In response to last week’s article, today I’m posting more creative and inexpensive holiday gift ideas sent in by readers.
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Looking for more great ideas? See
Holiday Magic – Free Gifts All Year Long at: http://www.booklocker.com/books/1298.html
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Personal Journals!
One year, I bought lots of cool journal books from places like Barnes & Noble. Then, for each particular person, I picked out my favorite quotes that fit with what they were going through in their lives at that time. Each page was a quote from some of my favorite authors (soon to be theirs – I used old classic literature quotes in my books to try to get my more “non-reader” friends interested in old literature).
I included an intro on the first page and personal encouragement at the end. For some covers that were cloth, I added embellishments (gems, sticks, feathers, etc.). Since I’ve since moved away, my friends tell me that, when they miss me, they bring the book out and re-read the quotes. They feel encouraged and closer to me.
I also did personalized (journal) books for my girls when they turned 18–passing on parental wisdom on relationships that they would never sit long enough to hear from me–but knowing they would read it when alone! They have told me they have given my books to boys they were dating to test out their relationship skills!
-Sandy Brown, MA
~Friendship Memory Scrapbooks~
I have an idea that worked well last year. My two best friends and I have
been friends since high school. I designed a booklet with pages for each
of the years we were in high school, one page for college, and then one
page since college. On each page I listed the top ten songs for that
year and top ten movies along news happenings. I then wrote a humorous list of things that we did each of those years (i.e. Rachel started dating Scott. What
was she thinking?) I finished with a page full of pictures of us throughout the years. I then included a poem I had written about them.
Each of their books had different items. They loved it! It is a keepsake for years to come…I only wish I had made myself a copy!
-Kristie
~Homemade Greeting Cards with Personalized Poetry~
One inexpensive thing I do quite often is to write personalized poems for people in their birthday cards (you could do this for any holiday or special occasion). For “big” birthday milestones (60s, 70s, whatever), I will scan a picture of that person as young as I can find for the front of the card and use my greeting card program to add graphics, a border, or whatever, and then add my poem inside. I try to add as much info as I can about that person’s life into each poem. People love these gifts.
-Alice Cave, Alexandria, VA
~Three Idea! Personal Historical Account; Compiling Stories from Old Friends; Grandkids Writing Memories of Grandparents~
In recent years I have had some wonderful inspirations for inexpensive gifts writers can prepare.
1. Our family moved from a small town in Montana to Idaho when I was about eight years old. Most of my memories are pretty sketchy, but it is still what my sister considers her “hometown” and the town and its people still hold a special place in my Mom’s heart, too. So, I made contacts with both town and personal sources to write a brief history of our family’s time there. It was especially nice when one of my late father’s friends wrote a special letter about their experiences. My younger brother was born after we moved, so this also helped him fill in a part of his family’s history.
The history is by no means complete, but it has opened doors for other parts as well. My mom and sister spent a long time that Christmas day looking at the history and trying to remember just where some of the pictures were taken. Since then, both my sister and mother have written their memories of that time.
2. My sister was in her early teens when we moved and she had some especially close friends. The year after I started the history, I made contact with those special friends and had them write their memories of the group’s time together and some of the things they did. It hasn’t happened yet, but I hope it inspires them to re-establish some of those friendship connections and catch up with what is happening in each other’s lives. I shared contact information with each of them. In the process, I was able to have some great visits with people from my past as well.
3. Another inspiration I had last year was to contact my cousins on my Mom’s side and have them write or tell me about their memories of our grandmother. Since most of my cousins are quite a bit older than I am, they had more time to get to know her and remember more than I do. It was especially poignant since one of my cousins died shortly after I talked to him. I prepared copies of the memories for my immediate family and copies have been going out to the cousins.
Hope these ideas are helpful. They did take quite a bit of time and some long distance calls, but were well worth the effort. I am looking at how to expand on these avenues this year.
-Nancy Butler
Personalized Video CD!
What I’m doing this year for our two adult children (ages 40 and 37) is creating a video CD for each of them containing photographs from their infancy and pre-school years. This entails scanning pictures, arranging them in a CD slide show format and adding a music sound track. It takes a little time to do this, but it isn’t expensive and I know our daughter will love it. I’m not sure how our son (the 40 year old) will react to it, but his two sons will get a kick out of it.
Putting music with the CD is reasonably simple, since my CD burning program (CD Creator) allows one to copy a music track from one CD onto the slide show CD. I’m sure there are more sophisticated CD burning programs that might allow editing of songs or putting more than one song on the CD, but CD Creator (it came with my new HP computer) doesn’t seem to have that capability. But for this slide show presentation it will be fine.
It has been great fun going through old pictures, deciding which to use and arranging them in meaningful order.
-Richard Bauman
TO READ MORE, see last week’s article, Your Writing As a Loving (and Inexpensive!) Holiday Gift HERE.