OK, so Christmas is just over a week away and I still need something for my girlfriend. I’m not going to able to get to mall until next Wednesday at the earliest because of exam schedule. This is bad. Plus my guy friends are pretty useless at dispensing gift advice. No wonder none of them have girlfriends. Half of them are kidding with me and for the other half, I hope they were kidding too.
To make things worse, this is the first Christmas I’ve ever had a girlfriend. So I’m really at a loss of where to get started. We go to schools 9 hours apart, so I really want to get her something personal that will remind her of me during next, her last, semester.
I was thinking of getting her a couple of small gifts. Except I can’t get her anything for her apartment since she’ll be moving out in 4 months to come back home for good. I already bought her a bamboo plant for a back to school gift, so a plant is out. She’s a student, so she doesn’t really have a use for nice coffees, since she doesn’t have a coffee maker. She’s not really in to music or movies; she’s pretty much given up on choosing movies when we go out since I’ve picked all winners and her choices haven’t been as good.
We’ve been going out for 4 months, so I don’t even know what an appropriate price range is. It feels to me like this is the first big test of this relationship and I’m about to fail it. She really means alot to me and I think its a testament to how much we want to be together that we’ve gone the last 3 months only seeing each other for two weekends.
I’d be forever greatful for anyone who actually read this whole thing and even more so for some great suggestions.
Need more info. Does she wear Birkenstocks, sensible heels, or stilletos. Skirts and tailored slacks or jeans. Listen to Indigo Girls, Jazz, Punk, Classical, or World Music. Is she skinny, normal, or heavy? What is she proudest of? What is she most insecure about?
A gift certificate to go to a luxurious Spa with you or with a friend during the holiday. A whole day of baths, beauty treatments and massages. Can be ordered on-line, or even just made (check out a spa on-line, make reservations, and write everything down on a nice card, then decorate the card with gift paper and a ribbon)
When she comes home all rosey, have a candlelight dinner ready for her and ask her to show you what was her favorite massage.
Also, if she does wear jewelry (not all of us do), bracelets are nice because they come in one-size-fits all Charm bracelets and the kind that are a chain with a plaque for engraving are favorites around here for a “first piece of jewelry” gift. If it’s a charm bracelet, most of my friends prefer it “unloaded”: just the chain and the first charm, and you get the other charms with time. The ones that are sold with several charms tend to have too many, so they’re heavy and uncomfortable. Steel or silver-plated works, don’t bother going for “real jewelry” yet.
Whenever you give jewelry to a woman, think of what does she already wear. I can’t stand necklaces (I love them, but wearing them makes me nervous, I keep pulling on them), my sister in law never wears earrings (same, keeps pulling on her lobes).
Boks are good, because you can write a personal message on the inside cover, and if the relationship doesn’t work out, books stay nice, and if it does work out, someday little kids will be thrilled to find the book on a dusty shelf, and read a note in it from grandpa to grandma, back when they first met!
I think a nice big coffee table book relating to something she is interested in is a good book to get, especially if it is about something that 1) you and she are both interested in, but no one else you know is or 2) a really big interest of hers that you don’t share. The first is a sharing of something, the second is showing you recognize and like HER, not your own idealized version of her. Do not get her a book about something you are interested in that you hope to interest her in.
Charm bracelets and the kind that are a chain with a plaque for engraving are favorites around here for a “first piece of jewelry” gift. If it’s a charm bracelet, most of my friends prefer it “unloaded”: just the chain and the first charm, and you get the other charms with time. The ones that are sold with several charms tend to have too many, so they’re heavy and uncomfortable. Steel or silver-plated works, don’t bother going for “real jewelry” yet.