Did you know that there are some people who have already finished their Christmas shopping? If you are one of those people, I don't know if you can hear me frowning at you, but I'm doing it as hard as I can right now. I've actually wondered how the economy will affect what people buy for the holidays and how they celebrate. I watch a fair amount of daytime TV these days (also having discovered there is nothing good on at 4am, no matter how many channels you get) and there are a ton of Wal-Mart commercials talking about how your holiday spending dollars go further there. It's made me think a lot too about what kinds of gifts we give and receive and their significance.

In that vein, I'm curious what gifts have made an impression on you in your life. What is the best or worst present you've given or received? How important do you think gift giving is for holidays or birthdays? Have some of you stopped giving anniversary, birthday or holiday gifts and has that worked well? My husband bought me a lawn edger for my birthday one year and it remains one of my favorite birthday gifts to date. I still have and use the anniversary gifts Jeremy gave me all those years ago. Unfortunately, I also have a container of about half of my Christmas gifts from last year that has gone untouched for nearly 12 months, which makes me wonder if that was the best use of those funds or if something else would have been better. So for this month's Living Out Loud project, I'd like you to tell us how you stand on gifts and which ones have really stood out for you.

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each question above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org.

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, December 6th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

As far as I'm concerned, your participation in these projects is all the present I need. It makes me ridiculously happy more than any themed sweater could. Can't wait to hear what you have to say!