Category: Gifting Guides Page 8 of 12

Mother’s Day has a long history in the UK.

Originally, the holiday was a Christian celebration that emerged in the 16th century. Called Mothering Sunday, it was celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and saw Christians all over Great Britain and some other parts of Europe travelling to their “mother church” to worship with family members.

Over time, the holiday became a way for fathers and children to celebrate the mums in their families by spending quality time together and giving flowers and gifts.

While Mums should be celebrated all year, not just on Mother’s Day, the official Mother’s Day can serve as good inspiration for finding a really excellent gift.

What’s one of the best gifts you can give Mum? Spending some loving, quality time together comes in first, of course, but after that, we think photographs of your special memories comes in a close second.

Make your photo gifts unique to make them special.

There’s nothing wrong with giving Mum a simply framed image as a gift, but if you really want to wow her, why not try something a little different?

Collage frames that allow you to include multiple pictures in nicely presented configurations make very thoughtful gifts. Other options are some of the more modern display ideas:

• Getting a canvas print of one of your favourite photos
• Making a hanging display of photo prints using string or wire and clothespins or metal clips
• Creating a display that incorporates decorative objects, like wooden initials, small plants, etc. along with photographs
• Making a photo calendar or book with special images of the family

Framed pictures are classic and timeless, but with all the options out there now for dressing up your photos, you may find yourself tempted to get a little more creative.

Go digital to make your photo gift more versatile.

Digital pictures offer so much potential in terms of gifts. By themselves, they’re not that exciting – no one wants to get a flash drive for a gift! – but you can create slideshows or digital albums to look through on Mother’s Day, preferably while your mum eats the breakfast you made her.

One of the best ways to get the most out of your digital photos is to put them on a digital frame, like the Nixplay Seed.

The Nixplay Seed is a WiFi Digital Frame, which means you can not only upload photos to the frame, but you can send them to the frame no matter where you are in the world.

If you’re gifting a frame, you can load it with special playlists that your mum will love. A few ideas are below.

• A playlist of photos of children or grandchildren with mum or grandmum
• A chronological playlist of mum’s life – you can include graduation photos, wedding photos, anniversary photos, and more
• Chronological playlists of photos of your children
• Soothing playlists filled with images of beautiful places or vacations (just make sure you purchase photos you pull from the web or use copyright-free ones)
• Aspirational playlists – places Mum wants to travel to one day, for example

Mums deserve nothing less than the very best on Mother’s Day. A gift of lovingly chosen photographs, whether that means framed prints, or digital playlists on a Nixplay Wifi Cloud Digital Frame, will let mum know how much she means to you.

For more on how Nixplay is helping families stay in touch, read our post “How the Nixplay App Can Keep Your Family Connected.”

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.

Who says Valentine’s Day has to be just about couples?

Whether or not you’re part of a couple this year, chances are you have someone in your life who could use a reminder of how much they mean to you. After all, that’s what Valentine’s Day is really about: sharing love with the people closest to you.

And while boxes of chocolates and red roses are nice, they are – let’s face it – a little cliche. Here are some Valentine’s Day gift ideas that will work for anyone and everyone on your V-Day list this year.

A personalized photo book

Perfect for: Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, significant other

Photo books documenting a trip you all took together, a child’s first year, or another special occasion are perfect gifts for parents and grandparents. You can create them easily either online or with a photo editing program, and the quality is exceptional.

One of the most difficult parts of creating a photo book is selecting the photos. We all have so many nowadays that it’s tempting to try and cram as many as possible into the pages. Resist the temptation! Photos will be much more striking if there’s just one or two on most of the pages.

Otherwise, you can end up with a book that looks cluttered and messy – the opposite of what you want to give someone special!

If you want to create a photo book for your significant other, a milestone or special event can make a perfect theme. Think anniversary, first apartment or house, wedding or honeymoon – you get the picture (no pun intended).

A Nixplay Iris WiFi Cloud Digital Frame

Perfect for: Grandma and Grandpa, a business-traveling spouse or partner

Nixplay’s newest frame, the Nixplay Iris, would make a great Valentine’s Day gift for special family members, especially Grandma and Grandpa. The sleek design and silk-metal finish give the Iris a traditional photo frame look, and the three available colors allow it to complement any home decor.

But the most important thing about our WiFi Cloud Digital Frames is that they allow you to share photos of your loved ones instantly, sending them from your phone right to the frame. It’s a small, but important way to help your loved ones feel connected to you – even if they’re halfway around the world on a business trip, or living across the country.

Personalized photo cards

Perfect for: Friends, faraway family members, teachers, kids’ classmates

Want to share some love with everyone you love this Valentine’s Day? Consider making personalized photo cards to stick in the mail.

You can add a photo or two of your family with a kind message and send them to friends and family. Think of them as an upgraded version of those school day Valentine’s Day cards you used to hand out. And actually, if you want to get really ambitious, have some made with a picture of your child for him or her to distribute to his or her classmates.

Photo collages

Perfect for: Children, significant others, Mom and Dad

Since making a nice photo collage takes some time, you probably want to save these for the really special people in your life: a child who’s graduating high school, or a significant other, for example.

You can make digital photo collages and have them printed and shipped without ever printing a single photo.

However, since most of us don’t have hard copy photos lying around anymore, a photo collage can be a wonderful opportunity to go through some of your digital photos and find special ones that you want to have printed. Again, the temptation will be to use lots and lots of images, but restrain yourself to a reasonable number so that each one has a chance to shine.

Valentine’s Day is a time to show love to everyone, not just the person you share your life with. For more gift ideas for the special people in your life, check out our post “7 Great Gift Ideas for Mother’s Day.”

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.

If you’ve got a shutterbug on your list this year, you’ve got plenty of options when it comes to what to buy. Gifts for photographers and photography enthusiasts abound – so how do you choose the best one?

From special lenses and camera equipment to books and gadgets, here are our picks for the best gifts for photographers, whether amateur or pro, this holiday season.

1. Photography at MoMA: 1920-1960. This beautiful survey of modernist photography, published by the Museum of Modern Art, tells the history of this artistic period through photographs in MoMA’s collection. The book consists of 8 chapters, each with a scholarly essay to introduce it, and features works by Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, and Dorothea Lange, among many others. This would look great on the coffee table of any art photographer (or art photography buff).

2. iPhone Telephoto Lens. Even photographers can’t always carry their best cameras around. When all they’ve got is their iPhone, this telephoto lens can help make an average snapshot into a great snapshot – maybe one that’s even up to their exacting standards. The lens can fit in a pocket or purse with no problem, making it just as portable as the phone, and comes with a mini-tripod and phone case.

3. Lens Coffee Mug. Photographers need coffee, too – especially when they’re out to catch that “magic hour” just after sunrise. This travel mug that looks just like a camera lens is just flat-out cool. Just make sure they keep it nice and far away from their actual camera lens…a mix-up would definitely not be cool.

4. The Nixplay Iris. This digital frame is our latest offering, and is designed to look more like a traditional picture frame than our other digital WiFi cloud frames. The Nixplay Iris allows you to send photos from your phone or other device straight to the frame, no matter where you are in the world – if you’ve got WiFi, you’re connected. This would make a great gift for traveling photographers, as they can send their photos to the frame at home, sharing them with family in real time.

5. MaxStone Wireless Camera Remote. Any professional photographer will doubtless have one of these in his or her bag already, but beginner photogs will discover a whole new world when they start using this. The gadget allows you to take pictures remotely, so you can not only take selfies that look more like real portraits, but you can also take better pictures of unpredictable subjects – namely, kids and animals.

6. The Sun Strap. Even the most experienced photographer has found herself without a spare battery on occasion. Help the photographer in your life avoid that sinking feeling of realizing that his camera is dead with the Sun Strap, a strap with a flexible solar panel built in. The solar panel stores energy in a battery pack that has both a USB and micro USB output, so you can use it to charge not just your camera, but your phone, iPad, or other mobile device.

7. Green Screen Kit. While pros might want something a bit fancier than this portable kit, we bet your average amateur photographer would be over the moon to receive this this year. This is also a great kit for high school or college-aged photographers, who will have fun experimenting with backgrounds and lighting.

8. Spider Camera Holster. Camera straps and camera bags have their uses, but they can cause a whole lot of neck and back pain if you’re wearing them for hours at a time – like wedding photographers do, for example. This holster is a wonderful alternative. It eliminates the back pain because it sits around the waist, and the quick-release mechanism allows photographers to access their cameras at a moment’s notice.

We hope this list helps make your gift-giving a bit easier this year. If a Nixplay WiFi cloud digital frame is on your list, check out our post “A Lifetime in Pictures: Suggested Pictures for Your Gifted Nixplay Digital Frame” for some great ideas on how to personalize your gift.

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.

Moms: They give us everything, and they never ask for anything in return. So when it comes time to buy mom a gift, you want to make sure that you’re getting her something as unique and beautiful as she is.

This holiday season, try giving Mom one of these special gifts.

A beautiful coffee table book

Who doesn’t love a gorgeous coffee table book? And since these big, beautiful books are something most of us rarely splurge on for ourselves, you can be pretty sure you’re getting Mom something truly special.

If your mom is a home and style enthusiast, try Styling Nature: a Masterful Approach to Floral Arrangements. If she’s a lover of fine portraiture – or Annie Leibowitz – go for Vanity Fair: the Portraits.

An elegant smartwatch

Smartwatches don’t have to look like a tiny wearable computer, as several companies have proven recently. For a smartwatch with a traditional aesthetic but a typical smartwatch display, opt for the Fossil Q.

The Pebble Time Round smartwatch is a sleek, lightweight watch that offers a minimalist design and plenty of useful features.

If you want a smartwatch so well-designed it could trick people into thinking it’s a high-end, traditional watch, take a look at the Huawei Watch.

The Nixplay Iris

Mom deserves style and grace in everything she owns – even her digital picture frame. The Nixplay Iris’s sleek, silk-metal finish and three color choices (Silver, Peach Copper, and Burnished Bronze) make this digital picture frame something she’ll want to display right alongside her traditional picture frames.

The Nixplay Iris’ features include a high-resolution display, an activity sensor that tells the frame to “wake up” when someone enters the room, and WiFi connectivity, so you can send Mom pictures from anywhere, at any time. It’s a great way to stay connected with her through all of life’s little moments – even if she can’t be there with you.

A swanky cookbook

If mom loves to cook – or if she just loves flipping through all those delicious pictures of food – pick up a high-quality cookbook. For the romantic at heart, there’s Ina Garten’s Cooking for Jeffrey: a Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, which features recipes that Garten makes for her husband of 45 years, Jeffrey.

For the adventurous, fun-loving cook, try the totally unique Dirt Candy: a Cookbook. This graphic cookbook is filled not just with recipes, but with comics detailing everything from how to properly slice a zucchini to what it’s like to run a restaurant.

A subscription box for sweets

Subscription boxes are the gifts that keep on giving, and boxes that deliver a collection of delicious chocolates or candies to you every month – well, we’re hard-pressed to think of anyone who wouldn’t be thrilled to get that as a gift.

For the chocolate lover, try Chococurb’s mini box, which will send Mom a box of three personalized premium chocolate items each month.

If she’s a true chocolate connoisseur, you may want to opt for Choco Rush. This club offers a three-bar-per-month box featuring all bean to bar chocolate – in other words, chocolate from makers who perform every single step of the chocolate making process in-house.

If Mom’s more of a candy person, try Treatsie, which will ship her a collection of artisan confections from sweet makers from around the country each month.

Amazon Echo or Google Home

Whether or not Mom is particularly tech-savvy, she’ll be able to get a lot out of the Amazon Echo or Google Home, two smart home bluetooth speakers and virtual assistants that both came out in the past couple of years.

You’ll want to think long and hard about which to get Mom, as a device like this is a highly personal item – but then again, who knows her better than you do?

Happy shopping! We hope your holiday season is filled with lovely gifts, but more importantly, with making happy memories with the ones you love.

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.

The holidays will be here before we know it, which means it’s time to start pulling together your gift list.

While it can be fun to give your loved ones the latest gadget, toy, or video game, these things lose value with time. Why not give your friends and family something that brings you closer – something that helps you connect with each other?

That’s what a digital frame can do. If you’re having trouble deciding which frame to get, here’s a guide to help you out.

The dedicated parent or grandparent

Choose: The Nixplay Iris

These enthusiastically family-oriented people need a frame that they’ll love to display at home or in the office. Their family is their life, after all, and they want to share the images of the ones they love with everyone who comes to visit.

With its stunning silk-metal finish and sleek design, this WiFi photo frame brings a contemporary twist to the traditional picture frame which makes it perfect for the home or office.

The Nixplay Iris also features an ambient light sensor so it can adjust the display to fit the lighting in a room, and a motion sensor that tells the frame to wake up when someone enters the room, and go to sleep when they leave.

The traveler and adventurer

Choose: The Nixplay Seed

A bold explorer needs a bold frame – one they can take along on all their adventures without worrying about packing bulky cables, extra batteries, or easy-to-lose SD cards. They also need WiFi connectivity, so they can send and receive pictures from friends and family no matter where on the globe they are.

That’s why the colorful Nixplay Seed is a great choice. With a choice of blue, yellow, or burgundy, you’ll be able to find a perfect color for your own adventurer. Travelers can use the Nixplay app to connect to their social media profiles, too, so they can pull those perfect Instagram shots into their digital frame playlists.

The executive or business traveler

Choose: The Nixplay Iris

Busy executives and business travelers have a special need to feel connected to the ones they love – especially when they’re having to miss important moments like the school play, or the Little League championship game.

They also need a stylish frame that won’t look out of place in the corner office or their hotel suite. While they’re on the road, family members can send them images from the day via the Nixplay app, making for a fun visual surprise when they get back to the hotel.

The Nixplay Iris’s light and motion sensors give it excellent battery life, so that road-weary executives can come back to their latest photos going no matter how many meetings they had to get through that day.

The urbanite

Choose: The Nixplay Seed or the Nixplay Iris

These trendy, culture-loving city dwellers need a frame where they can display their latest selfies, vacation pictures, and Friendsgiving shots – not to mention the images of their closest friends and family.

Depending on their style, the Nixplay Seed or the Nixplay Iris would be a good choice. The Nixplay Seed can fit perfectly into more eclectic home decor, while the Nixplay Iris would look beautiful in a modern or contemporary home.

The soon-to-be graduate

Choose: The Nixplay Edge

Your soon-to-be graduate is in the thick of enjoying that final year, be it high school or college, and they need a simple, slim frame to show off the fun they’re having.

The ability to connect to social media is of prime importance for these young people, so you absolutely want a frame with WiFi connectivity. The Nixplay Edge is a low-profile frame that will fit easily into any bedroom, dorm, or apartment decor, while allowing your graduate to display their best Facebook photos to the world.

Holiday shopping can be a hassle, but knowing what you’re getting for whom can help immensely in making it the enjoyable experience that it ought to be. Start your shopping right by checking out the Nixplay store, and get in the holiday spirit by checking out our post on holiday decorating tips!

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.