Celebrating 30 years of friendship. How?

July 2, 2009 12:42 PM

Celebrating 30 years of friendship. How?

One of my closest friends and I will be celebrating 30 years of friendship next year and as a gift, I’d like to put together a scrapbook for her. It will include pictures, probably a mix CD, and quotes...but I need other ideas to make it funny, interesting, and touching.

Of note: We're both female and will be 35 next year when I give her the scrapbook. Most of our friendship has taken place through correspondence. We went to school together from ages 5-7, then I moved away, and we’ve kept in close touch ever since. We have visited each other a few times over the years, but not a lot and we don’t have a ton of photos. I’m planning to include a couple lists like “30 Things We Have in Common” (and for fun, maybe “30 Things We Don’t”) or “30 Things We’ve Collectively Accomplished”. I may also include this list (ok, so we’re past the AGE of 30, but it fits with the theme). Any other ideas for this scrapbook? Articles, short stories, poems, lists, original ideas – all are welcome!

I'd love suggestions on how to incorporate the theme of letter-writing since we wrote so many long (often angst-ridden, hehe) letters to each other over the years.

Please help me make this great. Thanks!

posted by yawper to human relations (5 comments total)

Do you have her letters? Make good quality color copies of your favorite letters and include those. I'd love to be able to see what I wrote in letters as a kid!
posted by decathecting at 12:56 PM on July 2

What about a section highlighting the evolution of her handwriting? Maybe I'm a geek, but I think that would be neat.

Or how about a section for various post addresses that her letters came from, if you kept the envelopes? I bet you could do something neat with Google Maps that tracks your locations over time and where they were in relation to each other. Sort of a nod to how amazing it is that you're such good friends despite the geographical distance between you.

Did you have any frequent topics of discussion? You could do pages about those topics - an homage to a shared favorite book or television show, perhaps?

This is a really awesome idea, by the way. Have fun putting it together, and I'm sure she'll love it too. :)
posted by ashirys at 1:14 PM on July 2

This is such an awesome idea - she's going to love it.

On the subject of letters, it might be fun to type some of your favorites out, and lay them out like a newspaper article, with a headline, a byline, and (not sure what this is called) a section of text in the middle somewhere that's much larger than the rest of the type, with a choice quote from the letter.

Other ideas for the letters - If you can draw, or know anyone who can, maybe illustrate a couple of them in fun ways.
posted by ORthey at 1:32 PM on July 2

This is just a stylistic idea for the scrapbook - but using little envelopes for bits of it could be fun, stylistically. Does she live in a different country from you? You could use old stamps from her letters, if you've kept them.

a section of text in the middle somewhere that's much larger than the rest of the type, with a choice quote from the letter.

I think that's called a pullquote :)
posted by teraspawn at 2:36 PM on July 2

These are all great suggestions - thanks! I do have her letters and will be incorporating them in some way. I'll definitely keep these suggestions in mind.
posted by yawper at 6:18 AM on July 3