A Memorable Christmas Gift

Are you struggling for a gift idea for your parents or grandparents or brothers and sisters? My brother, sister and I collaborated on this book last year for our parents. My mother takes it everywhere with her and even reads it to my dad on road trips. When I was back at my sister's wedding I photographed a few pages of it (sorry the photo quality isn't that great).....my mom showed me the tear drops she had left on the pages.

All three of us wrote a letter to my parents about how much we appreciated them and with it included a few pages of our most vivid memories of children. It was so amazing reading each other's memories as well. Some were good, some bad and most hilarious. We each ended up with about 10 full pages of memories....the book is about 50 pages.

I printed the pages out on cardstock and added in photos here and there. The front page was a photo of my parents on their wedding day and I covered it with a piece of vellum with a letter of introduction on it. I took the book to Kinko's and had them spiral bind it and add a clear vinyl cover and sturdy back to it.


The memory portions were sometimes as stories and sometimes as lists. I even put some sad things in like when my grandmother died and my parents forgot to tell me until they asked me to get dressed for the funeral....long story.


Memories of the restaurant we used to eat at a few times a week and how I used to trick my parents into thinking I was sick so I could stay with my grandmother and watch the Twilight Zone instead of going to church:


My brother is hilarious and made his entire memory section resemble a computer accessing data from a hard drive:


The last section of the book was a compilation of memories and photos from the last big family trip we took to Ireland/Scotland/England in 1997. My husband and I had just started dating and I wrote him between 2-3 postcards a day to keep myself sane....he kept them and I typed them all up with exactly what we did each day. I was really bratty at the time and we drove the entire perimeter of Ireland in a mini van so there were some funny stories.


I think this book was even more special to my brother and sister and I because it became almost a mini-memoir of our childhood. It was nothing fancy and very simple.

Another idea for grandparents (and yourself) is a yearly compilation of a child's artwork, photos and memories. I've made one the past two years and of course I'll make one this year. I use the Mac iPhoto software but it you don't have a Mac check out my other post and it has some other links to similar products.

Below are some excerpts from the 2008 book. I couldn't post the whole thing because it was just too large a file. I hope it will give you some ideas for your own book. I included excerpts from my journals as a narrative.

I can't believe how little she was just not long ago....she doesn't even look like the same child! If you have trouble viewing the book click the link below:
Excerpts From Sienna 2008 Book