Really quickly before my story — Happy Birthday & Congrats! I saw your post on Martha Stewart weddings’ blog & it really made me smile! I’m so happy for you!!! (& a little jealous; We still have to wait until next September for our wedding!) ||| My story ; For our first Christmas together, my fiancee and I shopped almost exclusively for each other’s stockings on Fredflare. We both love Fredflare so it was easy (& cheap) to fill our stockings. It was perfect — Scott’s a huge bacon fan (& Fred flare has no shortage of bacon items) & I love knick knacks of all sizes (the kitschier the better!). We both ordered separately so everything would be a suprise on Christmas morning & since I pick up the mail, Scott even had his box shipped to his parents’ so I couldn’t peek at the shipping label when it arrived. Somehow we even managed to go all of December without spilling to each other (we’re both absolutely terrible at keeping secrets from each other)! On Christmas morning we got up bright and early together & sat down next to our tree to open up our stockings from each other before we headed over to our parents’. It was the perfect start to our first Christmas together & it’s a tradition we’ve continued every year.

{Bonus pic — Our stockings (Mine is the Santa, Scott’s is the argyle & our cats share the other one); http://i44.tinypic.com/2mgnltt.jpg }

I gave my best friend (a lovely Jewish gal) the Nice Jewish Guys calendar last year for Hanukkah and it is definitely one of my favorite gifts I have ever given. She did not expect it all, let alone knew that such a marvelous calendar even existed. It makes her laugh each time she looks at it, and I know that she looks forward to seeing her new guy each month. I can’t wait to give her another year of Nice Jewish Guys.

This is a killer playlist, Chris! You’re a November babe too? GO SCORPIOS! This happened ages ago but I remember giving my dear brother a pair of UrbanEars from FredFlare for his birthday which turned out to be just the perfect gift for him and his girlfriend. They met at school and when they took the train together every morning, they got to listen to their tunes together through the (totally awesome) Zound plug, which I thought was SO CUTE. Music is a huge part of why they’re together so I guess I could take a bit of credit for their engagement just last month! What are sisters for, right?

Happy (belated) Birthday, Chris! Hope you had an amazing time : ) As for stories… I think the best gift I can remember from Fred Flare is when my mother bought me a pair of your mini elephant earrings for my birthday. I fell in love with them online a couple months prior and thought they were so adorable… but I didn’t want to buy them because I didn’t know what to wear them with. On my birthday my mother surprised me with them, and it was love at first sight all over again. Three months later, I moved to Florida to work at Disneyworld, and they placed me at Kilimanjaro Safaris at Animal Kingdom… I was really shocked, and partially terrified of having to drive those giant trucks around, but before going to work on my first day I wore those mini elephant earrings for good luck… and the day was absolutely perfect! And get this: a baby elephant was born in the park on that same morning!!! I wear those elephant earrings everyday at work now… I don’t feel like a safari driver without them!