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I can tell you the most meaningful gift I ever gave...
My friends dad past away when she was high school, so about 5 years later, I got her a ring with her dad's birthday and the day he past away engraved inside of it.
We hadnt talked in a while and when she got it, she called me in tears!
The best gift I ever got was from my grandma. She decided to write her autobiography and print it out for the family for Christmas. She got my cousin to type it up, and she included some old photos. It was soo cool to have a written record of her childhood and her marriage to my grandpa. Parts of it were heartbreaking-- like the part where she talks about my grandpa's struggle with cancer (that eventually took him), and parts of it were funny-- like when she talks about the antics we pulled as kids.
@Nicole - that's beautiful, I'm sure that meant so much to her!
@Corgi - wow, that must have been amazing to read. I love biographies but when it's someone you know in their own words, it's even better. My cousin did an in-depth biography on my grandpa in college, and I know it meant a lot to everyone in the family to read.
Anyone else? Given or received?
Anyone else? This is a shameless bump, because I think this post got buried last night! Haha.
I can only think of one that I gave. My grandfather died 25 years ago, when I was just a toddler. He was very young. My grandmother is still living and pretty healthy.
He knew he was going to pass away (lung cancer) so he made a list for my grandmother of all the things he wished he could have done with her. He wanted her to do as many as she could. She went to Ireland, kissed the Blarney Stone, etc. etc.
One of the things he really had wanted to do was take her to Coney Island. He grew up in Brooklyn and C.I. was his favorite place. He even continued to meet friends there in the summer after they were married, but my grandmother never could go with him.
Unfortunately it would be too much for my grandmother to get to Coney Island on the subway and such. So FI and I went one day and took tons of pictures. We put them in a book for her so she could see what he was always talking about. She was so grateful and happy to finally get to "see" it.
For my birthday last year, my fiance bought a ton of paper at papersource and cut them into all shapes and sizes - and then on each one he wrote out something he loved about me - and then hid them around the house for me to find all day (one for each year of my age). He used our wedding colors and apparently stayed up til 3 am cutting and gluing and writing them!
My Grandparents (collectively) gave me a Sapphire ring for my 22nd b-day (random year, I know). It was the ring my grandpa gave my grandma for their 25th wedding anniversary. We're best friends and I'll never have a better gift than that.
@hotchild- that is so amazing, i teared up a bit. what a special gift!
My FI bought me the "Baker's Edge" Brownie Pan which is a brownie pan that makes every brownie have at least 2 edges and some have three.
See:
First of all I had no idea this thing even existed. Why did he buy it for me? Because I loove corner brownies! I love the more chewy texture. So any time we made brownies I would request a corner. Or if we'd go to a potluck with a plate of brownies I would seek out the corner even if it was risky Jenga brownie to take. Anyway, he picks up on this tiny pleasure of mine and surprises me with a pan to increase my happiness love-of-brownie corner. :)
Well, the one popping into my head right now is the really soft bathrobe my friend sent me from Pennsylvania when my brother died. It was just an amazing gesture at a time where I didn't even expect something like a gift, but let me know she was thinking about me.
Oh, also when DH was deployed, he actually wrote me a cute/funny poem and drew pictures and colored them in. It was incredibly cheesy but it was so cute. He even drew a picture of the world and showed where I was and where he was.
Hmmmm this may not be as thoughtful as everyone else's but it was definitely meaningful to me... Last year (08) for my bday m forgot it was my bday, he had been working all day and we were driving all day picking up stuff i bought from craigslist. he goes, so baby what do you want to do, i was like open my champagne!! well umm he forget to get it!! and he was so upset... this year for my bday i asked for a cake (and of course i was expecting a proposal lmao big mistake). but he walked in with the bottle of champagne and said i know you like these for your birthday :D... it was awesome!! earlier in the year he bought me a gps because i'd gotten lost looking for a route home earlier in the year (there was a parade, i'm not from here and it ends with me being in tears at a gas station lol).. he was like now you'll always be able to find your way home... sigh...
Off the top of my head... the first one that comes to mind is what my little sister (who is 16) made for me and gave me the night before my wedding! She made a treasure box for my engagement ring + wedding band - it's perfect because it's just the right size and has a thing that holds them securely in place! She painted it by hand and it was my first and married last name on the bottom. It was so thoughtful and sweet that she took so much time to make something I would never have if she didn't think of it!
I love reading these. I think it says a lot that most of them are not expensive, but personal.
Books. Sounds silly, right? It's very weird to me considering I graduated high school at 16, started reading at age 3, etc., but seems like guys assume that girls who look a certian way can't be intelligent.
Anyway, a guy I had only been on two dates with brought me an X-Mas gift. It was a book of poetry and a novel. I was so moved because he just saw me. It was the first time a guy had just seen me.
What a fun topic.
A guy I dated a few years ago found me 21 little gifts for my 21st birthday and wrapped them all individually. Some were fun, some were crazy, but the best part was opening them all and the fact that he took the time to think up 21 things to fit me.
The most thoughtful gift I've ever given...
long story short, my mom and my aunt were married in a double wedding.. they lost their wedding dresses after their parents moved across the country.. 25 years later, the dresses are found in someone's attic and given to me.
I got them cleaned and repaired as much as possible and preserved in a nice box and gave them each their dress for Christmas.
I've never seen my Aunt cry so much! And of course, my mom's first thought was for me to try on her dress!
@Beav - ooh, that's so great! I can't believe they were found again... where were they lost?
I know that one thing I put the biggest effort was into a scrapbook I made my FI even before we became BF & GF... it was a book with pictures of him and his family I had. I also included personal poems I made in dedication of him and the hard times his family was going through with the recent loss of his father.
One of the greatest gifts I have received was from my uncle (my favorite uncle)... My grandma Lala passed away 10 years ago and right after her funeral he takes me to her bedroom privatly and starts telling me stories of her and her love for me. He then tells me that out of everything in her room she mostly treasured was a painting of her with her parents; she had it hanging on top of her bed. He said that was meant for me to keep in memory of her.
I just wanted to add mine in! My family is very much a generic gift-giving family... it's always either gifts cards, cash, or a gift that everyone gets (all the girls get matching bracelets, etc) or something specifically requested.
Last year, though, FMIL, who is a Kohl's fanatic, and doesn't shop anywhere else, remembered that I mentioned loving Anthropologie but rarely having the money to go there. So she went in and picked out cute things she thought I'd like (a shirt, monogram file folders, and a coffee table book) and wrapped them all up for me. It meant a lot to me that she remembered that and ventured into Anthro for me!
I think the best gift I've gotten was really a family gift. My grandmother passed away about 4 years ago. When her sister, Annrita, passed away this past year, Annrita's daughter had to go through her things. Annrita didn't throw anything out! Her daughter gave our family a letter that my grandmother had written to Annrita when she was 18. It was probably the neatest thing I have ever read. She talked about Grandpa, and how in love with him she was, the letter was written about two weeks before they got engaged. She talked about her high school graduation, and the words and phrasing she used, sounded just like Grandma when I read it. My mom showed this to the whole family at Christmas last year, I think pretty much everyone teared up a little as the read the letter.
FI brought me Hot Chocolate... i posted about it before, but here's the story...
We were just dating - maybe a month or two and I was having a really bad day. It was cold outside, an X was being a pill and just draining me mentally. I was hella busy and totally ehausted. I was also teaching a class at church that night and had come home to a dirty house - ugh! We were talking on the phone while I was loading the washer and he said "Are you in the garage ? "
"Um yes..."
"well open the door"
so I hit the button and opened the garage door and there he was, holding 2 hot chocolates.
He said " I just thought you could use a hug"
I was floored. The fact that this man has listened to me vent (about an X, no less), driven 40 miles, and knew that all I really needed was a hug was just too much. I cried and drank hot chocolate in the driveway with him. Hands down, one of the most thoughful things anyone has ever done for me. I couldn't believe he knew me so well after such a short time.
**No - I wasn't being mean by making him stand outside. I have a morality clause in my divorce to protect my children. No person of a dating relationship in the house after a certain time for either me or the XH. So he drove all the way to my house knowing he wouldn't even be able to come in!
@lilyfaith the dresses ended up in my dad's parent's attic.. no one really knows how they got there...
Long story short............
My mom died of liver cancer while I was pregnant, needless to say she never had the opportunity to crochet me a baby blanket like she did for everyone in the family when they were having little ones.
I didn't think much of it until one day a package arrived in the mail from one of my moms cousins with a note that said "I think this was meant for you."
Inside was a crocheted blanket my mom had made for her little one years earlier. It was the best gift ever.
Mine is somewhat funny.
When my now-fiance and I first started dating, I had only been single for about five months. So I was still getting over my ex. My ex had bought me a lot of special gifts, including my highly-coveted strand of pearls and my amazing fountain pen (I love writing!).
So during the first part of me and my fi's relationship, he started trying to "out do" my ex's gifts. Our one month anniversary, he gave me a fountain pen ten times nicer than the pen that my ex had given to me haha.
And our two month anniversary, he gave me a silver chain necklace, with a diamond and pearl pendant. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry!!
My three month anniversary present to him? New Moon by Stephanie Meyer haha.
but anyway.. the sentiment and his heart was just so precious, it was so endearing and just made me love him more.
mine is a wedding gift and in the scope of the western world its kinda lame but its something i hope i will always remember
we married in PNG, a 3rd world country and we had been on the island already for a week and made friends with the local workers (hubby always bonds immediately with locals) and generally everyone was pretty excited about our wedding (because it basically meant a day off work for everyone).
anyways, on the day of our wedding one of the boat drivers we got to know knocked on our door and gave us a bunch of banana's and a blessing for our future marriage and i was so touched by that, to me, it meant more than getting gifts or money from family/friends. it just sticks in my head that here is a person that literally lives in poverty and they took the time out to wish these over indulged westerners a happy life and it truely touched me - still does
This week, one of my distant relatives sent us a package with a couple of picture frames in it as wedding gifts. At first I didn't think anything of them except "Oh these are pretty..." and then I noticed that what I thought was a stock photo was instead my great-grandmother's engagement photo! The relative wrote a note explaining who she was and how she came across this picture of her. It was really touching because I never met my grandmother, much less great-grandmother, and in the picture, her engagement ring looks almost identical to mine!
What an incredible thread! Thanks for sharing your stories, ladies. I'm inspired!
Me and FI got his dad a family tree photo album for Christmas and he loves it! We got it from Things Remembered and got it engraved with their family name on it. There were just enough photo slots for each and every one of us in the family. He loves taking pics at family gatherings so we knew it would be perfect for him
On my birthday a few years ago my grandfather gave me one of his dress lapel pins from his WWII uniform. It's gorgeous. He has the other one still and I can't even say how much it means to me that he split the pair between us (needless to say my sister was a bit mad!). I wear it all the time on as a necklace or as a broach, it's my favourite piece of jewelry other than my e-ring of course! Whenever I have it on around him he always stops to notice that I'm wearing it and I constantly get people asking about it. I love telling people where it's from! I'm going to wear it on my wedding dress as well.
I actually put it through the washing machine by accident once and a bunch of the rhinestones fell out. I moved the earth and got them replaced with the help of a woman who worked for the original manufacturer (Birks) who outsourced the repair to an antiques repairman in Montreal (I'm in Toronto!) after my local Birks store refused to help and were really rude to me. Her going above and beyond was a huge and meaingful gift to me as well since it was my mistake that caused the problem in the first place! Plus she didn't even charge me for any of the repairs!!! I sent her a HUGE bouquet of flowers as a thank you!
You can sort of see it in this ridiculous picture of FI and I. Pardon the duck faces.
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A family friend's 50th birthday was yesterday, and this is her sister's first year living across the country. She couldn't come out to visit, because the the daughter of the birthday girl had just gotten married, and her sister had taken a lot of time off to be there for that.
So she wrote her a Facebook note with the top 50 reasons why she loves her sister, along with some old pictures. It was beautiful!
That got me thinking, what is the most meaningful and/or thoughtful gift you have ever received?