Forums » Smalltalk » The best present you've ever *given*

You know, I've gone through the best present received thread, and some of those gifts are truly heartwarming for the stories behind them.

So, I thought I'd like to hear even more heartwarming stories, only this time, about gifts you've given to others that made you feel good about yourself, whether they were to people you love, or strangers you met on the street, gifts that brightened someone's day, or helped them in their time of need, or just reminded them that you cared.

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One I gave when I was five or six, I can't remember if it was for mothers' day or valentine's. But I made my mom a handwritten card. I don't recall if I said anything, but I do recall that...I divided a lot of it up into little coupons for her. Some were worth so many free hugs from me, some were for washing the dishes, some for other little chores around the house and property.

I got a vintage gold and diamond necklace and earrings for my wife for our anniversary. She broke down crying because nobody ever bought her diamonds before. It was so worth the price I paid!

I don't think I have a single thing, but maybe a few?

I recently gave a long distance friend a teddy bear with a t-shirt that had pictures of me visiting him over the summer. He seemed to really like that.

I generally like giving personal gifts, and I once gave my boyfriend a scrapbook for his birthday. The scrapbook had pictures from our time together, tickets and receipts from things we've experienced together. I did some writing in it too.
I recently created a photo wall for him too, which was his Christmas present. It too has pictures of us, made in different sizes.

Awww

Yeah feel free to share as many as you like, if you want

That sounds awesome

Best present I ever gave was a Mothers rings to my mom for her birthday. It was a ring with my dad's name, my mom's name, my name and my little brother's name engraved on it in chronological order. It also had all four of our birth stones as well.

I heard mom talking how much she like a coworker's mother's ring, so I decided to get her one as a birthday gift. When she was at work, I swiped one of her rings and brought it to my dad so he could use his tools to figure out her ring size and then put it back before she got home. The gift took her completely by surprise and she absolutely loved it.

Don't think it was the most expensive thing, but its the one I'm the most proud of.

That's the nice thing about gifts, they don't have to be expensive to have meaning to the people we care about. What matters to them, is that they're from the heart.

My grandmother lost a son in an accident a number of years ago when I was still very young. My mother got into a fight with the family and disowned them for a number of years, and my grandmother was only left with a few photos. About ten years later, I showed up at her doorstep at about the time she lost her son. She looked very depressed, still at work in her 70’s, but she remembered who I was and gave me a warm hug. I told her I needed to go to school, but I came by to give her an out of season Christmas present.

When I told her what the present was, the joy brought her to tears. Holding my hand, not wanting me to go, she whispered “Thank you.”

It was a jump drive full of old home videos of her son and his family. He was my father.

Awwwe, that was sweet! *sniffles*

I'm not sure if it was the best gift i ever gave, but I do know it was very much appreciated. My dad has this rule about presents: he doesn't want money, he doesn't want gift certificates, and he especially doesn't want clothes. He does however want handmade things, or things picked with him in mind. It might sound like a hard list, but it's actually pretty easy, because he has a lot of hobbies.

For the last two or three years, whenever I've gone to something nerd related, he's asked me to look for one thing for him, promising that if I found it, he'd pay for it. That one thing was t-shirts with something that could relate to The First Law-series by Joe Abercrombie, which he has been reading for at least ten years. I've looked every time and even searched online, but it simply doesn't exist (probably because it doesn't have a TV-series or movie adaptation).

Because of this, I decided that all his presents in 2018 was going to be t-shirts with quotes from the Abercrombie-books. I borrowed the drawing tablet for computers from him (he even helped me set it up, because it had gotten deleted since the last time I had used it), and made four sketches with quotes, two of which he even quotes randomly every now and then. I usually never draw on tablet, because I'm much better at drawing on paper, but once I was satisfied, I looked into websites where you could design custom t-shirts and have it sent to you. It took me some time to figure out how to cut away the background, but I got it done and paid my order.

I got it in time for his birthday in November, and picked two of the t-shirts, one of those with a favourite quote and one of the others, and he was not only ecstatic to be given something I had drawn, but even something he had wanted for so long. His only negative comment was that he hadn't gotten the other favourite quote. Which he then got a month later for Christmas, along with a different quote. I even joked about having broken his rules, because I gave him clothes, but he couldn't care less about that, because he could see how much work and thought I'd put into it.

That ended up getting really long, sorry! Those shirts were a huge project for me, and he can't wait for summer, because he currently has to wear them over long-sleeved shirts!

Heheh, long is perfectly fine, it gets the essence of why the gift was special

Many years ago when I was a child my father was always searching in secondhand book stores for a specific book. The first print, hard back copy of The Neverending Story, which was printed with red and green writing just like it's decribed within the book itself.
Of course, this was long before the internet and in a small country where the chances of finding a fairly obscure first edition were pretty low (it's not an overly rare book it's just obscure)
When we moved to the UK and you know, ebay happened and all that, suddenly there was a chance to track that dang thing down.
So one year I decided that was what I was going to do. I searched for a while and finally found a first edition copy (they aren't overly expensive) and purchased it for my father for his birthday.
The look on his face when he opened this thing and opened the book and saw the red and green writing, oh he was so impressed. "HOW!?" he demanded. "Ebay!" I told him.

Of course since then i've bought a few more copies because the red and green is way easier to read than the regular and italics of the reprints lol. So I have my own copy (it IS my favourite children's book) and my mother has a copy too, but my father's glee with that first one was just so magical.

A few years ago I also bought my sister a Bingo Bear.
Now, to explain the dang bear. When I was very young my sister was gifted for christmas this talking bear, he was, at the time (late 80s) REALLY high tech. He had a large library of stock phrases and even into my her teens my sister and I would get him out and giggle at how cheesy and amusing he was. Some of his statements we even used to just quote "WOW, I never knew THAT before" with weird emphasis and there was always one thing he said we could never work out what the hell he was saying. "are your knees made of cheese"!? that's what it sounded like. (i've looked online, NOBODY appears to know what the hell this phrase is supposed to say) but it always amused us a great deal.
Anyway, when I was about 12 my sister's Dad got into a serious relationship with a woman and my sister decided to gift her Bingo Bear to this woman's children because they found him just as dang funny as we always had.
Sadly that relationship didn't last, and so off they went and off went Bingo Bear.
My sister always regretted giving him away.
So a few years ago I decided I was going to be a bit silly and buy my now very much grown up sister a ridiculous talking bear from the 80s and ship it across the world to her.

She laughed and laughed and laughed when she opened the box and laughed even more when she put batteries in and he started babbling away.
There were a lot of good memories linked to that one toy. So many memories of the two of us sitting on her bed laughing and having fun.

For my mother, one year one of her beloved ornaments got broken in an accident and it was not something easy to replace. I was so upset for her, so I set to work making something to replace it. I hand made another pukeko (they're big blue wading birds) and painted it up. It's not as big as the one that got broken but it lives on her shelf anyway.
She also still has a painting I made when I was like 9? Which used to hang in her office and then was given to my grandparents to look after and hung in pride of place above their tv. It's a chalk pastel piece of fish I did with my grandfather's help and supplies and gave to my parents as a "just because" gift and maaan, my mother is obsessed with that dang fish painting lol. I don't quite know why.