Like a lot of people on my friends list, I've been looking for inexpensive gifts to give people, and especially my kids (who are not on this filter, BTW). One of the obvious zero-cost options is lessons: guitar for the Y.D.; maybe simple Perl or Javascript programming for the Wolfling.

I've offered, of course, but I think they're a little shy of asking, and when I think of it, it's usually not convenient for them. So this year I'm going to print a couple of stacks of coupons on business card stock. That way they'll have a tangible reminder that they can ask, they can hand on to me some time when I don't look busy, and then I'll have a tangible reminder that I made the offer and should make the time for it.

Feel free to make up your own variations on this one. Of course, what you put on the coupons doesn't have to be lessons; I remember a long time ago one Valentine's Day when Colleen gave me a little coupon book for things like hugs and kisses and backrubs that I might have ben too shy to ask for. Massage, home-cooked meals, private performances...

Today for Solstice I gave each of the kids a Bag of Holding from ThinkGeek, and gave the flower_cat a Cheshire Totoro Face T-shirt.

There are hundreds of gift guides this holiday season filled with junk you can buy - but a lot of time you actually don't own it, you can't improve upon it, you can't share it or make it better, you certainly can't post the plans, schematics and source code either. We want to change that, we've put together our picks of interesting open source hardware projects, open source software, services and things that have the Maker-spirit of open source. Some are kits, some are open software projects that you'll need to build hardware for before gifting, and some are just support for the projects/groups that do open source. Included in this guide are things you can get from the MAKE store too (we try and have as many open source goods as possible).