Homemade White Elephant Gift

 Steve's family does a white elephant gift exchange every year for their Christmas party.  It is one of my personal favorite activities of the season.  We've given away plenty of junk through the years, but this year we thought we'd make something of great value and humor.

Steve, being a school teacher, gets to have a premium packet of free school pictures every year of just himself.  That's a lot of pictures they give him.  What do you do with all those?  Most people give them to every family member they know, but we are not really on the ball like that.  So, we have a surplus of Steve's school pictures from the last 7 years.  Actually, make that 6 years because one year he decided to not show up to pictures and found out later that because he decided not to get his picture taken, all the students who ordered a class photo would have a blank spot with "Mr. Christensen" printed beneath it.  If you know Steve well, you know he could care less about pictures, especially "posed" pictures (aka professional pictures), and he thought we should throw them out.  I thought we should put them to good use.  So, with a little tape and scissors, the homemade white elephant gift was born.  A book.  A keepsake.  A real treasure.  Behold...

"From Frump to Fabulous, Fashion Tips By Steve Christensen"

The pictures we used on the front cover made me bust up when he brought them home from school for the first time because he looks so... so... so looney with his eye half-closed.  They let you get picture retakes, but that would mean Steve would have to sit through another posed photo shoot.  Forget that.

Steve told me what to write, and I wrote each of his tips down.  The book is made from an old cardboard backing from one of his old huge notebooks that we folded into a book.

Maybe you can't tell, but his first year, he wore a Christmasy plaid green shirt with a white-polka-dotted navy tie.

Eva ended up with this book.  Not sure why no one tried to steal it away from her???