presents that make me feel happy

I sent some holiday gifts this year that really made me feel good.

There are some family members for whom it has become increasingly harder to come up with ideas for gifts, since we don’t see or talk to them often enough to know their tastes well. When I can, I try to choose a book or CD that I liked, thinking they can at least pass it on to someone else if they don’t like it. In other cases, when I don’t have books or music in mind, I try to keep the gifts compact or consumable so that the recipient won’t be burdened with storage of something they might not really like. (I wrote some more thoughts about gift-giving at this time last year.)

This year, I was multiply inspired by some blogs I read. First, Mad of Under the Mad Hat described and showed photos of her impressive craftiness, and asked what sorts of holiday crafts her readers were up to. I replied that I had in the past made some Christmas tree ornaments, but that my own days of craftiness were largely behind me. Then Sage of Not So Sage went and showed her own crafty endeavors.

Somewhere along the way, I started reminiscing about the things I used to make with my hands, while dreading the experience of holiday shopping. And I thought to myself, “wouldn’t it be great to spend my time and energy making gifts, rather than desperately hunting for gifts and parking spaces?”

So I decided to dig out my supplies, my brass and copper wire, my tools and my beads, and to make some ornaments. (I’ll post some photos later.) My plan was to give an ornament to these hard-to-buy-for relatives, and supplement with a donation to Heifer International, or some such.

But then my next inspiration came in the form of a post from jen of One Plus Two. In her preamble to the November Just Posts presentation, she mentioned a project described by Jess of Oh, The Joys: the rebuilding of a school library in New Orleans that had been destroyed during hurricane Katrina. There is an Amazon wishlist for this school whereby people can purchase books for this library, and have them sent directly there.

So the idea fell into my lap what I could give to those various people. I picked out books from the wishlist that I thought would be appreciated by the giftees: music books for/from the musicians in the family, a history book for/from a history buff, art books for/from the artists. And for each gift I bought, I printed up an image of the book, and wrote a little note saying “We sent your gift to New Orleans!” (And briefly describing the project.) I got on such a roll, I even bought extra gifts for/from people I already had other gifts for.

I have to tell you, as I wrapped up my hand-made ornaments, and enclosed the notes, I have never felt so good about the gifts I sent.