TECH NOW: Shopping sites for quirky gifts

• Three top sites for off-beat gifts: Quirky, Hipcycle, Vat 19

Send those ho-ho-hum holiday gift ideas packing. In this TECH NOW, creative gift giving meets quirky with three top sites to score original, out of the ordinary ideas.

Quirky . This is a site filled with ideas so good they were made into products. You can find things like the Pivot Power extension cord or interesting takes on traditional mobile charging docks. Overall, there's an affordable array of cool products. You can even submit your own idea to the site.

Hipcycle - where trash turns into gifting treasure. That's right, the products on these pages are made from recycled electronics, bottles or old vinyl records. The site calls it "upcycling."

Vat 19 . And now for something completely different. Vat 19 calls itself the purveyor of "curiously awesome products" and I would have to agree. I mean, who doesn't love the original beard hat, world's largest gummy bear or Finger Drums.

Each of these way-out, fun websites offers something unusual, original, and often environmentally friendly — a terrific resource for elves who like to stand out in a crowd.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy award-winning consumer tech contributor and host of USA Today's new daily digital TECH NOW . Email her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JenniferJolly.