"The Big Card" and "The Shoebox" - Your Style of Gift Giving

You can find lots of great gift ideas out there, for any occasion - birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. And get some interesting homemade, cheap ideas too. But these are two types of gifts I'd like to share that I absolutely love giving. I like to call them "The Shoebox" gift and "The Big Card" gift. They are very thoughtful and show you really took the time to tell the person how much they mean to you.

"The Big Card"

Whenever it's someone's special day, say their birthday or baby shower, you sometimes normally have a group of people sign a card for them. But there are times where you want other people to sign the recipient's card, but are unable to get them to sign it in time. What I've enjoyed doing in the past is buying one of those insanely huge cards - you know the ones I'm talking about? The ones sold in card stores that are like 3 feet in height? Then, thanks to the new e-mail age we live in, I send out emails to all of the persons' friends and relatives and ask them for a message, for example, a birthday message, that they want included on the card. Of course you have to stress secrecy to them not to tell the recipient what you're planning.

Once you have the message, I usually print it out and paste it into the card diagonally or horizontally, along with a picture of the person sending the message. It helps to have images on your computer of these folks to easily crop and print out. Just print on any normal paper with any color printer (unless you really want to be fancy). And even if I want to get a message from a person who doesn't have an email address, I just call them up and ask what message they would like added.

When the recipient opens up that huge card and sees all the wonderful messages from their friends and family, they're usually surprised and you can see how much it means to them. They usually get engrossed in reading all the messages, surprised and who's included. And (hopefully) it will be one of the cards they'll actually save and hold onto for years to come.

"The Shoebox"