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I have no idea what to get my mother for her birthday.

She will be 60. She likes music, theatre and the ballet but has some kind of season ticket to Coventry Garden. She wears hideously expensive very well made clothes and jewellery by up and coming designers so I can't really give her something like that.

She's having a big dinner thing instead of a party and we've already done the newspaper from the day of her birth idea.

Heeeeelp.

Do you have DC?

Chelsea Flower Show?
Weekend away en famille?
Spa treatments?
Afternoon tea at a London hotel?

How about something personal/thoughtful? My friend was telling me the other day that for her dad's birthday she contacted lots of people he knew and asked them for photos of him or stories/memories about him and compiled them all into a book. Thought that was a lovely idea.

Silver pen from tiffanys

Teamed up with some beautiful notepaper from smythsons

My mum was thrilled with the photo album my sister pulled together for their golden wedding anniversary of photos right through from when they first met to the family today. Could you do something similar for your mum by getting all the family to pool their photo resources and a really lovely album?

Also, afternoon tea at the Ritz (if you have plenty of time - I think they book up at least 3 months' ahead) or the Dorchester. Or Brown's Hotel if you want something lovely but slightly more relaxed.

day at Chelsea (or Hampton Court) flower show is a great idea puffpants. There are some great places to have lunch / gallons of champagne / pimms there too. Unless she collects something, tend to find that by that age people don't really want more stuff to lie about.

Eebahgum, that sounds like something you'd do for a funeral not a birthday!!

1 DS, coming up for 2.

Flower show idea is good! As is nice notepaper (my budget doesn't run to Tiffany pens!).

I'm really struggling to come up with special things because she does spa/afternoon tea with her cronies on fairly regular basis. They've all worked PT for years. In fact fish and child out of newspaper in a blustery sea front is more likely to be something out of the ordinary.

I think you're right she doesn't want stuff and that's making it tough.

"fish and child out of newspaper"??

Now there's an original gift idea.

Is she the sort who would like to do something like this?

grandparents.about.com/od/booksaboutgrandparenting/tp/Keepsake-Books-For-Grandparents-To-Give-To-Grandchildren.htm

HuffleWitch does anybody have any tips on how to get those back again from GPs?

We gave all DS's GPs books like that at his first Christmas, when he was about 9mo. He's now 4 and we've not seen even a hint of one of them coming back to him

I did give my own lovely grandad one a little while before he died, and he returned it to me. But despite being a wonderful teller of lengthy tales, a typical answer was "Did you go on honeymoon?" "Yes."

Hmm. . Not sure I can help there. I guess the recipient needs to be the sort of person who wants to a) fill it in and b) give it back.

On the monosyllable answers, I guess there you have to sit and chat and maybe tape their answers, then fill it in yourself.

Yes, I wish that I had taped him telling his tales now. Ah well - I do remember those quite well, as he did tend to repeat .

The thing about those books is that they prompt you to ask about everyday things that give you a great sense of their lives, which they might not normally talk about.

To be fair to DParents, they did give DNiece a gold wedding band for her 18th that belonged to a multiple-great-grandmother that was hallmarked for 200 years previously, together with a family tree showing how she was related and a transcript of her sister's diary. So they do try!

if you don't run to a Tiffany pen, you can get rally lovely Tiffany stationery that still comes in the blue box / white ribbon.