12 Days of Conscientious Christmas, Day 11

More Creative Ideas on a Budget: family tree with photos and decorated photo frame.  Thanks to Michele in Southern California for these ideas.  

I think Michele and I bought the same tabletop Christmas tree; where I made home made cinnamon ornaments with my Nature Kidz, she had another idea: make a family tree!! She also embellished a picture frame as a gift. Here are her descriptions:

"I made “family tree”. I spent about $6.00 per tree at Target for table top trees. Then I used mostly old small ornaments that I hadn’t used in years to decorate them. Hot Glue is my favorite tool, and makes everything go faster and STICK…although if it is too hot, it will melt those little pine needles J To personalize them, I used a photoshop type program to blend family members into (free) ornament clip art, printed them up, and then hung the ornaments on the tree. Each of our family members are represented, plus, I used extended family photo on my SIL tree. I think these would also make a nice wreath…we debated, but decided on the tree this year.

My Sister-in-law’s mom is joining us for Christmas, and I don’t know her very well. I was loathe to get a bath and body set or candy, so instead I printed up a picture of my brother and her daughter, and put it in a frame that was going unused. I garnished the frame with small ornaments and garland to dress it up."

Michele also made a DVD with photos and accompanying music to send as a gift. I've done this as well--she even made custom DVD labels! It's very inexpensive and grandparents adore them. When I made mine (using my Mac, of course) it was so easy to sync the songs to the pictures. Plus, I was able to use the song that always make me think of each child ("She" by Elvis Costello and "Wonder" by Natalie Merchant) and play each song for photos of each child. With today's technology this is a really great, inexpensive and thoughtful gift. In my opinion, way better than a $50 tie made by 8 year olds in a developing country for .20 an hour!