elfster

It's that time of year in our family... the time where we draw names for Christmas gifts. Our *first* Thanksgiving dinner (yeah, you read right) is Saturday with Scott's family and that is the traditional name draw time.

One of Scott's colleagues introduced him to elfster.com and I am passing along the info in the event that any of you could use it. Basically, elfster was created as a cyber-organizer for secret santa groups. An administrator sends e-vites to the potential participants. Once everyone has agreed to participate, elfster will do the name draw for you. And here is what I like, particularly because my Mom has a history of insisting that we keep secret whose name we have, making asking questions about potential gifts nearly impossible: each person can create a wishlist for him- or herself and annonymously ask questions of their "givee", such as what kind of music they like, favorite color, sizes, etc. This is particularly useful for true Secret Santa operations.

Ideally, we could just all contact those on our lists and see what they like, what they want, etc, but that does not always go smoothly. And when my Mom insists on being the hub of wish lists, well, that does not work well, either. So I think we'll take elfster for a spin this year and see how it all works out.

I don't know about all of you, but I am completely pumped about the holidays this year. So pumped, in fact, that I don't mind the early snow on the ground. Here we go -- Thanksgiving is next week!