In an effort to write more, I am doing a meme from Daydreaming on Paper (which is a great site, BTW.) My random topic generator came up with the following: What is the best gift I have ever given?
I have several answers to this. The first bestest gift I have ever given is the album I made for my husband for our 10th wedding anniversary. It took A LOT of work, but I did it and it made him cry. It was one of the happiest moments in my life, because I was able to give him something with some meaning. I also put a lot of hard work into and was worried sick he would be like "oh, that's nice". That wasn't the case and he shows it off everytime someone new comes over to the house.
Now I figure I have another 10 years until I have to come up with something with the same impact. That should be enough time. This got me addicted, and I made 6 albums to give away for Christmas this past year. The results weren't quite as dramatic, but I liked giving something that wasn't just "stuff". I have a tendency to be a pack rat so I try really, really hard to not perpetuate the process. I hate getting "stuff" just for the sake of giving something. To me, it doesn't serve a purpose. I also like giving something personal because I like feeling good when others feel good. It's a little selfish, but at least I can admit it.
As for material types of gifts and excluding things given to my kids, the best gift I have ever given was the Ipod Shuffle I got for my husband for Valentine's day this year. I really splurged on it (it was a lot of money to me) and prayed that he would like it. He always gets me the coolest gifts ever (Palm Pilot, MP3 player, video camera, etc) so I wanted to be able to return the favor for once. I am very happy to say that he loved the gift and listens to it everyday. Not only that, but I also got him hooked on listening to audiobooks, so we can now both listen to and argue discuss books together.
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