When life takes you far away from your loved one and you don’t know how to love them from afar, a touch of inspiration and a pinch of planning can still connect you.
These packages may not work for you specifically, but I think that they can be a starting point as you create your own list of care packages. In planning these care packages, I had to ask myself a bunch of questions about my recipient’s likes and dislikes.
- How often did I want to send a package?
- How much should each cost?
- What are some of his or her favorite things?
- Do we have any shared interests that I could build a package around?
What I ended up doing was creating a master list of the packages with the details of the contents of each package (because there was no way I was going to remember in September something I prepared in March of the same year). I coerced help from my home base to send the packages once a month. I had them lined up, packaged, addressed, and marked with a post-it note.
Have I ever mentioned that I’m a super planner?
In no particular order, here are a few of my favorite packages.
Above is my You Glow package. I filled it up with glowsticks and wrote a little note in glow-in-the-dark lemon juice. Did you ever do that as a kid? It’s still SO fun!
Another favorite was the Cowboy Bebop themed package. If you haven’t seen the show, you probably should go watch at least one episode. I found that cute shot glass on Etsy! Also, you’ll notice that I’m a recycler of boxes. Hey! It’s a good box!
Oh my gosh! I loved making the above Hatch Your Own Dragon package. I found a recipe on Pinterest (basically just baking soda, water, and food coloring) to create that weird egg-shaped thing. I purchased a plastic Toothless dragon, and I encased him in the baking soda and after a few weeks (yes, weeks! That thing was dense!), it was finally dry. I burned the edges of a sheet of paper and then let my imagination go wild in the writing!
My Post-It and Rolos care package was fun and simple to make. I strongly believe in the power of a couple of words, and a post-it allows just the right amount of space for words or a little doodle. All you need is a favorite candy, post-its, a few nice pens, and a lot of compliments!
A Letter in a Book package. Okay, I confess. It was my brilliant mother’s idea. She thought I should combine my own love of letters with my love of books. With a highlighter and my favorite book by Anne Lamott in hand, I highlighted words, letters, and punctuation to write out a letter. That letter would be a hard one to decode, but I think it was worth it. Most letters are.
The Mug package. Have you ever been to one of those pottery painting places? GO! I found a giant mug, and I had such fun painting it. I dubbed it The Monster Mug. I won’t be showing you a picture of it so you’ll just have to imagine how awesome it is! Picture big teeth and fearsome eyes!
The Message in a Bottle package takes the cake. I love history, and I love the mystery of messages in a bottle. I considered just releasing it to the wild and seeing if it could eventually make its way to its desired recipient. I eventually decided the USPS was probably the best idea (YES! You can slap an address and postage on that and the US postal office will get it to its destination). This bottle is special because it’s a bit more high tech than most bottles. Nestled amongst all that blue squiggly paper is a USB stick filled with all sorts of fun surprises.
Even though this post ends here, you don’t have to stop the brainstorming! There are still so many great options! You could enlist people who live nearby to be in on the fun. Create a scavenger hunt. Dream up a Someday Package with little items to represent what you look forward to doing with them someday or you might do a Letter A Day box. Of course, there’s always room for practical boxes!
Let your imagination run wild as you plan on surprise gifting your loved one!
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