I have a dear friend who has a birthday near the end of this month, and we like to exchange birthday gifts. We live far away from each other, and I think that makes it more challenging to think of gift ideas. If I were frequently at her house, or we were going out shopping or out to eat, I would constantly be collecting input: her kitchen is yellow! she likes pictures of dogs! she could use a new kitchen knife! she likes soaps that smell like treats! she mostly wears blue/purple/green! she loves caramel things! she accessorizes with scarves! she doesn’t drink coffee anymore! she likes to try new things! she loves cookies! she always picks up that cute mug but never buys it! she wears big earrings! her coin purse is boring!
But because we’re physically distant, I hear a lot about her inner thoughts and emotions, and very little about whether she drinks loose tea / is really into hand lotions / loves aqua / is always chilly / has too many notebooks / needs a new cardigan / wears stud earrings / can’t make herself spend $25 on that lipstick.
It’s okay, because we are at the stage of life where it doesn’t feel like it matters very much. I buy her some things I think/hope she might like (usually an assortment of smaller items, to hedge my bets); she does the same for me; if we fail, who really cares? We’ll donate or re-gift or whatever; and another nice thing about being physically distant is that we’re not going to notice that the picture isn’t on the wall / the vase isn’t being used / the clothing isn’t being worn / whatever. And so I consider this an entirely fun mission: find something she MIGHT like! or will at least enjoy opening!
This year I am in the mood for fresh ideas. I feel like too many years in a row I have gotten her the fun pens and the novelty sticky-notes and the book it turns out she’s already read. And YOU don’t know what she’d want any more than I would—but you’ll have a fresh batch of ideas, and also I thought this could end up being a comments section filled with ideas we ALL could use, not just for our distant friends having birthdays, but for the upcoming holidays. Just sort of GENERAL GOOD IDEAS for other people, or for ourselves. And they can be small or large, because sometimes I get her one bigger thing and sometimes I get her a collection of smaller things, and because we all probably have people at various price levels on our lists, and because we need stocking/fill-in gifts as well as main gifts.
I will mention a few things here, from things I have in various carts to consider and/or from recent orders, just to get us started:

(image from Amazon.com)
Giraffe drink stirrers. I bought these for Paul one year. They are just as whimsical/ridiculous as I’d hoped.

(image from Amazon.com)
Ponytail holders with…those bead/ball thingies. The other day we were discussing whether middle-aged women could wear scrunchies the second time they came into fashion, if those women had also worn those scrunchies the FIRST time they came into fashion, and that led me to wonder if these bobble things still existed. I AM READY TO WEAR THEM AGAIN. (I would buy them for my friend, but she has sassy short hair dyed in fun colors.)

(image from Target.com)
Meri Meri enamel hair slides. Well okay here are super cute hair clippies perfect for sassy-short-hair-dyed-in-fun-colors.

(image from Amazon.com)
Pom-pom earrings. I MEAN!!! This is stocking stuffers for six separate people right here!

(image from Amazon.com)
Vintage McCall’s Patterns notecards. I love these, but partly because I have happy memories of my mom using these patterns, and my friend does not have a good relationship with her mom, so maybe not.

(image from Amazon.com)
Flower socks. So bright and cheery!

(image from Amazon.com)
Cat sticky-notes, if I HADN’T already done too many fun sticky notes, which I have.

(image from Amazon.com)
Menopause: A Comic Treatment. This is on my OWN wish list, but I haven’t read it yet, so it seems risky to give to someone else until I have.

(image from sephora.com)
Tocca Discovery Set. I bought this for myself (If I spent $10 more on an order I’d save $10 on shipping, so it was basically FREE) (plus $10), and there was only one sample I immediately put into my “see if someone else would like this one, because I do not” pile. But I don’t know if my friend wears/likes perfume. See, that is something else I would know if we were in person more often.

(image from Target.com)
A New Day stud earrings. This is a set of three pairs of tiny, delicate stud earrings I impulse-purchased because I loved them instantly when I saw them at Target, and I had to look and look and look to make sure these were the same ones I bought, because they look so much worse when ENLARGED like this. In person the teensy circles are so tiny and delicate and sparkly! The teensy flowers are so tiny and delicate and dark! The teensy…whatever the third ones are…are so sparkly and delicate! I wear the circles and the flowers all the time! But I would never have bought them, seeing them like this. Still, she wouldn’t see them like this, she’d see them as I saw them.

(image from Target.com)
Starbucks Fall Blend coffee. All the special blends taste the same to me: fall, spring, Thanksgiving, Christmas—all the same. And I will buy them EVERY TIME. There is something so happy and heartening about using the Thanksgiving blend the week before Thanksgiving, and the spring blend when you are HOPING winter is ending and the tulips will be coming up soon. This is putting me in the mood to put together a care package type gift for my friend. With the unicorn hair clippies up above, plus maybe the stud earrings, plus the nail polish I am about to mention.

(image from Target.com)
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri nail polish in Cinna-snap. I bought this to get an order up to the $10-off-$40-of-beauty-products threshold, and I am wearing it right now and I really like it. It dried quickly enough, even with two coats, that I did not manage to scuff/nick it. It’s not as brown-red as I’d expected/imagined, more of a classic deep wine red I probably already own, but I do like it. Very nice for fall/winter.

(image from Target.com)
Suave Pink Honeysuckle travel hand sanitizer. This was another of the things I basically got for free by trying to get up to $40 of beauty stuff so I could get a $10 gift card. I am still giving everyone hand sanitizer as gifts, and I wanted to try out this scent before giving it to anyone. I like it! I don’t know if you’ll like it. I’d describe the scent as a clean/soapy/fresh floral. It’s a bit rich at $1.50 for a purse-size bottle, but nice as a fun stocking stuffer. (Hand sanitizer: a middle-aged woman’s idea of a fun stocking stuffer.)

(image from Target.com)
Burt’s Bees Ginger Lime lip balm. I don’t remember where I saw this mentioned as a highly-desirable and hard-to-find flavor, but no description could make something more irresistible to me unless it was also “limited edition,” so I bought one, and I do like it. (I also love ginger lime diet Coke, which I still have not seen since the pandemic got underway. Alas.)

(image from Target.com)
Dear little mug. This is not at ALL an expensive mug (two single dollars), but I find it charming to the point of being unexpectedly touching. (Or the Nope mug is an option, too.) I would pair it with the fall Starbucks coffee above, or with cocoa, or with tea.

(image from Amazon.com)
EuroGraphics Cupcakes puzzle. I LOVE this puzzle. I am not a person who does 1000-piece puzzles, and I don’t like DIFFICULT puzzles. But this is more the kind of puzzle where you can keep snapping in pieces at a satisfying rate, and where you can be like “Dibs on the Christmas tree cupcake!” or “I’m working on all the hearts!” or whatever. Note that the background color varies, meaning this is more like seven smaller puzzles. Plus: it looks delicious. (Similarly terrific: the doughnuts version. The background color difference is less obvious, but the dots ARE different colors and give important clues.)

(image from Amazon.com)
Wool-blend cat socks. I just ordered these for Paul’s sister, who loves cats and lives in a chilly old house. (I bought the snowflakes ones for her boyfriend and also for me, because I wear a women’s size 10-11 shoe so I usually find men’s sock sizes more comfy, and because I already have/love the more colorful ones.)

(image from decomposition.com)
Decomposition books. Oh my gosh! How does anyone CHOOSE?? I would buy these for everyone in my life if I could CHOOSE which ONES to BUY.