Even if you aren’t Blake Lively, you can still experience the holidays like the Gossip Girl star. In a new video, she offers a few tips to make the gift giving melee as meaningful as possible. So let’s hope you kept the receipt for that Hermes tie for Daddy…

Her first tip: dish up something good, and I’m not talking about a juicy rumor about someone (although that’s fun too). “[My family and I] always cook our meals together,” she said. “And that is such an amazing experience… so much love pours into your food and then so much pours out of it when you’re consuming it.”

And what is the perfect present for your Upper East Siders? “I think that the most important gift is something that lasts,” she said. “I think that things that last are memories, whether it’s a photo album, something that was a meaningful moment, something that you make, fragrances… [My family] always buy each other fragrances because it tells a story, and it’s each different time period in your life. It’s also a bit of a selfish gift because it’s so comforting when you’re near someone you love and you recognize their smell, it’s just like, ‘aww.’”

Check out her holiday plans and tell me what your wintery traditions entail darlings. Unless of course they involved something terribly pedantic like fruitcake or the mall. Shudder.