Attention: Missionary Moms

If you'd like some ideas for gifts for your missionary - here are two that I did. They were a big hit!

For Christmas, I did a Tribute to Elder Herron, using Cherish Bound's Tribute 'Lifeprints'. 'Lifeprints' are a set of 16 "story leaves" - pages with questions on them. All 16 are identical. You give one to each of the people who want to add to your elder's tribute book. Ask each person to pick one or two of the questions on the inside to answer - write their answer in the space provided. Take a picture of each person (or ask them for one). For the cheaper version - the one I did - print each picture off and attach it over top of the set of questions, opposite of the person's written answer. When you've got all of the pages done, put them all into a 'Sassy Binder', wrap a bow around the spine and you've got a beautiful gift for Christmas. You can take the pictures and everyones' written pages (typed up) and make one of the beautiful hardbound books through Cherish Bound. That costs a little more, though (about $10 more). Here are pictures of the one I did for Elder Herron...
1. This is the set of Tribute Lifeprints

2. This is an inside page (one of 16) - inside and outside


3. These are pages from the inside of the 'book' I did - one from his dad and one from me. The one with his picture on it is the inside of the cover.



4. This is the whole thing completed - all the story leaves with pictures and writing put into a Sassy Binder with ribbon tied around it. Grant loved it. He had been gone for 10 months and it was nice to hear from everyone - especially all the nice things they said about him. We gave the story leaves to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc. I printed off the pictures at Costco with a white border around each one. The whole gift cost around $35.00 (Lifeprints are $19.50, Sassy Binders are $12.00, (plus tax and shipping) plus cost of pictures and ribbon).


The other gift I did for my son was an autograph book for the end of his mission. If you are going to do one of these, you'll want to start it about 3-4 months before the mission ends. It will take a few days to make it, about 3 weeks to get it back from the publishers, and then about 10 days to send it to your missionary. The book I did was a 5x7 size, hardbound book. It has 24 pages - full color. I gathered enough pictures and quotes from his letters to put either 2 pictures on a page or one picture and one quote on a page. I didn't label the pictures or anything. I left the rest of each page blank for people to write on. Once the book came back, I bought him a small set of colored super fine tip Sharpie markers (the pages are glossy - you have to use Sharpie markers on them) and sent both to him. He LOVED it. Here are pictures of the outside front and back covers, and a few pictures of the inside pages.






Let me know if you'd like to do either one of these for your elder. I'd love to help you with it. Call me at 801-360-4666 OR email me at kara (at) cherishbound (dot) com OR nafari01 (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Take Care,
Kara Herron
RM: Grant Herron - Fukuoka Japan Mission 02/07 - 03/09