We seem to be focusing on adult gifts and current gifts to kids. How about your favorite gift you got as a kid . . . for Christmas or Hanukkah or a birthday, or whatever?
When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was an architect. So around the age of 8 or 9 I told my parents that I wanted a doll house. Not for the furnishings or little people, but for the house itself. Well, my parents understood and got me a doll house. It was not what I wanted after all, because you couldn’t move the rooms around in another configuration. You could just put it together the way it was planned. So I hit on the idea of making cardboard walls to add to the original ones, and painted them to match . . . and I came up with some really original designs. Eventually I just made everything from cardboard, and left out the original doll house.
Mine was a dollhouse as well, though not with the architectural part of it.
I think it was a birthday present, but it may have been Christmas (only a week apart). My dad built it for me out of plywood. They let me open it at midnight, which points even more to it being a birthday present (New Year’s baby: I got to stay up until midnight on NYE since it was NYE AND my birthday). I think I was 8 years old.
I loved it. Still have it, in the basement somewhere. Spent hours with it, and had a great time buying/making furniture and curtains and rugs for it.