What To Get Your Husband For Your Anniversary

 

I never know what to get my husband for anything. I used to try to dress him up with my holiday gifts, buying jeans and rugbies from the Gap and Banana Republic, but once he realized I was living some ’80s-Chicago-preppy dream and attempting to Jake Ryanize him, clothes as presents were off limits.

 

Then there was the year I bought him brass monkey bookends because once a guy on the basketball court called my husband a “skinny monkey;” but there’s only so far you can go with inside-joke-monkey humor.

 

Of course, he never gives me much direction with gift giving. Every time I ask, it’s either “I don’t need anything,” or completely outside-my-reach answers like, “dream basketball camp with Michael Jordan” or “Claire Forlani”.

 

So I get stuck. For the last few years, we didn’t exchange Christmas presents because it’s all about the kids and what the hell, but honestly I’d get him something if I knew what.

 

Then, this year, on the way to Thanksgiving at my dad’s place, my daughter, Booger, asked my husband what he wanted for Christmas. She had the iPad ready to type in his answers and he just responded off the top of his head the things he really wanted.

 

The number one answer? Teeth whitening. Down it went in the iPad’s note section, and I’m thinking, “Really? That would have been easy enough for you to tell me the year I bought you four cardigans with wooden buttons.” Then, he answered a bunch of other boring stuff like “underwear” and “a phone case,” until Booger interrupted with “You need a watch.”

 

Now, he’d not actually asked for a watch with his mouth, but apparently Booger had noticed that all the other dads wore watches and my husband better get with the program. I mean, he was embarrassing her with his bare wrist and non-suburban-dadness.

 

Bemusedly, my husband agreed to want a watch for Christmas and Booger closed her iPad case with a satisfied snap. I sat back in my seat smugly. Now I knew what my husband desired for Christmas.

 

Four days later to the minute, I received an email from a man who offered to send me a teeth whitening kit and a watch for review. Teeth whitening AND A WATCH. Surely the most random but wonderful combination ever, not to mention serendipitous.

 

I took him up on the offer.

 

Come Christmas, my husband was genuinely surprised that I a) listened to things he said not even directly to me without turning up the TV or unloading the dishwasher; and b) didn’t buy him anything plaid or stonewashed.

 

Now, I know this is not Christmas or even close to it, but our anniversary is coming up in a month and I’m again enlisting my daughter to ask what my husband wants because apparently she enacts some kind of truth serum response in his system. Also, I’m paying this information forward to you should you also have an anniversary approaching: your husbands probably want teeth whitening and/or a watch. And if they already have a watch, they might want one cooler. Or you want him to have one that’s cooler.

 

Same difference.

 

Here’s what I gifted my husband:

 

Smile Brilliant Teeth Whitening

 

 

You know how you go to the dentist and you pay a million dollars for everything and then think you should probably get your teeth whitened when you’re there, but it’s another million dollars? In addition and furthermore, I can barely get my husband to any appointment willingly, much less one that’s “vain.”

 

That’s why Smile Brilliant was perfect for him. The company sends you impression material so you can take molds of your teeth in the privacy of your own home and not in front of the drool basin you inevitably have to use at the dentist’s office. After you’ve taken your teeth impressions, you send in the molds and a few weeks later, you receive custom-fitted teeth whitening trays and high-velocity 22% whitening gel. It’s all private, and easy, and here’s the best part: NOT a million dollars. In fact, it’s more like not even $125.

 

In all honesty, I’ve tried to coerce my husband into teeth whitening for years, but he always balks at the price and the having to walk into an office to have it done. With this handy dandy gift, he had no more excuses. Yes, I had to be the one to apply the molding clay and attend to the drool, but these are the things us wives do, in addition to picking up wet towels and making sure our husbands don’t eat Lucky Charms or Dinty Moore every night for dinner.

 

Wood Watch by JORD

I’ve bought my husband watches before, and invariably he doesn’t like them. He has left-of-center, funky taste (enter me as his wife) and the same old watch doesn’t cut it with him. That’s how I knew he’d dig a wood watch. Plus, a watch made of “diverse woods from all over the world?” would really capture his fancy. I completely imagine a JORD wood watch worn by the most interesting man in the world, or my husband, who is a close second in his head.

 

 

Although we’re probably just like everyone else really, my husband and I like to think of ourselves as being different and unique, and these watches spoke to me for that very reason.

 

So I made Booger happy by dressing my husband up in a “suburban-dad” watch, while simultaneously making him stand out as staking his own style claim.

 

Plus, although my husband and I are well past the five-year anniversary stage, it is the “wood” anniversary and a wood watch like this would be the perfect nod to your wedded-bliss number and be functional at the same time. It’s not always easy to find anniversary gifts that do both.

 

In the meantime, I can tell you in all sincerity that I never would have thought to gift my husband with teeth whitening and a watch (hey! I should have included a card that said “I love your mouth and hands,” although he’d probably think that was an invitation to something naked), but sometimes the universe (and your daughter) has other plans.

 

I received the above products for review, but was not compensated in any other way. Furthermore,  I don’t accept products for review often or usually not really at all, so I have to sincerely like them in order to do so.