A scarf from Paris
Happy Birthday to me! I usually love what I get and fret a lot over what I give because it never seems like enough or like it’s personal enough or fun enough or clever enough. Some of my favorite gifts of all time were things I never expected in this life or the next. Here’s a short list:
- A homemade sock dog
- A Russian made linen bag
- A sagebrush ‘Christmas tree’ decorated with a red chile garland
- A tambourine
- A raw sheep skin
- A paper weight
- A handmade kick spindle
- A container full of gift wrap and ribbon and cards and tape
- Steak knives and placemats and Eiffel Tower note paper
- Eiffel tower notecards (see a theme?)
- A spinning wheel
- A hand written, historical story
See what I mean? So, help me out, here. Let’s talk about gifts and gift-giving and traditions (or lack of them) and what some of your favorite gifts were and why.
And thank you!
P.S. To those of you who worry about such things….it’s a broken pencil….
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One of my favorite gifts that I think I got for my 9th (?) birthday was a little, silver jewelry box covered with carved roses. I still have it and love it. I’m not a jewelry box type, but this one is so small — like a box for treasures. When I got it, it just seemed so utterly lovely, like nothing I’d ever had. It’s really dear to me.
Another: A seashell and a donkey fetish from Sue. It was just so Sue, I loved it.
Not so much a gift as something I asked for…but I’d love it as a gift, too: A book that someone I loved had read a lot and marked up with thoughts, notes, and little doodles. This was covered with mold when we got our storage, but I kept it anyway.
I like posts like this! I’m going to think about this more and come back.
I know that box! Lined with red velvet, isn’t it? And this reminds me of one of MY favorites: a quail fetish…..with the ‘quail’ reglued several times. What is that top feather called? This gift was especially sweet because we lived where there were families of quail trotting in a line everywhere.
One day, as I was walking out to my car, a family had all made it up on the curb except the last one. The ‘parents’ were scurrying hither and thither, rooting the little one on, as it were, and I was more rootED to the spot, wondering what to do. Just as I had decided I would give that sprout a boost, he gave one great leap and was reunited with the clan. I cheered inside and they disappeared into a bush!
My quail has a turquoise eye.
Yes, red velvet inside, along with my most special “little things”.
Yay for the little bird! That was a cute story — it would be great made into a kids book w/ illustrations! And, I hate to have to correct you publicly, but the top feather is called a quail. I don’t know what the rest of the bird is.
By the way…I LOVE the pic in the post!! You LOOK like a Parisian!
And I find it disturbing that you would smoke a broken pencil when cigarettes are actually made for the purpose. C’est la vie.
You should try to light one.
Aren’t I?
It disturbs ME that I put my reply to this in the wrong place. I actually think it was a conspiracy of WordPress to make me look like Daffy Duck. So now it’s a guessing game. Which reply do you think actually goes in this honored spot? OK. Now I just look like Steve Carrell on the office, vis., pathetic. Wonder if I have some ironing to do, or something….
HAHAHAHA! Don’t even talk “Office”. Ack!!!!
I think the benefit of the pencil is that, once you DO get it lighted, it probably burns for a looong time. Like an all-day, leaded smoke.
Yes, you really are an honorary Parisian.
I just thought of another present I love: A cd mix I got on my 30th birthday. I love the movie and music of High Society SO MUCH — but where you can get a soundtrack for something that old? Ha. So someone made one for me, with a few other songs added by the same musicians (Frank, Bing, and Louis). Awesome.
That was a great gift! I’m taking notes.
Once, all my friends/colleagues knew that I wanted to save for a trip by myself to Europe the next year. So they gave me a big, porcelain piggy bank with no way to get the money out except by smashing the thing. It was awesome. It worked. Before I even bought groceries I used to take twenties out of every paycheck and cram them into the pig. Nine months later, I took off for Europe and returned five and a half weeks later, on schedule, with a few cents left over. Basically, those friends gave me Europe. They saved the trip from the squandered fate it surely would have met had I had a two-way piggy bank.
What a great idea! Five and a half weeks! Yowza! I need one of those banks–hide the hammers.
cognition? huh?
incognito
But yours works just as well, in fact maybe better: Often goes incognito my cognition anyway.
Slap on forehead. Of course, Sherlock! Also icontigon: multi-faceted saint. With dark glasses and a mustache.
Am I in the wrong blog again?
Well, I’m certain that there’s only a million if I can just get my mind to settle into the mode of thinking about it.
The first that comes to mind is one that my sister and I received at Christmastime from our parents. Of course, Christmas being such a lovely time – all my memories are hazy and full of yellow light and all. I can hear the Carpenter’s singing some Christmas ditties on my parents record player. I’m laying under the tree looking upward into the lights. And wondering how on earth we could have so many little gifts under the tree. There were like, a hundred small boxes, each with both my sisters and my name on them. (Helda, edit that sentence for me, would ya?)
Turns out that each box contained a letter. The letters spelled out the gift. We had to come up with the proper arrangement of the letters. It was a trampoline. The whole thing just tickled us to no end.
My Mom is the queen of presentation. She will make the cheapest thing look like a million bucks with truly stunning packaging. What she didn’t have in money for the gift was made up for with cutesy ways of cutting, glueing, decopaging, stenciling and generally fantastasizing the packaging of a gift so that you could feel the love she was having toward you just oozing out of the wrapping. I’m talking Dollar Store junk made to look like boutique wares.
How old/young are you? Do you need any soap for your birthday? Just wondering. No reason, really.
You have a gift for word pictures–I was right there under that tree with you, only I think Eddy Arnold might have been crooning about what the dog dragged in for the holidays….
This is my sister-in-law, to a tee. I never even want to open her packages and almost don’t care what’s inside…..like some soap I received for Christmas….. Every package is a literal work of art. I take pictures of them.
You’ll be glad to know that I have finally opened them, and am using them and they make the most luxurious lather I’ve ever experienced. Combining lather with scent makes these little bars just heavenly! I’m 11 months away from 60, btw.
I’m glad you like the soap, Penne. I’m glad you opened them, too. Wrapped soap doesn’t clean nearly so well as unwrapped soap.
Here’s a follow-up question: when do you give gifts and to whom? I guess that’s two questions. So here’s another: Are you and your husbands agreed about who gets what, on which occasions and how much to spend?
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When we give gifts: When the urge strikes. Also, when so much extra soap and salve has been packed into our order that in order for the company to remain capable of filling our soap needs in the future, they will need something else to sell for cash to buy more oils and stuff. (Yeah, Penne, I have her email addy, but this seemed like a perfect opportunity…)
To Whom: To anyone who elicits the response.
Agreed with husband? Of course!
Well, it’s nice to see someone still willing to respond to an ancient post….especially when the blogger is apparently MIA.
My favorite part of your answer was ‘Of course!’ It reminded me of why I posed the questions in the first place.
My family gives gifts at Christmas, on birthdays and on anniversaries. I should say, my parents raised my brother and me with this tradition. My husband’s family of origin actually did the same thing. One family had fun doing it and one didn’t. One family attached strings to their gifts and one didn’t. So when we got married, each of us had ideas about gift giving: one enjoyed it and wanted to keep up the traditions, one didn’t and didn’t. Thus, we were disagreeing from the get-go. And this didn’t even begin to include extended family and friends–or even restaurant and hotel tips!
Now, by God’s great mercy, I’ve learned something about Biblical submission and I ordinarily pass every potential buy under my sweetheart’s scrutiny. I also keep a “gift fund”–monies I put aside in the check book only for that purpose. We still don’t always agree about what the gift should be: underwear or a tin whistle. One of us came from a super practical family and one of us from Claus family.
So there you have the update on the questions. And here’s another little something about me: I love gift giving and gift getting, but in the giving department, I’m a perfectionist and spend a little too much time in the middle of the night worrying about if it’s “just right” or “enough” or “too much”, sending the wrong message. The one (yes, 1…) gift I’ve given in my lifetime that I knew was both a complete surprise and “perfect” was a softball glove I have my sweetheart about 30 years ago. I still revel in that memory.
Well, this has been a real “couch” session, hasn’t it. Thanks for listening. And thank you again for being willing and wonderful contributors to this little blog!