Need Creative Ideas for Christmas Gifts......................

My new favorite gift is gift cards to DonorsChoose.org. I received one as a gift last year and had the best time spending it. It's a website where you can donate money toward a wide variety of school projects. Teachers across the county talk about what they need and you can contribute as much or as little as you'd like. You can search the site based on special interests, too, so if you want to help kids with ADHD, support art programs, math, etc., you can narrow it down that way.

I received project updates from the teacher for the one I chose and it was so rewarding to hear how the items were helping his kids!

My mom found this book at the christian bookstore (although I think you could find in anywhere) that was like a diary of her life. It asked a question on each page and she answered it. It asked about her childhood, how she met my dad, what school was like, what her fave memory of her mom and dad was and so on and so forth. They had one for moms and one for dads. It was the coolest thing ever. We got the story of her life for Christmas one year. It took time, but was the cost of the book.

I want to make a cookbook for my older kids as they leave the house with all the favorite and family recipes that they grew up with. One of the things that I don't have is a collection of my mom's recipes, so I can never have that fried chicken again. It's sad. So, I want to give that to my kids.

A book for your son from dad about what every young man needs to know as he grows up. His wisdom all in a book. What he wishes his dad said to him, all the questions that life answered. And then a book from you about what all men need to know from a woman's perspective.

The reverse for your younger daughter.

An opportunity for them to make such a book for their family with coupons for time set aside to work on that book, with the stuff to make the illustrations.

Art supplies in all types of art, from painting, to drawing, chalk, collage, decoupage along with some local art lessons for the youngers.

For the bigger girls, crazy as this sounds, some mix cd's of music that will remind them of home, growing up, the music you listened to, the crappy but sentimental stuff they listened to growing up.

A photo of each of them as a child, blown up and edited in an artsy masterful way, kind of like just their face looking down just a bit in black and white, so that it's them but not dated and not just a family photo. Frame it and it can be for their dorm wall.

Every year a do a photo book of my kids from that year for the grandparents. I am starting to do some for my husband of our pre-kid life. You could do a photo book for your older kids of their childhood.
You could start a charm bracelet for your daughter, adding to it on special occasions. It can be a treasured item as she gets older and cover a bunch of holiday gifts.
You could do a t-shirt quilt for the older kids if they have a bunch of old t-shirts still at your house.
You could plan a big family trip, and give little things related to the trip as gifts.

J., This is an ongoing problem every year with our family. We figured out in the end, there are so many things we have as adults, that we stopped exchanging gifts between us, and focused on the kids only. I will say, that a fellow teacher of mine did buy me a beautiful wooden purse mirror. I was touched more so with her gift than any other gift I've recieved from my sister's.
As for buying gifts for the adults look into "Red Envelope," they have some pretty nice stuff on line. They even have great stuff for men.
Congrats to your daughter. Look to Red Envelope, you might find something meaningful. If I think of anything else, I'll let you know.
Take care

One fun thing we used to do for my husband's parents that didn't really cost much was to come up with a funny project each year. One year, we gave my father in law (who was a great cook) a home-made cookbook with things like how to boil water, how to open a can of soup, things like that. I put a picture of the author on the back (me) and wrote a short summary of experience and exceptional recipes (his, of course). He laughed so hard he cried. We did newspaper for my mother in law with a made up article about her living in squallor (she was definately NOT someone who would do that) and found the worst picture of her we could (we deliberately took it one day while we were helping her paint). We also put in an article about her sister (with a nice picture) and how she did all of these super nice things for charity, as well as an advertisement for her daughter's made up bed and breakfast. We put in funny little ads and such.

We've also done things like buying a bunch of $1 items and putting them in a basket (individually wrapped), home made gift cards for things like car detailing/car washing/lawn mowing, etc., christmas stockings filled with wrapped presents for adults, photo albums, family tree albums, restored old pictures in a nice frame, subscriptions to magazines/blockbuster on line/clubs, gift cards to each family for the same place so everyone could get together for an outing, home made books from kids to their cousins that include pictures of them together, and creative baskets of things the family or person likes (such as a gift card for gas, fishing gear, a gift card for bait and a note saying our gift to you is a day of relaxation or for someone who likes to bake you might do a gift card to the grocery store or craft store, spatula, new recipe book and put inside of a cake pan or mixing bowl with a note such as have fun baking up something yummy!).

Plants are great gifts. They are alive and so is your heart.

if you haven't done this already for your adult kids, if you make duplicate photos of their childhood photos would be great. I have done this for many of my nieces and nephews and they have all loved them. As a parent you take your own photos, but when the kids grow up they want to remember their childhood and often there is only one set of pictures. I don't really have any ideas for your two younger children. Good luck.

Got an idea from a friend that I loved.....Last year I gave all family members a family photo that I had pasted to a smooth, glossy ivory colored rectangular tile and then modg podged to give a canvas like look.I embellished with some ribbon and bought cheap $1 easels from Wal Mart. They turned out great and you can do them in various sizes.Could even do a collage of photos on a tile and print out uplifting adjectives that describe the person in the photo and paste those on too. Could also cut words out from magazines to surround photos. Maybe even use a photo editing machine at Sam's or WM and print some words directly on the photo in the program so that they will be there already when you print the photo out.