A New Generation of Personalized Gifts

Throughout grandparenting history, personalized mementos have been a huge deal in gift-giving. Your own grandmother probably spent hours embroidering your initials on special hankies, and we’re pretty sure the Australopithecus grandpa engraved stone picture frames for his youngest when he wasn’t running from predators (our anthropology department is looking into this). As both technology and the grandparent species evolve, so do options for customized keepsakes. Here are our favorite personalized gifts that wow modern grandchildren much more than monogrammed backpacks do:

Like visiting a farm to see where eggs come from, giving your grandchildren a mix CD of your favorite old songs will show them the exact origin of their favorite hip hop samples. Mixaloo.com resurrects the obsolete mixtape by letting users build their own compilations from its digital library of more than 3 million tracks. The site is mainly geared toward the MySpace generation of music fans, but grandparents can easily make a CD for about $12, depending on the number of tracks, and e-mail it to their grandkids as a download. You can also design album-cover art by using your own photo or picking one of Mixaloo’s ready-made options. Delivering this kind of rocking history lesson now will have them begging for your favorite Hendrix LPs later.

Price varies by number of tracks

Available at Mixaloo.com

Cartoons, starring you!

Young grandkids love a good story, even more so when a skilled and compelling narrator, such as you, reads it. With this in mind, Peeka Productions has set up shop in Chicago, where grandparents are filmed in a fully equipped studio with a soundstage and green screen, reading a story for their toddler, preschool, and grade-school-age grandkids. The finished product is a cartoon DVD with your narration; the action cuts back and forth to you sitting in front of a whimsical, animated background, delivering your lines. Peeka Productions will even give you some preproduction media training to perfect your elocution and look as professional as that DJ on Yo Gabba Gabba. Check out their site for package deals and demo videos.

For ages 3 months to 7 years

Price ranges from $320 to $400, depending on package. Additional books and DVDs available for an extra cost on each package.

Available at their Chicago studio, with new locations coming soon. Visit Peekaproductions.com.

Flip out over video

The home video of you and your granddaughter feeding koalas at the zoo is just sitting on your hard drive, and you can’t let such gripping footage go to waste. Motionbox.com lets grandparents upload video and select 15 seconds of footage to put into a high quality, frame-by-frame flipbook. Just like their animated predecessors, these are paperbound 3.5-inch by 2-inch booklets printed in four-color format with cover art and personalized titles. They’re a new techie twist on an old novelty, and chances are your grandkid has never seen a flipbook before, let alone one that features the two of you.