How to Make a Unique Gift for Your Boyfriend: A Step-by-Step Guide

I enjoy celebrating holidays and birthdays by honoring my special someone. This gift was specifically for my boyfriend's milestone birthday (now my husband), but it will also make the perfect Valentine's Day gift! You still have plenty of time to make what you need for the romantic holiday!

Birthdays come but once a year, so they should be memorable each year. They show that you care, and they give you a chance to demonstrate how much the birthday girl or boy means to you.

It is their special day, and the most important thing you can do to make them happy is to come up with a birthday idea that would bring joy to their lives, not just something you want them to have or something that is fun for you to buy or make.

The most meaningful gifts come from the heart. This takes careful consideration. When giving out gifts I brainstorm. I take the following steps in my analysis:

Step 1 – I think about the person and when their birthday is. I must make sure that I have time to create whatever I come up with.

Step 2 – I think hard about their interests, passions, the things they think about, the things they loved as kids, the things they collect, and what they have fun doing in their spare time.

Step 3 – If I can’t quite put step one and step two together to make something work, I play “investigator.” I ask the person’s parents and friends what homemade gift they think my special someone would like.

• What was his favorite animal growing up?

• What was his best subject in school?

• What sports did he play?

• Did he collect anything?

• Does his parents have old children photos that I could make a cool collage with?

Step 4 – I examine my budget, what equipment I will need to make the special present, and how much I plan to spend on any other presents.

Step 5 – I make a plan. I write out step by step instructions on how I plan to accomplish my goal.

Step 6 – In secret, I work “hard” and give it all I got making my gift something that will bring a smile to his face.

I have always felt that if a person’s birthday is close to a holiday (My boyfriend’s birthday is near Halloween.), they should be given extra attention to show that you are celebrating their birth and not the holiday around the corner.

Many people feel “blended in” with the holiday near their birthday, and I find this sad, especially if the person is your special somebody. I know too many people who get one gift representing both Christmas and their Birthday.

A milestone is quite an achievement in life. It only happens once, so it should be extra special. My present is for my boyfriend’s 40^th birthday. Luckily, he isn’t dreading it, though he is in good spirits about almost anything.

I’m quite a ways away from hitting that milestone, and I feel lucky that he isn’t going through a mid-life crisis. I think his sports car, motorcycle, and tattoos did that for him years ago. I joke with him that his mid-life crisis can just be that he has a girlfriend that is six years younger than he is.

We have other plans for his special day, and I bought him other special presents. Since my talent is knitting, I wanted to show my love through knitting, but most guys don’t appreciate knitted gifts as much as girls do. However, I do want his birthday to be filled with love and lots of memories to come.

I wanted a gift he could use and enjoy. I knew he’d appreciate a homemade gift that has taken me weeks to make. I wanted to demonstrate my love for him by the time and effort it took in making the gift just right. Also, I was able to show him I listen to him, pay attention to him, know his interests, and appreciate them.

Since Bryan doesn’t get on the Internet much, but enjoys reading, I decided to make a notebook or binder full of his favorite things. The time it took me to research and compile the information and the effort it took me to hole-punch each page, put the dividers together, and fill the binder with color show how much I love and care about him and the things he loves.

Tools Needed for My Project:

1. A Binder
2. 5 Folder-Type Dividers of Various Colors
3. A Hole Puncher
4. A Place to Print Off Documents
5. Crayolas, Colored Pens, Colored Pencils, Colored Highlighters, etc.

The Keys to Success in this Project:

1. Choose your topics wisely.
2. An "Other" topic gives you leeway to add extra items that don't belong elsewhere.
3. Make it interesting by adding pictures, color, fun facts, anything that would brighten the birthday boy or girl's day.
4. Aim to make them smile!
5. In the pockets, include sporting game schedules, important business cards they would appreciate, take-out menus to their favorite restaurants - get creative!
6. For small things like a cut-out recipe or short business flyer, consider using a blank notebook page with tape.

1. Motor

2. Sports

3. Things To Do

4. Cooking

5. Other

• Motorcycles – Bryan has and adores his Honda VTX-1800R. Therefore, I used Motorcycle Roads.com – I found where it listed motorcycle events, runs, trails, rides, give away’s, contests, and benefits for our state, Oklahoma.

• Sports Cars – Bryan has a grey Dodge Challenger that I love. (I love my Mustang too, though). So, I also found a calendar of car shows for our state, Oklahoma, which I included in this section.

• Guns – Bryan loves shooting. He owns a Smith and Wesson .40 caliber. Inside this divider, I included the full application for the Oklahoma City Gun Club Membership.

• More Guns – Bryan is just paling up with my dad who is an avid H & H gun addict. He’s anxious to start going more and more to Oklahoma gun ranges.

I knew he needed information for the main gun ranges around here. I provided their website, address, phone number, hours of operation, costs, related documents, events, and certifications. These are the gun ranges I included:

• Heartland Outdoors

• Sgt. Everetts Gun Range

• Silverleaf Shotgun Sports

• Practical Shooting LLC

• H & H Gun Range (my dad and Bryan’s favorite one)

• Gunworld

• The Oklahoma City Gun Club – complete information, as well as three pages on the National Rifle Association (membership, tournaments, training, clubs, ranges, associations, and benefits).

• Fishing and Hunting – If I had to pick Bryan’s two favorite sports, they would be fishing and hunting. If he had the chance, he would do it all the time.

When we were just friends, he went fishing every single weekend! I knew this had to be the top category. Not only did I buy him two fishing books for his birthday, but I also dedicated more than half the binder to fishing alone.

What I Included in This Section:

• Oklahoma Fishing Guides – I started with the basics: (1) History (2) Cabins and Lodging (3) Fish World Records (4) Favorite Fish Sayings, and (5) Fishing Jokes.

• Lakes and Rivers– Next, I dug deeper into the main website. I listed 6 major fishing lakes, 1 cabin listing, and 2 fishing rivers. Digging even deeper so I could provide details on each one, I included things such as:

1. The history of the lake
2. What the lake is famous for or why it is special
3. What kind of license you need
4. Records the lake carries
5. What kind of fish you can catch there
6. Area Attractions
7. What times of year the area is open
8. The address and directions
9. A related phone number, facsimile number, and contact e-mail

• More Oklahoma Fishing – I found a list of over 200 lakes in Oklahoma that I included. This gives him plenty of places to fish and research further if he so desires. The website I used was found under www.outdoorsok.com.

• Hunting – I included regions to hunt in the state, what animals a hunter can kill, what season a hunter can hunt, and for which animal. I found this information on www.wildlifedepartment.com.

• Football – Bryan loves watching the NFL, which is great since I do as well. I colored a football coloring sheet. Then I colored a bit on each piece of notebook paper, and on the paper I wrote the teams who were playing each week, the time, the day, and so on. This information can be found on www.nfl.com/schedules.

• Basketball – I found in Bryan’s car an Oklahoma City Thunder Basketball schedule, so I swiped it and included it in his binder for easier access.

Bryan has only lived here for six years and loves going out and about. I found some items on www.visitokc.com.

Bryan cooks or grills daily and loves it. I found great recipes of things he loves and items we have on hand. I used magazine cut-out recipes from Family Circle and hand wrote out recipes from www.allrecipes.com.

I planned to use this section for poems, jokes, and such about turning 40, but our computer and printer went out before I had time to do the research. I searched for great poems, but I was not overly impressed with the Internet so I just wrote my own love poem for his birthday.

Happy 40th Birthday My Love

When we first met,

I didn't know of our future yet;

You spoke of girls who let you go,

And the more I knew you, the more I now know

they didn't have a clue, not a thought in their brains,

so very dumb, and I knew they'd never again

have a chance at winning your love and heart for real,

because I took them and have them still,

and this brainy, straight-A, college grad

isn't dumb enough to miss out on the best thing she's ever had.

I hope I make you as happy as you make me

and that you think that someday we will be

joined in wedlock that will last our whole life,

realizing with our eyes wide open there will be some strife,

but we are together every night and day,

and rarely have anything negative to say.

I think we get along really well,

and even King (our cat) can tell

that you and I are meant to be,

and no one is as happy as we.

I wish I could tell you how much I appreciate all you do for me,

but writing that out would sacrifice a tree.

Bryan, I love you now and forever,

and if you'll be patient, I know we can get through any endeavor.

I know this is your big milestone birthday,

and I hope it is special and you'll just let me say

you mean the world to me, and I'm so happy we found one another.

If you'll let me, I will spend my life under your wing taking cover,

because I love you and always want us to be together -

regardless of what comes our way, any kind of weather.

Please enjoy your day, and I hope you like what I made,

I wanted something special, a memory that wouldn't fade.

Whatever ups, downs, surprises, or endeavors,

Michael Bryan Kelsey, I am yours - forever.

~Michele

I copied and pasted the text from the websites as "special" and as "unformatted text," and this took away website special formatting, making it black and white. I also changed the size of the font to 7, except for my headers, which I put at 18 point font. I also removed the space between paragraphs and changed the spacing to "single." I am going to visually show you step by step how to do all of this in the video below.

• I wrote the names of the websites on the pages of the binder so he could refer to them later.
• I hand wrote out as much as I could, because it showed the time and effort I took to make it special for him.
• I used sports' teams and cooking abbreviations that he knew.
• The romantic poem that I created meant more to him than one I could have found online.
• I used color on almost every page with markers, crayolas, colored pens and pencils, stickers, and anything else I could think of to make it fun to read.
• One of my issues of Family Circle came with a mini cookbook (a booklet), which fit perfectly in the clear folder tabs I used as dividers.
• I taped on cut-out recipes, take out menus (and hand wrote information from the back of the menus), and pizza coupons for when we order pizza by delivery.

Show your special someone they are remembered by making their birthday memorable. Think about what is important to them and what makes them happy. This can be the most special gift of all. Buying them generic gifts that any guy would like shows how little you really know about them. Consider creating your own homemade gift showing you listen to them, pay attention to their interests, and love them.

Bryan loved his gift and really knew I took the time and effort to make it extra special. He can't wait to read through the whole binder! He was really excited and enjoyed the color I spruced the binder up with.

Pictures: The main pictures are the property of Michele Jones. The clip art was found for free at 321clipart.com and www.webweaver.nu.

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