Parent Tips: A Unique and Precious Gift

Start now to make your child [or each of your children] a very personal holiday gift. Make them a book about who they are that year: "Carson at 9" or "Meghan at 13" or even "David at 20." Make each page separately on individual sheets.  When it comes time to finish the book you can choose to put the pages in what is called a "presentation folder" [under $5 at Office Depot or Staples etc.]  If you are feeling grand have them hard-bound at an office store [such as Staples'  "Ambassador" binding for about $10 per book. These "A Year in the Life" style books can be done for any age person and are always big hits at birthdays or holidays.

Page style options and examples:
1- Scrapbooking style  or stickers or borders or colorful
2- Photo album style pages
     [WITH captions to id the people and places]
3. List pages
[Steve's friends this year, Suzi's favorite TV shows, etc.]
4. Anecdote pages
[funny or special stories from the year]
5. Theme pages
[School, Vacations, Work, Friends, Sports]
6. Accomplishments pages
[Learning to Drive, First Steps, Little League, Starting College]
7. In the News pages
[capture the year in news stories, sports, entertainment etc.]
8. Guest pages [ask relatives or friends to do a page about
the person]

Be as fancy or as simple as you want! This is a gift that no one else has, that doesn't need batteries, and gets more and more valuable to both the giver and the recipient with every passing year.

P.S. Be sure you date it, write a "To/From" page, and put a current picture of the person in the front!