It’s officially here. The season of gift giving. The shopping frenzy starts with Black Friday and continues for thirty days of mall madness to Christmas and Boxing Day.

We’ve never been extravagant gift givers in our house. When the kids were little, we followed the ABC rule—a toy, a book and one outfit of new clothes. We’ve never done the “big gesture”. There’s been no trips under our tree. No diamond rings or necklaces. The gifts under our tree have always been modest.

Well, all that changed last week in a culmination of happy acts. In October, I blogged about the 23 years I’ve been married to Dave in “Marriage is a Life Sentence”. My happy act that week was to do something special for your partner in crime in life. I wracked my brains to think about something special to do for Dave and could only come up with one thing.

For the past two years, all Dave has talked about is getting an ATV. Ad nauseom. We had been saving, but a car bill here, a washing machine on the fritz here kept putting it off.

Then last week, my post was about taking the Financial Weight Loss Challenge. The idea is to take action on the one thing you should do during Financial Literacy Month to feel better about your financial health. In that post, I said we’ve always taken a balanced approach between saving and living and right now, living was winning out.

So as Dave’s birthday approached, I decided to kill two happy acts with one stone and buy an ATV from Perth Powersports (the team there were great!) It just so happened I was working from home on Dave’s birthday, and would actually be at the house when he got home from work to see his reaction. They delivered it in the morning—a shiny yellow CanAm 450 Outlander with a plow. All it needed was a big red bow.

Dave’s reaction was everything we hoped for and more. He was a 12-year old boy again on the farm with a grin a mile wide. It’s still on his face.

This week’s #HappyAct is to find the perfect gift for someone this season and wrap it up in a big red bow. I still don’t think you need the “big gesture” to bring joy and pleasure in the gift you choose. It might be cliché, but it really is the thought that counts and finding that perfect gift, big or small.