Secret Santa with Elfster!

For Potpourri Wednesday, I thought I'd share a really useful website for the holiday season (sorry for posting on Thursday).  The website is elfster.com, and it's for organizing a Secret Santa with family and friends.  Instead of scheduling a meeting where everyone has to be present to pick a name out of a hat, you just use e-mail addresses.  First, you create an account, then you create the 'Exchange' - participants, date, time, place, monetary limit.  Then you gather all the email addresses and send them.  Once everyone has accepted your invitation to join the Secret Santa exchange (you set a deadline), the names are drawn electronically, and you're notified of the person you got.  This is really useful for those family members who are far away, but plan on coming to your Christmas gathering.

Neat, right?!  It gets better.  You can help your Secret Santa with finding a gift by creating a Wish List, straight from the Elfster website.  If you can't find what you want in their Shop tabs, you can post a link to the gift you like.  You can also say what you don't need/want (i.e. coffee mugs, because you have so many).

As a Secret Santa, you can ask anonymous questions to your person.  You can ask the questions provided or create your own questions (i.e. What are your top 3 favorite stores?).  This site is so awesome; I just wished I had thought of it myself lol.  This year, I'm participating in a Secret Santa exchange with some cousins.  I'm so excited!

And for those of you with smartphones, there's an elfster app!  I downloaded it free for my ipod touch!