This is not entirely a fair response. I have a present for Pat WINOLJ that I hope will cause her to make interesting noises. But I don't want to mention exactly what it is here, just in case.

Alas, it has not arrived yet, so it will probably be a post-Christmas present. But it goes with something she already has.

Yah, with the risk of the people in question reading this, I think identifying who rather than what is entirely fair at this date.

I got my mother this beautiful, soft, robe with a Florentine pattern. I hope she likes it.

truffles, hugs, love letters

The cowls I knit for my Grandma, Mom, Sister in Law, and Bill's Mom. They are my first attempts at lace knitting and I am really happy with how they turned out.

I got my sister the card game we used to play in marathon sessions while we were off doing Family Camping. I'm so glad that we're friends now. It's not something that seemed possible when we were children and this one game was one of the few things we could play together without getting into an argument. So I hope she'll be glad to have a new copy.

That's pretty special.

Tickets to American Idiot on Broadway, for my teenager to go with me. I already went with my best friend (she got the tickets as her birthday/Christmas from her dad) so I know it's fabulous, but this will be the first Broadway show I've shared with the kid -- all the kid's other Broadway experiences have been with the grandparents or the summer youth theater program.

Um. Unless you count the touring company production of Les Mis, when the kid was three. This will be the first properly-appreciated one.

Homemade vanilla-chili extract. And a parasol for S, already given.

Encountered and bought for Thrud Derek Jarman's War Requiem, which is not only a film about WWI she hasn't heard of but one which features the work of Wilfred Owen prominently.

I already gave Mirth a pretty cool present for Chanukah: A blue canary for the outlet by the lightswitch.

The one LJH seems to like best is one I was most nervous about giving (in case she thought it was too babyish): the baby doll that she fawned over every time we went to Target. I think she appreciates the tacit invitation to still be a kid.

There's an even cooler present in the works, but Mirth knows about that already, and at this point it's sort of for all of us. But I need to write about that elsewhere.

Ha! how did you do that? Is it an outlet cover with a blue canary on it ...? :)

It's a night light (so a lighthouse is indeed its primitive ancestry).

Thank you! I NEED one! My sis in law needs one for her birthday in 2 weeks also - free shipping!!

It is pretty, too.

OMG want! Or possibly, I can just take great pleasure in knowing it exists.

It is quite lovely, as nightlights go.

Well, this one requires a bit of backstory but I'll keep it short. My mom and I talk on the phone a lot. And we do other things while we talk. And we don't have headsets so we hold the phones in our shoulders while we talk. A few months ago my mom was chatting away and suddenly said OW! OW! OW! and I said WHAT! WHAT! and she said, abashedly, "I was pulling a pumpkin pie out of the oven and I burned my hand on the rack." Getting her to put the phone down first was not in the scheme of things, I guess. So then a few weeks later I got a Lee Valley and Veritas catalog, and in it was a set of oven rack guards for these very moments. The catalog copy didn't read "for when you can't stop telling your daughter small-town Idaho gossip long enough to put down the phone and safely remove your pie" but it should have. So I bought her those. I anticipate squeeage.

Oh thank you! I didn't even know these existed. Soon I will have a set of my very own.

I made a silver & gold charm necklace for my sis-in-law with her son's name, son's birthstone, husband's initial, and a cutout pawprint, to represent all of her family. For my sister the wildlife photographer, I made a keychain with a moose charm, a camera charm, and a disc that says, "Inspired by Nature".

My mom said she feels the cold more now that she's lost some weight, so mom & dad got warm snuggly fleece blankets.

Yep, being a grownup means that the giving is way more enjoyable. I love finding or making just the right thing to give!

I could imagine someone making goat bacon and putting that in fudge, and I could imagine someone liking the result....

I think I'm most excited about my gift for tiger_spot -- I had no idea what to get for her until the last minute, and then I had this really good idea, and there was indeed a place where I could get one nearby without having to order it. Even if I did have to drive to Half Moon Bay for it, although really that just made it more fun.

(Actually, I'm also pleased with a gift for suzanne, too, but I shall not say any more at all about that because she is good at guessing.)

I'm glad the Botanical Garden isn't rigid about who is allowed to go on a family membership. We've been frustrated by that at our zoo.

I was very pleased by a now-defunct SF/mystery book store in Northampton (Massachusetts), that firmly told us that a family membership was for anyone who considered themselves family.

I'm taking mmerriam and careswen to see Stomp! in April. I am excited by this and hope they enjoy it.

A tea cozy I knit for a friend who loves tea and naughtiness, upon which were the words "coffee tea or me?", my first attempt at knitting with alternating colors like you need to make the letters, which even my two more experienced knitting friends were impressed with as they've never tried it!

It was well-received, too

I gave this one at Hallowthanksmas in November, but I think my younger cousin who brought his girlfriend to TWO family occasions this fall really liked that I got him a gift card to a movie theater in his hometown that would be enough to pay for him and his "special lady" to see a show together.

I was very excited to give one of my brothers a kid-carrier so he and my one-year-old niece can go hiking together. I know they are going to like it. Probably better than she liked her first experience with snow, which confused her and made her cry when I set her down to stand in it.