Last minutre birthday gift

August 4, 2006 4:38 PM

Last minute birthday gift ideas. I have 24 hours to find two birthday gifts.

I need two birthday gifts one for my brother and one for his wife. We are doing the gift thing in about 24 hours so I need to find something fast. I live in a small town so really the only store that is around is Walmart, no mall or anything of the like.
These guys are hard to get gifts for. They are really into wine, but I don't know much about wine so I can't just go pick out a nice bottle for them as I wouldn't know what I was doing.
So I'm looking for something I can pick up at walmart or get online that is like a gift card or something.
Any help would be most usefull.

posted by blackout to shopping (9 comments total)

What about an online gift certificate to a store like Sur La Table? They have all manner of kitchen accessories, many of them wine-pertinent.

Failing that, there's always amazon gift certificates, or iTunes.
posted by rossination at 4:43 PM on August 4, 2006

So I'm looking for something I can pick up at walmart or get online that is like a gift card or something.
How about a gift card? There are plenty of websites that sell electronic gift cards. Amazon sells just about everything.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 4:46 PM on August 4, 2006

Buy them a small calendar, as novel as you can find. Include with the calendar a single PostIt note that says "Dinner with blackout at ______________". They pick the place and the date and put it on the calendar, you buy them dinner.
posted by ldenneau at 5:08 PM on August 4, 2006

Are they also in Scottsdale? What about a gift certificate for a wine tasting? Or a pretty wine decanter?
posted by lalex at 5:28 PM on August 4, 2006

For the people who are hard to shop for, I usually give flowers or a nice potted plant.

When I do gift cards, I try to make them into a sort of themed gift basket. For example...

Movie theater or Blockbuster gift card in a large (popcorn appropriate) bowl, with a package of popcorn kernels or microwave popcorn, and candy (gourmet is best, but even movie theater candy is good).

A couple of fun coffee mugs with an individually wrapped biscotti and Starbucks gift card in each.

A bookstore gift card with a cute bookmark ... again I would probably wrap these up in a mug, maybe with some tea bags.

Other ideas...

Subscriptions to magazines you think they would like (you can find these on Amazon).

Scour Walmart, who knows, they might have some fun wine glasses or cute wine bottle stoppers.

If there is something you would want to take them to do at a later date, you can give them a small token gift and give them a nice card outlining the day and what you're going to do. One example is that my fiance wanted to take his father for golf lessons. He gave him a card with the info for the first lesson along with some golf-related doodad for effect. Things you could do this for include various lessons (golf, swing dancing, etc), sporting events, plays, movies, etc.
posted by tastybrains at 5:33 PM on August 4, 2006

Gift certificate: www.wine.com.
posted by beatrice at 6:10 PM on August 4, 2006

Thanks guys for the help. Wine.com sounds great as well as some of the other ideas.
Lalex: I'm up in northern part of Arizona in a smaller town where they live, thus only access to walmart.
posted by blackout at 6:19 PM on August 4, 2006

Gotcha. If all else fails, you could always do a few months of a Wine of the Month club.
posted by lalex at 6:26 PM on August 4, 2006

If you're in N AZ your options are obviously limited, but I'd be thrilled with a visit to Pizzeria Bianco in central Phoenix by the science museum. Make it a standing offer and go whenever it's convenient for all. Jeffrey Steingarten, one of my favorite, most respected (and NYC-based, incidentally) food writers, proclaimed it among the best pizza in the country.

If a jaunt down to PHX this week isn't out of the question, he has a lunch place called Pane Bianco that serves sandwiches. Maybe closed monday though, he makes a point of setting hours that are not inconsistent with his own life (consistent week to week, though, look it up). Would be a nice taste of things to come though, and they'd definitely keep for a several-hour drive, I think they're all served at ~room temp.
posted by oxonium at 7:06 PM on August 5, 2006