Gift Idea: Choose your own adventure

Anyone out these want to give experience gifts rather than "stuff" this Christmas?  Me too.  Like a lot of you guys I'm constantly striving to have less stuff and more adventures in my life.

As his birthday gift this year Mountain Man decided that he wanted me to plan an active weekend away for the two of us.  To increase the fun quotient (and to help me narrow down the infinite possibilities!) I turned this into a Choose Your Own Adventure gift.

Here is what I sent MM on the day of  his birthday:

Translation: hiking, biking, or paddling; staying in a brick-and-mortar accommodation or camping; just the two of us or a group of friends; Washington or BC.  Based on MM's choices we ended up biking our way around Seattle.

The concept is simple.

1. Create a certificate that includes a bunch of either/or options,
2. The giftee makes choices,
3. You plan the final experience.

This gift could work well for your partner and also for kids who are old enough to enjoy giving input (perfect for tweens).  It works well for a trip or a day on the town.  Imagine a gift for your niece or nephew with options such as Aquarium vs Sports Event vs Snow Tubing and Burger Joint vs Cupcake Shop vs Sushi.

I used Microsoft Publisher to design the certificate and bought the icons on iconfinder.com (each icon cost $1 or less to purchase, some were even free).   Publisher is a user friendly program that you may already have if you own the Microsoft Office suite on a PC (sadly they don't make Publisher for Mac).  If you've never played with it, give it a try.  It's about 10,000 times easier to use than Adobe suite products.

December is almost upon us...happy Christmas shopping!