I am in need of some gift ideas. ILs decided to draw names for Christmas this year, and I think I got the most difficult person to shop for in DH's family - my FIL! We have a limit of $25 to spend. He's not into drinking or sports or any of the typical guy things - aside from motorcyles, which he loves! He works as one of the head finance guys at an area multi-million dollar construction company. 

HTH. If you need more info to help me out, feel free to ask. TIA!

So right after my previous post, I got to work. I read some of the Window Movie Maker help file and dove in. It took about 3.5 hours to come up with a two minute video, but I think it was worth it. This will be a great gift for the cost of a DVD-R and I had a great time making it.




It's got a few things I might go back and change, but tell me what you think. If anyone's got questions, ask, and if anyone's interested in having a brief tutorial posted, let me know.

A lot of digital cameras take short digital videos now, length dependent on the size of your memory card (and larger cards aren't very expensive). It took me a long time to "get around" to looking in the book about how take video with my camera, and it turned out to involve turning the dial on the top to the icon that looks like a movie camera, pointing at the subject, and pressing the button, just like taking a picture. Totally easy.

Ok, after feeling dumb about that, I made a little video of my daughter, and then promptly forgot about the whole thing. I think we often tend to think of making movies as recording important events. But YouTube, etc., seems to be changing that. I don't like to watch the entire VHS of my wedding, and I don't imagine I'd want to sit through an hour of my daughter's first birthday party, even if I had recorded it. But snippet videos, which happen to be the kind possible with the camera, of little bits and snatches of life, are quite enjoyable.

So I had been thinking that I should start trying to remember to take more videos of my daughter, for memory's sake, but also so that I could put some on disc for her grandparents. But often when I catch her at something interesting, it requires intervention rather than documentation.

Anyway, the other day I read this post by Brenda Coulter (intended for authors) about making your own book trailers. (At least check out her trailer. It's good and you'll have a better idea what I'm talking about.) Basically what she's done is taken series still images, layered in some words, set it to music. If these were your own images, rather than images to evoke scenes from a novel, it might be sort of like a moving scrapbook, right? Ms. Coulter said she basically used software that was just hanging out on her computer (Windows Movie Maker) and the only thing she really paid for was the background music that wasn't public domain. I figure if your movie is personal, for personal use, and will not be widely shown, you can probably get away with using just about anything, including popular recordings that fit the images or are special to you and the recipient.

Is this making sense?

Some examples:
Grandparents Their grandchild's Year in Pictures: Pics you've taken of your child throughout the year, both special events and just because with descriptions or stories
Children Movies of something special to them, a chronical of a special event like graduation, or images of their toys and what the toys do when the child isn't around
Older Children possibly read: grown children, might enjoy a montage of snapshots from their childhood. A lot of people seem to move around a lot not to be into keeping books and boxes of photos, and might appreciate have this kind of copy of things you're holding onto. Also a nice thing they could share with their kids.
Siblings do you and your siblings share any special memories? An annual family vacation or just some one time that was special to you? Do you have, or does someone in your family have pictures you could use?
Extended family What about a video family tree? Not as cute as what those kids did with the Polaroids, maybe [weeps over that commercial!] but it might make a nice slideshow to find a starting point and work your way up through the branches with a series of pictures.
Coworkers Are you bored at work? Think you could make up some kind of story involving all your coworkers? Maybe with a mystery theme. Take pics for the next couple months and arrange them along with bits of the story, like a silent movie. Make copies for everyone.
Friends Again, a special place, event, memory? Images of what their friendship means you to? If you have internet friends who are compulsive picture posters, you can steal all their images and make them into a movie. If your friendship involves sharing a hobby, try a movie about that.
Old Friends Do you have old shoeboxes full of photos or scrapbooks? Is there someone you went to camp or college with who would love to have a collection of those memories? Maybe you have pictures of you and your BFF at different ages as you grew up together. Or maybe you still live in or visit that same town and could do a then and now theme.
Spouses I'm certainly not even going to make the suggestion, although I do remind you that your digital camera has a delay feature for self-portraits.

Well, what do you think? I think I want to at least look at doing one, see how complicated it is. If nothing else, it's unique, totally thoughtful, and seems inexpensive. Anyone tried this?

I report that I did very little. I got wrapped up in some personal projects in the weeks before, so I didn't do as much as I wanted to. I did make cookies, which were good, I did make a nice dinner. I didn't get my fortune cookie in the take-out container thing done, nor did I get a dress made for dd.

No plans for St. Patrick's Day.

On the Christmas stuff, I'm still saving $20 a week and that's going really well. So even if I don't get other stuff made for gifts, at least I'll have some money to buy some. I've started checking Etsy on a regular basis for unique gifts, though I haven't found anything yet.

On another Christmas prep note, this past year I wanted to make a calendar for my parents featuring pictures of my daughter. But at that time of year, it seemed overwhelming to slog through all my pictures and try to pick out the right ones. This year I'm choosing one picture a month so that by mid-December the calendar should be ready to print and one gift will be DONE.

Easter is on April 8 this year. This is about the time I start wondering about that.

Ok, I really think I am going to do this for VD.

I'm going to take one of the chinese food containers that I've cleaned and saved in my craft room, trace it onto posterboard, and cover it with valentine fabric (using fusible web). The handle will probably be beaded wire.

I think I might put a few different kinds of cookies and candies in it, but the fortune cookie recipe I want to try is this one.

x-posted to personal

Well, here's what we are taking for Christmas Dinners!

My s/mom is making meatball sandwiches, so DH and I are taking chips and a dessert (cappucino cake). Both ILs and s/mom's family do big traditional dinners, so we like to do something different when we get together! ;-)

My MIL still hasn't told me what the plan is there, but we always seem to get nominated to bring dinner rolls. Last night we picked them up and I got ingredients for my peppermint treats - similar to peanut brickle but made with candy canes and almond bark! Mmmmm! This year I'm going to dye it green and decorate it like a wreath.

As far as gifts go, I think I may do a brownie mix for my dad, FIL, and GFIL because I am just at a complete loss as to what to get them. I think that is my best options because they all have MAJOR sweettooths with a weakness for chocolate!

ETA: The brownie mix idea is out because I couldn't find a jar big enough to hold it all, so I think I'm just going to bake them the night before and put them in a pretty box for them to open on Christmas Day! Oh, I bought chocolate & peanut butter chips to add to them!

For those of you who don't get the holidayplanning flylady crossover, I wanted to let any who were interested know that I posted a draft of the aforementioned cookbook to flylady here.

I know the idea of making cookbooks for people isn't new, but I thought I'd bring it up. Yesterday my mom said that she had talked to my brother and he had mentioned that he had ordered pizza three times last week (from Dominos, for goodness sake! Blech!). My brother is single and lives with one roommate on the other side of the country from us. He seems to put in long hours at his job, and when a deadline looms, he works longer. The roommate works for the same company and my brother says that the roommate is even worse.

Those of you who know me from flylady might remember that I am a rabid fan of both crockpots and mene planning. I know my brother has a crockpot because my mom gave him one for Christmas a few years ago, but he claims he doesn't use it. I know he still has it because I saw it on a shelf in recent photos of his new apartment.

So what I plan on doing is coming up with at least 10 recipes that I think will work well for him and his roommate. Things that go together quickly and easily, and with a concentration on convenience groceries like instant rice, frozen chicken breasts, beef cut and packaged for stew, prepared fresh and frozen vegetables, etc. (as opposed to concentrating on frugality and a lot of time-consuming kitchen tasks which is how my own menu is). I figure 10 recipes will give him 2 work-weeks full of recipes, and since he's single and has disposable income, he'd likely either eat out on the weekend or perhaps cook something more involved or in the conventional stovetop way since he'd have time. I intend to use the same quanities I cook for my family which provide a "man portion", "woman portion", "toddler then the dog gets it portion", and a "lunch portion". Two guys might split that between them and may or may not have a lunch leftover. The recipes will be complete with quick side dishes where applicable, and each week will have a grocery list.

I figure I'll either print one day per page like in my control journal, and use plastic sleeves in a binder, or possibly print half-pages and laminate with contact paper. But I'm leaning toward the first as it will be less work and more practical. If he hates it, he can recycle everything.

Off to think up recipes!

Ha! But anyway, craftgrrl has a ton of links for holiday gifts to make.

The past few days I've started to get Christmas catalogs. I can't afford the stuff in them, but there are some ideas for things to make, and I really like to look. Today's catalog is Solutions and apparently they have a website at Solutions.com. It occured to me that this might be a place to look if you're looking for a gift for the housekeeper who has everything. Or if you're so monetarily blessed that you can spend $14.50 on two rolls of Christmas themed toilet paper. There's cooking stuff, decorating stuff, organizing stuff, cleaning stuff, Christmas stuff, pet stuff, beauty stuff.