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Family Gifts
Whether your family tree is a small sapling or a mighty oak, chances are you would like to give gifts to everyone in your extended family. But the cost of buying or making individual gifts for everyone on your list can be daunting. The solution for you this year could be a family gift—a calendar, a cookbook, a family publication, or even a gift basket that is unique to your extended family. Once you make the first gift, you can simply reproduce it to make the same for every family in your family tree.
After you see the potential and read about these gift projects, you are likely to come up with ideas of your own. Don’t delay. Projects such as these typically require more time than money.
Family Calendar
The first one I ever saw completely blew me away. An artistically talented young mother drew, lettered, and illustrated by hand a calendar for the coming year in the typical one-month-per-page format. Each month also featured an original drawing depicting a family event that was seasonally appropriate for that particular month.
Next, she hand lettered every possible special occasion and remembrance that would be meaningful for both her immediate and extended families in the coming year: birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, and holidays. She included whimsical events such as National Opening Day of Little League Season and Last Day of School. She illustrated all of these special occasions on the appropriate date. Each month was a visual burst of anticipation and joy.
The talented woman made color photocopies, bound each calendar with ribbon, and gave them as Christmas gifts. Because color photocopiers do such a great job, it was impossible for me to tell the original from the copies.
She gave one of these calendars to each family in her rather large extended family. What a treasure!
You can start with this idea to create your own unique family calendar. It’s a gift that will be used throughout the year and then cherished as a family keepsake.
Thankfully, you do not have to be an artist. You can start with a blank calendar from the office supply store and embellish it with photographs and data. You can create yours on a computer. If you have a scanner, digital camera, and printer, you can take the family calendar idea to new heights.
Possibly the most important ingredient in this project is time. Unless you keep very good records, you will have to do some research. And that’s just fine, because you’ve got time.
You will be the hero of your family if you are careful to include every person’s name and date of birth, including the year, the full date of wedding anniversaries, and other memorable events.
For older family members who find it particularly challenging to send greeting cards and to remember so many birthdays and special occasions throughout the year, you might consider adding a pocket page at the back of their calendar. Fill it with greeting cards appropriate for each of the year’s special occasions. Include the mailing addresses and tuck in a sheet of postage stamps too. You’ll be remembered fondly nearly every day of the year as you help them to keep in touch.
Epson, Hewlett Packard, and Microsoft all offer templates for you to download. Go to their websites and look for services for home computers, crafts, seasonal downloads, etc. You can insert photographs, edit data for special days, and then print out each page. The binding is up to you.
If you’d rather hire someone to do a lot of the work, go to FedEx Kinko’s website (Kinkos.com will still take you there) to create your calendar online (look for “Cards and Calendars”). It will cost around twenty dollars depending on what you select. Wait a few days for the finished product to arrive in the mail. Now you have a master calendar onto which you can write important data by hand and embellish to make it unique to your family. Once complete, take the binding apart, and you can make as many colored photocopies as you need. Other websites to check are Ofoto.com and Shutterfly.com.
No computer? No artistic talent? No scanner or digital camera? No problem. You can go into an office supply shop such as Kinko’s, hand the clerk twelve photographs, identify which month each one is for, pay about $24.95 for a photo calendar, and come back in a day to pick it up. Now you can customize and embellish with stickers and markers to make it your special family calendar.
One final word of caution: If you do this too well, you unwittingly may establish a new family tradition. And you know what that means? Your family will eagerly anticipate a new edition of your family calendar every year.
That may not be such a bad idea.
Family Cookbook
One of the best ways to tie a ribbon of love around your family tree is to create a family cookbook. I don’t know what it is about food, but it touches the soul. It has a way of gluing families together. Perhaps this is the year you should consider putting together a family cookbook. I can’t think of a more amazing gift to give all the members of your family than to organize and publish a family cookbook.
Recording a family’s recipes preserves an important piece of your heritage to pass on from one generation to the next. But before you make a quick decision to publish your family’s cookbook this year, you need to know that this is a serious project. Depending on the size and scope of your design, it could be challenging. So think this through carefully. While handwriting an entire cookbook is a possibility, it’s not practical. This is a project for a computer.
Will you do this together with several other family members or go it alone? If others are willing to pitch in, you’ll make easy work of this large task. However, it is a project that one person can do quite efficiently.
Design. Before you start, you need to outline what your cookbook will entail. Of course, you’ll have recipes, but will you also include biographical information about family members? Stories or anecdotes that tie these recipes to your family? Pictures? Clip art? What size will you make your final cookbook? Will you bind the pages together? Will you make photocopies or print it yourself?
Collection. Write a simple letter to all of your family members requesting that they send you recipes according to the criteria you’ve chosen. Be sure to give a deadline or you’ll be collecting recipes on Christmas Eve. It is important to include current recipes being used by family members too. Remember, all of you are creating history as you live your lives. Remind your family members to double-check the ingredients and the measurements.
Compilation. And now the fun begins. You can build your cookbook using a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, which offers a variety of useful templates. If you are experienced in Word, you’ll do well. My experience is that Word is not as friendly as I’d like. This is why I suggest that you seriously consider investing in software specifically designed for creating a family cookbook. Take a look at CookbookWizard.com. For less than thirty dollars, you will make your life considerably easier while turning out a visually pleasing gift that is easy to read, uniform in style, and very useful.
Other additions. Consider leaving room to include your family tree, favorite stories about family members, a history of where the family came from, as well as photos. Everyone loves the photos! Add some quirky interest with trivia you’ll find at the “On this day in history . . .” website (History.com/tdih.do).
Binding. Once you’ve printed the pages for your cookbook, it’s time to put them together. Your method of binding will be determined greatly by how many pages you end up with. If you want the cookbook to open flat, use comb binding. This is a plastic spine similar to spiral binding. Copy shops offer this type of binding for a reasonable price.
If it is a fairly thin booklet, you can punch holes through the pages and string twine or ribbon through the holes to hold the pages securely. Or a local print or office supply store such as OfficeMax or Kinko’s will be happy to do the printing, copying, and binding for you, though your choices of bindings there will be limited.
Family Christmas Letter
If you can compose a decent sentence and have access to a few modern-day tools, you have all you need to create a unique and priceless gift—a family Christmas letter. Done well, it will be treasured by those who receive it, and that’s a gift money cannot buy.
Content. Tell about the past year using character sketches of family members. Entertain your readers with anecdotes that show rather than describe just how brilliant and clever your family members are. Good quotes, especially from little ones’ backseat conversations, are like pure gold. Interview your kids to come up with great material.
Appearance. If your letter doesn’t immediately captivate your reader, the best content in the world will go straight into the trash can. The care you take in the letter’s appearance shows the respect you have for your reader.
Length. Keep it to two pages, three at the most. There’s beauty in simplicity. Don’t do as one woman who sent me her twenty-eight-page, two-sided, single-spaced account of every single day of the entire year. Your goal is to leave your readers wishing for more, not pleading for less.
White space. This is the area on a page that is not covered by print. If you are conscious of big blank white spaces, you have too much white space. If you squint your eyes and the entire page looks gray, you don’t have enough. A judicious use of white space gives your readers’ eyes a chance to rest.
Margins. This is mandatory white space. One and a half inches at the top and at least one inch at the bottom, right, and left are good rules of thumb.
Fonts. Control yourself. Even though you have 579 choices readily available, use no more than three in the same letter. Two is better.
Punctuation. There are specific rules about everything from quotation mark placement to spaces between sentences. When you care enough to punctuate correctly, you show respect for your readers’ intelligence. Visit TeacherVision.com and type “proper punctuation” in the search box.
Pictures. You can increase your letter’s value by including special photos. Make sure your pictures do not collide with your text. Be sure to allow for buffer space—a margin of at least ¼ inch between the edges of the picture and where the text begins. When it comes to photos and clip art, more is tacky, less is lovely.
Proofreading. It’s difficult to find your own errors, and spell-checkers are not completely reliable. Ask a couple of people to proofread your final version.
Simplicity. When you have a choice between a long word and a short word, go with the short one. Strip every sentence so all that remains are the cleanest components. Examine every word and keep only those that are necessary. Don’t say “At this point in time” when you can say “Now.”
Etiquette. The purpose of your family letter is to reacquaint readers with your family and to convey your wishes for their joyful holiday. Keep to these rules:
- No press releases. This is not the right time to review your amazing career and most recent promotion.
- No fund-raising. You do have a captive audience, but curb the urge to ask for donations for your next mission trip or sponsors for your kids’ Jog-a-Thon.
- No sales pitches. It is not cool to include an invitation to your next Tupperware party or mention that you have an amazing business opportunity to share.
Start now. Letters thrown together at the last minute usually show it.
Gift Baskets
A basket filled with delicious treats and fun gadgets will please just about anyone on your gift list if it’s tailor-made. Choose an attractive container—it doesn’t have to be a basket—decorate and fill it. Your “basket” can be as simple or as extravagant, as big or as small, as your budget and imagination allow.
A gift basket is a great gift for an entire family, including the pets. The basket itself can actually cost less than fancy wrapping paper. No matter what time of year it is right now, start looking for elegant but cheap baskets and containers. A great source for beautiful yet inexpensive baskets is stores such as Trader Joe’s, Big Lots, and World Market.
Once you start thinking creatively, you won’t have to worry about where to shop to start filling your baskets but rather when to stop. As you fill the basket, lean items at an angle rather than stacking everything vertically. Presentation is most important.
Family fun night. Fill a large bowl or other container with everything required: DVDs, microwave popcorn, theater-sized boxes of candy, a puzzle, a deck of cards, and bottles of soda.
Party of two. Include boxes of dry pasta, a jar of spaghetti sauce (homemade would be nice), breadsticks, candlesticks, and a CD of classical Italian music.
Christmas in a box. For someone living alone, send a tabletop tree, a string of garland, a tree topper, lights, and a box of ornaments. Also include a CD of Christmas carols to be played while decorating the tree.
Bookworm basket. Fill a basket with a few books; a coffee mug; packets of hot chocolate, instant coffee, or tea; a tin of cookies; and a pillow.
Letter writer’s basket. Include assorted greeting cards, postcards, stationery, postage stamps, pens, pencils, and return address labels.
Gift wrap basket. Include curling ribbon, wrapping paper, gift cards, transparent tape, scissors, gift bags, and tissue paper.
Bath basket. Fill a basket with bubble bath, lotion, bath powder, fragrance, scented candles, a back brush, a loofah sponge, soap, a book, and a CD of relaxing music.
Gourmet’s basket. Include fresh dried herbs tied in a bundle, fresh spices, unique kitchen tools, recipe cards, and jars of gourmet mustards and salsas.
Artist’s basket. Include brushes, brush cleaner, a sketch pad, a palette, a beret, sponges, a small canvas, and colored pencils.
Picnic basket. Fill a basket with a tablecloth, napkins, plastic plates, utensils, candleholders, candles, salt and pepper shakers, plastic bags, and bug spray.
Mother of a preschooler basket. Include activity books and games for the kids, coping manuals, babysitting coupons for a night or weekend away from it all, bubble bath, and a romantic novel.
Pizza basket. Fill a basket with checkered napkins, a pizza stone, recipes, special flour, spices, a jar of pizza sauce, cheese, and a pizza cutter.
Gardener’s basket. Fill a basket with work gloves, a trowel, seed-marking stakes, seeds or bulbs, decorative pots, a sun bonnet, a tiny birdhouse, and sunscreen.
Breakfast in a basket. Include homemade jelly, pancake mix, muffin mix, a biscuit cutter, honey, cinnamon sugar, mugs, gourmet coffee, a crêpe pan, favorite recipes, and tea.
Coffee lover’s basket. Include a bag of exotic coffee beans, a coffee mug, bagels, and a bagel cutter.
When our girls were small, they got caught up in the “I wants” of Christmas, so we started a new tradition. Every Christmas we would set aside a certain amount of money, and we and the girls would spend the weeks before Christmas looking and praying for people who might have a need we could meet. The catch was that we had to get the money or gift to them without them knowing who gave it. That way they could only thank God. If we got caught, we put more money in the fund and tried again. The girls absolutely loved it, and it changed their thinking from what they could get to what they could give.
P.B., email
One year my oldest daughter from New Hampshire could not get up to Pittsfield, Maine, for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, so she started a new tradition. It was a celebration between the two holidays on a weekend when we could all manage to get together. She began calling it Thanksmas. We have a meal, exchange gifts, and thank God for each other. We alternate holding the event at her house and ours.
Elizabeth C., email