The curse of homemade gifts

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

It took about 25 years to convince most of the people in my life that I honestly don't enjoy receiving gifts, but they finally caught on that it wasn't false modesty and now I don't have to deal with crappy handmade gifts or crappy store bought gifts.

Could you by any chance send every member of mine and Michael's family a letter that says, "Traci wants Barnes & Noble gift cards ONLY for the rest of her life until further notice."?

I really like homemade gifts provided that they are cool things like knit socks or chocolate or whatever. Our families are terrible at gifts. For one anniversary we got a talking plastic picture frame (thanks mom!), a stupid book of inspirational sayings about marriage that my sister picked up from the grocery store on her way to my house, and a whitman's sampler. I wanted to go and introduce myself to every member of my family as they clearly hadn't met me before.

My mother in law gives us the same gift every year. It consists of a basket (or a gift bag) of pastas and sauces that we probably won't eat, some sort of chocolate "delicacy," candy for Michael, and the latest Disney release. I give her a ton of credit because at least she puts thought and effort into her gift. If you are going to pick up a gift for me from a grocery store bookshelf on your way over because that also happens to be where you are buying soda, then please just skip it. I've got too much crap already.

I'm a little like Alex (a *little* ) in that I save almost nothing and I'm not very sentimental about objects. I throw away drawings and paintings Indi does all the time. As long as my mental facilities are intact I can rely on my memories of people if I want to reminisce. When my mind does go, trinkets won't be much use to me anyways. I do save a minimal amount of stuff though.