Does anyone come up with unique gift at Christmas? I'd love to hear about some of the ones that others have come up with.
Several years ago a friend of mine gave all her married children a "Home Date Night." She bought large bowls, two liter bottles of soda, DVDs, microwave popcorn, and large bags of M&Ms. She put a bottle of soda, a bag of M&Ms, two packages of popcorn and one "babysitting gift certificate" in each bowl and wrapped them in the clear gift bags tied with a bow. After the first Christmas of "Home Date Night" gifts her children insisted that she do it every year.
One year when all six of us were grown and married Mom and Dad put envelopes of Monopoly money on the tree for each of us plus the SILs and DILs. We then got to "bid" on our Christmas gifts. The gifts consisted of things like loaves of homemade bread, jars of homemade jam, an afternoon of Dad's help cleaning our garage, one oil change by Dad, a homecooked meal at of our choice at their house, an evening of baby sitting, bags of Mom's homemade noodles, etc. It was so much fun to have all of us bidding against each other. Mom and Dad laughed and laughed when a SIL paid $500 for a loaf of bread and then didn't have enough left when someone ran the bid up on him to get a jar of jam to go with it. Of course mom let him go to the basement and pick one anyway but it was still a lot of fun.