The Gift of Time

For Christmas this year, I decided to take the advice I had heard that experiences are more meaningful than things as gifts. Since I still needed gifts for the girls on my side of the family, I was trying to think of an experience that we could all enjoy together (and that was not a million dollars). Since Christmas for us happens in small town MN where blizzards are prone to strike at any moment, I knew that going anywhere was out of the question. Hence, it had to be something that was doable at home.

As I pondered things we might all enjoy doing together at home for not a lot of money, I realized that we were all pretty creative people. We've all spent time here and there making cards of various sorts, being creative in our cooking, engaged in fine arts, etc. That being the case, I decided that maybe we should attempt scrapbooking. To accomplish this, I covered my bases by guaranteeing that everyone would be home and have one day free during the Christmas break. (Easier said than done.) I knew my mom and my sister-in-law had a good chunk of supplies that would be helpful, so I made sure those supplies would also be in the house at the time. Then, I got to do the fun part. I took the money that I normally would have spent on the girls and bought scrapbooking supplies (the actual book, stickers, ribbons, embellishments, etc.)

The more I thought about this adventure though, the more it occurred to me that if I was going to do scrapbooking, I needed to have some kind of focus, so I decided that it'd be cool to do a scrapbook centering on photos of people in the kitchen and family recipes. First, I managed to find a library book about recipe-centered scrapbooking just to get us started. Then, when I was at home, Mom and I went through scores of old pictures and albums looking for pictures of people eating, cooking, or in places where we could associate a recipe with it. Then, we started tracking down recipes, and away we went. And for the final touch, we had the boys cook lunch for us while we were working!

When the day came, we spent a good chunk of hours making pages, as documented in the photos below. It was more challenging for some of us than others, but we all contributed to the album, and enjoyed spending time together. Lots of memories were made :-) Oh, and we also plan on adding to it at future Christmases as well. The gift that keeps on giving :-)

So, having now had experience with giving experiences, I would highly recommend it. :-)