Art & Inspiration Merry Christmas! What did you GIVE?

I guess I grew up somewhere along the way. I seem to have forgotten about all the anticipation of getting a surprise gift, or even unwrapping the not so surprise gift. These days, for me, it's all about the GIVE. Maybe you have one to share?

I'll wait for one of you to keep the thread on topic. I just have to tell you about my evening. You see, my daughter is a Junior in high school this year. As is customary, I wanted her to have her cl*** ring this year, to show off between now and her graduation in 2011. The usual delivery through the m*** production houses is in the Spring, so I had a safe bet that I could surprise her. I also have a brother that is a 30+ year Master Jeweler, so it's not going to be any m*** produced piece. My wife had baited my daughter into enough conversations in recent weeks to find out what sort of style she liked best. My ex-wife ****ered her into a jewelry show n tell in order to get me the correct size. My brother, the artisan that he is, took my description and turned it into a cad drawing last week. On Monday, the cnc mill cranked out a wax model for casting, then the diamond and saphire stones (blue & white are her school colors) were delivered on Tuesday. Now this is where it get's mushy. My mom p***ed away 3 years ago. Having a son/jeweler for so many years, she left behind one hella stash of jewelry. Some went to each of her children with meaningful pieces preserved and lesser stuff kept in the family by recreating, recasting, resetting the materials into new works of art. A part of this precious material left to us by my mom was p***ed down yesterday, reborn into a one of a kind Cl*** Ring for my 16 year old, AP student, high school junior, beautiful daughter. On this Christmas Eve, I handed my little girl a note with a small white box. It reminded her that there was almost nothing in this world she would get into that I hadn't done first. This year she will beat me out of that claim. She will graduate from high school as she prepares for college, a claim that I can not make. I guess we do live again through our children. I can't imagine being more proud. That old hotrod in the garage will just have to take a back seat for tonight. Giving this gift was one of the best moments of my life.

 

All i could afford.Kids are happy.I am happy

 

Awesome story man.Hope to be saying these wrods one day when my children graduate from college.You done good....

 

How about the gift of Mobility. spent a few hours wrenching on donated bicycles, making them fit to safely ride, sorting the donations, seperating the wheat from the chaff, stripping usable parts, patching tires, etc. Part of an annual program to provide bikes for kids who other wise would not have one. about 3500 came in on donation and about 2100 went back out the door. What can't be used is sold for s**** for next years tires, tubes and patches. Been going on here for about 15 years. Another group gives out helmets during the distributio day.

Also contributed to toys for tots and gave some blankets, towels, food and cat litter to the SPCA.

 

Lots of love to my family...

 

Great story! Christmas is my favorite day of the year for that very reason, the spirit of giving. My two kids are 18 and 20. They both know who Santa is and that I only manifest his spirit. He knows exactly what they want and what they need and can tell which is the more important of the two. They don't expect anything, but, I love to give to them. It is not about commer******m or consumerism for me, rather the true spirit of giving .
Some of my best memories have been from 3:00 in the morning wrestling with "some ***embly required", 2 hours of sleep and the joy of a child getting the greatest thing ever. I love getting to be "Santa".
May the spirit that is Christmas follow all of you throughout the year

Conor

 

Just got done helping Santa with my childrens gifts.
My family gave gifts to 4 different families at the local battered womens shelter. We choose a charity every year and donate gifts and time to help that charity.
My 7 year old looks forward to giving more than getting. I feel this is my big gift to my community. Today she asked Santa for a good Christmas of spending time with her family!! She makes me a proud father.

 

This Santa is putting the sleigh away. Til next year! Merry Christmas Y'all!

 

I gave some of my time and money to the Salvation Army.

 

All great stories! For the past 22 years, our family has purchased gifts and clothes for the State Street Mission in Chicago and this year we decided to switch our time and efforts to support some more local folks through the Riverwoods organization. I am so proud of my wife and children who want to help others who are in need of help. We are so thankful for what we do have and the most important things are having our health and each other. I wish all of our HAMBERS and their loved ones, families and friends the best of Holidays!!!
E

 

Great Story Scotty. My wife and I spoiled our nephews last night with the usual gifts. They are 6 and 3 so this is a fun time for them (and my wife and I as well).

The biggest gift I will give this year is the gift of my time and talent. I am about to go on a missionary trip to a small village in Guatemala. While there we will be doing some landscaping around their church so that it doesn't flood as bad during hard rains. Also, most importantly, we will be teaching bible school to the children.

 

bought gifts for a single mom with a 20 yr old son who has cerebal palsey. SP? makes you grateful for all you have. merry christmas.

 

i gave the wife her first trip to NYC........ major snowstrorm!

she told me she had fun anyway , the kids are all taken care of , life is good at the moment ..

happy holidays to everyone!!

 

Amen brother! lot better to give than recieve....

 

My GrandDaughter and I bought a couple of bicycles and donated them to Toy for Tots. This our third year to do so. A new family tradition....

 

Great story Scotty ! And a Merry Christmas to You and your Family ..

 

My wife and I, our 2 kids, my wife's sister, along with her daughter and son-in-law from Florida stood out in the cold rain at Walmart and rang the bells for the Salvation Army yesterday. Our 2 hour volunteer stint was filled with great Christmas carols, many 'Merry Christmases' from our generous patrons in this very unemployed county. Our highlight was when an elderly lady that was listening to our carols proceeded to tearfully tell us, about many years ago, she would not have been able to have Christmas for her kids without the help of the Salvation Army. As tears ran down our cheeks, she made a donation in our bucket and walked away in the rain.

 

Awesome story Scotty! I have 2 daughters, 18 and 20 and they give me the same sense of pride. I find you can give a lot to people around you just by keeping a positive at***ude in this modern world.

 

Kids are on their own now, so the wife and I got things that they need and use. Spoiled the 1 week old grand-daughter (our 1st). Donated turkeys and hams to the hometown VFW so that they could hold their annual free x-mas dinner to whoever needs. Love those veterans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

awesome!!!! Merry Christmas

 

I bought my 7 yr. old daughter Ellie her first gas powered transportation...A used 2003 Polaris 50cc Scrambler Quad.....I showed it to the wife after I had it home and running a few days ago...she did not say much, just worried she will get hurt, but after I showed her you can regulate the speed she was better with it..I had to exercise great restaint when working on it, I wanted to pull the carb and machine and polish the bore along w/ removing the inner restriction in the exhuast pipe...but figured she is not ready for that yet...

After my daughter open everything this morning..I asked her to help me out in the back shop for a moment....She walked in and her eyes got as big as the moon....she asks if it's real...I said it's very real and it's yours...She runs over and jumps on it with the largest smile ever..
.....I hope to teach her about gerneral engine maintenance, keeping something clean ''ownership'', saftey....and in the future how to improve power and speed...Only time will tell.........Hope everyone made the best they could do w/ their Christmas, Littleman

 

Back towards the end of summer I took the only picture that my grandmother has of herself as a child and scaned it onto my computer so I could have a copy for myself. I decided for chirstmas i was going to use photoshop to clean up the image and add some color to it and give the enhanced ones to here. She was extatic when i gave it to her. In my 20 years alive i have never seen here cry except when my grandfather p***ed away and today when i gave her the pictures.

Here is the original photo



This is after i got rid of all of the imperfections in it



Here is the final one where i have added color to it

 

You guys rock!

 

Didn't have much to give, but did what I could. If I talked about it, then it wouldn't really be "giving" though.

 

thats a great story, reminds me of a couple of years ago my father wanted to buy my graduation ring for medical school and i still had about 2 years left in before graduation so i didnt understand why he would want to buy it so early. he said he had his reasons and he couldnt buy it himself because I studied abroad...a couple of months went by and my father p***ed away...I understand why he wanted to get it and your story really hit my heart. I guess when I have kids one day I'll better understand...anyway, the gift I gave would have to be for my dad... by graduating a couple of weeks ago...we were also building a 32 ford together...only have frame rails and a 1948 59AB flathead in pieces, but when its done it'll be my next present for him.

 

I restored a Wagon for my 5 year old nephew, my Dad got it when I was a kid and never got around to it. I thought it would be a great idea this year to redo it for Christmas. My dad p***ed away 10 years ago but the wagon was still on a shelf in the garage, I was thinking how great it would be to p*** something my Dad had gotten on to my nephew. So like Santa's little elf I tinkered in the garage for the past couple of weeks, searching for small parts, sanding, refinishing, painting, and finely ***embling.

He loved it ! Here is a picture of him riding in it. Christmas is all about the giving.


CBB

 

My wife and I have two grown children that have given us 7 grandkids. Our joy comes from getting each one something special each Christmas. This year I had planned to give my grandson something very special. He is 12 years old. When I was 12 my grandfather gave me a Remington bolt action .22 rifle. I used it to keep the woodchuck population on his farm under control while I was growing up. I've kept that gun in excellent order for over 50 years and planned to give it to him in his 12th year. I had planned to go with him and his dad to shoot it this holiday season but a little incident preevented that from happening. He broke his arm sledding a few days ago so I'm going to wait and give it to him after the cast comes off. We gave him a bunch of hunting things he has wanted for presents this morning so he has no idea there is anything else yet to come.
Aside from that my wife and I have enjoyed putting a lot of extra cash in the salvation Army kettles this year. Giving and not knowing who is receiving is a real joy.

Frank

 

Scotty,
Great story, great thread. You sound like an awesome dad. I'm sure you made your daughters christmas.

I gave my dad a die cast replica of his 1955 chevy D/gas drag car that he had built and raced back in the late sixties to the early seventies. My dad knows I've been searching for his old car for a couple years now, and that I've had absolutely no luck. Well, I had an idea of just building a model and making it look as close as possible to his old car. Well, I had had much luck finding a 1955 chevy 2dr post, found lots of hard tops but no post cars.
I was over at a friends house/garage that I had built an engine for and did some work for on his model T for truck. As I was checking out his collections of everything in his garage I noticed he has a lot of die cast collectibles. On one shelf there was two 55 chevies, both 2dr post cars. I had asked Jerry where he found them, he replied one came from some friends down in In. his old home town, and the other some guy just gave him cuz he knew Jerry had a lot of die caast collectibles.

Jerry then asked me why, and so I told him what I was looking for and what I planned on doing. As I was getting ready to leave, Jerry came up to me with one of those 55's and said here, take this and make your dads car out of it. He wouldn't take anything for it, just wanted me to agree that when and if I ever find or recreate my dads real car, that I take Jerry for a ride in it!!! I said, for sure.

Well, the car he gave me was a die cast replica of the American Grafitti 55. It had a tilt front end(so did my dads car) and a lot of potential. Well, I have a lot of models, but they are 1/24 scale, this die cast car is 1/18th. So it has taken a lot ofsearching to find cars with the right wheels, tires, etc. to build the replica of my dads car. After a lot of work, removing the hood scoop, filling the hold in the hood, removing bumpers, swapping wheels and tires, making the little push/nerf bars etc. I finally had the car ready to paint etc. I was able to talk to the guy who painted my dads car and got an idea for what the colors were and found the paint codes and mixed up some colors. A friend who letters race cars and does some striping, did the paint with an air brush, did the lettering on the front fenders, and the STP decal just like my dads real car! I got it all finished up, put into a case, and took it to dad for christmas.

I must say, my dad was happy....he can be a tough guy at times but this gift brought tears to his eyes. He was very very happy. It felt great to give this to him, and with him telling me it was priceless.....well that made it all worth while. I have to say, this was by far one of the best christmas' I can remember. Giving is way better than receiving!!!!

If you care to see some pics,here is a link to the thread that has pictures of my dads car, and the die cast replica I made for him.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=430231

 

Mine is what someone gave to me that I was able to give. My 13 year old daughter's best friend moved to North Carolina this past summer and my daughter went with her to spend the summer with her family. While she was there my ex wife died of a drug overdose so of course my daughter had to come back home. I had planned on sending my daughter back to spend part of the holidays with her friend but did not think I was going to be able to since a plane ticket was going to be around $1200 and we just bought another house and our old one has not sold so we are paying two mortgages. A guy who bought my truck from me a couple of weeks ago talked to me about selling a motorcycle that I had planned on building over the summer so I declined his offer. The more I thought about her not getting to go see her friend I decided to sell the bike to pay for the ticket so I called the guy back and offered it to him. He told me he had just dumped money on the truck and really didn't have the funds to build anything else. I explained the situation and asked if he would mind telling some people about the bike and I would kick some cash back his way if he could sell it. He said give him a few minutes and he would call me back. Turns out his son in law works for American Airlines and gets x amount of very discounted tickets per year so he calls me back, has his son in law on the phone and takes her info and the $1200 flight just became $180. So we got to surprise my daughter with plane tickets in her stocking this morning. I had never met this guy before he came to look at some parts trucks I had, ended up selling him my project truck also and have not spoke to him since he came and picked them up. Never met his son in law at all. They had no reason to do it other than they are just good people. I talked to his son in law for a while after we set up the flight and he was telling me about a Mustang 5.0 project that he has going that he blew the ****** in. After I got off the phone with him I called his father in law back to find out where he lives and it turns out he lives in Dallas and the father in law and wife was going down there for Christmas. I used to build and race Mustangs and still have a lot of parts left that have been in my friends barn for the last few years so Jack (the father in law) went out yesterday morning and dug out a t-5 ******, a B303 cam, a Cobra intake, 3.73 gears, and some other odds and ends stuff that he is going to surprise his son in law with. I love it when God's plan comes together. And I got the opportunity to meet two really cool guys that I will forever be grateful to. I love this hobby!

 

I gave nothing I would admit to. ho ho ho.........