04 Oct 3 Gift Ideas for the Winter Holidays
Are you starting to think about the winter holidays, and what unique, meaningful gifts you could get for friends and family? It feels like preparing for the winter holidays starts earlier and earlier each year!
One suggestion is to use your photos to create one-of-a-kind gifts. You could use old family photos to create family history photo albums, or recent pictures to remember trips or events. Photo books, calendars or even digital scans of hard to access slides or negatives make wonderful gifts!
If you would like to create a photo project such as a calendar or a photo book, October is a great time to start. We’re far enough into the year that many recent memories have been made and pictures have been taken. But early enough to collect pictures that other family members have and start the project. Then, just the last few Thanksgiving pictures could be added before turning the project over to a publisher.
Regardless of whether your goal is a photo book or a calendar, to include recent pictures or legacy pictures, the biggest hurdle is gathering the pictures. If the pictures are in your possession, you need to curate them to ensure that the best photos are selected. If someone else has the pictures, sometimes it is challenging to get them, in order to start the project. In my case, the issue is not so much gathering my own photos, the issue is more of getting photos of the grandkids from their parents (my kids).
I encourage the adult kids to send their pictures in any way: emails, text messages, I even set up a DropBox folder for them. They are very busy with their own lives, and seem to have difficulties finding the time to share the pictures. But when the project is done, they just love the results!
Here are some sample photo projects:
- Calendars:
I create a calendar each year. It contains the highlights of the year around the kids and grandkids. I include birthdays, with a picture of the celebrant in the square for that date. I make copies for each of the kids, their grandmothers, and some of the aunts, uncles and cousins.
2. Photo Books:
I’ve created several photo books as Christmas presents. The ones I’ve worked on contained legacy pictures. The one which was most appreciated was one in which I took old photos from albums which were falling apart, scanned them with their labels, and created a photo book for an elderly woman of her childhood through early twenties. There were tears in her eyes when she looked through that book!
3. Slide Scanning:
One of my clients had around 800 slides from the 1960’s that have not seen the light of day (or the light of a projector) for many, many years. I scanned the slides and copied them to a USB. They plugged the USB into the TV on Christmas, and got to see themselves from all those years ago!
If you have any suggestions for photo projects, please respond in the comments section of this blog.
If you have questions or would like guidance, please do not hesitate to contact me at www.PreciousMemsPhoto.com/Contact.
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