The Simple Pen

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30-Day Giving Challenge: Change the Exchange & a DaySpring Giveaway

The 30-Day Giving Challenge has me in a giving frame of mind. It’s spilling over into many areas of my life. This week it spilled over at work. Our office traditionally does a Christmas gift exchange. You don’t know who you’re buying for, but it’s a $10 limit for the gift. It’s fun to exchange gifts, but I got to thinking…. What if we took the $10 that each staff member usually spends and pooled it? I started to think about what that would add up to. And then I went out on a limb.

I emailed our boss to see if she might want to pitch the idea at the next staff meeting.

Her reaction shouldn’t surprise me. My boss is one of the most caring, generous people I know! She had the secretary talk with me about taking my idea and changing it just a bit to possibly help one of our co-workers who has had a really rough year. I’m hopeful that my other co-workers will be willing to jump in, forgo the gift exchange, and help someone in need instead!

Day 17 Giveaway: DaySpring

DaySpring loves helping people share their heart and God’s love with messages of hope and encouragement. That’s why they’ve partnered with the 30-Day Giving Challenge. DaySpring sent each blogger a fabulous gift pack full of goodies!  Check out what was in the amazing kids’ pack I received:

Contents: Trusting the Shepherd DVD, Shepherd’s Promise Activity Book, Scripture Matching Game, Joy Notes, Joy of Giving Coupon Book, Lost & Found DVD, Tree of Life DVD, Tree of Life Activity Book, God’s Green Earth DVD, Gift of Christmas DVD, Advent Calendar, Happy Birthday Jesus Sticker Books, Gift of Christmas Sticker Books, Happy Birthday Jesus Kit, Bedtime Prayers Book, Titus Plush.

I can’t wait to donate these! There will be some really happy kiddos!

DaySpring was also generous enough to donate TWO $50 e-gift cards for each member of the 30-Day Giving Challenge team to give away. (Note: The $50 3-gift card does not cover shipping.)

To Enter:

  • Leave a comment. You can share a story about gift exchanges if you’d like, but it’s not required.

Extra Entries (Leave a separate comment for each.):

This giveaway will end on Friday (11/19) at 9 p.m. EST. The winner will be drawn randomly and notified via email.

The other bloggers leading the 30-Day Giving Challenge are also giving away $50 DaySpring e-gift cards. Stop by each of their sites for 3 more chances to win!

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Comments

  4. I’m a stay at home mom….so I’ll just share something else!
    We used the Really Woolly Happy Birthday Jesus kit last year and it really made Christmas so special! My daughter was so excited and we watched the video. We did this first thing Christmas morning and it helped put our focus on the true reason of Christmas rather than the regular hustle and bustle we’re used to. We’re hoping to do the Advent Calendar this year as well. It’s so fun starting new traditions. :o)

  9. What a great idea about pooling the money for a greater good! I loved and appreciated office gift sharing but never NEEDED the gifts I got.

  10. Sadly where I work we do not have Christmas parties much less gift exchanges. But I do have a favorite gift my son made 15 years ago that still hangs on our Christmas tree every year 🙂

  13. I love gift exchanges with a price limit, like $5 ….its frugal, and I love to amaze people with how far $5 can go!

  17. Such a lovely idea for an office giving idea– much smarter than all the odds and ends we always wound up giving each other back when I was in banking. 🙂

  22. I would LOVE gift exchange of dinner. Weird I know, but we could all bring a crockpot or casserole dinner and then containers and take home a few fabulous dinners – and my meal planning for the week would be taken care of!

    An “inspiration” gift exchange would be great too – something to inspire and lift or console – you could do some amazing things for under $10.00 (small picture; tile w/vinyl lettering/graphic; etc.)

  28. Our family has grown so large that we have a gift exchange like a white elephant (but not gag gifts) with a $10 limit. We look forward to it every year!

  33. I love gift swapping. One of the most fun girl get togethers involved the FIND of the century swap. We bought a product we discovered that was super-wonderful and wrapped it for exchange. What a variety of great products for under $5 – our maximum. Food products, kitchen gizmos, bath and beauty items, jewelry, books.

  36. I love Dayspring! Such great inspirational items. I love your idea of giving to the needy instead of getting another “trinket.” There are so many needy this year (and always).

  39. Love your idea of pooling money! I wonder how that will go over in my unchurched extended family?!? I might just try that! We are trying to look outward rather than inward this Christmas with our kids. We are changing how we think about Christmas, too.

  40. The only gift exchanges I have been involved with are with family and friends….but I always enjoy watching others reactions!

  42. Last year I participated in a gift exchange at work where I ended up not receiving anything for some reason or another. Looking back, it didn’t really bother me all that much and I was glad to be able to give to someone else.

  53. We draw names with several different family members making it easier (and cheaper!) to get nice gifts without having to get so many, although we’d like to!

  58. Wow what a neat story! Last Christmas my parents did a white elephant type gift exchange with a family of 12 that graced our house for Christmas. It was White-Elephant-with-a-twist because as we were each opening the really nice gifts – we noticed a theme. Some tool boxes, some scrapbooking stuff, kids nerf guns etc. When the game was over and everyone had attempted to “steal” to get which gift they wanted, there were still some people left with weird awkward gifts. That’s when my dad announced that each gift was actually meant for someone specific. He read from his list and everyone traded gifts and ended up with something that matched who they were! Fun times!

  59. This isn’t really a story about an exchange per say, rather a story of how our family spent Christmas last year.

    We went to spend Christmas with my grandma. While we were in this small town, we heard about several families where the parents had recently lost their jobs. We (and my grandma’s church) put together a “shop for free” sign out front of the fellowship hall and brought in a bunch of gifts that we had gotten in years past and never used. It was awesome to see the smiles on these faces when they got to come in and pick a gift for their family member who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten anything! 🙂 I think it puts everything in perspective – the whole meaning of Christmas was that Christ GAVE everything – why shouldn’t we give a little of what we have?

    That’s my story! 🙂

  65. I love the idea of pooling the money to make a big impact, especially for a co-worker or for a local charity!

  71. Only had several gift exchange experiences, involved family or friends. But always enjoy watching the reactions on their faces!

  74. I love all of dayspring’s things! There are great things to share with all kinds of folks.

    llwoolard [at] gmail [dot] com

  84. I went to the DaySpring website and LOVE so many of the products!! I also love your idea of pooling the money for the gift exchange. What an awesome way to really bless someone!

  86. I too am going to speak to my employer about giving. We throw away an amazing amount of food that I know could be used. I found an organization that will accept and pick it up, I just need to go to management and get permission now.

  89. One time I participated in a gift exchange and we were suppossed to have 12 gifts, one for each day Most ladies spent about $50 total. I got 12 cards. Some were even Valentine cards with stuff marked out. I had the hardest time coming up with something nice to say about each card, especially the marked out ones! But i was able to do so!

  92. Thank you for the opportunity. We are really struggling for Christmas this year and are only buying for our kids. This would be a great gift for our two little ones! Thank you!

  97. I would love to buy some Really Woolly items for my children, and for a Christmas Toy Charity drive my husband’s work hosts!

  98. Oh how amazing that would be to bless your co-worker that way!
    And that looks like a really fun collection to distribute. How fun it will be to give those out. =)

    I would love to win the DaySpring gift card. Thanks for doing this. =)

  112. I think your idea for the gift exchange at work is wonderful! I hope it goes through. Please let us know how this turns out.

  113. My home daycare picks 2 kids off the Christmas Tree at our library and then we take the kids shopping for those kids. Our dc kids are 1, 3, 5 & 7 and love shopping for other kids. They also make homemade cards, pictures and ornaments that we put in the package as well.

  115. I ‘like’ (actually LOVE!) Dayspring on Facebook!! I use Dayspring’s ecards on almost a daily basis 🙂

  119. we don’t really buy for anyone else these days but who lives in our home and a few family members but no friends anymore

  122. We like to have our kids’ friends bring a toy or book for those less fortunate instead of for them since we have b-days right at Christmas time.

  124. I always enjoyed our gift exchanges in school in the 1950s. It was always so exciting to take a small toy I thought another girl would enjoy and see what I received!