Using your computer, make a booklet of your favorite recipes, ideas, craft ideas, family history stories, poems, essays, jokes, quotes, etc. Include photos and sketches.
My neighbor up the road made booklets for her children and grandchildren one Christmas. One booklet contained recipes for quick breads and the other recipes for beverages. She wrote a page about herself and also included a statement of her values and beliefs in it.
One of my sisters collected and typed family history stories and gave them as gifts to us. It is very valuable to me.
Another one of my sisters compiled and typed family e-mails. She added a few clip-art graphics then bound them all in a book. She entitled it, “E-mail Wit and Wisdom—From Sister to Sister” and gave one to each of us as well as our children. I think it was my kid’s favorite gift that Christmas, they sat around all Christmas afternoon reading them. My sisters are witty and it was entertaining reading.
I have written several different booklets and given them as gifts. My favorite would be the “Homespun Happiness” booklet that I sometimes give as a wedding gift in a cake pan, with a brownie mix and spatula.
You could make a booklet telling a favorite childhood memory or story illustrating it with photos.
Computers make typing so easy now that you can type the pages and take them to a printer who will copy and bind them with staples, plastic, or spiral wire. Writing the book or booklet takes some time for the original gift, but is easy giving after that.
Updated to add:
For Valentine’s Day I made Calvin and the kids a “Twelve Things I Love About You” booklet on our computer. Using digital pictures taken within the past year, the booklet is a simple way to remind them that they are appreciated and loved.
Here’s a sample page from Calvin’s booklet:
Twelve Things I Love About You . . .
1. You’re adaptable.
One thing I love about you is how you adapt to the kids’ likes. You have your own likes and dislikes, but you adjust to the kids’ personalities so that you can do things with them that they enjoy instead of expecting them to always adapt to the things you enjoy. For example, you will watch chick-flicks and even ROMANCES with Ande if she asks you . . . not once, not twice, not even three times . . . but as often as she invites you. You can even speak the lines before they play in the movie (“Brinkley . . . Brinkley . . . Don’t cry Shopgirl.”) If anyone is watching a movie you don’t want to see when you come in, you’ll sit and read a book quietly until it’s finished and then make your selection. You gotta love a man that will adapt to his kids.
To make your own inexpensive booklet on a computer, you can follow these simple directions
- Open Microsoft Word program
- Click on File, Page Setup.
- Click Landscape and then OK
- Click Format, Columns.
- Click Two and then under Spacing increase to 1” and then click OK
- Now you have the format in which to make a booklet. Choose your font style/color and type in the words you want to say.
- Insert digital photos by clicking on Insert, Picture, File
- You can use regular photos by leaving a blank space and then pasting the pictures in place after you have printed your booklet.
- Print booklet on front and back of heavy, white cardstock.
- Crease pages in center.
- Fold
- Make a cover out of colored cardstock and embellish as desired. Put pages of booklet within cover.
- Staple two times in center of booklet with a long-armed stapler (if you don’t have one, you may have to go to a copy center and ask them to do it for you).
- Decorate the cover of booklet and sign with a personal note if you wish.
(The reason I chose twelve things is because it uses three sheets of paper front and back with double columns. Another option is to simply make the booklet in your own handwriting and bag the computer all together.)
