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Thanksgiving is coming and Christmas is right around the corner. This week, caregivers from all over joined together with Denise Brown, Caregiving.com (I thoroughly enjoyed her fun “Break For Fall” giveaway and ideas as well as her Caregiving Open House in honor of National Family Caregivers Month) and Elder Care Consultant, Michelle Seitzer, for our twice a month “#ElderCareChat at Twitter to discuss dealing with caregiving and holiday stress. All week, the grandkids and I have been listening to Christmas Carols, interspersed with Narnia audio books and their school work on audio. And I just touched base with a fave senior to compare notes on our holiday plans. It’s easy to do with her, since she has email, but not all our beloved long-distance seniors are online. And even if they are, I don’t know about you, but I need to remind myself to get creative with writing (not to mention, actually DO the writing). So I made a list to remind myself and thought you might enjoy it as well. This year, I’m planning to:
Buy cute greeting cards for throughout the year AND USE THEM! (I’m so tech-oriented, this is an area I’m REALLY bad at). A lot of the local Christian book stores have ongoing sales of buy one get one free. Or we could follow my senior mom’s excellent example and shop at Hallmark with their frequent buyer’s card that can come in quite handy.
Kids pictures – write on the back. While doing extra babysitting of grandchildren this past month, I had them do a lot of just drawing and painting and now have way more pictures than can fit on both refrigerators and walls in the house! I realized I have the perfect “stationery” to write several loved ones – with the picture on one side and a letter on the back – after taking pictures of these awesome works of art, of course! And for that matter, those photos of the pictures can be great on my senior mom’s iPad, my computer screen saver and to decorate upcoming SmileBox holiday online – or printed – ecards!
Smilebox – one of my holiday favorites, my GOAL (we’ll see how far I get) is to work on it and send them out for THANKSGIVING instead of Christmas – to save on holiday stress (a thought I got during our #ElderCareChat on holiday stress 🙂 ). I’ll be adding photos of the kids and grandkids and granddogs, artwork, and lovely music to send online to my tech-savvy loved ones, plus I can print out the handful we need for those not online. (Hmmm, I think I will “delegate” mailing those to my wonderful senior mom who LOVES snail mail! – And that’s another grand idea that came from this week’s #ElderCareChat!)
I’ll never get to it on my own, but I might with my grandkids – Make handmade greetings cards and stationery like my senior mom. While time-consuming for an already slightly overwhelmed caregiver, it’s definitely one of those fun and easy crafts for kids AND seniors that I can put the grandkids to work on, then share with my senior mom to do the mailing. Hooray!
How about you? Got any other fun ideas to help us stay in touch with seniors and other loved ones who aren’t nearby? We’d love to hear! And if you entered Caregiving.com’s “Break For Fall,” we’d love to hear what you are “letting go of.” As you can tell, I’m going to “let go” of some of the mailing tasks by delegating them to my senior mom who honestly enjoys them! 🙂
You have given us lots of great ideas! My grandsons’ yia yia lives 8 hours away. I think I will help the boys put together a package of their crafts and drawings and some photos of the works in progress. Your post made me realize that senior (“I-don’t-need-anything!”) grandparents would enjoy a package like that as much as kids love getting a box of goodies and toys. I find the best ideas on grandparent blogs! Thank you!
What a fun idea, Joyce! My senior mom just went through her files and found several of the old school and coloring pages for my daughters I sent her decades ago! Now she’s putting together packages to send to those daughters children. The fun gift can keep going one! 🙂