I think that parents and grandparents love that we offer them pictures from ourselves and from our kids, they are in a stage in their lives where they sometimes live more our life than their own lives, so I make an effort to give them some good moments because I know they will treasure them. Do you usually offer pictures? And if you do, just the picture or usually in a frame?
We gave family pictures as gifts last year. We knew everyone would love them and they were cheap. Pay $50 for a photo session and then $20 on picture frames for everyone. For the grandparents, we gave them a bigger picture collage with all of our favorites. They absolutely loved it and it now hangs on their wall. Otherwise, I will usually just mail them pictures in a card through the mail. My mother-in-law gets a lot of her pictures off her kid's Facebooks and adds them to her own digital frame. We've actually given picture gifts for two Christmases in a row. Last year was the family pictures and the year before was an ultrasound picture. I have NO IDEA what we're going to do this year!
A few years ago (maybe 4 or 5 years ago) I've offered my grandmother a big album and now and again I offer her some pictures so that she can fill it up. Other relatives do swamp her with frames, every single birthday or Christmas she gets yet another frame with a picture and I think that is too much, I've never seen a house with so many frames...
I do not have any grandparents anymore, so I don't think I can offer them pictures, but even with my parents, I don't think I would want to do it for them, lol. I think offering pictures is nice if you are a sentimental person and you get along with your family, but I don't think that it's for me. I want to give something more practical.
In the case of my parents, they really have everything, I mean, there is nothing they need, so more often than not I offer them books, CDs, bottles of wine or whiskey, so now that I have kids my mother loves to receive pictures of the grandchildren. My dad doesn't care that much lol, but my mother yes and if she stays more than one year without receiving them she will complain.
I enjoy giving framed pictures as gifts, although I know plenty of people that don't like doing it. It's a simple yet effective gift that people tend to love, especially older family members. I've given them to friend that have enjoyed receiving them, too, though.
Why don't those people life to offer pictures troutski? From my experience, people might no enjoy receiving them because they don't care, but if it's a grandmother for example, she will always love to receive the pictures from the ones they love. For me it's indifferent, better, I am happy to give something they enjoy, I have no problems in offering pictures.
I don't give out pictures myself, but I do receive pictures from family members who are new parents (for example). I usually get them in the format of a Christmas greeting card with a picture on the front. No frame. I don't mind it this way, especially because frames take up more space. I'd rather the simple picture keep in a photo album or choose to frame it later on.
That is something I heard of that is very common in the US no? People offering Christmas cards with their own pictures, but we don't have that culture here in Portugal. Either cases, I think that it's a good idea and I might try is this next Christmas, make a few prints of my family and send to relatives and closest friends, a good simple way to greet and keep in touch.
Gelsemium! It is a very beautiful thing to present some picture. Especially to grandparents. It will make them happy. I usually offer pictures of my grandparents. And they started talking about their memories. It gives them peace and happiness. I really feel better when they became happy.
What a weird time to see this kind of post, I bought my father a picture frame recently with enough room in it for six pictures and we thought it would be nice to have pictures of his four grand children (my two sisters have a boy and a girl each), we thought it would be nice to have a single picture of each of them and then have them pair up and take two more pictures of two of them together. One of my sisters happily handed over some pictures, but my other sister has refused and doesn't wish to tell us why. :/
I send pictures to all of my family members by e-mail, as they all live on another continent. They are happy to receive regular updates of what is going on, and I feel the same about them. I haven't send them any physical pictures in a long time. Most of them have printers and can choose themselves what images they like to print out and frame.
I offer photos as presents to my grandparents from time to time and you're right, they always love it, I know that when I go back, that picture will be displayed up on the wall. Another thing I've done is I use a service online where you make your own album with our digital pictures, then you can add text, images, etc and when you're happy with the album they print it and send it to you, it's not too expensive and it's really high quality work, I usually do that with pictures from vacations so I have an album of that special trip.
I have actually thought of this several times. The best way to do it, would be with one of those electronic frames, in my opinion. They are like 30$-50$ a pop, but it's worth it. You can really put a bunch of pictures in there, and have a great gift. Goddamit, I got to do it this year.
I used to but nowadays we have so many pictures and they are all available through our online albums that I mostly don't do it anymore. I would maybe just have one or two printed as a supplement to another gift, but honestly they already have so many framed pictures at home so if I ever gave them one again I'd probably just give a digital photo frame so they could cycle whatever pictures they wanted in the form a slideshow. I agree they are great gifts for older parents because they really appreciate small things like that at their age.
The thing with online albums is that only people that access the internet can see them. Just last week my mother asked me to print some pictures from my kids in the beach, so older people still want these printed pictures. I personally don't care though, but I am still printing them and offering them at least once per year.
