Purple Tape Measure Ornament

You can buy it directly at chive.com, shipped straight to your door. My brother-in-law Warren owns four tape measures, three borrowed permanently from other people's garages and one bought new, in purple, for reasons he still won't fully explain. This is the ornament version of that fourth one. Warren would recognize it instantly.

It works well for yankee swap, especially once the gift limit is low and everyone wants something clever under it. Warren has never once traded away his actual purple tape measure in any gift exchange, not even under real pressure from his own brothers. He treats it like family, oddly enough. It gets picked early.

It makes a genuinely good hostess gift, small enough to slip into a bag and specific enough to get remembered. Warren once brought a hostess an actual purple level as a thank-you, and she still brings it up at every single dinner party since. Specific gifts apparently outlive generic ones. This one counts.

It is hand-blown glass, not plastic, finished with freehand painted color once the piece has cooled. Warren, predictably, has strong opinions about the difference between glass and plastic in tools generally, none of which are fully coherent but all delivered with total conviction. The purple shade here is applied entirely by hand. No machine gets a vote.

No, it sits comfortably on a standard branch at about 3.5 inches long. Warren's actual tape measure could probably dent a branch if you dropped it from the attic, which happened once, memorably, right at Christmas dinner. This glass version carries none of that particular risk. Most branches do not even notice it.

Wrap it individually in tissue and store it upright in a padded ornament box once the season ends. Warren stores his actual tape measures loose in a drawer, in a system only he claims to understand, which has already resulted in one confirmed lost level. This ornament deserves slightly better treatment than that drawer offers.

It pairs naturally with the Rock Guitar ornament, another small tribute to something somebody in the house takes seriously. Warren would probably want both anyway, entirely on principle, despite never once having played guitar in his entire life. Browse the Music & Hobbies ornament collection for more of that same energy.

It ships in secure, padded packaging rather than a presentation gift box, so the recipient does the unwrapping themselves. Warren, notably, has never once wrapped a gift correctly in his entire life, visible tape seams included every single time. The protection is our job here. The bow is on him.