help needed

Here’s the deal. In my family we tend to give special gifts for big birthdays. For my father’s fiftieth, my sister and I videotaped each of his friends talking about my dad and how they met and they told small anecdotes. Since my father has always been into making home movies, telling anecdotes and doens’t like being the center of attention, it was the perfect gift for him.

My uncle has lived in several countries in Europe and has friends literally all over the world. For his fiftieth, we emailed and called his friends and got them to send us short letters written for his birthday. We then bound those letters into a book and gave it to my uncle.

When my grandmother turned eighty, my sister dug through old photos and got generations of pictures from our family and made a large, amazing collage.

Finally, for my mother’s fiftieth, my sister called each of my mom’s friends and asked them to write up a small note, telling us their feelings about our mom. We made a web page with fifty hearts, my mom loves hearts, and underneath each heart, we put either a note from a friend or a photo from a special date. (Like my sister and my birthdays, my parent’s engagement, their wedding, etc.)

My sister is turning thirty on Valentine’s day. I had scheduled to be there, but my doctor says it’s best if I don’t fly; the trip takes eleven hours. Especially since I can’t physically be there, I want to do something special for my sister’s birthday. The thing is, even though I helped with the coding of the webpages, my sister came up with all of the above neat ideas. Now that I can’t pick her brain, I am drawing a complete blank.

So I decided I would ask for help. If you have any ideas at all, please tell me.

There are only a few small details. Valentine’s day is about three weeks away, so it can’t take longer than that. Between now and then, I will not be able to go to Turkey so I can’t take any new photos. I might be able to find a way to get my parents on my brother in law to send some already existing photos, but that’s about it. The present can involve my sister’s husband and/or her one-and-a-half year old twin sons, but I really want it to be focused on my sister. I’d prefer for it to be a present from the family, but if it’s just from me, that’s fine, too. (So it can be about sisterhood if you can think of a neat idea with that.) I have no other siblings, it’s just my sister and me. It can be photos, it can be a book, notebook, craft, music, anything. As long as it’s unique and personal. However, I prefer not to do something we’ve already done to a family member.

Feel free to ask me anything I might have left out. Feel free to spread the word. Ask anyone.

I really want to do something special for her.

Help me.

Previously? Know Thyself.