Christmas Presents for Parents

[thebigcheese]

Ok guys, I hope I'm not the only one out there who has the HARDEST time thinking of stuff to get for my parents for Christmas. What are your ideas?

Thus far, my best idea is buying tickets to some sort of cultural event, like a play. But that's complicated by the fact that I didn't grow up in the city where they now live, so I don't know anything about the venues there. Perhaps they might like a good church book, but I'm generally not much of a reader and don't keep up with these things. They have EVERYTHING, so I'm running dry on ideas...

[bobtheenchantedone]

I often just ask people what they would like. I'm terrible at figuring out what to give someone, so though I feel a little silly for asking, I do it anyway.

[Dragon Lady]

We draw names for Christmas, parents and siblings. This year we drew Yellow's mom. Oh, and the gifts have to be homemade. That probably works out better for us, because Yellow's parents have everything. What do you buy for someone who has everything? But making things opens a whole new world. (Even though it's still tough. It took us ages to figure out what to do.) We're making her a birthday calendar. It's a long skinny calendar (5.5x15"), one page for each month, bound at the top. The month name is at the top, then below is one line for each date. There are no weekday names, because this will be a perpetual calendar (meaning it's not year-specific. She can reuse it every year). Then we'll go through and write everyone's birthdays in there. Kids, grandkid, siblings, in laws, etc.

Oh, we also joked about making a cruise ship out of raspberry sticks for his parents.

Now I just have to hope that Yellow's sister, who reads the Board, doesn't also read this forum. Because who we draw is supposed to be a secret.

As for my mom, I crocheted her a rug this year. We're also taking her pictures and taking them to a place that'll digitize them so she can have all her pictures on CD. Then she can turn around and give copies of the CDs to all her kids for another Christmas. Also I took all her recipes and I'll be compiling them … somehow… so they're not all just lose in a drawer. Ok, those aren't all for Christmas. Some will be saved for her birthday in March. And maybe one will be saved for next Christmas. They're on a mission, so these things can be spread out easily. But my parents have been much easier to get/make presents for this year than ever before.

[ahem.]

My Mom is getting a Kindle from all of my sisters.

I'm giving my Dad a recreation of a photo he has on his desk with all the kids in front of our garage door when we were tiny. I made everybody wear similar styled clothes and do the same poses over Thanksgiving. It was hard to be so sneaky, but it's going to be awesome.

[TheAnswerIs42]

Yeah, the older a person gets, the harder they are to shop for, in many cases. When you are a kid, you see all this stuff you want but don't have, but once you are older you generally have most things you need. And the generation above us isn't all that impressed with the new electronic "toys" that our generation likes. So . . .yeah, I don't know what to get my dad either. My mom was easy because she loves her Pandora bracelet, so I just got her a bead. But some of my favorite presents I have ever given or gotten were handmade, so DL has a good idea there.

Hey, can I ask for advice too? Not to hijack your thread. But my son has a really awesome bus driver who is a Star Wars nerd. (Every driver puts a little unique image in their front window so the kids know they are getting on the right bus, usually a piano or teddy bear or something. And his is a Darth Vader head surrounded by flames.) Does anyone have any ideas for a little, cool gift for a Star Wars guy? Bonus points if my son can help make something (he's 4). The only idea I have had so far is the Star Wars cookie cutters I saw online that I could use to make him a batch of cookies, but the set of four cutters is $20 plus shipping and I don't know that I would ever use them again.

[Dragon Lady]

42, try something on here: http://www.google.com/search?client=saf ... 8&oe=UTF-8

I just googled "star wars crafts for kids"

[thebigcheese]

I often just ask people what they would like. I'm terrible at figuring out what to give someone, so though I feel a little silly for asking, I do it anyway.

I've tried this tactic every year, but they usually just change the subject or otherwise try to dodge the question. Even in my family, where we all make Amazon wish lists every year, theirs is often blank or has a very, very limited number of items. The default gift for my mom is something puzzle-related, and the default gift for my dad is ties or socks. But I don't want to be that lame.

Lots of times, all of us kids get together and do a big group gift. Maybe I should go harass the siblings about that...

[Dragon Lady]

You could give your mom socks and your dad a puzzle. Throw things up a bit.

[thebigcheese]

Haha...I can only imagine my dad's face.

Actually, I was in the Bookstore today (it's WEIRD being back on campus after graduating, by the way) and I was looking at President Monson's new biography that just came out. Anybody read that yet? I'm curious. My dad loves that kind of stuff.

[Katya]

My mom's easy to shop for because I can just get her a book about art or art history. My dad is impossible to shop for and always has been because he doesn't know what he wants and he doesn't have hobbies or interests that are easy to shop for. I usually chip in for whatever my mom is getting him. (I've never had the problem of "they already have everything they want" because money's been tight for them for years.)

[TheAnswerIs42]

My Grandfather, on the other hand, has nothing and wants nothing. He has no idea what to do with people who give him objects. I could give really hilarious examples of that, but that's the bottom line. The only thing I can give him is tickets to plays and such. So I guess that's what I meant by my comment.

[NerdGirl]

My parents are actually ridiculously easy to shop for. My mom loves bath products and brooches, and my dad loves ties and books about hockey. He also reads murder mysteries, but I don't buy him those because he's at the library every day looking for new ones and he would probably have already read any one that I would buy him.

[Craig Jessop]

My Grandfather, on the other hand, has nothing and wants nothing. He has no idea what to do with people who give him objects. I could give really hilarious examples of that, but that's the bottom line. The only thing I can give him is tickets to plays and such. So I guess that's what I meant by my comment.

I would love to hear just one hilarious example... pretty please?

[Unit of Energy]

I usually give my parents used text books.

[TheAnswerIs42]

My Grandfather, on the other hand, has nothing and wants nothing. He has no idea what to do with people who give him objects. I could give really hilarious examples of that, but that's the bottom line. The only thing I can give him is tickets to plays and such. So I guess that's what I meant by my comment.

I would love to hear just one hilarious example... pretty please?

Okay, so he doesn't like things to go to waste. For example, if he has any food left on his plate at a restaurant, he will offer it to every person at the table. But my Grandmother died in 2000, and he never learned to cook. He eats cereal for breakfast, and then (until he moved into a assisted living center last year) ate out for lunch and dinner. Every day.

So people try and give him food, but he honestly doesn't know what to do with that. I don't think he has ever eaten food that wasn't served to him by someone else. One Christmas, we sat down to chat with him on the couch. He was sitting there opening his gifts one at a time. He would open one, inspect it, and write down what it was on a notepad before opening the next one. He opened a small banana bread loaf that one family had baked for him, and remarked that he had no idea what he would do with it. We told him he could eat it, and he looked at it oddly before going back to the stack.

When he finished his stack, he picked up the loaf and insisted (over and over and over) that we should take it home because he had no idea what he would do with it. The people who gave it to him were in the room, mind you, when we VERY reluctantly took the loaf.

SO awkward.

[Wisteria]

My mother is really hard to buy for. She's physically handicapped to the point where she can't feed herself, she can barely talk, she definitely doesn't have the dexterity to pick up a book and even if she did, she wouldn't be able to read the words. She watches a lot of TV. We've started giving her scriptures that we memorize and recite for her, telling her why they're meaningful to us. The same for my dad (although he's not physically handicapped). We are also putting together a slideshow of the year for them that we'll all watch together.
The more I think about it, the more I'm coming to think that gift-giving for the sake of tradition is kind of hollow and pointless. But I'm not sure what other conclusions I'm drawing yet- I'm not backing out of the family gift exchange (ironically enough, gift-giving is one of my primary love languages. It's an interesting internal dialogue).

[thebigcheese]

The more I think about it, the more I'm coming to think that gift-giving for the sake of tradition is kind of hollow and pointless.

I'm starting to reach this conclusion as well, especially since my family has managed to suck every ounce of thoughtfulness out of gift giving. We rely solely on Amazon wish lists. So most of my Christmas shopping is like, what does my brother want? Let me check. He wants season 17 of some TV show I've never heard of. I'll get it! And then I'm done. It takes about five seconds, and it requires no more effort than a few clicks of the mouse. It's completely meaningless.

But I must confess a guilty pleasure. I rarely buy fun things for myself, so Christmas is the one time all year when I actually get to have all the fun things I've been dreaming about.

[Dead Cat]

My parents have decided against buying "stuff" for my grandparents since stuff yields clutter that will never go away. Now they go for money, gift cards, slide-shows, or just making memories.