It’s that time of year again. High school and college graduations everywhere you turn. Parties, congratulations, celebrations, family, friends, happiness and hope for amazing futures. Most teens graduating from high school or college will tell you the best gift you can give them is money (as we all know going into or coming out of college, clearly hard cash is a rare commodity). Of course no one denies cash is king, however I want to share the gift idea that is still 16 years later my most prized possession.

My Grandmother, a sassy smoker who could take on high rollers in Vegas like a champ, was also a very skilled seamstress. I had this idea to take all my beloved college t-shirts I knew I someday would probably either lose in the dozens of moves I would make from apartment to apartment across states and countries or would eventually have to throw away. Each shirt had a huge significance to me during those 4 years and I never wanted to forget the experiences that were attached to each of them. They each had memories of my sorority Bid Day, date functions and formals, my semester in Spain and the shirts we made to memorialize our time we spent with our new lifelong friends drinking and playing until 7:00am then heading off to an 8:00am class….all in Spanish mind you (how I aced those 16 units I will never know). I asked her to take about 30 of these shirts including my sorority initiation letters and make a quilt out of them. She spilled hours of labor and love into making this quilt and I’m sure as hard as it was for her to do it at her age, I hope she knows wherever she is that it is still my favorite gift I have ever received.

So many things we will give and receive over our lifetimes. Big gifts and small, inexpensive and lavish. But we will always remember those that were done with love that we cherish forever. Gifts that when you still look at them they warm your heart and instantly make you smile. It never has to be the amount we spent, just the feeling it gives the recipient and how it’s etched into their memory from that moment in time and rekindles that feeling in your mind and soul every time you touch it.

If you know someone who has given you a gift as such always remember to thank them and express why it’s still important to you. I promise you they have no idea the impact that it made.

If you want to learn how to make a T-shirt quilt like the one pictured please see this step-by-step link:

http://m.wikihow.com/Make-a-Quilt-from-Tee-Shirts

Enjoy this wonderful season of transitions safely and responsibly!

Congrats Graduates!