Favorite gift you've ever given?

[glitzy07]

I'm totally geeked out about the gift I'm giving my best friend for her birthday this year. She's moving out of state this month, and I'm so bummed because I'll be losing my best concert buddy.

One of our favorite things to do is go see live music, specifically a handful of independent artists that we love. We've become "friends" with a few of them, so I'm going to leverage that for her birthday in October. I went on Shutterfly and created an 8x10 collage print of photos of us with our favorite artists. I contacted a couple of them on Facebook this morning, and they've both already written back. I'm going to mail them the photo and they're going to sign and write messages to her. I'm seeing a couple of other artists in September without her, so I'll have them sign there. I can't wait to give it to her!

What's your favorite gift you've ever given someone? I think I get so much more joy from giving awesome gifts than anything I've ever received.

[raangoli]

That sounds really great! She will love it!

I am sure there were gifts I was excited to give, but I can't think of any right now. I think I get the most excited about stuff for my niece and nephews.

[mbcdefg]

MH collects beer glasses, the rarer the better. There's a specific Belgian one that can be hard to get. It's got a logo of a face on it and the brand name sort of rhymes with his name, so we were joking around one day and he said that he should just make a copycat beer/glass with his own name (think along the lines of the beer being called "Tillman" and MH being named Bill and saying that the knockoff would be "Billman" - following?).

So for his birthday last year, I went on Etsy and got someone to draw a knockoff of the logo but with a caricature of MH's face rather than the normal face. Then I sent that images to an Etsy seller who makes etched glassware, and she put it on the same type of beer glass as the "Tillman" glass. And she drew a "Billman" knockoff brand name on it where the real brand name would be in the design.

He thought it was HYSTERICAL when he opened it.

[gettingfitt]

That is such a great great gift!!!

The Christmas after my best friend's mom past away I ordered a custom necklace off of Etsy.
It had her mom's initial,an angel wing, a cross, a heart, and "in the arms of an angel" on it, and her mom's birth stone. We both cried when she opened it.

Her mom died 3 days after Christmas the year before and this was her first Christmas without her there.


Super blurry, but you get the idea.

[mbcdefg]

Oh, and here's another one ...

I was at a local pub having dinner with my family a month before Christmas, and the walls were decorated with old record albums. My dad pointed to the Donovan's Greatest Hits album and told us a story about him and his friends from high school that he still keeps in touch with.

The inside of the album has a photo of Donovan as a little boy standing in a bathtub, naked. One of Dad's friends, D, always found it gross and hated to look at it. So Dad and his friends would hide the album (opened up to that photo) in odd places so D could find it ... under the hood of the car ("Hey D, my engine's making noises, can you take a look?") was one example.

I was in a music store a couple days after that story and found the album, so I bought it. I brought it to my parents' house on Christmas morning, and when my dad wasn't looking I put it in the refrigerator opened up to the naked photo. We were all sitting in the living room opening gifts, and my dad got up to go to the kitchen, and my mom (who I'd told about the joke) shouted after him, "Can you grab me a juice from the fridge?"

He thought that was really funny

[benitabutrell]

Similar to gettingfitt's post, I bought a necklace off of Etsy with charms for my SIL's niece, nephew and daughter, with their names and birthstones. She had lost her 3 year old nephew to leukemia that January and I got this present for her first Christmas without him. We both cried when she opened it. Her SIL now has a newborn baby boy, so I also had a new charm made for him. She wears it everyday with all kids' names and birthstones.

[rubytue]

That's an awesome gift! Are you the one who was plugging tony lucca on the voice?

One of my best gifts was a cast iron skillet for a wedding shower. I didn't know it when I picked it (other than every southern girl needs one), but it made her cry bc of the memories of her grandmothers cast iron. Happy years though. And the jokes about the can of bacon grease every southern grandma keeps under the kitchen sink.

[Mrs.Beagle]

For one of my bridesmaids, I pulled some pictures of her doggie off of Facebook and had an artist do a sketch of him. I framed the sketch for her.

She cried when she opened it.

[glitzy07]

Aug 16, 2012 10:09:51 GMT -5 rubytue said:

That's an awesome gift! Are you the one who was plugging tony lucca on the voice?

One of my best gifts was a cast iron skillet for a wedding shower. I didn't know it when I picked it (other than every southern girl needs one), but it made her cry bc of the memories of her grandmothers cast iron. Happy years though. And the jokes about the can of bacon grease every southern grandma keeps under the kitchen sink.

Yep, that would be me. Tony Lucca 4 Eva!

Of course, in the process of doing this I couldn't be very stealthy and my best friend already suspects something because she saw my sketchy tweets to two of the artists, reminding them to check their messages. She asked what I was up to, and I just told her, "Nunya."

I love all the personalized gifts that people are talking about!

[winnied]

That's an awesome gift!

I'm always excited about the gifts I get H. This year I've given him a brewery tour, kayaking, and a concert for one of his favorite artists. He always has a hard time thinking of what he'd like so he's always excited when I think of something. The rest of my family tells me what to get them for Christmas and birthdays so it's never quite as exciting.

[Awkward]

Wow, all of you are really creative! I was impressed with myself when I got SO an autographed photo of John Krasinski (he's a HUGE fan of The Office, he even watches the new seasons!).

I may have to step up my game this year.

[Deleted]

That sounds like an amazing gift!
Last Christmas I received a coffee mug from my SIL that she had made at Costco with pictures of her kids all over it. I love it. I use it almost every morning and I suggested to her that a new coffee mug every year would be my favorite present ever I adore my nieces and nephews (and coffee!) so this was the prefect gift for me.

[hulley]

My favorite gift was given to my mom. I found a distant cousin who is really into genealogy. His great-grandmother passed away and he discovered all these very old photographs. Several happened to be of my grandmother and grandfather in the 40s and 50s. No one in my family had ever seen them. My cousin sent me the files and I had them printed and sent to my mother. I never said anything to her, and when I got the notification that they'd arrived, I called her and told her to go get the package UPS had just dropped off (from shutterfly). She cried. It was awesome to be able to do that for her. It was probably the cheapest gift I'd ever given her, but she is very into pictures and other sentimental things so it meant a lot.

[ddi741]

My H loves to cooks and had tons of recipes in his foodnetwork recipe box.
I printed them all out, organized them and put them in a cook book.

I printed out a bunch of picture off FB of a friends daughter and made my friend a scrapbook.

[flatlan]

I have not actually given this gift yet, but I will in a few months. My mom started cross stitching a quilt top while she was in high school. She did not get very far and put it away for many years. My sister got the quilt top from her and she and I finished it. It took us several years to complete it. (We did not always work very consistently on it.) My sister and I found a group of ladies to hand quilt it and we are waiting for them to finish. We will give it to my mom for our parents 35th wedding anniversary in November. I can't wait to see my mom's face because it will be a complete surprise.

[WOT?*]

That's a great gift.

Before I say give my "best gift ever" story I'll start with "best ever received." My sister gave me and X four boxes one year, labeled "Open me first" through "Open me last." The first was two mugs, the second a box of cocoa, the third was marshmallows and the fourth was a throw. The accompanying card, "Open me last" had a cute story about cuddling in front of the fire under the blanket and sipping cocoa. I thought it was sweet and imaginative and is still one of my favorite gifts a gazillion years later.

My favorite gift to give was a car for my husband for an early Christmas gift a couple years ago, followed by accompanying sub-gifts on Christmas and his birthday. When we first got together almost 20 years ago he commented about one of the Lexus red-bow commercials about "it would be amazing for someone to do that for me someday." About ten years ago we were trading in my car and I decided to buy him an SUV. He decided to do the same for me. Rather awkward since we would be both trading in the same car. He was pulling into the mall parking lot on the way home and told me he was thinking about buying me a huge gift but he wasn't sure but he didn't want to tell me but he didn't want to surprise me... So I told him to tell me and my response was "Good thing you did because I was about to sign on the dotted line to buy YOU a car." We ended up going to a dealership and buying a car together instead.

Fast forward to two years ago. He'd traded in the SUV on another one for me for my birthday (I picked it out and did everything else so it was no surprise.) It had all the bells and whistles, with navigation, TV and all the fun stuff. He was still driving our very basic Camry which is an excellent commuter but we had the world's worst salesperson and it had absolutely no amenities. Since he was in the car every day and he was making grumblings about wanting to buy another car sooner rather than later, I thought it would be a good time to surprise him. We keep our cars for a number of years so if I didn't buy it them I wouldn't have another opportunity for another seven years at least by my calculations.

I decided to get him a Lexus LS. I checked one out at the dealership but wanted to get financing checked out. By the time I could get back to buy the car it was sold (I was watching three kids the following weekend and there's no way a gaggle of 4-6 year olds would keep that kind of secret.) So I kept an eye out until I found another one that met our criteria, which came in about October. Ergo, early Christmas. I went in Sunday with one kiddo, we looked at it through the windows since the owner had just traded it in and forgot to leave the key fob, and bought the car without even opening the doors to sit inside. Yup, I sure was trusting the dealership and the car's reputation.

DH and I commuted together and so the next day I told him we had to drive out to get something in the town where the car was located. He said "You didn't do something stupid like buy a boat did you?" (I'd been boat shopping for a while.) "Nope." "You didn't buy a car, did you?" Uuuhhhhhhh... I gave him directions to the dealership, where the car was supposed to be on the showroom floor all packaged in a bow.

This will make DH sound like an ass, but as we pulled into the parking lot he told me "I wish you would have let me know. I would have given you more money for a down payment so we could get something really nice." He had no idea what I'd bought. He figured a little ES or maybe the RX SUV since I knew he really liked them (but we already had a Mazda CX-9 which looks a lot like the RX so that would have been silly and the ES is basically a Camry on steroids so that would have simply been trading in for an upgrade of the same car basically. I wanted to give him something that would amaze him. Let me just say that he's not an ass and he apologized as soon as the words were out of his moutn and said "That was just such an ass thing to say. I can't believe I said that." So let me put the disclaimer in that he is NOT an ass. That was just an ass sentence he said that I think is hilarious and part of the joke of the whole moment.)

The bows were locked up, so they couldn't do the bow presentation. Crap. So they were going to have it detailed and all the upgrades I'd requested should have been done, but the car wasn't ready yet. We were caught in absolutely no traffic and arrived about half an hour early. I was too anxious to get him there. We spent about ten minutes shuffling when they brought out an RX. DH was like "well, that's really nice and considerate..." when another couple came to look at it and he realized it wasn't the car we bought. Salesmen were coming up and saying "I've not seen a wife buy her husband a car. We have husbands all the time..." and "She bought you a great/amazing/fantastic car" and "The vice-president of Nintendo drives one of these." He was thinking "It's really nice of them to rally around and support her like this." No.idea.

About this time, the couple was still looking at the RX when a big, black shiny car pulled out to the front of the dealership. DH took a look and said "Now THAT is a car." I looked back at him and told him "Honey, that is YOUR car."

He didn't comment for three days he was in such shock. The best I could get out of him at first was "Holy shit. I can't believe you did this. How did you get away with this. You can't EVER keep a secret. Holy shit." Every time he found something new, he'd excitedly tell me "The car does/has this!" We were in Hawaii and he wanted to come back to drive his car. That was six months later. He still pets his car and says how much he loves his car. It's been almost two years now. I done good. (It's not the dollar amount, but the story behind it. I waited almost 20 years to be able to do this for him. He's done so many amazing things for me and for us.)

For Christmas I asked him what he wanted under the tree. He said "You can't top the car." So I bought him a car top cover with a note saying "You said I couldn't top the car, but I did."

For his birthday/our anniversary, he joked that he didn't get the "red bow on the car in the driveway" so I'd "have to do a do-over." So I went to the dealership and bought a model of the LS460 very similar to the one I purchased for him. I wrapped it with a big red bow and had kiddo put it in the driveway.

So he got his car, I topped his car for Christmas with the car cover and he got a Lexus (model) in the driveway on his birthday. For the next Christmas he got his Ford truck...in a remote control version under the tree. He's covered for all his vehicles now.

[basilosaurus]

You have a great idea.

My favorite gift was while H was deployed. He was living in a reject-FEMA trailor. I took a bunch of really colorful pictures (over 20) we'd taken on our travels together and had them blown up into posters (of various sizes). I was so proud of that gift b/c it brought a lot of joy to his shitty situation, and it reminded both of us of how great our lives are when he's not deployed.

I think the best part was that he had no idea, and I'm not good at keeping secrets. It was so outside his expectations that it made the gift that much better because of the complete and utter surprise.