What's the best present(s) you can remember receiving??

[squilly]

I've got a couple that stick out in my head:-

Best ever - When I was pregnant with my dd, my husband made up a photograph collage with pictures of my family (I'd lost my dad a couple of years before and he featured heavily) and friends from years gone by. It must have taken him hours to make and it made me cry. He did one for me recently of pictures with me and my daughter on different trips out, to remind me of the fun times we have together.

Another goodie - my SIL made up a cardboard box with a big bag of popcorn, a dvd, 2 coke glasses, a big bottle of coke, a box of maltesers, cappuccino sachets, italian nibbles, bottle of wine, various bits and bobs for a 'night in for two' and it was the perfect gift for a sad old couple with a new baby. We enjoyed it not long after Christmas with the lights down and the baby sleeping upstairs. Bliss!

When I was a kid, my mom bought me a doll, that all the kids I played with wanted. It had been in the window of the local sweet shop and I wanted it so badly. We didn't have much money, though, and mum wasn't terribly loving, so I never expected to get it. But I opened my gifts that Christmas morning and there she was...the perfect doll with curlers and hairbrush and everything. It was just magic.

So....How about you??

When I was 6 I wanted a chemistry set. My parents knew a chemist so when I got my chemistry set it wasn't a crappy commerical thing with teeny vials of boring stuff. Instead it was a proper kit with a huge jar of copper sulphate and goodness knows what else and a meths bunsen burner to heat it all up with.

A Sindy ballerina doll, when I was about 6.

this but blonde hair and purple skirt

A major morgan and a little prof all on the same xmas

A Sindy horse - my parents were very anti plastic tat, but it came from my uncle & aunt & I loved it to bits!

Wow Fimbo! Do you still have her? She's worth a packet! My doll was early 70's, unbranded, but lovely. It's hard to believe how anti-doll I am now, considering my early recollections.

What's a major morgan and a little prof fiveplusbump? I'll go off to have a surf, see if I can find them.

OhYouBadBadKitten, are you now a chemist I wonder? Do our early gifts influence us in any way at all??? If so, what do our DS kids grow up into!?

Sorry...I'm home sick with DD at school til after 3, so I've got way too much time on my hands

No sadly not, but I do have a Pippa Range Rover complete with picnic set and the original box with the price sticker on £5.49!!! which was probably a lot of dosh in the 70's.

Have looked on Ebay but there is nothing the same. So it could be unique. One of the car door's is falling off but someone with know how could probably easily fix it. My mum keeps saying I should give it to dd, but at 10 she is probably too old for it now but funnily I kind of feel precious about it. Dd has played with it at my mums but I always put in back in the box and in the loft!

A kitten, for my 10th bday.

Best childhood present was a Lundby dolls house for my birthday. I was so overcome, just couldn't believe it was really mine for me. Had spent months gazing wistfully at it in the window of a toy shop with my mother pointing out the price and saying it was far too expensive. I even wrote to Jim'll Fix It asking for a tour round the factory (swine never replied).

Unfortunately I leapt to the conclusion that the other present must be a consolation prize for my sister because there couldn't possibly be anything else for me... turned out, it was the furniture and dolls. Boy, was she furious.

Best adult present was a flying lesson from dh. THE most exciting thing you can do in public.

this is it except I didn't have the basement.

Last Chistmas, my DP got me a ticket to see a show in the West End, and gave me the money for the train ticket and cocktails before hand AND took the day off work to look after LO I could go up to London early and catch up with friends.
Plus, his mate got his girlfriend a ticket for her present too, so we could go together.
It was a total surprise and definately one of the best presents I've ever had!

My BEST EVER childhood present was a Curly Twirls (or Swirls) Barbie. She was AMAZING! And came with an actual hair twister styler thingy which I was forever getting stuck in my own hair. And she had an extra long ponytail and a cool pink outfit which you could do different things with.
I wonder if my Mum has it in the loft still......

A really shabby 1930s dolls house passed on by a cousin...I loved that dolls house. When we left my dad when I was 12 it had to be left behind and I only had a few belongings from my childhood. Until one day I was browsing in an antique shop not far from where I used to live and there it was! It was definitely mine because it still had the damage from where my brother sat on it I paid £40 for it and it is sitting in my attic waiting to be restored to its former glory (complete with a 1960s wooden tv that I used to have and found an identical one in a different antique shop).

My dd's about to nick the laptop 4 the evening, but these are great stories...and yours sounds so cool waswondering. I like the theatre trip one too....What a thoughtful gift.
And I always wondered what Lundby dolls houses were like. Now I know!

Aaaaggghhh dd driving me nuts! gotta go

Fimbo - I remember buying myself that same Active Sindy with some birthday money one year, except mine had a sort of caliper-stand thing for one leg so she could stand up on pointy toes. God, I loved her.

And Takver - I was given the Sindy horse too one year. Parents also anti-plastic, so my first Sindy had been a present from a friend's mum the year before.

Still struggling to think of best ever present, but several awful ones have come to mind and are making me feel guilty about how ungrateful I've been.

A pogo stick which I then used to make holes with in my grandparent's lawn :D

Oh and the Bob Dylan Biograph box set!

Sindy with horse (parents actually bought something I'd pleaded for )

doll's house

bookcase for my bedroom

A school desk and chair!

I was about 7 I guess and it's what I wanted, one with a lift up lid (it had blue metal fold down legs, I recall), but I loved it. My real school desks at that stage were all trendy formica but I wanted a desk with an inkwell. I remember oening my eyes and there it was! With the pillow case we used as a stocking propped up in it with all the rest of my stuff inside. Bliss.

I handed the desk down to my cousin's DD years ago and I gather she loved it too.

A watch when I was about 6
A wendy house
Tiny tears doll

All because they were the only things I had asked for (different christmases) and was so excited to actually get them.

In response to waswonderings post

Sister and BIL who normally spent loads on each other (expensive holidays and the likes)decided that as they were doing up house no2 for to sell, they would give each other token gifts and wait to splash out when the house sold. So sis went and bought him new boots, new jeans, underwear, smellies etc, only to find he had bought her a new car and had a friend park it outside the house just before midnight on christmas eve. She was soooo embarassed that she had only bought bits and bobs.

a fisherprice play garage with little cars. that morning is one of my earliest memories. i think i was three at the time.

Oh my grandma gave me a pushbike. I'd just got out of hospital from a fractured skull - doh, fell out a window - and had been in over xmas. She (and my parents) kept all my presents under the tree and we did a xmas day part 2 just for me. And she gave me what i thought was just a card. In the card was taped a piece of string and I followed it all round the house out to the shed and my bike was in there. Best present ever.