My Family This Christmas....

From the last few years (my mom is older 80) - we just got her an exercise bike, a weekend away with us and we made her nice meals there (she absolutely loved this), a new TV for her bedroom wall with Netflix membership, a maid service (cleaning), a snow removal service, a device to read books online, an ipad, etc.

She is the least tech savvy person I know but she can work the ipad (she mostly uses it for games and to facetime with the grandkids), and netflix.

I love experience gifts - got the idea on here, and so far, those have gone down the best. my mom is in the process of downsizing so giving things at this point isn't the way to go.

For my mother-in-law, I went back through her old photos and found a really ugly scrapbook with jammed-in photos of a very memorable trip she took. I "borrowed" the scrapbook (snuck it out without her knowing, and returned it, of course!) and made a calendar with the photos of that trip. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience (with her sister, when they were in their 60s, to the country where their father was born). Some calendar pages were a collage of a certain event during the trip, some were photos of the capital city of that country from when their dad was a boy. You get the idea.

You could also use photos of their wedding to make photo gifts. Many older parents don't have their precious photos in digital form, like many of us do (we have them on our phones, on our computers, in online storage, in Google plus, etc), and they might like to be able to enjoy their photos more. Those old scrapbooks with the "magnetic" sticky pages aren't too easy to enjoy after a couple of decades. Preserve their photos for them!

I also took my mother-in-law's and my husband's grandmother's favorite recipes and made them into a heritage cookbook for my husband and his siblings, and my MIL. At a craft store, I found black scrapbook 8x8 pages, and found a nice scrapbook (I bought enough to make a book for everybody in the family). I took my MIL's and dh's grandmother's old, faded, stained recipe cards and photocopied them (since they were in their handwriting). Then I included an up-to-date transcription of the recipe (if they were hard to read anymore), and a memory from them about the meal, or how that pie was always served at family gatherings, or from the war years when times were tough and they improvised, and created a new dish. Even though my MIL didn't cook anymore, she loved reminiscing about her mother making supper for her dad after a long day, and she loved knowing that the next generation would remember these recipes. I used a scrapbooking software to add trims and embellishments on the pages, and photos, but even a simple heritage cookbook would be wonderful to have.

My parents are around the same age and also not tech savvy. A couple of gifts that they loved in past years were tickets to a musical or concert, and a digital photo frame. The thing with the frame was that I also went to their house the day after Christmas and loaded up a bunch of pictures onto it from their computer and camera. They had all these photos saved that people had e-mailed them, and my mom has a small digital camera that she takes pics on, but they had no way of viewing them outside of their devices so the frame really delighted them.

I do a calendar every year with pictures of our family for my MIL. It's her favorite gift - she even keeps them at the end of the year to look at the pictures later.

What do they love to do? Get then tickets for a jazz club, a nice dinner out, a bed and breakfast ect. Get them something that helps them create a memory, things have little value as we near the last chapters.

My MIL only wants hand-made stuff for Christmas, whether it be a drawn picture or a picture book of things they have done together this year. She wants those things instead of something bought.

We're STILL going through stuff from my FIL! He died almost 3 years ago.

Tyler wants to get her passes to the movie theater this year so she can get out more.

Tickets to something or restaurant gift certificates are usually a hit. If you are close by maybe getting tickets for something they can do with their grandchildren might be fun.

For my parents 40th wedding anniversary - we did a memory book - contacted their friends and our family - asked for pictures and memories...we got a lot.

Maybe you can do a memory book of your family? Why do you have to BUY something? Why not make it?

Why not have the kids put their hand prints on a T-shirt for your parents to wear?

Things don't have to be purchased. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.

What would they love to have? Memories of their kids and grandkids or something that will garner dust on a shelf? I know my dad opens the memory book at least once a week. My mom and dad loved that book.

My parents always appreciated gift certificates for restaurants or tickets to a play or concert. My MIL always enjoyed gift certificates for spa treatments or full serve car wash/detailing. They all appreciated a framed family portrait or photo book.

Local theater membership (preferred seating or reduced prices on shows).

Science or art museum membership. Sometimes museums have special exhibits and classes too,in addition to the discount admission for rotating exhibits, free parking, etc.

Wine club membership - some of them sponsor ongoing tastings, so it's social in addition to providing affordable or interesting wines.

These are all gifts that "keep on giving" throughout the year.

There's not enough time before Christmas, but for the upcoming 75th birthday, you might look at a family scrapbook for the birthday person. We did one for my mom, and each person did a double-page spread with memories (typed and printed out on the computer), funny anecdotes, photos, etc. We got together just beforehand, and we added the captions and embellishments, and each person slipped their completed pages into a scrapbook album with clear plastic sleeves. Get people started on it now.

Something new for their home that they would not buy for themselves - for example, a nice cashmere throw blanket with nice slippers for each of them (the fur-lined ones from LLBean are warm and have good soles for walking around the house).

As for a ticket to an show/event, based on my experience, you should only "risk" that for an event that is happening soon. I have had a few experiences where tickets bought for events months away became unusable due to other life situations that arose before the event occurred.