Father's First Christmas

Christi Johnston just did a Heavenly toes party for me, and I would highly recommend it!!! The pieces are priceless!!!!! You will not be disappointed

I make handprint/photo tiles every year for my husband with our two - and pick a different poem every time. I use thise for Father's day...last Xmas I gave him a father's ring with the boys stones and names. I've also done a handcasting with both boys (course not a surprise) where they held onto daddy's hand.

Best gift my husband loved from each of the boys is a "Daddy and Me" album. I made it as a traditional scrapbook (7x7 in size), but am currently helping my sister make one for her husband using StoryBook Creator from Creative Memories. It is a free software; use it off-line/don't have to be on the Internet until done. Check it ____@____.com/daniellemohr . Your husband will cherish the book and it is something your daughter can have back many years from now when she needs reminding of her bond/times with Daddy, etc.

Good luck! Enjoy the holidays... everything is more magical thru the eyes of a child.

My husband loves it when i have my photos done with the kids then frame them in a special frame with captions or just take special snapshots and frame them with captions and stories about the moment.

not unique but special
A. J

You could make a book for him. I've been selling Heritage Makers for a few months - you can go to www.makesomethingspecial.com and check it out.

You can also put her handprint on ceramics. The website of the lady I have used is www.paintedpiggies.com. Timla does a great job.

The book might be something better for Father's Day since she is still so young. I think putting her sweet tiny handprint on something would be so special.

Have a great week!

There are tons of photo gift ideas at photo websites like snapfish.com.

By far, one of my husband's favorite gifts has been a "Daddy & Me" scrapbook I made using photos of him with each of our children.

I used a "Daddy & Me" board book that he liked to read to the kids as my inspiration. The book has photos of dads and kids doing things like jumping, playing guitar, etc. Each page in the little scrapbook was titled "Daddy and me...." then whatver they were doing in the photo. "Daddy and me reading" "Daddy and me dancing" then there's ...singing, ...chillin', ....snoozing....
Whatever you can catch them doing together!

I used a small scrapbook (7X7) so I only needed about 20 photos. On the last page I traced the kids' feet.
It took about 2 hours to complete the book.

How about pictures of you and your baby together. I did this for my husband when my daughter was three and it has been his favorite gift so far. You can also make your own photo books with websites like www.picaboo.com. These make really nice gifts.

I make stepping stones with hand prints with different mosaic and different phrases every year. He expects it now after 3 years but someday we will have an entire path of little hands getting bigger and bigger. I get the kit from Michaels.

For fathers day one year, I took a photo of my husband holding my son right after bath time (neither had a shirt on) and my son had his head on his shoulder (vary candid) and made it B & W with an AWESOME poem about being a daddy. He Cried! He had no ideas why I asked him a month before to take his shirt off and hold Tyler :-)

Good Luck!
E.

All of the ideas mentioned are great! I just wanted to add that there is usually a kiosk in the malls (I've seen them in NE Mall and in malls in other states) around Christmas time that sell handmade ornaments. They are really cute and usually feature little reindeer families or other Christmas-y type figures with little banners across the figure and a banner at the bottom. You can get them for however many you have in your family and have it personalized with names on the individual banner and whatever phrase you want on the big one. They handpaint the phrase on it.

For example, my bro and sis in law have triplets and they usually get my mom and dad one of these every year. They will normally get one that has four elves or reindeer on it, one for each grandchild with their name on each individual banner and Christmas 2007 (or whatever year) on the big banner at the bottom. I'm not sure I'm doing such a good job of describing it, but they are adorable! However, they are heavy, so be careful if you get one and actually hang it on your tree.

I sell a great product called Heavenly Toes. It is hand painted pottery where we take you child's foot prints and turn them into beautiful works of art. We do lots for daddy's. You are welcome to check out my web-site http://mydc.heavenlytoes.com/christijohnston and the company's main web-site at www.heavenlytoes.com We have lots of albums on both web-sites of pieces we've done and the main web-site has an album for things for dad's.

We do home parties where you can earn dicounted and even free pieces, but I always have people just coming over and printing individual pieces as well. The cut-off date to have pieces back in time for Christmas is November 1st.

You could do something with her footprint on a coffee cup, plate, tile, etc. at Quiggly's Clayhouse (http://www.quigglys.com/) or Feat of Clay.

You could also make/buy a photo/journal album for photos/notes. These would be notes and/or drawings from your daughter to her dad (of course you'd have to write them when she is little) or photos of just the two of them together. You would add at least one entry per year to the album. You can buy premade albums at many stores. Or something specifically targeted at this concept from Once Upon a Family (http://www.shopouaf.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&...)