My husband Jim gets quite a kick out of himself and particularly enjoys creating ways to make gift-giving occasions special in his own quirky way.  My favorite was the year we celebrated my birthday with a group of friends and he organized a scavenger hunt.  I hadn't done that in years!

My team and I started off on our search for the silly items on our list, determined to find one of each and be the big winners.  More than likely our prize would be last year's leftover Halloween candy, but it was the principle of the thing!

We stopped first at my dear friend Molly's, an elderly woman who seldom left her home.  I was certain she'd have at least a few of the things we needed.  She didn't mind a bit when we borrowed a roll of toilet tissue, a salt shaker, a magazine, and some soda crackers.  She was a gold mine!

Our next stop netted us a candy bar, some wrapping paper & ribbon, and a comb.  And so the hunt went.  We had twenty items to gather and could get a maximum of four from any one house.  The more obscure items, like a cigarette holder and an aluminum can masher, had us searching for quite a while, but finally we had everything on the list.

When we arrived back at the house we found that everyone else had finished ahead of us, but none of them had found everything on the list like we had.  We were the big winners!  Just as I had suspected, our prize was a silly one -- a package of licorice for each of us!

As Jim rooted through our loot to make sure we hadn't cheated, he held up the salt shaker we had borrowed from Molly.  "Come here honey.  Doesn't this look a little strange?"

I walked over to see what he was talking about, and, yes, there was something other than salt in that shaker.  Our curiosity got the best of us, so I went and got a bowl to empty the salt into.

Jim slowly poured as we all gathered around to see what was going to fall out.  "Clink" we heard as something shiny hit the side of the bowl.  "Oh my gosh! It's a gorgeous diamond earring!" I exclaimed.  The matching earring followed, and I said, "What on earth would Molly be doing with diamond earrings in her salt shaker?"

"You silly goose!" Molly said from behind our guests. "Those earrings are from Jim, and he conned me into helping him get them to you in his usual outrageous fashion.  I just think he's the sweetest man!"

I turned to Jim, "I think he's the sweetest man too!  Thanks honey! This is your best surprise ever!"