Giving Tuesday: Holiday Gift Swap

On Giving Tuesday, I attended the Holiday Glamour Swap at the CambridgeSide Galleria along with a group of other local on-line writers. Giving Tuesday, is a day designated when people are encouraged after Black Friday and CyberMonday to give something of themselves.

The shops at the CambridgeSide Galleria, were especially generous on Giving Tuesday as they donated many gifts for this event.
The CambrideSide Galleria also set up a number of displays for gift-giving ideas as well as fashionable attire ideas for holiday parties, such as shown below:

The California Pizza Kitchen donated snacks some of which are pictured here. (Not pictured is the Salted Caramel Pudding which is a must taste this holiday season.)

Santa even dropped by for a surprise visit and donated some good cheer for the occasion, offering to take some "Santa Selfies."

Now for the details of the Swap: as each person arrived at the event, they picked a number. The rules were set forth as follows:

• Each person would be allowed to choose a gift based on your number
• If you were fortunate to be Lucky #1, you were able to steal any gift after everyone had chosen a gift
• If you were not fortunate enough to be Lucky #1, you gift will more in likely (greater than 99% chance statistically speaking) be taken from you 

Okay so that last rule was not explicitly stated but I think you catch my drift. Now allow me to take you back to a previous Holiday Swap event that I attended at the Cambridgeside Galleria. For that previous event, participants needed to answer a trivia question in order to select a gift. I was so happy when I, very early on in the event, was able to correctly answer a very difficult trivia question and opened my gift to reveal a $50 Sephora gift card! Unfortunately, someone else wanted my gift and I ended up going home with: an umbrella (yes...that's right folks. I had a $50 gift card and then POOF! I had an umbrella) I officially was done with gift swaps for that year. Then, a new year began!

Now that you're up to speed with that past event I can now properly discuss this current event and how I was clearly there for one thing: REDEMPTION.

So, I will answer the most pressing question on your mind: I did not in fact have Lucky number 1, if I did then clearly I would have been able to succeed in my plan for: REDEMPTION. But alas, so the story unfolds, I opened my gift, decided to swap it for a $50 gift card to the Cheesecake Factory and then, as quickly as the gift card fell upon me it was gone. But, in the time that has passed since then, I have come to the realization that the card was not really taken from me so much as I gave it away. After all, that is what Giving Tuesday is all about: to give something. So I encourage everyone to go find something that they love (yes it has to be something you care about otherwise it doesn't count) and give it away. And, if you happen to have a gift card to the Cheesecake Factory, well, feel free to send it my way!

*The Holiday Glamour Swap was gratis for me to attend however, all opinions, as always, are entirely my own.