Community Voices for Health

By: Kris Berry

Father’s Day is Sunday.  Don’t ask me why (although I can give you about 1,000,000 reasons), but it seems that the older the children get, the more forgetful I’ve been getting.  It seems like the days just whiz by and I don’t even notice.  So if you are like me, you have found yourself four, yes four, days away from Father’s Day with nothing for the men in your lives.  And because my husband came through on Mother’s Day with the running shirts I’ve been wanting (although I acted like a total baby on the actual day because I thought he forgot, sorry Honey) I need to come through with something great.  What can I pull off in just four days?

I’ve been trying to come up with some inexpensive and creative gifts the kids and I can make for my husband.  Because I’m a stay at home mom the funds aren’t exactly huge, but I can still manage to make a nice gift for my husband that is both thoughtful and meaningful without breaking the bank.

I like the idea of marking the growth of your children every year.  One way you can do that is to make a t-shirt for Dad.  Take a plain white shirt and have your children put their handprints on it using fabric paint.  If they are old enough they can also write their names and “I Love Daddy” or some other phrase on the shirt.  You can do this every Father’s Day which would result in a nice collection of handprint shirts he can look back on to see how his kids have grown over the years.  In the future, if you are super crafty (and have more than 4 days) you could make a quilt out of the shirts.

Wordle is another really fun idea I found on A Few of My Favorite Things, a blog I read frequently.  Basically you input words that you want to generate a “word cloud” out of.  They mix the words up into different fonts and colors and scramble them into word art.  The picture is an example of one I made for my husband.  The more frequently you type a word into the text box, the larger that word becomes so I typed “Daddy” several times to get it to be the largest word.  I love this website.  I’ve been looking for a subway style sign for my bathroom, I think I might use Wordle to create one with exactly the words I want.

My crafty idol, Martha, has a really great idea for making a “DAD” frame.  This would be a cute addition to any dad’s work desk.   There’s also a tutorial for a shirt and tie card which looks adorable, but the directions look a little too complicated for this crafty novice to follow.  Let me know if you give it a go though!

If all else fails, a gift card to a home improvement store is always a good bet for my husband.  He mentioned that he needs some tool, although I can’t remember what tool it was…maybe a drill, or a saw, or a hammer.  I forget.  But if I get him a gift card he can pick out whatever it is he needs.

Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads and Grandpas out there, especially mine!