<p>My BILs birthday is Christmas day, every year it gets more difficult figuring out what to get him, he is very picky and actually lvoes to shop</p>
<p>After wracking the collective family brains we figured it out</p>
<p>A Flying Lesson!!! He loves mechanical stuff and it wasn’t that badly priced!!</p>
<p>it was such a relief to figure it out</p>
<p>as for my H, he wants nothing, of course, so I got him tickets to take the Ds to a hockey and basketball game- time with them is the best present</p>
<p>What a fabulous idea- a flying lesson! Sorry to steal your idea, cgm- that’s perfect for my oldest nephew!</p>
<p>In my and H’s enormous families, we only gift for the elder and younger generations (which now total 36!), so I never have to deal with the difficult BILs, thank God! My most difficult has been the older neices and nephews- several make far more money than we do working on wall street, so my past pathetic money gifts really seem silly now, lol!</p>
<p>I, too, get sports events and/or theatre tix- this year, Macbeth at the Met!</p>
<p>A skydiving jump is good for the adventurous. How about a ride in a biplane or hot air baloon? Or tickets to one of those dinner cruises? Here it’s cruising around Manhattan, with dinner & dancing.</p>
<p>I love the idea of time with the kids. This just inspired me to get in touch with a canoe/kyack outfit & get a certificate for a one day outing. It’s something we haven’t done in a few years, always “too busy.” This would make us schedule it in.</p>
<p>Actually, a piece of equipment from someone’s old, much loved hobby might be just the inspiration he or she needs to take it up again. Especially if you promise to join him playing tennis or camping or golfing…</p>
<p>Have to laugh-- the title of the thread made me think “why buy anything for a difficult person?” – I guess you meant difficult to shop for! LOL.
I got an old bf a helicopter ride as a gift once. It was fun!! (I got to go along!)</p>
<p>Have to laugh-- the title of the thread made me think “why buy anything for a difficult person?”</p>
<p>Yes I was thinking ** coal**</p>
<p>my D wants a hat and scarf- I have a hard enough time buying a winter hat for myself- I can’t buy a hat for someone else especially when hairstyle & color & face shape are different than mine.
I went to REI last night to look- they now have about 300 more hats than they used to- but did that make it easier?</p>
<p>^ There are a lot of cheesy/bizarre suggestions, but I tend to use this as a starting point for difficult recipients! It gets the creative juices flowing :p</p>
<p>^ Another potentially useful starting point. Mostly useful for t-shirts dealing with obscure topics. I sincerely love the “Have you hugged a philosopher today?” shirt that someone found me for my birthday…</p>
<p>I also turn to google, amazon, and ebay to see what my options are. If someone has a particular collection, ebay is usually a great place to look…lots of outdated, “vintage,” regional, international, hand-made, etc. merchandise that you won’t find anywhere else, and often for totally reasonable prices. Google and amazon just help me find things that I would never know about otherwise (examples: a book about the mathematics behind Rubik’s cubes for a cubing-obsessed, bookworm math-major friend, and the CD-to-raise-awareness-of-Darfur of John Lennon covers for my Lennon-obsessed, globally-minded, Darfur-awareness-raising sister…who even knew?). </p>
<p>It always takes me awhile to come up with good ideas, so I like to get a real feel for what’s out there before I make any decisions, hence all the bizarre search tactics. Good luck to all, and happy holidays ;)</p>
<p>my friends son wants a particular kind of giants baseball hat- black with grey logo and grey brim…and the only other stuff he wants are sports jerseys for particular players…egad man, you are 21 get over the jerseys already</p>
<p>my D wanted a leather jacket and her inspriration was one on Gossip Girl,sure…anyway found online for half price 70bucks!!! ordered it, had other D’s friends check it out, and they all said, ITS LIKE THE ONE ON GOSSIP GIRL!!! But BETTER!!!</p>
<p>Love the flying lesson idea! We gave our D a dolphin swim one year, and both kids rec’d ultralight flights another time.</p>
<p>My S’s favorite gift recently was a t-shirt with a retro design about Barium - the great new radioactive isotop soda. It’s hanging in his hospital room, where every doctor, resident, intern, etc. has to read it - and then cracks up.</p>
<p>I wish that I’d ordered the lump of coal in a bag for Dh that I saw in a catalog last month (really a lump of licorice - his favorite.)</p>
<p>We don’t exchange gifts w/ siblings any longer. FIL is hard to buy for, but I usually look for large print crossword books and sugar free candies. Usually I just send flowers to my mother (from the kids) but this year, LLBean had a great gingerbread lighthouse that I thought she’d enjoy having to decorate her nursing home room.</p>
<p>Wish I’d heard about findgift.com a few weeks ago…I’ve already found candy from the 60’s and one share of microsoft which I would never have thought of. I have several family members with birthdays in Dec/Jan so always hard enough finding one present let alone two.</p>
<p>My in-laws are the hardest. DH will spend forever wandering around the dept. store trying to figure out what to get them. This year it was so easy.
Their microwave died a couple of months ago. They couldn’t afford to replace it so DH went down for a visit a couple of weeks ago, made a trip to Home Depot, bought a micro.and had it delivered and installed the following week. What a relief!</p>
<p>For other hard to buy for people, we order some sort of great food online and have it sent to them.</p>
<p>The book, The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis (about football) is now out in paperback and it is a great read for guys…especially BIL’s or SIL’s or other men in your life. All 3 of my guys fought over it during Thanksgiving… written by the same guy who wrote Moneyball (about Baseball.)</p>
<p>I think I will give a Nap Blanket/pillow (Brookstone) to a friend or two…</p>
<p>Suede steering wheel cover a great guy gift (Wal-Mart)…</p>
<p>Might also do wind chimes for some friends… there are a lot of really neat ones available these days… both in appearance and sound. </p>
<p>The Cancer Community Center here in Scarborough Maine just published a new cookbook and that is what I am giving my summer sitters and college roomies… great cookbook and helps out a great organization…</p>
<p>I send my in-laws several things from Godiva…candies, cookies and coffee which they love to get and they bring to their complex holiday parties. They do look forward to them and to sharing them.</p>
<p>Some of you may know we are doing the ‘holiday breast cancer deja vu’…my mother-in-law has now been diagnosed with the exact same breast cancer as my mother at the exact same time of the year, one year later. So far, we have every reason to be optimistic about the outcome.</p>
<p>However, she is from France (La Rochelle where my husband was born), the daughter of a French chef, and quite accomplished in the kitchen. So as soon as she is recovered and fit enough to handle it, we plan to give her this gift to celebrate the end of treatment:</p>
<p>For her, it will not be a Christmas gift, but something like this could be a nifty Christmas present for someone who is about ‘experiences’ more than material things and therefore hard to gift.</p>
<p>The other hardtogift-er in our family is my mother’s husband. (Can’t refer to him as my stepfather, much as I love him, because he is only about 10 years younger than me). Ended up with the same gift as last year, size 15 sailing/deck shoes. He love his boat, so though not ingenious, I know it will be appreciated. ;))</p>
<p>We got the grandparents subscriptions to Netflix - they basically rely on the library so as not to spend their money renting DVDs - and they don’t have to go out in bad weather to get movies this way!</p>
<p>H has a small business and every year I take his six employees (females) out for a holiday lunch and give them a small gift. The gift is from me. He gives them a cash bonus. This year I gave each of them a soft, plushy Throw. Like the kind in Pottery Barn.</p>
<p>We don’t. And every year I tell my father I can’t help with gift ideas for S as I don’t know what I should get. There’s a lot to be said for not trying to give everyone gifts every year. The Netflix is a great idea.</p>
<p>My ABSOLUTE favorite present given to me last year. I’m all cuddled up with them right now as I read through CC.</p>
<p>Last winter, I was on a show choir trip with my daughter’s high school group, and one of the kids ended up in the hospital in another state needing an appendectomy. The mom was there, and stayed overnight in the room with the daughter after the surgery. I had my blanket and pillow along with me, and left them for her to use. She loved it, and now we often refer to it as the Linus blanket.</p>