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For Christmas, I'll always have a handful of gifts for my mom and for my dad I'll have one or two smaller things — at least one of which he will probably never use. This doesn't hurt my feelings as I know most gifts are a long shot when it comes to him. The man knows what he likes and what he doesn't! But, still, as someone who prides themselves in giving good gifts, I was determined to one day for the best gift. When Doorstep Digital, a digital archiving company, emailed me about partnering, I was immediately interested. As someone who lives in constant fear of losing photos, always wants to translate digital files to physical items, and eventually did end up accidentally deleting 40,000 photos from my phone, the idea of archiving and cataloging images that are important to my family was a no brainer. But originally I had planned to archive photos and have them put in a photo book for Mother's Day. Until I realized that it was actually the perfect Father's Day gift. You see, my dad loves cruises. Loves. But since we started going on family cruises regularly only about five years ago, almost all of the images from these cruises live on our phones — with a few making an appearance on Facebook or Instagram. What better gift that to have all of these images gathered, safely archived, and put into a photo book? So I shifted gears, and decided to make this into a Father's Day project.

I sneakily gathered about 250 photos from my mom's phone, my phone, and various forms of social media and sent them over to the lovely people at Doorstep Digital who helped me archive the digital files for safe-keeping and put them all into a lovely family cruise-themed photo book. And this isn't the only service Doorstep Digital offers. The company will also send professionals to your home to carefully and gently archive images that only exist in physical form — think old letters or your great-great grandparents' wedding photos. They also offer services like family biographer and video production. Say you wanted to have someone interview the older relatives in your family about how they grew up, or about their parents and childhoods and put all that information together into one video — Doorstep Digital has people who can do that, too. Finding gifts for people (especially meaningful ones) isn't always easy, but Doorstep Digital made it a fun and relaxing process that felt... well, special. Oh, and, of course: my dad genuinely loved the gift.

This post was created in partnership with Doorstep Digital.
