Thanks for the Love

[Sasha Distan]

as a follow up to the Christmas season and the thread I start on the giving and all important wrapping of gifts:

 

what was the favourite thing you got this year, and why?

 

what was your favourite thing you gave to someone, and did they love it as much as you hoped?

 

 

**Note: this thread is NOT designed to be a place to boast about all the cool things you got, it is for giving thanks to the person/people who gave you the love and happiness it represents - even if in all likelihood they will never see it.

[Valkyrie]

I got a couple things this year that were especially meaningful.  First, was that my mom was back into the holiday spirit.  My dad walked out three years ago after forty years of marriage and it's been very rough on her.  This is the first year since he's been gone that she's decorated and started feeling like herself again.  She did stocking stuffers for me this year, which is awesome because opening my stocking was always one of my favorite parts of Christmas.  The other gift was from my nieces and nephew.  They sent me a small drawing pad and pencils.  My oldest niece has become pretty interested in drawing, so I was really touched that she sent me something that we have in common.  I only gave one gift and that was a DVD of Season Two of my mom's favorite TV show.  She was thrilled to get it. 

[Sasha Distan]

Best gift received: Cris got me a half day personalized one on one butchery course, in which I will learn to take a pig apart. I hugged him really really hard under the tree. 

 

Best gift given: box of girly goodies I helped make (thank you YouTube) for Cris's mum. It had orange tea, fancy chocolates, I made lip balm, orange exfoliating hand scrub and orange and mango butty butter. She loved it and got all excited and giggly. the only girl in the family deserves to be spoiled, after all, she managed to produce a bunch of geeky boys!

[Irritable1]

I already posted mine: I got the expected perfect lippie (MAC Russian Red) and an awesome oyster mushroom garden to sit between the orchids. No one was too crazy about mine to them this year, but I got a belated one too---I'd splurged on nice sleds for the kids and my niece and we had no snow at all. You couldve seen me pouting from space. Then yesterday on our last day Mr irri reluctantly hauled kids and sleds another hour.uphill, found one icy slope, sent everyone down, and got me video. Best of all I sat on the couch the whole time

[Graeme]

I'm an amateur photographer, so every year my wife gets a few photos framed. We're slowly filling up the walls in the house with photos I especially liked a couple of the ones this year; they've come up really nicely.

 

My gift giving is never particularly imaginative, so I would have to say the best gifts I gave were Season 3 of Death in Paradise and a copy of Shirley Valentine that I managed to find, both of which I gave to my wife.

[TetRefine]

Hmm, the favorite thing I "got" this year was an apartment in the city with my boyfriend. After six months, a whole bunch of $$$, and a lot of man-hours, it is finally starting to come together nicely with decorating and making it feel homey. It now feels more like home to me then my childhood house I spent the first 18 years of my life in. Plus its pretty awesome to have a bedroom where I get to go to bed and wake up every morning with him.

 

My favorite gift is the one I'm going to give my boyfriend for Christmas when he comes up tomorrow to visit. I'm not gonna say what it is on the off chance he decides to log back on and sees this.

[Caz Pedroso]

I have to say the best gift I had this year was the gift of spending the day with my family. Either my husband or myself have been working Christmas Day for the last fours years so this was our first whole Christmas day together for a while.

 

As for physical gifts, a friend gave me a framed photo her husband had taken of our children together. They looked just like sisters.

 

I didn't give that many gifts this year as money was short but people seemed to be grateful for what i could give them and that made me happy.