1.Use Songify App to record your own song – Cost: 0, Wow Factor: GREAT
So AWESOME. It is fun, easy, and sounds cool enough to impress most people (especially those who are not digitally-savvy). Simply select your music choice, and then record a message, and the app will mix it together and make a song. Easy enough for the most tone deaf and musically challenged people.
2. Paint your own pottery – Cost: Average, Wow Factor: Good to Great
Think obvious: Mugs, tiles, and frames. Not so obvious: tea pot, plates, ceramic airplanes
3. Magnets on Shutterfly.com – Cost: Low, Wow Factor: Good to Great
A photo that sticks itself to the refrigerator. Just what every grandma needs. Plus Shutterfly will ship directly to grandma. Or buy in bulk and hand out all year round!
4. Handprints on anything – garden stone, paper, cards, magnets, Cost and Wow Factor can vary
Fun to make and sentimental! 🙂
5. A Scavenger hunt for grandparents to take grandchildren on – Cost: free to low for supplies, Wow Factor: Great 🙂
Make it go all over town, all over the neighborhood or park, or all over the house. Finish with a brunch or pizza delivery and maybe a treasure chest/tool box for grandpa or a treasure “vase” with some flowers for grandma, and of course, take plenty of photos. Grandkids bring out their inner kid, and they just might enjoy the novelty of the event and the fact that you would go through the trouble just for them. 🙂
Bonus Item: The photograph above (taken by cunninghamphotoartists.com) is of my daughter at age 3 wearing her grandmother’s dress. We gave her this photo framed and matted for Christmas last year. It was a total surprise. Wow Factor: Through the roof.
These may not be the most awe-inducing gifts (a plane ticket to visit, season tickets to the zoo, or something completely unrelated to the grandchildren might be more their taste), but hopefully one of these ideas will inspire you, and in case you were wondering (come on – who really knows this?) Grandparent’s Day will be September 9th this year.
Gretchen Smith is the mother of two girls ages 2 and 4. She lives near both sets of their grandparents and is constantly looking for new and creative ways to give back to the best babysitters money doesn’t have to buy!
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