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Gift Ideas for children using digital scrapbooking skills

Originally posted: Mar 24, 2007

Well, I'm off to St. Louis today to my niece's 5th birthday party (so no tutorial writing today, sorry!). I would love to show you a photo of my two adorable nieces, but without my sister's permission, I would not do that.

Hopefully, my sister will not be online this morning as I'm taking a risk of sharing this before the party! I'm hoping she is busy preparing for her busy day. I'm not even sure how often she reads this blog, but of course, wouldn't today be the day?

As everyone knows, I have three teenage sons! Therefore, it is sometimes hard to be creative with an idea for a gift for girls, although somewhat refreshing and fun too. I was having so much fun, I had to keep taking things out of my cart!

Anyway, I have a wonderful resource in my friend Sam who has a young girl. I go to Sam to see what is "in" now and give me ideas. She told me that her daughter just loves to write and draw. That reminded me of when my nieces were down last year and they too just had fun drawing at my kitchen table. So, this idea evolved in my conversations with Sam.

I have purchased this cute purple blank journaling book for her to scribble and draw in, as well as two more less expensive blank books, markers, glitter pens, colored pencils, and bunches of stickers, all in a cute yellow basket. Instead of a regular gift bag, I found an inexpensive bag to put the basket in that can be used in many other ways (even taking swimgear to the pool).

Now, my friend Sam has been blessed by God with this awesome talent for writing! I always enjoy reading what she writes. So I asked her if she could write something for me to stick inside the book so that my neice would understand the gift and make it more personal.
Isn't Sam awesome?!! Here is the poem she wrote. I made a 4 x 6 card with it, using brushes that came with my PSE to make the hearts and flowers (as in the poem) as well as some marker looking scribbles in the background.

I never wait until the last minute to do anything, huh? [giggle] My cousin recently adopted a baby from Guatemala and I needed to come up with a gift idea for her too.
I must confess. I'm stuck in a rut. I give this same gift to everyone who has a newborn. I just like the idea and I think it is something no one else would think of doing. I buy a bank and encourage them to collect pennies from the year they were born. This baseball bank reminded me of my high school days and sitting with my Grandpa at the Cardinals games.

So, late last night, here I am, phoning up Sam and asking for her help again! In previous gifts, I just wrote something -- I'm sure not too creative -- so that the recipient would understand what to do with the gift. I sure could use a poem!
Only a friend would come up with something for me at the last minute! Thank you so much, Sam!
Here's the poem. I made it into a card and managed to use the papers I made earlier last week that are free here on my blog. I wish I would have been able to make it more baby-ish, but it was really late and I was in a hurry. Maybe next time I will re-do the card, but this works for now.

I cannot offer you these cards for free because I must confess that I did not ask Sam for permission and these writings would be copyright. I did tell her I would be sharing them on my blog, but I cannot offer them in downloadable format. However, I did remove the words from my cards and you can download the 4 x 6 card and add your own words for your own gifts to them here (download removed, but email if you really want it). I will add that I did use a borderless 4 x 6 paper with a tab and that it did not print well. The date was beyond the tab line and the line border around the words went off the edge. So I would suggest printing with borders and then trimming with scissors.