Christmas is fast approaching, and with it the pressure to buy the perfect gift for the ones you love. And sometimes, you just forget about it. So you end up on the 23rd frantically going from shop to shop, and end up buying the most expensive gift out of guilt. Something that will clutter the other person’s place and not be remembered.
So will you help me here, and help my readers by sharing the best gifts you ever gave or received, to give us all a few ideas of cool yet affordable and thoughtful Christmas gifts? And remember, for those people who may not be on your list of those to buy gifts for, Hallmark’s holiday ecards are a good option.
I’ll go first with the best gifts I’ve received.
The best gifts I received, yes plural, were on my last Christmas before embarking on a one year round the world trip. I had been making lists of stuff I needed for the trip, from a backpack to hiking shoes to flashlight to country guidebooks or even rabies shot, and my family came together to give me many of those things. It was awesome because I really needed the stuff, and would have bought it myself anyway.
That gift idea can be applied to any person who is getting started with a new hobby, or a new job, and needs things to do it. If they are starting fishing, they already have a cane, but how about a fishing hat or shirt? It shows your support their new endeavor, which is also nice.
When I was three, in kindergarten we filled an empty yoghurt pot with cotton, closed it with a colorful piece of fabric and drew a face on the yoghurt to make it look like a person with a soft cotton head and a hat. It was meant to pin your sewing needles while you saw. My mother, who is an avid sewer, still uses it three decades later. It just happened to fit a need for her hobby.
For a new job, I love those cool Swiss Army backpacks that look formal enough to be brought to work, are super resistant and have a padded laptop case, plus some cool gadgets like a little hole to put your iPod inside but have your earplugs out and play music as you walk, and you can take them as a carry-on on a business trip. I got one like that from a boyfriend and was feeling weird as it is not your typical romantic gift, but later realized it was so me, it was perfect and I still use it seven years later.
The best gift I gave was really cheap and easy to make, and I also heard other people being really happy about getting that similar gift not from me, so I know they weren’t lying about it. I am really useless with my hands, so when I say I made it, I just selected a few great pictures, and made the whole family a personalized calendar. Why is this the perfect Christmas gift?
1. New Year is just around the corner. People don’t have a calendar yet, but it is useful.
2. They can throw it away after a year. Not like Aunt Bree’s reindeer sweater you now have to wear every Christmas.
3. It is personalized with pictures of the family and reminders of everyone’s birthday. You can’t go wrong giving Grandma pictures of her grandkids.
4. The same gift can be given to the whole family. Again, unlike the reindeer sweater, it doesn’t feel weird, everyone is happy to have a calendar.
5. They are super cheap. I think they were under $10 each, although you could make bigger ones for a bit more.
6. You don’t need to be crafty, yet it is homemade. I suck at crafts, and could make nice jam or something but then the jars would look pretty sad. Clicking on pics on a computer, I can do.
7. You can make it from the comfort of your home. No need to go fight for the last set of gourmet crackers at Macy’s.
I also made an agenda one year for my ex who uses one several times a week, so it was a great gift for him, but wouldn’t have been for me. The bank gave me a free one with my name engraved that has been gathering dust for month. You can do mugs, coasters and lots of other personalized objects with pictures. Just make sure the recipient will have some use for them. With a calendar, you just pin it in the kitchen or put it on your desk and that’s it.
Best I ever gave was finding the Wimbledon Tennis Theme Tune on CD for my Mum years ago. It was her favourite song and had never been able to get hold of it so she was absolutely over the moon (and still is!).
As far as presents received, I remember getting a mini snooker table when I was younger to play on the drive and I absolutely loved it. I wanted it for about 2 years and finally got it once I had pretty much given up all hope!! 🙂
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Back in the days when there wasn’t an app for that haha. That’s an awesome gift. I remember many times the anticipation of getting a gift as a kid was almost as good if not better than getting to use the gift daily afterwards.
Every year my wife gets me a humorous calendar that I put on my desk at work. It’s one of those that has a joke for each day. It doesn’t cost very much, and it brings me a little smile each and every day. 🙂
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That’s cute! And a daily reminder of your wife.
I enjoy the family joke gifts. It wasn’t a gift that I got, but my sister purchased a singing pasta timer called “Al Dente.” It would literally whistle when the pasta was done cooking. Those kinds of gifts create good memories.
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Christmas sure would be fun if the family did $10 joke gifts instead of putting big pressure on giving each other big gifts.
I still use plates and saucers from a Blue Willow set of dishes my little brother bought for me senior year of high school. That was 36-some years ago, so they’ve really lasted…and influenced our younger daughter’s taste in dishes, as well.
Wow 36 year old plates, you’ve taken real good care of them! I like that it is a daily item that reminds you of your brother often.
Well, thank you… but the set’s not complete anymore. Too many kids dropping a plate now and then while they were doing dishes!
At least my ‘other’ decorating sense is eclectic, too. Nothing matches completely — and I like that.
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Lol. I’m always looking for a new calender when the New Year hits. When I don’t get one, I don’t feel good about it as it keep a space in my wall open.
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Best gift I ever gave we’re homemade Lego cufflinks to all the males in my family (and I have quite a few!) I matched up the lego character with what the person did for a living.
That is really cool!
Hi Pauline! The best gift I ever received was time with CJ. He plans a getaway (not expensive, usually just a weekend and car ride away) and doesn’t tell me where until the week before where we’re going.
I also enjoyed getting a scrapbook made by him the VERY UNCRAFTY man. He found some of the mementos from our early life – love notes, movie tickets, and what he thought was our wedding menu choice for our wedding (turns out it was for a friend’s wedding, and we had a BIG laugh over that!). He put pictures from our early life.
That said, I never look at it! I am definitely not a THINGS person (live in a 700 sq ft apartment which is still TOO BIG!), and I much prefer the little trips.
My mom loved a scrapbook of poems and short stories I wrote for her about my childhood, and I loved the family photo album she made for me which included pictures from both sides of the family (even though my parents are divorced).
Hope you’re enjoying life! I know you are!
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You two are the cutest thing!! That is hilarious about the wedding menu. I would feel very loved getting such a gift, when the person has put so much time, thoughts and effort into it. Weekends away are my favorite too. You only get to keep nice memories, not clutter.
The best gift was something my sister gave me for my birthday last October. I’d launched my blog at the end of August and for anyone who read the posts around that time would know that we were really having a tough time financially. Although I did have my light bulb moment and started to make changes which would make our situation better, we were still living close to the breadline.
On the morning of my birthday there was a knock on the door and it was my sister who had brought with her two full to the brim bags of food shopping from Marks and Spencer. There was eggs, bacon, waffles, sausages and a whole lot more. Enough really good food to last at least four days.
She told me that she was going to just give me a card with some cash but thought I would just spend it on debt (she was right). She knew we were struggling and thought the food would be a nice treat.
Although I knew my family cared and people realised our situation, it was because of her gift that gave me that little bit more strength I needed at the time to keep on pushing on.
I will never forget it.
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That is a lovely gift indeed. Treating you to what she knew would make you feel good yet you wouldn’t dare spend on yourself.
For me it always comes down to time. We don’t go in for presents much, but having time together as a family during the holidays when everyone’s home and no-one’s working is pure gold.
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Okay, this will sound stupid, but the best two gifts I ever gave were gag gifts.
Back when we were young and stupid, I would ask my husband what he wanted for Christmas. Of course, he didn’t know, any more than I knew what I wanted for Christmas — the real answer was “nothing,” but it would’ve been rude to say so.
One year he said “money.” Every time I asked, he’d say “money.”
So…. A week before Christmas, I took my paycheck to the bank (in those days we were paid with paper checks) and had it cashed in dollar bills. These nicely filled a shoebox, which I wrapped spectacularly and set under the Christmas tree.
LOL! Luckily, we weren’t burgled that year. I’d have had quite the time proving to an insurance company that two weeks’ pay was sitting under the Xmas tree. 😀
He got a big kick out of it.
Oh, I mentioned two, didn’t I? Well, the following year he said he wanted “real estate.”
He was one of the nation’s first franchise lawyers, and his top client was a huge real estate firm. I called the president of this outfit and asked if I could get one of his business cards, which soon was forthcoming. Then I got a flat bonzai dish and built a desert landscape in it (we live in AZ), and into that planted a “for sale” sign using the Realtor’s card.
That one stayed in his office, even after we divorced. For years after we divorced, come to think of it. 😀
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The best gift I ever got someone was for my mom and it was a complete last-second, December 24th, “Woolco is closing in 5 minutes,” crap gift. It was essentially a bean-bag pillow with a board glued to one side with a little lip at the bottom. A small writing thing for your lap when you’re sitting on the couch or in bed. Cost = $5. My mom is/was so difficult to buy for and I felt like such an idiot giving her that thoughtless thing for Christmas. Well, damn–she used it almost daily for marking (she was a teacher), still uses it 30 freakin’ years later, and calls it “the best gift she’s ever gotten”.
The best gift I ever got (besides when I was a kid and my grandparents bought me a Millennium Falcon for my action figures–that thing rocked!) is an 8-DVD boxset of “Yoga Zone” from my mom. I’ve used it monthly, sometimes weekly, occasionally daily for the last 9 years or so. 16, 20-minute workouts on it. No back problems at all since getting it. The second best gift I ever got was a $2 wire-mesh handheld food strainer from my dad. I really never knew I needed one of those until I had it. …All wasted those years of burning myself with steam pouring water out of hot pots trying to use the lid to keep the vegetables inside.