Well meant gifts that didn't hit the mark

[imnotthatkindofmum]

Here's a thread to post your disappointing gifts that you can't be disappointed with in real life! Let off a little steam without upsetting anyone!!

My lovely daughter bought me some novelty earrings. I never wear novelty earrings but she's so proud of them i have to wear them. She was so secured about me opening them but now I have to work out how little I can get away with wearing them so she doesn't realise I hate them!

Also DH only bought what was on my list. It was a cheap and simple list. I would have liked him to choose something he thought I would like. After 22 years not sure why I expect that though!

It’s more the sleeves. Her arms don’t even reach the end and they just slide down as it’s so massive. It looks ridiculous even she can see it and doesn’t want to wear it

Asked for from DH: a full length, warm but beautiful dressing gown.
Received: a thin, cotton, short floral dressing gown. I'll need to return it as i genuinely doubt I'll ever wear it. I'm a cold tattie.

Also got from my SIL some anti ageing eye cream. Errr...?

DH has just given me a crystal type figurine of a Disney Cinderella and a bar of Cadbury's Snowball chocolate. While I like the chocolate, I can't stand Disney. Oh well, experience l suppose.

I’ve known my SIL for 30 years. For all that time I’ve put myself out to get a nice present for her that she’d really like - she’s so hard to buy for as she doesn’t seem to have any actual interests or hobbies and if I try asking DB he just looks despairing. I used to put in huge effort and buy thoughtful, tailored-to-her (I hoped) gifts, but they were so often greeted with a shrug at best that I now stick to reliable and useful if safe body care-type presents, albeit nicely packaged and certainly not cheap. She generally buys us absolutely generic TK Maxx staples, Baylis & Harding mostly, and an assortment of inexplicable tat (she’s the present-buyer in the household).

We've just opened our presents from them and they include an unbranded 'food hamper' with the classic teabags-crackers-chutney-jam combo, and not one but two additional presentation packs of those crappy tiny jars of jam and chutney in different weird flavours. Oh, and two bottles of wine - I don’t drink, and she absolutely knows that.

It’s the kind of present you buy a total stranger, or that you end up with in a raffle. Once again I feel depressed and actually a bit hurt that after 30 years she can’t be bothered to think of anything a tiny bit more personal. I’d actually rather she didn’t spend any money at all as it’s such a pointless waste.

Still, at least SIL isn’t buying for my DM any more - one of the most stressful parts of Christmas was thanking her for the wrong-size M & S sweater in a lurid colour which she’d present without a gift receipt and which, when returned by me (as it inevitably had to be) would be in the sale and now priced at about a quarter of what she’d paid for it. Aaargh!

The present.

Oh my word that is something!!

Crumbs. You’d have to be a die-hard Disney fan for that.

Do you collect crystal figurines OP or was this completely random?

My mum got me a hand sculpting kit. So our family can make casts of our hands. And tea towels.
I don't think I actually got anything I actually wanted this year. Obviously this is between me you and the mumsnet walls.

My PIL of 25 years got me some liqueur chocolates (that I don't like), a concrete heavy as fuck plaque about coffee that I don't have anywhere to put and a scarf in material, colours and design that I just won't wear. To add insult to injury they got my ds new girlfriend of a couple of months, that they have not even met, a scarf very similar to the one they got me.

I am really hurt, they asked me for some ideas which I gave, they ignored and bought me a load of crap I don't like and won't use. After 25 years it's made me feel very unseen.

I collect Royal Worcester china figurines of children - months of the year. I don't really like crystal figurines in the first place and Disney was the icing on the cake.

Christmas is largely a secular festival in the UK. HTH.

My aunt bought me a bottle of Tequila Rose. It will go in the cupboard with the unopened bottle she bought me last year. I am tee-total

I fancied a bracelet just even a simple one. Dh got me two but they are just not my taste. More my mums. I'll wear it when I have something to match them with.
But he did get me the big ticket item on my list so I'm still happy

They do say a coating of clear nail varnish can help, guess it puts a barrier between you and the offending metal if you do that and it works he need never know!

Some tacky jewellery and shit loads of chocolate when I'm on a major diet

Thanks husband

I’d be tempted to bin that right in front of her face. It really doesn’t come under the category of ‘well meaning’.

Oh and what I can only describe as a Victorian collar muff from the MIL

Teen DD also got one, wtaf for we don't know

Neither of us live in a Dickens novel

This sounds like a poem in itself…

Too many bottles of wine and fizz. I live alone and have one glass of wine a week if that.

Oh thank you so much for taking the time to write that….i really appreciate that ❤️

Vinted is your freind

We didn’t do gifts for me and DH this year. Although he did order me some Baclava and nice bubble bath on prime (very much appreciated) and we got a small gift for DD to give each other.
DD was very pleased with her stuff, there were no big presents.
I was happy to light a candle this morning and have a chat with God before anyone got up. If I didn’t have children, I wouldn’t be fussed about the day to be honest.
OP, enjoy the earrings, have a photo taken with them on, I’m sure they were given with love.
To the person with the Bombay mix, chuck it my way 🤣
Sorry to the people who’ve had a rubbish time - I think the build up is quite overwhelming tbh. 💐

Donate any canvasses to your local secondary school. GCSE art students go feral for those

I got some noise cancelling headphones as last week I mentioned that I could do with some to cut out the constant background noise while I’m cooking at my daughters house today ( 4 kids under 4) ….i thought it was quite thoughtful but then my DH just told the entire room he’s fed up listening to my audiobooks blasting from the kitchen while I’m cooking HIS meals and he’s very busy doom scrolling and trying to listen to reruns on the tv. 🤷🏼‍♀️

i got pyjamas and socks which i love but I’ve lost 35lb a the last 6 months and nobody send to have considered this so I’m going to have to take them up and in. Which is a ball ache as I gave my sewing machines to my dd when I moved house.

tbh I just tend to buy what I want when I want it. It’s not that my DH doesn’t love me, he often turns up with flowers or chocolate or a book he’s sorted that he thinks I like. But he doesn’t think about gifts, just the little trinket things occasionally that seem to prevent me from kicking his arse for neglecting me.

@latetothefisting
I'm going to do that, although I may just get him a bottle of rum. I'm going to open the moonshine tonight. I'm usually so careful, I check the ingredients of everything I buy. I think I may have asked for the toffee flavour and they gave me the wrong one.
I don't usually buy presents until about a week before Christmas so I was very smug this morning until he opened it!