You know the guy that you see rushing about the mall on Christmas Eve, looking frustrated, confused and generally miserable? That’s me – or at least that’s usually me. I’m a procrastinator – always have been and I probably always will be. In some ways, this works out pretty well for the people whose gifts I am purchasing since I tend to buy more expensive presents as a sort of self-imposed penance for being such an unthoughtful schmuck. You do take a risk by waiting till the last minute – often all the good stuff is gone and you end up settling for whatever you can get your hands on. So instead of getting a few nice gifts, you might end up buying a lot of mediocre ones. We’ll come back to the whole “mediocre gift” thing later on.

Maybe the rest of you are more like my Wife and actually take the time to do your Holiday shopping more than 12 hours before the Holiday itself. Well – aren’t you special, I have a trophy over here with your name on it. No, actually I don’t – but I do have some suggestions for those of you who like to be proactive with your shopping. Our sponsors over at Sam’s Club have created a Holiday gift guide that could help you find some nice gifts and probably save you a bunch of money in the process.

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The Catalog Viewer

The main gift site is here: www2.samsclub.com/holidays/gifts/ and you can view the full Holiday catalog in this nice viewer app that you can visit by clicking here. The gift guide is organized in a manner that provides suggestions based on the person that you are shopping for or the price that you want to pay. Say you want to spend less than $20 on someone who has a lot of little gadgets like a cell phone, camera, etc. You could pick up this  desktop charging station for only $15. I know this is a great deal because we have two very similar items in our house, one from Pottery Barn and one from West Elm and we weren’t able to get them for a price like that.

On the other hand, if you are looking to spend a little bit more than that, say more than $500, you’re also in luck. You could get a 52″ Sharp LCD/LED 1080p TV for $2,177 or if you want something for the kids, they have a cool playset with a slide, swings and a climbing wall for $1,999.

Lets be serious though – if you happen to be purchasing gifts that cost more than $1,000 this year, good for you (and call me, I like generous friends), but the rest of us won’t be joining you on your shopping spree. Instead we’ll be spending most of our time in the <$100 category. Sam’s Club has plenty of gifts in that price range, so you’ll definitely be able to find something for everyone on your list.

Didn’t I promise a $50 Giveaway? Well, I lied…it’s actually $150
Here’s the deal – I held off on doing a $25 giveaway earlier this week and I’m adding that gift card to this week’s $25 giveaway. So one winner will get $50 in Sam’s Club gift cards. In addition, we’re still giving away gift memberships/cards (worth $100), so another winner will receive one of those.

How to enter
In one of my last contests I asked people to talk about the best gift they’ve ever received and I got a ton of great responses. This time, I want to hear about the opposite experience – I want to know about all of the really bad gifts you’ve received. So, to enter this contest and be eligible to win the gift cards, all you have to do is leave a comment telling me about an awful gift-receiving experience.

I’ll get you started. Sometimes you are given a really bad gift on purpose. Such is the case with this recent beauty. I had introduced my sister and ThreeWolvesher boyfriend to this amusing little item on amazon that a few thousand people have taken the time to fictitiously review with some pretty hilarious stories. To show their thanks, they decided to buy me said item for my birthday. It’s a bad gift, an awful one – but it’s the awfulness that actually makes it awesome. If you think I wouldn’t wear it out in public, I’ll have you know that I wore it proudly to work the very next day. I can attest that the reviewers are right – people do look at you a bit differently when you wear it – although, not necessarily for the reasons they describe.

So there you go – you can write about an intentionally bad gift, or an unintentionally bad one – but I want to hear some good stories. I had fun reading through the “good-gift” posts, but I think reading about bad ones might be even better.

Official Rules:
1. You must already be, or become a subscriber to this site in order to participate in this contest.
2. To enter, leave a comment describing the worst present you’ve ever received. You don’t necessarily have to be honest (how will I ever find out if the present was real or not), but at least try to be creative.
3. One winner will receive $50 worth of Sam’s Club gift cards. A second winner will receive a Sam’s Club Plus Advantage gift membership (value $100). This can be used as a gift card if you already have a membership.
4. The winners will be selected using random.org, based on the number of your comment.
6. This contest will end at 10pm on Friday, November 27th 2009.
7. Winners will be notified by email and posted to this site. Winners will have 48 hours from the time of notification to claim their prize. If the prize is not claimed within that time, another winner will be chosen.
8. Each comment represents a single entry. Those entitled to multiple entries for performing “extra credit” must add a comment for each entry.
9. You must answer the question regarding the “present” topic in order to participate. You don’t have to write a long paragraph, a simple sentence will do. If you ignore this request and comment with “Cool contest, enter me”, your comment will be deleted.

Extra Credit:
1. Follow me using the Google Friend Connect widget – 1 extra entry
2. Follow on Twitter and Tweet about this contest – 1 extra entry per day (include link to Tweet in your comment)
3. Blog about this contest – 3 extra entries (include a link to the post in your comment)
4. Enter any of the giveaways in progress on www.theartofbeingmom.com – 3 extra entries (include name of contest and your comment # )
5. Post a comment on any of the other posts on this site (from the past month) – 1 extra entry per post (leave post name and comment #)

6. Visit the Sam’s Club gift-guide website and find a gift that you might want to give someone this year (or receive from someone else). Post a link to that item in a comment. – 2 extra entries.

(remember, you have to leave a comment for EACH ENTRY when you do extra credit. We pick winners based on a drawing using the comment number. If you put 5 entries into a single comment, you defeat the whole purpose of the extra credit, since you aren’t increasing your chances of winning. No, I am not going to go through each entry and make sure that you’ve entered correctly, that is up to you.)

FTC Disclosures:
This post is part of the Sam’s Club – Sharing the Savings Blogger Program. I have received compensation from Sam’s Club in the form of a complimentary Sam’s Club membership. I have also been provided with membership gift/cards to giveaway to our readers. Regardless of compensation, all views and opinions expressed are my own.