use the tool to peek into the exact number of stock the item has and make sure its not like 1 or 2 left if I really don’t want to be disappointed.
• maiden53 says:

  December 11, 2009 at 9:40 am

  my most exciting gift was when I was 15. I opened a PLASTIC horse! I was sooo not impressed.. I had about 50 already. Then my parents told me that it was suppose to represent the real one they had bought. Then the phone rang (being the teenager that I was, I just could NOT let it ring! LOL) – I said “hello” and then the REAL horse thing hit my brain and I started to cry! Then next day my dad took me to a pasture with about 12 horses that was knee deep in mud and told me to pick the one that I wanted. I picked the buckskin and named him Saudi. I think he was my salvation and sanity during my teen years. this revelation just hit me while I was typing it… thanks, Talina, for this outlet!
  maiden53´s last blog ..Susan Boyle is NUMBER ONE!!
• Talina says:

  December 11, 2009 at 12:11 pm

  Awe, April! That is a cool story! I think I was one of those gals asking for a pony as a kid… You pretty much got one. I am glad you shared! I loved reading your comment.

  Can’t wait to surprise Everly with gifts and help her create memories like these.
• Emily Elizabeth says:

  December 11, 2009 at 4:03 pm

  I wanted to get the Seinfeld package at Amazon. They were out of stock!

  So I googled Amazon notifier and came across this site:

  http://www.ehow.com/how_5680413_notified-amazon-product-stock.html

  Works like a charm.

  Now I don’t have to go to the malls!
• N says:

  December 12, 2009 at 1:03 pm

  As for my online shopping experience, Victoria’s Secret has been the worst. Everything I put into my cart when I’d go to checkout would be out of stock. So, I’d take the time to go pick out another color or size of that item and re-check out only to be told that it or another item in my cart was now out of stock. After 2 hours of trying to complete my order, I finally just said the hell with it and gave up! No money for you Victoria’s Secret!

  When it comes to a really memorable gift, I can’t think of anything that just stands out. Each Christmas there was always the “cool” present which one year was the giant LEGO pirate ship I wanted and then another year was a mountain bike. No cars or pony for me though!
  N´s last blog ..Eating locally
• Donna B. says:

  December 14, 2009 at 11:19 pm

  I’ve shopped exclusively online this year…. at Amazon, LeapsandBounds, and Dick’s Sporting Goods. It was painless and I plan to do it again next year! The best thing about it was being able to send links to the parents or spouses of those I was buying for. I got back yeas and nays as well as suggestions.

  In looking for a snuggle/comfy doll for my soon to arrive grandchild… there was a lot of collaborative shopping going on that would have been entirely impossible considering the 1200 miles separating us.

  With a few exceptions (coloring books, crayons, something the kids use up) I always check to see if the other grandparents, the parents, or aunt/uncles/etc. have already bought what I have in mind… and to see if the parents have any major objections.

  My major disappointment was having to settle for a gift card for a son-in-law. Legalities of shipping some items will always be a problem, shopping online or off.

  As for my favorite and most surprising Christmas gift ever — a piano. That it didn’t magically appear under the tree Christmas morning was no big deal, since my parents were adamant that we know from the beginning that they were Santa Claus… so the fact that it was awaiting me when I returned from ‘babysitting’ some young cousins (a made up excuse to get me out of the house) on December 23 didn’t take the thrill away at all.

  The most amazing thing is that, at age 7, I was convinced I’d actually helped my aunt out that afternoon!

  That was, um, many decades ago. I took piano lessons through high school, though that piano got left in Colorado when we moved to Texas because we were told the sounding board would not take kindly to such a drastic temperature/humidity change.

  Last year, I visited the cousin (that I ‘babysat’ years ago) and her grandchildren are now playing that piano. It was a gift that kept on giving.
  Donna B.´s last blog ..Happy Birthday, Mom

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