gift giving this christmastime

My friend Beth hosts a Favorite Things brunch each December where each friend invited brings a favorite thing around $15. We then swap gifts, and the morning basically turns into an awesome infomercial for favorite nail polishes, fair trade items, shampoos, teas and coffee mugs and this year, a hair brush that everyone wanted to go home with. The picture above is the gift I brought, the prettiest wrapping job of my life. Inside was a little Kelly Rae Roberts print called Shine that I adore.

It is a super fun morning filled with quality conversation, great food and we each go home with something special. It's one of my favorite parts of December.

But gift giving is a funny thing. I like the favorite things party because you come with something that you love. It makes for easy shopping! Some people are really hard to buy gifts for. My friend Amanda, who runs the Soul Sisterhood, recently told me that she thinks everyone should take the Love Languages quiz to discover their love language and then the gift giver should try to give gifts to fit the receivers love language. A person's love language (how they receive and feel the most loved) might be through actual physical gifts. But another person might have the love language of Quality Time more than a physical gift. So you could take them out to lunch or spend an afternoon together. (That's my love language.) Rory's love language is Acts of Service and Quality Time. The perfect gift for him would be to offer to help him with his garden this spring. The other two love languages are Physical Touch (gift card for a massage!) and Words of Affirmation. I have nephew who I think has this one, because he loves reading the long notes I write in his birthday cards and has told his mom how he anticipates a card from me! I know those words of encouragement and acknowledging who he becoming mean the world to him.

I've been thinking about this concept with each gift I'm giving this year. Trying to think through the receiver's love language. And it is a joy! You know what I'm giving Rory? (He doesn't read my blog posts if they get too wordy, so I'm not too worried...but if you are reading, Merry Christmas!) I'm ending our membership to the Y! Ha! I haven't been very good about going the past 6 weeks (mostly because the flu and strep are rampant and I can't muster up the courage to drop my kids off anywhere they don't have to go...) and he's quietly been bringing it up. So before he can say one more thing, I'm going to cancel. He's going to love it! (And I may very well join again in February...) But for now he'll see it as the gift of $70 a month back in our savings and a wife who values a dollar saved.

The other gift I'm giving Rory has already begun. He has said for years that he wants to watch all three Lord of the Rings in a row with me. And now all three Hobbits have been added to the list too. We started this marathon last night and will break the whole thing up into 90 minute chunks. And even though Orcs don't really scream christmastime to me, I know this is a Christmas we will never forget. Best of all, he's so pleased that I'm watching with him. 

We are celebrating with the Harrington side of the family this weekend and I'm so excited to give a few of my gifts. I can't blog about them yet, but I will! But I am most excited to start The Christmas Box tradition that we've done in the Groves family since I married in. We're beginning this one with the Harrington's, and I'm so excited to do it with both families. Because my love language is Quality Time and The Christmas Box is the definition of Quality Time.