Um...

Today's blog is a reversal of my regular blogs. Today's blog is a gift that I am begging you NOT to buy anyone.

I like to think that my array of friends and family are quite diverse. I have some conservatives, some liberals, Christians, athiests, fairly normal and fairly not...but this one. I just can't imagine one person on my lists...no, I take that back. I can't imagine anyone, PERIOD that I would ever buy this for. Or anyone that I can imagine buying for me.

A belly cast??

Really???

I'm not sure I'm going to want to remember that forever. Don't get me wrong, I think baby bumps are adorable. But I'm pretty sure pictures will suffice. Where would you put your belly cast? On your kitchen table? In the foyer? How would you store it???

For $20, I can take a TON of pictures from every angle. I'm good.

So note to everyone, don't buy this for me. 'Kay?

Thanks.

Timeless

One of the best and easiest ways to make a personalized gift is with a shadow box. It really goes with any occasion.

For example, for our wedding, one of Brad’s aunt made us a shadow box. It has some pretty little decorations, a picture from our save the date cards, and our invitation. She told us she does that for every wedding they go to. It’s also special to us because she and her husband were the ones who drove us from the reception to our hotel (and then off to our after-party!). I didn’t really know this particular aunt and uncle very well before the wedding but they were one of the best parts of the wedding. They shared their words of wisdom and well wishes the whole way to the hotel. We have it hanging in the kitchen now and I think of them and that ride often.

 We got married in the fall, hence the leaves and fallish colors!

Brad’s cousin Tara turns 16 today. When I was in North Carolina last weekend I stopped at  HomeGood’s and found a beautiful shadow box for less than $15. I came home, printed some pictures from the family beach trip we took this summer and bam! Instant personalized gift! I’ve been tossing around putting some little pieces of memorabilia around inside but I’ve been holding off – I want this shadowbox to be something that she can change out the pictures in. Obviously I would never change the pictures in my wedding shadowbox. But for a 16 year old – I don’t want her to feel like I spent SOOO much time on it that she can never change the pictures. This shadowbox is incredibly easy – it came with a few pushpins and the front cover literally just lifts open. I want this shadowbox to be a base but something she can personalize however she wants down the road.

Whether it’s a timeless shadowbox or just a “right now” shadowbox, it’s a great way to personalize a gift if you’re on a limited budget. Mine cost less than $20 (and would have cost closer to $15 if I could have found my flash drive – then I could have printed the pictures at CVS!). 

Diapers and Towels, oh my!

This gift is more of a do-it-youself-er but the good news is, you can use it for baby showers or wedding showers!

Let's start with the baby shower. Someone, somewhere, came up with this idea to turn diapers into a cake. An experienced cake looks something like...

Shown here...

Mine, on the other hand, looked more like this:

You can google tutorials all day long on YouTube. Just find one with the amount of instruction that you feel you need and go to town. In a nutshell, you're just rolling up diapers and sticking rubber bands around them to keep them rolled up. Although the mother-to-be I made this for had registered for diapers, Target happened to be out of them. I wound up with some of the baby powder smelling ones which made the  experience kind of pleasant actually :) We found some fun ribbon that my mom had saved from somewhere and hot glued them around the diapers. There is also a big stick (think wooden skewers) that goes in the middle and you form the diapers in a circle around that (using a large rubber band to keep the diapers together too). Yeah, I'm not the best instruction giver. I would definitely google on YouTube because the tutorial I watched was fantastic. You can't really see it in my picture, but there's also the cutest pair of baby shoes tied at the top with the big ribbon. I thought it was a fun way to tie in something besides diapers!

Then you can do essentially the same thing with towels. I haven't actually done this myself, but I saw one at my friend Amber's wedding. Hers had those little fake wedding bands clipped to parts of it, which I thought was a nice addition. Here's an example of a Towel wedding cake...

Of course, depending on their color scheme, it could get interesting, but just simple, solid towels make this a unique and fun gift. If you're giving a shower, this makes a great centerpiece, too!