What is the strangest, or most hideous gift that you have given? We will have another thread for most weird or strange gift received.

Apart from a few joke presents to friends , I think the worst thing that I have given is an awful cigarette box which had been given to me as a wedding gift, it was exceptionally ugly. The recipient had no taste and thought it was a lovely jewellery box!

One year we had a particularly cold and prolonged winter, so that year I gave all the men in my family silk thermal long underwear, tops and bottoms. They were all active outdoors people and I thought they would love them. It turned out that they were embarrassed to receive them and they all thought I was very odd to give gifts like that. I was really just trying to be thoughtful!

My mum and I have a thing where we give each other pressies that ultimately do have a purpose you just have to figure out what it is. Like those blocks of wood with a hole in them that are balanced just so and they hold a bottle of wine? Or a wrought iron bug with curly antennae about six inches long that was a boot puller and then there was the piece of foam that had five holes in it that was to put between your toes so you could paint your toenails. I never did use that one.

I gave my sister in law three wishes for her birthday. It was a wicca spell kit and my sister in law loved it.

I just remembered a slightly bizarre gift my ex-husband gave to me one Christmas. It was the month before we separated, we were waiting for the purchase of a house to go through so that I could move out. He bought me one of those vacuum pumps for wine bottles, he thought it would be useful as I would need to re-cork bottles when I lived alone. Actually he was right, it has been useful, I used it just now which is what brought it to mind.

At Christmas, my mother gives us what she calls "stocking stuffers", which are really just things she has lying around her apartment and wants to get rid of. BUT the weird part is that, frequently, these recycled gifts have already been used to some degree. So, one year my husband got three individual packets of instant oatmeal and I got an already opened container of Avon talc powder, which I never use anyway. The kids have received opened boxes of Pop Tarts, cookies, and crackers. My fav, though, was a a plastic bag of used bras and pantyhose. And they were of course the wrong size.

I once gave my dad a sock with a salami in it.
I think I already mentioned the best gift ever for a dad, or any red blooded male. You take a box like a tie, then you place a flyswatter in it. Works like a charm.

We also used to give dad tins of sardines as he loves them and my mother won't buy them for him, poor guy.

The most pleasing gift I've often given to my menfolk is a flashlight. I once picked a few up for extra gifts on my way to Christmas in France for the men (I give them to women too if I know they like them but the smaller one you can stick in your purse or your keychain. My daughter loves hers). My husband berated me for such a dud gift (coming from someone who always gives a box of chocolates to anyone he can't figure out). I told him to just watch.
Sure enough they loved them. They even mentioned them long after that...'Oh thank goodness I had your flashlight.'
My little tiny nephew saw the charity boxes being made up by his grandparents in which there was a flashlight. He was about three and reclaimed, 'Grandma, I really want a frashright for Christmas too.'

Greta's experience sounds like my one grandmother, but, not to that extent.
She did give us a lovely gift for our daughter, with snippets of wallpaper samples, strings, things from around the house, postcards and explained that on the frontier in Colorado in a ranchhouse, she and her sisters had made paperdolls for hours with those.
I ended up making them with my own daughter and she loved it.

Gosh Sue - perhaps you should start a "meanest gift" thread? Huh? HUH?