Valentine’s Day is only eleven days away and you’re still not sure what to do for your significant other… Why not bake them cookies with a special message?

Willams-Sonoma is the exclusive retailer of the cute Message-in-a-Cookie Cutter set. The set includes 3 shaped cutters (scalloped-rectangle, heart, and star) which are customizable using pre-made words or letters. When you use the cutter to cut your dough, it leaves an imprint of the letters. The possibilities for this cutter extends beyond Valentine’s Day and are practically endless… Have a fight with your best friend? Bake them “I’m sorry” cookies. Is your husband, family member, or friend returning from their tour of duty? Bake them “Welcome home” cookies. Read on. »

Although Christmas has passed this year, there’s still plenty of stories circulating around about Amazon workcampers hired for the 2009 holiday season.

I found out about it from a post on Gizmodo on a couple of technomads, Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard, who took up the life the pre-retirement RVing. They started a site called NüRVers, a community of the new generation RVers. They worked at the Coffeyville, Kansas Amazon facility for a month before spending the holidays in St. Louis.

Amazon afforded the opportunity to workcampers to work at the Amazon facility during the holiday rush. The workcampers were hired for amazon by two temp agencies.

From the article:

Their first day inside, Chris was awed. “Walking inside reminded me of the scene from Indiana Jones when they abandon the Ark in that giant warehouse. It’s three stories high. It feels like an industrial library. Shelves going up and up and up.” Hundreds of employees scurried, some “orange-badges” or “green-badges” hired by two temporary employment services mixed with the sought-after blue-badges of full-time Amazon employees, guided to their next destination by computers that flashed lights when bins were full or guided workers through the maze with handheld computers. “Pickers are basically playing a human Pac-Man game. They’ve got a computer scanner that they carry around that tells them where to go. They find their little shelf. One slot might be a book. The next shelf over might be a toaster. Or an iPod. The next slot after that might be a pair of jeans.”

Amazon gave workcampers the work opportunity after the previous years fiascoes involving busing in workers from surrounding cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma whom worked ten to twelve hour shifts in addition to four hour commutes. Read on. »

A homemade gift can go a long way with someone. Much further than an expensive gift. A homemade gift shows you took the time and energy to actually think about the gift and craft it for that person instead of going to the shelf in a store and picking something out.

With today being Christmas, I’ve been thinking a lot about the gifts I bought my relatives. All of it was bought the 23rd and all of it was made in China. As part of my New Years Resolutions, I want to start making more gifts this year. Not only Christmas, but birthday and anniversary gifts as well. Maybe even a few ‘thank you’ gifts for my clients.

Although a bit late for Christmas, here’s a roundup of a few DIY gift ideas that can be used year round (after the jump). Read on. »

Well, guys, it’s Christmas Eve and, if you’re like me, you’re still not done with your Christmas shopping. But lets face it, we’re not going to be able to get it down today. All that’s left are the items that have been picked over for weeks now–and those never make good gifts.

Thankfully the folks over at C|NET give us five great last minute gift ideas and they only require a printer! Read on. »