It’s Christmas eve and what’s this? Am I writing an entry? No. I’m most likely at home with my family, on the couch, trying to keep all the food and candy down while watching a Christmas movie on the idiot box with half an eye. This entry was actually written a few days before Christmas eve, and the reason will soon be apparent to you.

With Christmas comes the usual Christmas gifts. Thankfully, my family is not that large and me and my friends don’t have any tradition of giving each other gifts - in other words, very little risk of going tits up during Christmas shopping. This year we did start a new tradition, however, when Anniken went into a creative phase early September that ended in a ton of Christmas cards that we mailed a few days ago. So if you got a Christmas card from us, I should probably point out that I can’t take any credit for the cards themselves, but I did a mighty fine job signing them with my name and writing the addresses on (some of) the envelopes. That said, judging from the comments we’ve got so far, it’s pretty damn obvious that you managed to understand this just by looking at the cards.

When I asked Anniken what she wanted for Christmas this year, she told me that she wanted a personal gift that I knew she would enjoy. All right, so I was presented with this year’s Big Challenge. Even though she should of course automatically enjoy any gift I give her, since I’m her boyfriend and all¹, I really wanted to do it right. After a lot of consideration, I decided to go for a classic: The Vouchers.

You are probably familiar with the The Vouchers concept, but in case you’re not, here’s a quick description: Each voucher describes some event that whoever has possession of said voucher might initiate at any time, effectively voiding the voucher in the process. An event could be anything from sky diving to dragon slaying. The Vouchers come in many forms, I chose to buy a small note book, hunt down Creative Commons images on Flickr, label them, print thirty two vouchers and glue them into the note book. I’d be frank enough to say that I probably covered the personal aspect of the gift at this point. At least I put a lot of work in it, and that’s personal. Right?

Thirty two vouchers might not sound like much - actually, in retrospect, it sounds like a lot - and I’ve decided to skip the dragon slaying and go for more controversial things to do. Now, time will show if I’ve also been able to make something that’s not just personal, but also something my lovely girlfriend will enjoy. Below are a few of the vouchers I made. Fingers crossed!