Creating Meaningful Gifts for Family Members Became Great Experience for a Wedding Gift

Registries and money are easy but crafting something from scratch shows immense love

During 2020, we got a little bored around the house. My family took to new hobbies and activities to fill the time.

I started doing paint-by-numbers and cleaning out cupboards. My daughters choreographed dances in the garage, and my husband took to woodworking.

Our garage became his workspace. He even created his own workbench from scratch. That alone took him a good few weeks to complete.

He made everyone in our family special gifts for Christmas. I busted out laughing and appreciated mine so much. How fitting, right?

He made so many and even though I didn’t get pictures of them all, these are the ones that stood out.

We took to teamwork on some of his creations. Our friend is a huge Minnesota Viking fan and my husband made this for him, and I painted it.

Another friend loved charcuterie boards so we made her this “shark-cuterie” board.

My dad loves motorcycles and this was the beginning of his intricate Christmas gift.

And, my brother-in-law recently lost his pug, so this was a recreation of his sweet girl.

As life started to back to normal and my husband found himself a new job, the woodworking got put on the back burner. The mess of everything all over the garage stayed like that until this day.

“I’ll start again this weekend.”

“I need to clean up the garage.”

You know how that goes. Chores and hobbies get put on the list of things we want to do but we don’t find the time.

But, an event was coming up that I wanted to create a work of art for. Mind you, I am not that crafty but I do enjoy things like this: creations with meaning and love behind them.

My littlest brother was getting married. He and his fiance bought a house together and were in the midst of remodeling and decorating.

They live close to Lake Tahoe, which is one of my favorite places in the United States. It is magical there, and we have spent many summers there together.

So, I knew that I wanted to create some mountain art for them to hang in their new home. I wanted to create something that my family of four would all work on: each of us putting our hand on the product would create special meaning.

I scoured online to find examples and decided on one with two mountains coming together as one. I chose an image of two mountains that you would look up from Reno and see in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

When you are in Reno, it’s a lovely sight looking up at those mountains especially when they are snow-capped.

My husband set to work with the mountains and a frame to surround the wood art. I think it came out so beautifully and would be nice even without the painting and staining, but we all wanted to have a piece in the artwork.

One of my daughters stained the mountains, and I painted the frame. I am the least artsy of everyone in my family so I let my artsy daughters do the honors for the special parts.

My other daughter painted the backdrop and the stars. We were going to add a moon but opted out.

I put the final touches on the snow caps on the mountains.

After it all dried, we put the masterpiece together and wrapped it up for our long drive up to Reno, Nevada.

The sheer joy of watching them open the gift and knowing that they loved it was priceless. Just giving them money seemed to be so generic, so I am glad that my husband took up woodworking so we could all create this piece for them.

Now, when they are in their home, they can look up at this artwork on the wall and think of us and how special family is. Our side of the family is very small: my brother's side of the family that came to the wedding only consisted of five of us.

So, I know that going out of our way and creating this special gift for them was much appreciated.

I love to give, not expecting anything in return, especially when you know that your gift is valued. It was time well spent that created a little magic of love for the weekend.

Have you done something special for a friend or family member that was out of the box? Or, something that was unexpected? Let me know, I would love to hear if you found the same joy that we did.

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