The Friday 5 - Gifts!

I love presents!  I love getting gifts and, when I do a good job, I love giving gifts!  Sometimes I'm spot on and sometimes I'm really off base.  Surprising someone with something they love is always fun.

So, the challenge today is my top 5 gifts.  That's so hard!  I've been very blessed in my life to get more than 5 awesome things.  Hmmmm......let me see if I can narrow things down a bit.

1.  Tiffany coins.  Tiffany - yes the Tiffany and Company with the pretty blue box - didn't used to do gift certificates.  Instead they had Tiffany coins.  They were heavy and beautiful and shiny.  My brother got me several over the course of a few years.  I horded them.  I couldn't decide what I wanted so I just saved them.  Every now and again I'd take them out, hold them in my hands and then put them back in the small cloth pouch they arrived in.  Several years later, my then-husband added to my collection and took me to NYC to go to the only Tiffany store that counts on Fifth Avenue.  I bought a beautiful gold concave ring.  I still have it.  The memory of the whole experience makes me smile.

  

2.  My first computer.  Way back when computers were not in every home and they were not the norm to have (yes, I realizing I am dating myself here), my brother got me my first desktop computer.  It was for Christmas the year I opened a small record store business.  I will never forget coming down the stairs on Christmas morning and seeing everything out - and noticing a small card table set up in the corner with a computer on it.  He was waiting for me to see it.  I wasn't sure if it was for me or not.  When he said it was, I nearly passed out.  I was beyond excited.  I had that computer for a long time.  I don't know that he knows how important that was to me.  Yes, it was a cool gift but beyond that it showed that he believed in me and my business.  That was an awesome gift.

3.  My dad's wedding ring.  One of the things I used to love doing was going through my mom's jewelry box.  She had the best stuff!  And it all had stories associated with it.  This ring was given to all the first born girls in the family.  This one your grandmother's parents had to pawn to pay for food during the depression.  This one and that one - they are all special.  But my dad's wedding ring, a simple gold band with no adornment - was my favorite.  My mother gave it to me in a special carnival glass box (I collected that stuff) on my 25th birthday.  I am rarely out without it.  It makes me feel like he's still part of my life.

4.  My 40th birthday was a huge surprise.  Not the fact that I was turning 40 but that my then-husband and friends and neighbors could (and wanted to) surprise me.  I had absolutely no idea - it never crossed my mind.  I thought my husband was taking me to Applebee's (which made me cry, btw) for my birthday.  Don't get me wrong, I like Applebees.  Just not on my birthday.  We went to his mother's house - I still had no idea - and there were a lot of friends there.  I didn't know why.  Then they said SURPRISE! and I got it.  Mike and my family had gotten me my first digital SLR - a Canon.  All I could do was laugh.  And laugh.  And laugh.  Folks didn't know what to do with that.  I was beyond thrilled.  I am happy behind a camera.  This brought me much joy.  Mike's friend, PJ, gave me a gift certificate to Applebees.  I didn't cry then.

5.  A trash can.  Yes, that's right.  A trash can.  It's not my favorite because I loved it.  I really didn't.  But it was memorable and that's impressive.  It came from my mother-in-law's cousin for our wedding.  Who gives newlyweds a trash can?  Francis, that's who.  There's a couple of funny parts to this.  First, it's one of the few wedding gifts I can clearly remember getting.  Second, he gave THE SAME GIFT to my mother in law about a gazillion years earlier when she got married.  Apparently that's the gift he gives everyone.  Reading that in her memoir made me laugh.  So while it's not my favorite because I love it, it is a favorite because it's so weird.  That counts for something, right?