A Touching Gift for Father's Day or Any Day

For Father's Day, I made my dad cry.

I know, I'm heartless.

Seriously though, he loved our gift so much that he began tearing up while reading the special gift we'd made for him.

I found a fabulous idea on Pinterest, thanks to Jennifer who blogs at JennieKat.  I adapted it a bit, so I'll share with you how I put it together.

I knew it would be the perfect year for this special gift, since my stepdad passed away in the fall.  My oldest child was only 3 when he passed away, so it's important to capture her perspective of him while those memories are still fresh.  And she's also young enough for her answers to be cute.

Izzy said that Papa loves to eat "rice and graby"  and "if he could go on a trip, he would go to church and he would take books."  Her Papa was a Gideon.

Step 1:  Interview your child.  I interviewed her separately for each father/grandfather, since I knew that we would have repetitive answers if I didn't.  I found a great list of fill-in-the blank questions on a website called Simply Montessori.  And I tried interviewing my two year old about his daddy, but he's really not verbal enough for it to work.  It might work for an older two year old or one who can talk better than Andrew.

Step 2:  Choose a good vertical picture of your child with their dad & grandfathers and have it printed no smaller than a 5 x 7.  This size worked for us, but since I wanted a larger font, it was difficult to get it to all fit.

Step 3:  Find nice, inexpensive picture frames for each dad & grandfather.  Thank you, Hobby Lobby, for always having great prices on your frames.

Step 4:  Type up the interview in first person, from the perspective of your child.  I really loved the way Jennifer formatted it, so I used her ideas here to make it easy to see what the child's answers were to the questions.

Step 5:  Print it on vellum paper so that you can see the photo through the interview.  This is the main way I deviated from Jennifer's instructions.  She printed her words directly on the picture, but it worked better for me to have it on vellum so that I wouldn't have to print photos at home.  To save on the expensive vellum paper, you'll want to correct any layout issues, change font sizes, etc. by printing on regular paper first and holding it over the photo to make sure you've got it lined up properly.

My dad is a high school football coach, so his grandchildren call him Coach.  Isabelle said "if he could go on a trip, he would go to the football game and he would take a football."

Step 6:  Put it in the photo frame, wrap it, and watch the grandfathers cry when they open their sweet and thoughtful gifts.  My sister says I should give this gift to everyone in my family for their birthday this year.  It would be fun to see what Isabelle has to say about all of her aunts and uncles.

We used one of our favorite pictures of my husband with our daughter, taken in Jackson Square in New Orleans.  Isabelle said "If I could give my Daddy anything, it would be a soccer ball.  My favorite thing about my Daddy is playing with him."