Cool "Just Because" Gifts
April 16, 2010, By Josh Katzowitz 1 comment
The women we know love the flowers we bring. They love the chocolates we present. They love the little notes we leave around the house, the occasional breakfast in bed, the folding of the laundry when they haven’t even asked.
Face it: if it’s from our heart, they love it – even if it’s cliché like flowers and chocolate and even if it cost you less than a buck. If you’re thinking about them and they know you’re thinking about them, the battle has been won, the brownie points have been awarded.
But we know we can do better. We know flowers and chocolate are easy. Hell, we can grab them while shopping at the grocery store for our imported beer and our expensive cheese. We make a nice gesture, but it’s hardly an inconvenient task.
The women know it too. They just don’t care, because, at the very least, you showed some kind of effort. Most of the time, that’s all they want.
“With women, it’s the thought into a gift and not the actual gift,” said Marissa Joyce, a Marietta, Ga., native. “My boyfriend showers me with expensive things all the time. Don’t get me wrong – I adore them. But the smaller, unexpected things he has done for me stick out in my mind so much more.”
And since we should expect more from ourselves, here are a few “just because” gift ideas for your significant other. Because, it’s not just enough to make your women happy. Sometimes you have to impress them, too.
Post-partum jewelry: It’s not the most original of ideas, sometimes called a push present, but give yourself some credit – jewelry isn’t the easiest mountain to conquer. You really have to know the fashion sense of your significant other. You have to know what she likes and, more importantly, what she doesn’t. And if you can surprise her with a small jewelry box for a non-traditional celebration, all the better.
After Ashley Norton gave birth to their first child, her husband surprised her with a three-diamond necklace to represent their family of three. After delivering their second kid, he gave her a pair of diamond earrings, representing the two jewels she had given to him. After the third child, he gave her a cross with five small diamonds (four for each end of the cross, and one in the middle) to signify how blessed they were to have a family of five.
That’s giving jewelry in the most original of ways. That’s a pretty good “just because” gift.
“When a woman has a baby, she feels unlike herself,” Norton said. “Her body has changed, and she fears her husband won’t be attracted to her anymore. Now, every time I look in the mirror, I see these beautiful gifts and realize the feelings I had after birth were unimportant and how important my family is. And what an awesome husband I have.”
Customized perfume: Perfume, like the flowers and candy, is easy and yes, a little Valentiney. Customized perfume, though, is thoughtful. It tells her that you strive to know her wants and her needs; it tells her that you know her likes. And if you’re lucky, maybe she’ll spray some on you when she’s done spritzing herself.
If you’re shopping online, one option is Esens.com, where it’ll cost you $100 for 1/3 of an ounce (which the website claims should last from 9-12 months). They send you a questionnaire about your wife’s tastes. You answer it. They customize. Your wife loves it.
Or, better yet, order a do-it-yourself kit online and spend some time experimenting in the lab. She’ll probably like that even better. Because it would come straight out of your hands. And your heart.
Return to your romantic high school self: When I was in high school, I gave my girlfriend seven roses for Valentine’s Day. I didn’t give them all at once. I arrived at school early that day, tracked down each of her seven teachers and told them my plan. I asked them to hand the rose – with a note attached that would spell out a sentence declaring my love – at the beginning of their respective classes. So for every period of class, she got a new flower to add to the bunch and got to bask in the attention from the rest of the girls in her class.
That was pretty good.
This one, though, might be even better.
Marissa Joyce dated a guy in high school, and for no reason one day, he blind-folded her and drove her around their town to the spots that were special to them. In each place, he had written a note describing his love for her or an attribute about her that he adored or one way she made his life complete.
“Some places had flowers and some had small gifts, but the overall thing is totally burned forever in my memory,” Joyce said. “What was so monumental about it to me is that so much thought went into it: he had to go to each place that day and leave special things. I remember it like it was yesterday, and it was nearly 12 years ago.”
A photo mosaic: You’ve seen this idea before. It’s a bunch of tiny images that combine together to form one giant montage. From far away, you wouldn’t know that the small photos are working together to make the larger one. It’s only when you get closer and inspect the photo that you see the trick. It’s like pixels on a digital image. Except the pixels are also your special photos.
You’ve got plenty of photos of the two of you together, right? Put those images to work. Download a photo mosaic program – AndreaMosaic.com is one popular freeware site – and create a photo collage that makes you look like a software engineer.
Sharmeen Hossain, who lives in Upland, Calif., received one from her long-distance boyfriend whom she met while vacationing in Rome and who lived in Spain. One day, she received a tube package in the mail from him. Inside, carefully rolled, was the photo mosaic. It was the most romantic present she’d ever been given.
“When I opened it, I was completely shocked,” Hossain said. “I’ve never had anyone that worked so hard to create something as unique and romantic as this. It was very personal – photos I loved. I felt happiness for the fact that there was someone out there who only wanted to make me happy – did I even deserve this?”
Think she would have that reaction if he had sent her some flowers and a box of chocolates? I’m guessing no.
Josh Katzowitz is a freelance writer and author living in Cincinnati. He is a featured contributor to ManoftheHouse.com and author of the book, Bearcats Rising.
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