A thrifty gift guaranteed to give a priceless reaction

Here is a perfect gift idea, not only for the person-who-has-everything receiver, but also for the budget-conscious giver. I made this for my husband as part of his birthday present this year, and it was hands-down his favourite gift (which was lucky, because he didn't get too much other fun stuff!)

It's basically a mini-scrapbook in the form of a "2 minute memory" card. You can find them at most craft shops, or else order directly from simple scrapbooks, and they have options for every relationship: husband, wife, Grandma, friend, etc. And you don't have to be a die-hard scrapbooker or even slightly crafty to put this together!

Each card comes with 10 prompt questions, such as "what do you treasure about your wedding day?", "if you could have one of your husband's traits, which one would it be?" "what object reminds you most of your husband?" etc or you can make up your own. It's fun to really think about some of your favourite memories together.

Then, choose 10 different pictures (if they illustrate your thoughts, all the better) and stick next to each piece of journalling on the adjoining page. You can embellish further with patterned paper, but I kept it simple with different coloured photo corners.

And voila - a small book that contains some fun memories and which will make your recipient feel so special. Priceless reactions....from a gift that costs less than £5.00 ($10) to make and a little bit of time to put together.

Blog books

So I just discovered the coolest thing. Okay…maybe it’s not new, but it’s new to me. It is www.blurb.com They actually publish your blog for you. The best part is they are very affordable and have great tools to work with. (Being a designer I’m kind of a snob about that).

For the last year or so as I have gotten further and further behind on my scrapbooks I’ve looked into some of these companies that do photo books (i.e. snapfish.com, Kodak.com and Heritage Makers) but I was either turned off because of the price or because of the lack of tools. With blurb.com they have a lot of really nice features, nice layouts, and some good editing tools.

So here is a little comparison of what I found (a little disclaimer… these websites all have different options when it comes to size of book but I just picked the standard size to do my comparison here) …

Heritage Makers — One of my friends became a consultant of Heritage Makers, they have it set up so you can have parties and invite your friends. They have a lot of different backgrounds and sizes of books, but the price is a little high for what you are getting. They recently redid their software so I’m not sure how the new stuff compares, when I played around with it before it was very difficult to get it to do the things I wanted it to do.

Price Comparison 8.5 x 11” hardbound book $69.95 for 26 pages. Additional pages $1.99 for 2 pages. Max pages 78

Snapfish.com — This one is probably my next favorite. It has some good options for photos. My one big problem with this one is the limit on captions (it’s something like 100 characters). Although I don’t like their photo books very much they do have a lot of other really fun photo gifts. When Todd’s sister was on her mission we sent her some notebooks with Hailee’s picture on them. She loved them (and notebooks are always something useful for missionaries). They also have really cute note cards a lots of other fun things. They do have a cute little pocket book that are 2.75” x 3.75” that would make really cute favors for a party or as little presents. (Afterall snapfish is a part of Hewlett-Packard so it’s got to be good right.)

Price Comparison 8.5 x 11.5” hardbound book $19.99 for 20 pages. Additional pages $1.99 for 2 pages.

Kodak.com — This one has a lot of good option (even a new Martha Steward line). It’s really similar to snapfish. So see above.

Price Comparison 9 x 10.25” hardbound book $29.99 for 20 pages. I can’t find where it says how much additional pages are.

Blurb.com … Okay so the things I love about blurb. They have lots and lots and lots of layout options. You can choose what fonts you want (and there are lots of choices). There are several backgrounds you can choose from. They also have a fun feature where you can enter your blog address and it makes your blog into a book (the other ones don't have that option). Importing pictures is really easy (the other ones you have to upload them to the web so it takes a long long time even with a fast internet connection). As a designer this is really the best software that I have found. Really user friendly and nice enough not to drive me crazy with lack of options.

Price comparison 8x10” hardbound book $29.95 for 20-40 pages. Additional pages go up by 40 pages at a time so for 41-80 pages it is $34.95 and when you get up to 361-440 pages it is $79.95. Here is their price comparison list.

More Budget Airlines, ATTITUDE Travel

Two years ago I spent a small fortune getting to Bucharest, Romania for a research project. Granted, I flew British Airways and we know that's NEVER cheap (but oh so nice). At that point, I had no clue about the many low-cost airlines serving Eastern Europe.

I recently discovered this great website that lists all of the budget airlines cropping up all over the place. They are organized by continent and then by country/cities they serve. There's even a section for low-cost transatlantic flights and apparently RyanAir will start service from UK to US in 2009 (although, I'm not sure how I could manage their miniature baggage restrictions for a trip to London).

http://www.attitudetravel.com/

If you're really adventurous, you might try hitching a ride across the atlantic...seriously:
http://www.airhitch.org/

I also frequently check these sites for hotel/attractions/restaurant advice:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/
http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page
http://www.virtualtourist.com/

Leaving on a Jet Plane

The world has never been smaller for our generation, thanks mainly to budget air travel! Just last week, I booked a trip for my best friend and I to Barcelona from London Stansted - the two flights and all the taxes added together came to £55.00! (approximately $100!) Bargain! Here are some of my tips for air travel on a budget:

* book as far in advance as possible - back in February, for Jonathon and I to travel to New York on BA for Thanksgiving would have cost us £448.00 (for two, including taxes); if we had booked last week, it would have cost us £660.00! A sadly significant increase! I'm waiting for FlyZoom to publish their autumn prices!

* if you can, travel during the week - not exactly condusive to saving holiday days from work, but flights are generally less expensive Monday - Wednesday

* be flexible on times of travel - "unpopular" times, such as early in the morning or late at night, can be less expensive and on offer for a longer period of time

* if you are flexible on your destination, research all options - airport taxes vary from airport to airport, thus increasing or reducing your final cost. Last week I discovered that, for the same dates as our Barcelona trip, we could have gone to:
Berlin, Germany - £74
Riga, Latvia - £78
Ebsjerg, Denmark - £84

All the flight prices were the same (0.01p each way!), but the airport taxes varied!

* Be sure to weigh up budget airlines versus the more expensive - although prices can be cheaper on a budget airline, airports servicing your destination can be much further out, thus incurring additional transportation charges in both directions. Double check you are saving money by travelling budget - if there is only a minimal saving, it may be nicer to travel the mainstream airliners and have convenience at both ends!

* sign up to your airline's newsletter - you will hear of special offers in advance

Of course, the bonus of flying inexpensively is that you get to see more places over time, and, more importantly, are also able to splurge a little more on accommodation!

Contemporary art for under a tenner !

Found some great little white pop-up blank cards in Muji, depicting Paris, London and New Yorks sky lines, as a simple cut out. Being 3 of our favourite cities I wanted to use them in our home so, I opened them out and pasted them into box frames ( that you can get in Habitat ) so they remained 3D and hung them on the wall. It's pretty effective. I'm always looking in the card sections of shops now for my next 'find' to be framed and hung !