A Year's Worth of Memories.

This week Raising Olives and the other 4 Moms are sharing ideas for homemade Christmas gifts. Several years ago I gave my parents a Memory Jar. I typed out 365 memories of time spent growing up in their home (My husband and children contributed approx. 50 of them. The older your children, the more they can participate.), cut them apart and placed them in a decorative jar. Beginning Jan. 1st my parents selected one each day to read. They enjoyed it so much that they saved the slips of paper and did it again the following year.

Creating this gift was very inexpensive but did take several months to complete. This is not something you want to pull together at the last minute. I found it worked well to think about different topics when I became "stuck." (vacations, holidays, daily life, pets, etc.) An added bonus was allowing my children to read the memories and know more about me as a child. This is a gift my parents really enjoyed and I enjoyed my walk down memory lane.