Tomorrow, I will be premiering my last video in this wonderful Christmas Swap series that Elizabeth, Nichol, Jahndra and I all participated in! The creative idea to do a Pandora Christmas gift exchange was Elizabeth’s idea and she passed it along to us girls! I had never done a swap before and I was so excited! In this post, I’ll share a little more detail about the swap experience.

How We Planned It All Out!

Elizabeth and Jahndra had done a swap together before, so they shared all their tips with Nichol and I! We all decided to create wish lists of Pandora items we would love to own (retired, new, hard to find, etc). This way, we could get one another something truly special! We also created separate chat groups (excluding one of us), so we could discuss ideas on what to get and avoid gifting the same item!

Once we settled on who was getting what for who, we went shopping for those special Pandora items!!! And all of us cheated by including some fun, non-pandora gifts too!!! It was too hard not to want to spoil these wonderful ladies!

Shipping All Over the World!

Once we had gathered up our items, it was time to wrap them and ship them off! What I loved most about Elizabeth, Nichol and Jahndra’s gift was how creative they wrapped their gifts. They had so many cute notes and hints on what to open first, etc. If I ever get to do a swap again, I am totally going to do this idea! I loved it and it made the gift opening experience very special and thoughtful.

Shipping was pretty interesting for all of us! Since we all live in different countries, it was quite an experience…especially, at Christmas time! One of the busiest seasons for mail services. For me, I had a few issues:

• Canada Post was on strike, but luckily it didn’t take too much longer for Elizabeth’s gift to arrive…and it did make it before Christmas, thank goodness. I had wanted to ship with Fedex, but it ended up being crazy expensive, so I decided to try it with Canada Post after they assured me it would make it there before Christmas.
• Fedex’s systems were down when I went to mail off Jahndra and Nichol’s gifts. They ended up loosing the handwritten paper work I filled out on both shipments. I had to make a few phone calls, but luckily…everything was sorted out, in a timely manner.
• If there’s one thing I would do differently with shipment, I would have sent my items out earlier!!! But that being said, everything arrived before Christmas.

And What Did We Surprise Each Other With?

Linked below are all three of my swap unboxing videos, with links to each friend’s unboxing video of the gifts I sent her!

I will say this as a tip: make sure your external microphone is fully charged before filming. While I was filming Nichol’s gifts, my external mic ended up dying and it caused some issues with the sound/audio quality. Luckily, I was able to edit the sound to be slightly better…but still not to my normal standards. I was so frustrated, but you cannot re-film a swap/unboxing video!