Wednesday, July 31, 2013

60 Memories for 60 Years

Last Friday my Pops celebrated his 60th birthday! I knew that I wanted to do something really special for my Pop's big birthday. I found this really great idea on Pinterest. 

The idea was simple. Ask 60 people to share a memory they have with my Dad. In the end he would have 60 memories for 60 years. A nice reminder of how loved and appreciated he is. 

Simple to explain, was not so simple to execute. My sisters were on board and with their help we put together a list of over 80 people. Then it was time to contact people. 

I decided that the easiest way would be the old fashion snail mail. I made up a letter explaining what we were doing. I included a piece of stationery as well as a self-addressed stamp envelope. I did my best to make it as easy as possible for people to participate. All those letters were sent out in May. Then a reminder postcard was mailed out in June with a deadline of July 15th. 

We had decided to give Pops his gift while on vacation at Bass Lake. Which meant that I had to have the book done before we left for vacation. With 2 weeks from the deadline I had only received half of the memories we needed. I lucked out because we had a family party that my parents were going to be late to so I hit up as many people as I could and gathered a ton of great memories. I also had my sisters emailing, calling and facebooking anyone else. (We had a shared google document that kept track of who returned a memory!) 

During this time I loved getting the mail everyday. I was getting memories from high school friends of my Dad, old bandmates, his co-workers, and lots of family. 

Of course on the last possible day the last memory I was waiting for got to me (Thanks Kelly!) and I was able to put the book together. I wanted this book to last so I laminated each page. It made the book big and heavy but well preserved! 

Here is what we ended up with. 




A big THANK YOU to everyone who sent us something!
We appreciate you taking the time to put down on paper a memory for our Dad. 



Yes it was a lot of work. 

Yes it was a lot of organization. 

And yes it was totally worth it.........



Happy 60th Pops. 

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous4:10 PM

    I did a Creative Memories photo album for my mom's 75th b-day and it was a huge hit. Got my 3 brothers to create pages of their families, I did all the old family stuff, such fun finding pics and everything to go in it. She kept it out on the coffee table and showed everyone. I'm sure your dad will do the same with his memory book.

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