If you’ve been friends with K and I for a decent amount of time, you probably know we’re not much for giving traditional gifts. We love a fun kitchen gadget, or a woodworking tool, and the kids are never disappointed in a goodie bag. However, we encourage friends and family to only buy us something when it really fits.
I do not want to make it sound like we don’t appreciate the thought, we do! We actually appreciate the thought more than the gift itself. Thus, the family music video.
I tell this semi-sob story of my childhood, but the details are not important. The big take-away was that it was a small Christmas, and our little family didn’t have much to contribute to gifts for each other. I could not tell you what the BIG gift for the year was from my parents, but my mom had given each sibling some time at a dollar store to pick out something for each other.
My littlest sister handed me the gift she had picked out. It was a small, very plain, photo album – totally empty. (The last part is only mentioned because sharing past memories is a very thoughtful gift in itself!) It meant the most out of everything that I opened that day, because I was in school to be a photographer. I was very passionate about taking and sharing photos, and this was something that encouraged me to do it.
So, for $1.07, she won Christmas.
So, how do we do gifts?
We want less. Less kitschy. Less fad. Less instant gratification.
We want more individual, funny, and personal. We want things that don’t take up space in a room, but instead in our heads. Things that make us laugh and smile – we’re not big on happy tears, but if you get us there, impressive.
I think it’s also important to note that sometimes, the personal and funny and individual gifts do take up actual space. In that case, bring on the Ace Ventura socks, the potato masher, and the shop vac.
For all the other times though, I give you the gift option of endless possibilities. The family music video.
Where to start?
Expertly pick your gift-receiver. I suggest someone notoriously hard to buy for, or someone who will pretend to love everything no matter what.
Most recently, my family chose our very own matriarch, Grandma.
She falls under the category of ‘pretends to love everything’ until the next time you see her and then she’ll offer it up saying it’s just not the right fit for her house, which is meticulous.
Pick your song!
One piece of advice: don’t overthink it!
Grandma used to host fancy Christmas Eve parties where she would provide crystal glasses for our beverages and printed out lyrics of traditional Christmas carols. In a perfect world, we would all line up and sing in a favored tune to the songs.
In the real world, like most other families, we can be a bit of a chaotic mess. Between the small kids, the funny uncles, and too much spiced eggnog, we didn’t have the same vision. It was common to change the words and interpretive dance. Each year, she would feign disappointment, but we always knew we could do it again the following Christmas.
For this reason, we decided on a classic, 12 days of Christmas, but also a version that we feel more connected with the Redneck version, thank you Jeff Foxworthy.
Invite Performers, and set a due date!
We keep this group kind of small, siblings and mostly immediate family, but you can definitely make the group as big or little as you need to.
Once we settle on a song, I send it to everyone with a quick how-to:
- Dress for the part, set the song to play and dance/sing/mime/act through the whole thing while recording.
- Either text or email it to me by – at least a few days before you want to share it!
- Be creative. If you are passionate about a specific verse of the song, you can give it more attention, or it’s own clip.
Put it all together, for free.
I am not going to pretend that I know how to use iMovie, or any one of the paid options for similar software, but I know enough!
I start by uploading all the videos and the song that we are using to a project. Then switching between family videos, I add short segments of each to have a rotation of everyone at different parts of the song.
Thankfully, there are a ton of videos on the internet to help with it, but I found it to be pretty intuitive. I will say that I am sure to mute the videos when I add them to the movie, because the song overlay usually lines up pretty well, and then you don’t have the distracting background sound while it’s playing.
Get fancy. Add a banner intro, or an outtake of something funny caught on camera. I sometimes even incorporate a short video of the gift receiver.
Have someone who can’t get a video in time? Use LipSmash, or something similar to overlay their picture with a moving mouth to keep them included!
I can usually finish it in an hour or two. Sometimes I’ll come back to it the next day, but it usually comes together pretty easily.
Give the Gift.
Our family has seen enough of these that it’s not a surprise when we do them. What is a surprise is who will be the receiver of the video.
It doesn’t matter though, the reactions are always priceless.
I’ll keep the screeching laughter out of it, but Grandma was pretty excited.