Fun Family History Christmas Presents

The older I get, the more I value Christmas presents that have a meaning. I have outgrown the '70's "gotta have" bell bottoms teenager stuff, the '80's newlywed casserole dish infestation, the '90's Pogs and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze for my kids, and the 2000's stuff, stuff, and more stuff! I am hearkening back to what really means the most to me... Family! Everything else can come and go, but families are there through thick and thin forever!

This is little Miss Oaklie. We decided to do a book of pictures of her throughout the year that we had taken. It captures her year very well and you can really see the personality shine through. She is a little pistol that can shoot you a look that just melts your heart! Typical grandmother feeling, I know!

Next person up was Raylie Kay. Isn't she adorable? We pulled from our storage bank of pictures of Raylie through the year. At this point, we were on a roll and decided to keep going!

After the granddaughters, we decided to try out a book about our daughter's wedding! After all, she was the reason we had granddaughters! I suppose we should have started here, but were coming from a different place at the time. Once we got going, we realized that we could make books of anything! It was fun to do this wedding book because we used pictures that we took with our own camera, not the official photographer's pictures.

CAM's wedding came next! By then, we were semi-pros at this book creation thing! Again, my husband was the mastermind behind the project!

Finally, last year was our 30th wedding anniversary and we took ourselves to Europe for thirty days. We came home with about 1400 pictures, but we were able to narrow them down enough to create a memento of the fun we had!

These books were created with Shutterfly, an online photo company. It is one of many companies out there that are into desktop publishing. Google desktop publishing and you'll be amazed at what you can do!

Hopefully, seeing these will give you some ideas. It may be a little late for this year, but a great time to get started for next year! The sky's the limit!

Just a Little Slice in Time!

Time flies! Here's a Christmas present that we created for grandparents when the kids were 5 and 7 yrs. old.  We had just moved and the kids were excited to share the mountains with their grandparents! The grandparents talked about these pillowcases for years afterwards. Maybe this will give you an idea for a Christmas present this year!

Salt Lake City Family History Expo 2010-Genealogy Gifts and Games by Kim Woodbury

Do you want to involve your family in your genealogy pursuits but all you get is the rolling of the eyes from them? Involve them in ways that they may not even realize! Kim talked all about gifts and games that you can create using your family history. Think about commercial games that are on the market. Can you adapt them? Think bingo, matching games, go fish, etc. Create calendars, alphabet books, or family yearbooks. With the advent of online publishing, creating these items has become so easy! Do you have a family cookbook? What about Christmas ornaments? As you can see, the sky is the limit! Get creative and think outside the box! Remember, Christmas is just around the corner!