We’re slightly overwhelmed with the amount of Social Gifting startup sites that have popped up this holiday season encouraging us to outsource our decisions, but still think this whole movement is great. Many of you may have already heard of Wantful, a startup founded by serial entrepreneur John Poisson,  which aims to revamp the gift-giving process. This is a site that takes the experience of a high-end shop, and makes it fun and affordable for you and your gift recipients. It has a super simple design, and lets you log in with Facebook so that it can pull in all of your friend’s birthdays. These companies are offering to save customers from the task of choosing items themselves. They hire editors from the retail world, personal shoppers charged with sifting through hundreds of options, surfacing only the very best products and doing the dirty research.

It’s part personalized pop-up shop, and part gift certificate. The site helps the gifter put together a custom catalog of 16 items that all fall within a certain price point, then delivers the book either electronically or as a physical copy to the receiver, then ships the chosen product. By marrying tech and tradition, the service seeks to relieve shoppers from the burden of having to choose exactly what to buy that special someone, while preserving the sense that thought and care went into picking a present.

Wantful is also different in its affinity for paper and the postal service. They realize that an email can’t replicate the fun of unwrapping a gift so Wantful will print and ship a customized book that showcases the possible presents the gift giver has selected for a $5 fee. Not bad! Wantful is backed by a few tech industry heavyweights such as Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Path CEO Dave Morin and One Kings Lane co-founder Alison Pincus. The site doesn’t rely solely on fancy algorithms but moreso on old-fashioned means such as good taste and wrapping paper to deliver a personal, and memorable touch to help it’s user select gifts.

We love this idea and think it could be fun to experiment with this holiday season. It will be interesting to see how the etiquette of sending a Wantful will evolve once the novelty wears off. Will it be seen as little more than a souped-up gift certificate? Which of the new social gifting sites are your favorite so far? Gift Side Story, Trunk Club, Givvy, Quarterly…the list goes on!

There sure are an amazing amount of social and curated gifting sites popping up this season! It’s clearly a great idea, so it will be interesting to see which ones succeed and which ones don’t. Quarterly is a new way to connect with the people you follow and find interesting. We spend so much of our lives connecting with people online that we forget the value of authentic interactions that happen in the real world. This new service from the former editor of Good Magazine let’s you subscribe to tastemakers like Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic or Scott Belsky of Behance, every three months you get a gift curated by the person you’ve chosen to subscribe to. You can receive physical items in the mail from influential contributors and cultural icons of your choice.

What kind of stuff will you get? Quarterly says that you’ll see a blend of original, exclusive, and consumer items that are timeless, practical, exciting, and fly under the radar. The idea is not to fill up your house with clutter, and they are mindful of the waste that we all generate each day. They also recognize that consumption isn’t inherently bad, but just a matter of making smarter choices about the things we surround ourselves with.

Quarterly users can subscribe to as many contributors as they like. Support for multiple subscriptions was by their most requested feature ever since the launch, and it’s now being offered. We’re thinking this is pretty awesome. What you are getting is an experience, just like getting a letter in the mail from a good friend. Instead, you’re getting a gift from someone super cool that you admire! Super!

Will you be testing out Quarterly this holiday season?

Christmas and Hannukkah are just around the corner, so it is time to start preparing! Here are some creative and fun photography tips that we hope you’ll enjoy.

1. Prepare: Making a List, Checking it Twice

• Make sure you are prepared to capture the moments of this holiday.

• Check that you have everything and find some good places to take some shots

• Pack the camera

• Make sure the batteries are charged and you have extra memory cards

• Put someone on ‘photos’.  Make sure someone is taking charge and photographing the whole event!

• Consider the light in the room that you’ll be photographing in. Is there enough light? Will you need a flash?
• Are the backgrounds too cluttered and distracting?

2. Get Your White Balance In Check: Pay attention to what type of light you’re shooting in and set your white balance accordingly.  If you have a camera that shoots in RAW, however, you can change it later.

3. Set Up a DIY ‘Photo Booth’: Time to be creative and set up a photo booth station where the party is.  An idea would be to photograph everyone as they come in and then leave a tripod set up with a self-timer on the camera for people to take pictures of themselves during the party.  As the party goes on, the photos get crazier!

4. Capture the Preparation Stages:

• The meal or party is the best part of the day, but there are other photographic opportunities; mainly the preparation stages of the day.

• Food preparation

• Putting up decorations

• Wrapping gifts

• Kids throwing a tantrum while getting dressed in their Christmas outfits

• Setting the table

5. Before and After Shots: Take pictures of the place before the party starts and after it has finished. It will show you what a success it truly was!

6. Time-lapse Christmas Series: A creative idea would be to set up a web cam on the table looking down the Christmas tree. Set the camera to go off every 5 minutes over the day and you will end up with one of the most wonderful series of shots. Of course can be applied to a Hannukkah bush as well;)

7. Christmas Lights: This can be tricky so read up on it!

8. Find a Point of Interest- but just per shot: Work hard to de-clutter your images

9. Fresh Group Photos: Take the group photo before the day gets started and when everyone looks their best.

10. Opening Gifts- Shoot in Continuous Mode: Opening gifts bring a wide array of emotions, facial expressions and excitement, so be ready to capture all of them! You will find a lot of really exciting, memorable photos.

11. Fill Your Frame: Fill your frame with your subject either by using your zoom or getting up closer to the subjec

Together with the convenience of digital cameras and advances in offset publishing, and fun new apps, this holiday season we will surely be seeing lots of digitally printed holiday cards. While we know this is more convenient for many reasons, there is still something to be said about handwritten cards. Digital images are great, but they don’t capture the feeling you get when you hold a real photo in your hands.

If you are interested in going digital, and saving time with address labels, stamps, etc…be sure to try Sincerely Ink or Postcard On The Run. Both of these apps will let you design your card and then they will send it out for you.”Just snap, tap, and send.” If you have some spare time, and want to go traditional, we’ve got a few recommendations for you this season. California Home + Design shares some of their favorite finds from local San Francisco stationery makers.

Greetings from San Fran: Wish your friends and family happy holidays from The City by the Bay! The cards can also be printed as customized photo cards. Greetings from San Francisco Cards ($16 for 6 at Hello! Lucky)

Say it in Black and White: Keep it simple with these bold holiday cards from San Francisco’s In Haus Press.The Merriest Holiday Cards: ($18 for 6 at In Haus Press, Etsy)

Merry Mistletoe: San Francisco’s famed Yellow Owl Press offers an unexpected take on the traditional holiday card this year. Botanical prints of seasonal plants are surprisingly festive and sophisticated.Botantical Card ($4 each at Yellow Owl Press)

Merry and Modern: If cutesy holiday cards aren’t your thing, consider these from the SFMOMA Museum Store. The red hue on the featured Mark Rothko’s 1967 says “Holiday” but is still sophisticated. Mark Rothko Holiday Card ($16 for 12 at SFMOMA Museum Store)

Doe a Deer: This unique card is merry, without being over-the-top. It comes from one of our favorite purveyors of fine stationery, Austin Press–who, despite their name are based here in SF. So hop to it and send it to everyone on your list. Holiday Doe Visiting Card (price upon request at Austin Press).

Shutterfly and Moo will also let you design your holiday card, but they won’t mail them for you. This year you will have no excuses! Will you be going Traditional or Digital?

We recently saw the launch of a new lifestyle brand, HelloBrit.com which aims to find helpful, yet creative new ways for busy people to live more simply, beautifully and imaginatively. Brit Morin (wife to Dave Morin, the founder of Path) has been working in the tech world for several years now and was a former Apple and Google employee. She is already being touted as the Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley and has recently been featured in The LA Times, Huffington Post, and TechCrunch. Brit gives new ideas and tips to live a more simple and creative life whether it be through technology, food, style, health that she either created or curated from scouring the web, something that is becoming very popular! Brit says “The ideas should come to you, and they should come through a channel whose expertise and taste you trust.”

Her site is looking like a cross between Real Simple and Wired Magazines with videos showing you how to make Christmas tree cheese appetizers, how to use electrical tape to make candy cane cups, DIY Holiday welcome mats, wearable dinner party napkins, and more. She recently featured a great gift guide for the holidays and showcases 20 of her favorite products and apps. Thanks Brit!

The brand’s first offering is a wedding app called Weduary, which was inspired by the process that Morin and her husband used in planning their own ”Pixel Cowboy”- themed wedding this summer. This will be a new service for brides and grooms, and will hopefully make for a more interesting experience for guests online and off. Make sure to sign up on the website to be notified when the new site arrives! There will be some other apps launched in the future which will likely be centered around ways to be creative around the home and novel ways to perform everyday activities like cooking, decorating and shopping.

We hope you enjoy and use Hello Brit for a little inspiration into your own creativity! We know that at ABCey, we will be keeping up Brit’s innovative ideas and using them for inspiration of our own, especially this holiday season.

Do you ever spend hours in a store or shopping online, trying to find the perfect gift for someone, but just can’t quite figure out what to get them? Well, now your days have become much easier, and just in time for the holidays!  Givvy is an “open community that let’s you participate in shaping the next gift-giving trend”. Whether it’s for a birthday, holiday present, housewarming party or a little something for yourself, our community of curators makes it easy to discover trendy new gifts that will inspire you and delight your friends and family.  You can also keep track of your most important occasions and social events with a personalized calendar and gift reminder service.

Givvy is uniquely designed for use inside Facebook—so you can discover gifts and share occasions while staying connected to the friends you love most. Givvy is an open community that let’s you participate in shaping the next gift-giving trend. Simply share your favorite gift ideas with friends and earn points as your influence gains in popularity. The members with the most influence earn exclusive rewards and join our community of Curators.

Your Holiday season of gift giving has now become much easier.  Make sure to check out Givvy’s Facebook page for great ideas for the perfect gift.

ABCey Events would like to thank Larry Rubin, one of Givvy’s founder’s for making our gift-giving days much easier!

WIth Thanksgiving just around the corner, we thought we would give you a few fun facts about this special holiday.  M.J. Stephey, from the Times, tells us 10 bizarre facts. Enjoy!

1. T-Day or a Tray: In 1953, Gerry Thomas, from Swanson, had 260 tons of frozen turkeys to serve, so he ordered 5,000 tons of aluminum trays and got an assembly line of women to dispense small amounts of turkey, corn bread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes, which became the first ever TV dinner.
2. Football & Feastin’: The tradition of watching football on Thanksgiving started in 1876, when the newly formed American Intercollegiate Football Association held its first championship game. Less than a decade later, more than 5,000 club, college, and high school football teams held games on Thanksgiving Day.
3. Franksgiving:  In 1939, FDR said that Americans should celebrate Thanksgiving one week early, hoping the decision would spur retail sales during the Great Depression.  Americans did not like this new deal, so the mayor of Atlantic City declared that the residents would have two meals, Thanksgiving and “Franksgiving”.  It wasn’t until two years later, in 1941, that Congress adopted a resolution and declared Thanksgiving to be held on the fourth Thursday of November.
4. Mary Had a Little Thanksgiving Obsession: The woman who wrote the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also played an important role in making Thanksgiving a national holiday. After a 17-year letter-writing campaign, Abraham Lincoln was finally convinced to issue an 1863 decree recognizing the historic tradition. 
5. Americans at the Abbey: In 1942, London’s Westminster Abbey held Thanksgiving services for U.S. troops stationed in England. The Church’s pew sang America, the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner, with more than 3,500 soldiers in the church.  This was the first time a foreign army was invited to take over the grounds of a 900-year-old church.
6. Pardon Me, Mr. President:  When President Harry sympathized with a Turkey in 1947, the annual tradition of pardoning a turkey before thanksgiving began in the White House.  
7. Slow Roasting Tradition: It took more than 150 years before all 13 colonies celebrated Thanksgiving at once, in October 1777, although the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621.  George Washington loved the holiday, while President Thomas Jefferson disliked it, calling Thanksgiving “the most ridiculous idea” ever conceived.
8. Turkey and Chicken and Duck– Oh My!: A store in Louisiana claims to ship more than 5,000 turduckens a week before Thanksgiving day.  I bet you wonder what a turducken is? It is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken.  Now that is a lot of meat.
9. Fast vs. Feast: Thanksgiving is all about eating an abundant amount of great food.  Ironically, it was initially supposed to be a fast, not a feast.  The settlers at Plymouth Rock celebrated the day by prayer and abstaining from food.  But when Wampanoag Indians joined them, celebrated the 3-day celebration with dancing, games, and feasting.  
10. What’s in a Name?:  Three towns have been named after this special holiday — Turkey, Texas, Turkey Creek, La. and Turkey, N.C. — each with less than 500 residents.  It is said that t the pheasant’s name came from Christopher Columbus, who thought he was in India when he arrived in “The New World” and, therefore, named the pheasant a “tuka,” an Indian term for peacock.

Burning Man is around the corner and we are going all out this year by prepping weeks in advance with Prepare for the Playa! It is the largest event focused on Burner-Preneurs and pre- playa preparedness anywhere. The first part of the event was a huge success on July 17th and they are expecting great things from the second festival on August 14th at San Francisco’s Club Cocomo! Prepare for the Playa is part of “a by burner series of events connecting people to unique, creative, handmade and funky Independent owned/made products and services.”

This year’s designers include the revolutionary couture of Wild Card and Jan Hilmer as well as the funky fur fashions from Wild on The Inside, footwear, and more from the AYYA collective. We also suggest checking out the lyrical, “neo-archaic” attire of Miss Velvet Cream and colorful wool dreadlocks and adornments fromNifNaks. In addition to a wide selection of vendors, the event will also feature live performances, music throughout the day, and two playa fashion shows. Acclaimed stroboscopic sculpture artist Peter Hudson (Sisyphish, Homouroboros) will also give a presentation on his latest installation, “Tantalus.” It gets better…the event is free!

This year it will be bigger and better than ever before to celebrate the 5^th anniversary of the event! ABCey hopes to see you there. We’ll also be at the Beyond the Fence event next Sunday at Mighty.  Do you have your outfits ready?

Today TripAdvisor announced its top ten wackiest summer events in the United States.  Some summer events are sure to get a little crazy but nothing can quite compare to the events we read about in this article. These events offered flabbergasting family fun and surprising sights – from monstrous mushrooms, to weighty watermelons, to copious quantities of cream cheese.

1. Funky Fungus: Humungus Fungus Festival — August 5 – 7, 2011, Crystal Falls, Michigan
Fungus fanatics will be in their earthy element at this celebration of the world’s largest mushroom, which weighs 11 tons, covers 37 acres and lives just below the ground near this northern Michigan town.

2. Rowdy Ruckus: National Hollerin’ Contest — June 18, 2011, Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina
Travelers should leave their indoor voices at home at this cacophonous celebration, which draws in over 10,000 attendees. The hollering contest is the highlight.

3. Creamy Chaos: Cream Cheese Festival — September 17, 2011, Lowville, New York
Cream cheese connoisseurs can finger paint a mural with the yummy spread, fill a friend’s face in an all-you-can-eat contest, or have a taste of the world’s largest cheesecake, which measures 20 feet in diameter.

4. Seedy Celebration: Watermelon Thump — June 23 – 26, 2011, Luling, Texas
Now in its 58th year, this juicy four-day celebration is ripe with fun and anything but melon-choly! Attendees can attempt to break the Guinness World record of nearly 69-feet in a seed spitting contest.

5. Georgia Jubilation: Summer Redneck Games — July 9, 2011, East Dublin, Georgia
For those that don’t find bobbin’ for pig’s feet appetizing, visitors can also participate in the hubcap hurl, mud-pit belly flop contest, or even test their talent for tossing toilet seats in a round of “Redneck Horseshoes”.

6. Pungent Party: Gilroy Garlic Festival — July 29 – 31, 2011, Gilroy, California
Tantalizing delights from more than 65 food vendors include garlic chocolate, garlic-flavored ice cream cones, and garlic watermelon, to name a few.

7. Tater-Tastic: Barnesville Potato Days — August 26 – 27, 2011, Barnesville, Minnesota
People immersed themselves in a round of mashed potato wrestling, and stuffed their faces with the savory starch, in the “French Fry Feed”.

8. A Chipper Celebration: Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw — September 2 – 3, 2011, Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin
Travelers can try their hand at breaking the 248-foot long record in the legendary adult chip throw, while youngsters can also have a shot in the “Children’s Chip Chuckin’ Competition”.

9. Mushy Madness: National Baby Food Festival — July 20 – 23, 2011, Fremont, Michigan
Adults who are young at heart can turn back the clock in a baby food eating contest, while those that prefer solid foods can test their skills with a bubble gum blowing contest, a pop ring toss, or fill their faces in a pie eating challenge.

10. A Tacky Time: Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival — June 17 – 19, 2011, Avon, Ohio
Duct tape enthusiasts will see dozens of displays made from this household staple, including fashion-forward clothing and sports memorabilia.

The wackiness of these events is what keeps the attendees coming back year after year. Have you attended one of these events? Or have you attended something wackier?

Some people get as excited for April 1st as a child on Christmas eve.  But if you don’t already have your pranks picked out, here are a few last minute ones that will surely fool everyone around you.  Merry Pranking, everyone!

1. The Fake Out Prank:  First choose a coworker to mess with.  Then simply place a sign that reads, “April Fools!” upon their desk.  They will be waiting, worried, all day to be the butt of some insane prank.

2. Pest Control Prank:  Let everyone at the office know that you have a contagious ailment, such as pink eye or head lice.  Walk around scratching your head or rubbing your eyes all day.  People will panic.

3. What’s That Sound?  Stealthily place a small portable radio in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet, turning it on to a static station on a very low volume.  Ideally, this file cabinet will be close enough to someone’s desk that they will begin to complain about that “strange noise.”  Everyone around that person will either think they are trying to play a prank or they are just crazy.

4. Crossed Wires:  Switch the telephone plugs of your colleagues’ phone lines and wait for the fun to ensue.  They will be receiving each others’ calls all day, much to their confusion.

5. Set the ring tone for your cell phone to an embarrassing bodily function noise.  Turn the volume up really high and stash the phone in a coworker’s desk drawer.  Call your cell phone from time to time from the land line to see their reaction.

We love a good prank over here at ABCey.  Hope you all play some delicious practical jokes out there today!