Occasion
A digital Christmas gift for your girlfriend she will actually keep
Most digital Christmas gifts for a girlfriend are gift cards and subscriptions: useful, forgettable, and nothing to do with the two of you. The gifts people actually keep are the ones that took effort and could only have come from one person. A page about your year together is that kind of gift, and it fits in a text message.
On Longlove it is The Magazine: a flip-through magazine about the two of you. Her name and a photo of you both on the cover, your letter on its own page, your story, nine reasons on hearts that flip, photobooth and film strips of your photos, your songs on a spinning vinyl, and 'Merry Christmas' on the back cover. She opens it on her phone on Christmas morning, and she can write back.
Make it an issue about this year
A Christmas magazine works best as a year in review. Go through your camera roll from January and pick the moments that made the year: the trip, the new flat, the bad week you got through together, the night you laughed until it hurt. The story page carries the short version, and the photo pages carry the rest. Up to twenty photos fit, and each new batch adds a page. The cover photo should be a recent one of both of you, ideally a candid where she is laughing.
Write the letter like a Christmas card, only longer
The letter gets a page of its own. Skip the summary of the whole relationship, the story page has done that. Write about this Christmas: what this year with her was like, one thing she did that you have not thanked her for, what you want next year to look like. Around 150 to 250 words is right for a phone. If you would rather not start from a blank page, there is a ready Christmas letter you can keep or rewrite in your own words.
Add the songs and your voice
The songs page plays your songs on a spinning vinyl: paste the Spotify links of the ones that belong to you two, like the one from your first drive or the one you both know every word of. On the letter page you can also add a voice recording of up to thirty seconds, made in the editor in a minute. A girlfriend who has read your texts a thousand times has not heard you say this, and that is usually the part that gets the tears.
Pick the style: Cherry, Noir or Blush
Cherry is warm red and cream, the most Christmassy of the three. Blush is soft pink and gentle. Noir is black and white with sharp type, for a girlfriend whose taste runs more fashion editorial than festive. You can switch styles at any time while you build and nothing you wrote is lost.
Time it for Christmas morning
Send the link on Christmas Eve and set it to open at midnight, or at the moment you would hand her a present in person. Until that time the link shows a countdown. If you are together, write the link inside a card under the tree, or simply hand her your phone. You get an email when she opens it and another if she writes back.
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Start with The Magazine
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