The Best Gift I Ever Gave

SWAGG is a free mobile app (download here) that lets you shop smarter using your mobile phone. Buy, send or swap SWAGG GIFTS and organize your old school plastic gift cards.

For every download of the app between now and Dec. 31, 2010, SWAGG will donate $1 to Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) , up to $125,000.

Clever Girls Collective and SWAGG are sending a pair of movie fans to the Sundance Film Festival! Download the SWAGG app and then visit the Ultimate SWAGG Getaway Sweepstakes site to enter to win a trip for two to the Sundance Film Festival. Entry deadline is January 3, 2011, 11:59pm, PST.

* * *

The best gift I ever gave was mostly stolen.

Well, it was sort of stolen. I did steal the box of old photographs from my mom's house. I did, but I bought the photo albums.

My parents would never have even noticed the box was missing. When I got married in 1999 and my mom developed pictures from my wedding shower there were photographs on that same roll of film from my brother's prom in 1994.

This was back before digital cameras were reasonably priced.

What I did for evenings over the next five weeks was sort through 30 years of photographs. I picked out the best ones and put them in chronological order. Then I took forty or so pictures from my own collection and I added them at the end.

The box of pictures was just this thing that sat up overflowing on a shelf. I was the only one that ever really looked at it.

But that Christmas I gave my mom two and a half photo albums filled with memories starting from her childhood and ending with her first grandchild.

The whole family spent hours together looking at the pictures.

It was magical.

And now my parents can keep them out and look at them anytime.

They could also throw away that old box.

It was the best present I have ever given anybody - I mean, not including the time I gave four people twin grandbabies all at the same time. They seemed to really like that too.

I'm sure if you asked my mother she would tell you that she liked the twins better, but (and don't tell her this) I made them for me. The photo albums, I made those for my parents.

* * *

Learn more about the coolest new app that revolutionizes the whole shopping, gifting, and gift card-organizing experience and Download the SWAGG app to your iPhone or Droid. I was selected for this sponsorship by Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity.