<p>I guess we aren’t the only family with a “throw-up” bucket, but I must say, yours is fancier than ours!</p>
<p>lololu, I got one of those at our wedding too and haven’t used it but those are some good ideas. </p>
<p>On the flip side of this, some people you can never please even when a lot of thought goes into the gift. My MIL is such a person. Once she returned a floral bouquet we had sent as she prefers cut flowers and this was an arrangement. I mean how hard was it to live a week with an arrangement??? </p>
<p>Another time, I had something you would put on a desk engraved with a special poem about her as a mother and had it individualized. I thought it was lovely and in fact, had done something similar (different poem) for my own mom who thought it was special and put it on her desk. MIL looked at it and snubbed it and for some reason must not have liked it and I have never seen it in her house, despite that she has other things of this nature on display.</p>
<p>The Christmas 3 weeks after my twins birth, the ex gave me an alarm clock and a new iron, not fully grasping the changes in my life. This guy was actually quite a thoughtful gift giver, most of the time. That year, it felt like a put down. </p>
<p>My mom, a fanatical health food nut, gives me book with titles like “Healing the Hopeless” and “Left for Dead”</p>
<p>The Lincoln-bust giver gave my D the same year something we named “bad bling”. It was a cheap metal necklace with fake diamonds in the shape of a machine gun! Should I have let my 16 year-old wear that to school? It was also rejected by Freecyclers and I’m not sure where it went. Hopefully, it sleeps with the fishes.</p>
<p>I also have twins and the worst gifts I got after they were born (6 weeks early) were two beautiful, exotic, high maintence, tropical plants. I finally decided that I couldn’t keep all of us alive and left the plants outside to fend for themselves in the winter.</p>
<p>greenwitch, you may be the “winner” on this thread. The Lincoln bust is a bizarre gift. The necklace in the shape of a machine gun…wow. And tropical plants as a new baby gift? Rather odd.</p>
<p>The first year my husband and I were dating, he left for ROTC summer camp and left my birthday gifts with strict directions not to open them. There were two boxes: one medium box and a tiny little box. The bigger box was a toaster. My mother’s response was: “How did he know you needed a toaster?” Funny mom. The little box, which I was hoping was something slightly more exciting than the toaster contained a yellow Mustang convertible Matchbox car. My reaction was probably ugly enough that DH might have thought I was not a good life mate. </p>
<p>At Christmas time that year, I told him that he didn’t need to buy me anything. He responded, “Oh, I 've heard that before.” I said, “Well, let me put it this way: If you are going to get me something like a toaster, don’t get me anything.” I think I got cross country skis. </p>
<p>Now I tell him that diamonds and pearls go with everything and rubies go with most of my wardrobe. It has gotten better over the years.</p>
<p>No really a stupid gift, but… My husband usually will ask my friends or daughter what to get me for Mother’s Day or my birthday unless I have dropped some hint. A hint might be a catalog opened to a page with the item circled or mentioning out loud that I would love to have X.</p>
<p>One birthday when I guess my daughter was around 16, my husband gives me the large box and it was obviously clothing. I open the box and inside is an outfit from Bloomingdale’s that I think was not even something my mother would wear. I tend to wear nice dark jeans and a top if we go out for dinner and a movie, unless we are going out nicer, and then it is black pants with a nicer top. This outfit was purple nylon type pants with an elastic waist, and some sort of floral jacket. My daughter fell to the floor in a fit of laughter and could not stop, so then I started. When I asked my husband what made him pick this outfit, he said when he asked the sales lady for something his wife could wear our on Saturday night, this is what she showed him. My best friend told him to go to Bloomies, she just didn’t tell him what department to go to!!</p>
<p>We still rib my husband for that every year. the thing is, he knew it didn’t look like anything else in my closet, but the sales lady told him to it would be nice. I think I dress fairly stylish; closer to what my daughter wears that what my mother wears! I am of normal build and the only time I wear elastic pants is in pajamas and workout clothes!!</p>
<p>A couple of years ago my D was having dinner at her then-BF’s house. It must have been near Valentine’s Day, because the subject of Val gifts came up. The BF’s mom recounted how, early in their courtship, her husband had given her a “plastic” rose on Valentine’s Day. The H said, “Because fake flowers last forever!” and the BF chimed in, “What a great idea!” The Mom and D couldn’t stop laughing long enough to explain to the men why fake flowers just don’t cut it.</p>
<p>@lololu, my MIL has a large stainless steel bowl like you’re describing. Her father owned a restaurant and I think it was a commercial mixing bowl. I knew it as the popcorn bowl, until I was visiting them while in early pregnancy with S and nauseated. When I headed up to bed, my MIL gave me the bowl and said, “Here, keep the throw-up bowl next to your bed, just in case.” I never ate popcorn out of that bowl again, lol.</p>
<p>A joint Christmas gift to DH and me from my brother (whose wife fully believes that she is only responisble for gift shopping for her side of the fam. and my bro. is left to his own devices for ours)…</p>
<p>It was a Boot Brush…the heavy round kind with thick brushes on each side and a slot in the middle to slide your muddy boots through to get the caked on mud off.</p>
<p>We aren’t construction workers. We live in a suburban neighborhood with a small yard. We live in the south so no snow or slush.
Our kids are grown and gone. Not sure where he thought we’d be bringing so much mud from.</p>
<p>Here’s a funny one for you…
Years ago my aunt had put shoes on layaway for herself and my uncle.
At Christmas she told him she would like it if he would pay the balance on her shoes for her Christmas gift.<br>
So Uncle B goes to the store (not knowing there were shoes there for him too) and asks to get the shoes off layaway and have them wrapped for Christmas. The clerk must have assumed he was there to pick up his own shoes and did not bother to show them to him before wrapping.
Imagine my aunt’s surprise when she opened a shoebox on Christmas a.m. to find a pr. of mens’ loafers inside!</p>
<p>I worked in an office and one year a client gave me . . . thumbtacks. Okay, I appreciate that they thought of me at Christmas, but THUMBTACKS? In a building filled with office supplies?</p>
<p>“A joint Christmas gift to DH and me from my brother (whose wife fully believes that she is only responisble for gift shopping for her side of the fam. and my bro. is left to his own devices for ours)…”</p>
<p>My SIL told me that there was noticible improvement in gifts after I married DH. Although some years I think like your SIL, packmom.</p>
<p>Packmom, we bought my in-laws a boot brush! But it was for their ski house in Vermont, where there is ample mud and slush and such.</p>
<p>I think so far Thumbtacks is the winner of this thread, although the metal-and-fake-diamond machine gun necklace is running a close second.</p>
<p>That thumbtacks gift was…well, er…tacky!!! :D</p>
<p>I am getting a lot of chuckles out of this thread. When my D was about 1yo old we hired a nanny who was not particulary fond of 8yo S. She rarely sat for both of them so it didn’t matter. Every xmas she would buy a large quantity of gifts for both kids except for the xmas when S was around 10yo. That year she gave him one gift, a used ceramic boot. I think it was suppose to be a flower pot. She told him she knew he collected cookie jars (H collects them). How many 10yo boys collect cookie jars??? She said she looked all over to find one just for him. The nanny told me she purchases it in a second hand shop. It was not even clean! We all chuckle over that gift every year which I think we regifted as a gag gift. oh, and I did make him write a thank you note as usual.</p>
<p>Many years ago, an Aunt who was a notorious bad-gift giver, gave her nephew an awful 1950’s-era ceramic pencil sharpener and pencil cup. It was a figurine of a football player ready to throw a pass with the pencil sharpener somewhere on him, and a football shaped pencil cup beside him. We were all at a beach house for Xmas, without the Aunt, and the nephew, who was still a teenager, was really angry about the bad gift.</p>
<p>“I am NOT taking that THING home”, he yelled and stalked out of the room. Soon after, his sister got a wicked gleam in her eye and pronounced that SOMEONE would be taking #39 home. (The football player had #39 on his jersey so we started calling him #39). </p>
<p>She snuck #39 into a different brother’s suitcase and so it began. #39 changed hands many times over the years in quite nefarious ways. The meanest thing I did was leave it at the sister’s house once, with fake flowers in the football cup, after she let me stay in her apartment for a few days. My D1 once broke her finger, while falling UP the stairs, in a frenzy to hide #39 in her grandmother’s car. My BIL fooled me by insisting that he LIKED #39, and of course, I found the darn thing somewhere in my house after he visited.</p>
<p>The Aunt never found out, and we spoke fondly of it and her at her funeral years later. He’s still around somewhere, and someone is not talking about just where he is right now, because who knows where he’ll show up next?</p>
<p>The stupidest gift I ever received was from my then fiance, now husband. It was a Christmas gift right after we became engaged. (No, it was not a ring- that I didn’t get until our fifth anniversary). It was a twin sized electric blanket. Mind you- I did not own a twin sized bed, and although we were engaged in NJ, we were very shortly moving to Houston, TX, land of 90 degree Christmases. He was so proud of himself. I was not happy and told him so. </p>
<p>From then on, however, he has always bought me jewelry for holidays and birthdays, eventually making it into the diamond jewelry arena- but only for that one anniversary.</p>
<p>I joke about my husband’s gifts, but he would say that me buying him a tent for our first Christmas ranks right up there with anything he ever bought. He was in the Army and spent a good bit of the first year we were married in the field.</p>
<p>I still laugh at the cappuccino maker my husband gave me. After I opened it, I went over to the cabinet and opened it to show him the exact same cappuccino maker that he had given me earlier in our marriage.</p>
<p>On our third Valentine’s Day after getting married, DH bought me a romantic… exercise bike… Do I win?</p>
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<p>At least when the “exact same gift” thing happened at our house, it was diamond earrings!</p>