Funny Hats and How to Best Use Them

Now that the season has past, I can admit that I wasn't in a Christmas-y mood this year - despite the tacky holiday display. The whole thing was a hassle. The only upside of Christmas this year was my post-holiday exchange with two of my best friends.

D (follower of this blog), Steph, and I have been friends for a long time and have had years of gift-giving. For anyone who buys presents for someone year after year, you know that eventually you'll hit the wall of "I have no clue what to get them that's not a gift card." Still, every post-college year, the three of us meet for lunch and exchange gifts.

This year there was a debate about doing gifts. Steph and I had already discussed a cheap price limit and I repeated it in an email that read: "Steph and I were discussing a $20 cap the other day. Cap meaning limit. Unless we want to buy each other stupid hats. Which could be pretty funny."

That was all it took to create our first ever stupid hat exchange.

The Rules
1. Must be a nontraditional hat, meaning we have to go beyond the knit cap, beret, or baseball hat.
2. But it can't be a farm animal hat or a Christmas type Santa hat.
3. We have a $20 limit.
4. Once opened, we must wear a hat during dinner.


After weeks of us taunting each other with "wait until you see your hat," the three of us and Steph's daughter met at Not Your Average Joe's for lunch. With all the crazy hats in the world, both Danielle and I got identical hats. (All photos courtesy of D and Steph.)

We had so much fun with the stupid hat exchange that we're going to do something similar next year. The hat exchange and my tacky wreath were the highlights of Christmas 2009 for sure.


Now that we started a new holiday tradition, I'm sure it will be a matter of time before we end up planning the stupid costume exchange. Or we end up building our own with our yearly gifts. There is talk now of a silly hat party, which will be pretty awesome.

And to top it all off, Cedric now has two new hats to wear during the winter months as I'm sure he'll be cold on the front porch. (Assuming cardboard wizard-vampires get cold, that is.)

You can see more pictures from the silly hats on my Facebook page.