But, as promised before my hiatus, I wanted to talk about what I gave for Christmas presents this year. Growing up, my husband's family was big into carving pumpkins at Halloween. They would create elaborate designs on paper, tape them to a green pumpkin (because there was more contrast between the dark green skin and the yellow flesh underneath), and then use an exacto knife to carve the designs.
Pretty impressive, huh? I never got past triangle eyes and nose, and jagged teeth, myself!In later years, when the grandkids came along, my mother-in-law started using Disney coloring books to create her designs.
This is Scar from the Lion King. Very cool-looking on a pumpkin!
Anyway, my mother-in-law had two file-cabinet drawers STUFFED full of pumpkin patterns, and copies of the patterns. I spent some time this spring going through them all, organizing them by year and subject matter, and scanning them. I then got rid of all the extra copies (in a variety of sizes), thus condensing the two drawers full down to about 6 inches' worth. After scanning them, I put them all onto CD, and printed out an index with thumbnail-sized images. These were very well-received by my husband's siblings and nieces and nephews, and it was easy and inexpensive to make. To produce the indexes, put them in little report covers, and duplicate the CDs cost me about $3 per person.
I also gave my nieces and sisters-in-law copies of the jean quilt instruction pamphlet I put together this spring to sell on etsy. Everyone in the family has a jean quilt made for them by my mother-in-law. Price to make a booklet-sized color copy of the instructions came to about $4 per copy.
Both of these gifts were inexpensive to make but provided something that the recipient couldn't just run out to the store and pick up for themselves. I really love to both give and receive gifts like this that have family significance, and that preserve parts of our family history.
