Great gift for parents who are hard to buy for

My parents aren’t easy to buy for anymore.  I’d run out of great ideas and needed something new and meaningful to give them.  So with my siblings, we came up with this idea for our parents.  This works as a great Christmas gift, Mother’s Day/Father’s Day gift, Anniversary, or Birthdays.

I asked each of my siblings to choose and print photos they had taken over the years of their family doing things.  My parents don’t get to see many of the things we do and often don’t see the photographs of the vacations we take, or the everyday moments of our lives.  So we each picked about 200 photos and printed them. The number of photos will vary depending on how many people are in the family and how many albums you want to fill–we filled two albums and there are 6 kids in my family.

Each sibling mailed me their photos (we don’t all live in the same state) and I mixed all the photos together and assembled them using Project Life albums and kits.  You could also just put them in regular photo albums, or print them as a photo book from companies like Shutterfly, My publisher or Blurb.  If your siblings live close, you could get together and assemble the albums together.  

I mixed up the photos, but you could keep them together according to family if you wanted.

I used one Project Life kit per album.  I put the photos in first and then added the Project Life cards to make it look a little better.

We didn’t do it this time, but next time we do this I’ll have each person write on the back of each photo the year the photo was taken and where it was taken.  That would be helpful for posterity’s sake.  And for my parents as they didn’t know where each photo took place.  Instead of writing on the back of photos you could also write the info on Project Life journaling cards next to the photos.

Huge hit with the parents.  And it’s also fun to get the albums out when we’re all together and look through the photos.  This type of gift takes some pre-planning and due-dates so you can get everyone’s photos printed in time.  Assembling the albums took 2-3 hours but would go faster if a group of you did it together.  This could easily be a recurring gift.  Each year you can print out a new batch of photos and assemble them into books.  A meaningful gift that helps preserve and document the lives of our families.

*For a gift for your kids, check out this idea.

*Check here for ideas on how and where to print your photos.

*For more photography related posts, check the Photography section in the menu bar.