Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For my very first birthday as his wife, my exH bought me groceries. I'm not joking.

He gave you a DIY birthday dinner!

I LOLed at this. At the time, I tried to see the sweet side of this. But, looking back on it now, I laugh and think: no wonder we didn't make it.

Anonymous wrote:For my very first birthday as his wife, my exH bought me groceries. I'm not joking.

He gave you a DIY birthday dinner!

For my very first birthday as his wife, my exH bought me groceries. I'm not joking.

My mother is also cheap, I mean thrifty. She gifts my children toys from my childhood. She also reuses wrapping paper to the extreme, so the gifts are wrapped with several mismatching squares of paper. I think my son is now old enough that he might notice his grandmother's terrible gift giving this Christmas.

My elderly aunt was infamous for her bad gifts. One year she gave my suburban, skinny, blond middle school brother a huge FUBU sweatshirt (many years after it was popular) My mom later tried to clue her in that it wasn’t really his thing, but he continued to get FUBU apparel for the next few years for birthdays and holidays because she had apparently stocked up at a discount store. She once gave me her old-fashioned corsets and old lady underwear when I was about 13, I was so embarassed. She also decided that my father loved ducks (no idea why) and he received many years of duck themed clothing and presents. But her bad gifts bring back such good memories for our family, she was always so happy to give them and really spent a ton of time thinking about presents (she thought) we would love. She had terminal cancer when I started dating my future husband and spoiled the heck out of him at holidays even though she barely knew him. The year she passed, she made family take her shopping in her wheel chair while undergoing chemo and pre-bought and wrapped presents for many holidays to come. The gifts were just as bad, but made us smile so much unwrapping them in her memory.

When we first started dating, my future husband bought me perfume....Paris Hilton perfume. It smelled awful! And when I unwrapped it and exclaimed
“Oh, Paris Hilton perfume!”, he said “I didn’t know that, guess I didn’t look hard at it.” He’s since redeemed himself many time over, but I realized
I had to drop pretty obvious hints to guide him in a better direction those first few years.

Anonymous wrote:My grandparents were very thrifty, and when I was around 8 they gave me a baby doll who was clearly from the thrift store because some other kid had hacked her hair into a pixie cut, and she had two different legs! My grandmother had knit her a very cute outfit.

Love this--perfect balance of weird and sweet!

Anonymous wrote:Oh let's see...

Friend invited to my baby shower gave me an outfit for the baby, but the outfit was a size 7. So I was still pregnant, but had an outfit to fit an elementary school aged child.

MIL routinely bought gifts for her only grandchild with the wrong name on them. Like the name is Jane and the ornament/pencil case/notebook says, "James."

This made me laugh because I have a name that's spelled a few different ways and of course my mom went with the rare way. My grandma loved giving personalized gifts but since I was the oddball grandkid with the weird spelling, she always just picked the one closest to my spelling. One year she couldn't even find a female name close to mine on some items so she picked Karl and hand-wrote the rest of my name in.

Anonymous wrote:My uncle owns a porta potty company. One year he gave everyone coupons for one free rental of up to 7 days. He kept telling everyone, "that's a $1400 gift right there!" My aunt was beyond mortified. She'd just had twins at the end of November that year and tasked him with getting gifts for the family swap. She saw he had a stack of envelopes and figured he'd gone the gift card route.

This one made my spit out my water laughing! Thank you!

My uncle owns a porta potty company. One year he gave everyone coupons for one free rental of up to 7 days. He kept telling everyone, "that's a $1400 gift right there!" My aunt was beyond mortified. She'd just had twins at the end of November that year and tasked him with getting gifts for the family swap. She saw he had a stack of envelopes and figured he'd gone the gift card route.

Oh let's see...

Friend invited to my baby shower gave me an outfit for the baby, but the outfit was a size 7. So I was still pregnant, but had an outfit to fit an elementary school aged child.

MIL routinely bought gifts for her only grandchild with the wrong name on them. Like the name is Jane and the ornament/pencil case/notebook says, "James."

Anonymous wrote:My grandparents were very thrifty, and when I was around 8 they gave me a baby doll who was clearly from the thrift store because some other kid had hacked her hair into a pixie cut, and she had two different legs! My grandmother had knit her a very cute outfit.

Okay the two different legs made me cackle. Co-workers now staring.

I mentioned it in another thread, but my MIL gave us a used vinyl office chair for our wedding.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've also told this story before, but before we were even engaged, just recently dating, my DH told me about these earrings he bought for his ex-girlfriend made out of Mt. St. Helen ash after he went there for a visit. He never got to give them to her, they broke up. I don't know if he forgot that he told me that story but sure enough, that year for Christmas, that's what he gave me.

They were hideous as you could imagine, but seriously??

He's still a lousy gift giver, 13 years later, but this is one of those situations where I really really knew that before marrying him!

This is classic. What did he say when you reminded him you knew the story behind the earrings?

It was ridiculous! When he told me about them at first, I said, "no offense but they sound hideous." Then I got the "well, she never got them, we broke up." They come to me and I'm like, "I was right! They are in fact hideous! And, incidentally, bought for someone else. Imagine that!" I'm not sure he took my ribbing all that well at the time, but he really has terrible taste in jewelry! I didn't care, but they were so bad I always reply to these threads.

They forgot about her when they bought everyone the same pajamas, then had to run out at the last minute and grabbed the elf costume.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My in laws gave me a literal elf costume one year, when they got all of their kids and themselves, and the grandkids, matching christmas pjs. Mine had a hat, and bells, and lit up. I dont even celebrate christmas.

Wait, everyone got pajamas except you, you got an elf costume?

Sounds like they wanted to put you to work, seeing as you don't celebrate anyway.