Make an Awesome Gift for the Kids, for Just a Few Cents

I wanted to share something I've been working on for the kids, for Christmas.

For about the last year, both kids, but L especially, has been really into audio books. We've rented tons of them from the library, and we actually even have some ancient books on cassette tapes still lying around here. :) L listens to them as he goes to bed at night, and as he's playing throughout the day.

I had the idea that I wanted to record myself reading some books to the kids, and burn them to discs to give them as gifts. I asked around on Twitter, and someone suggested that I could do reasonably good recordings using the voice memos function on my iPhone. (Whew, I was hoping for an easy process.)

The hardest part is finding time when the kids are both asleep, and the house is totally quiet.

The recordings turned out great, even I was sort of shocked to hear that my Texas drawl was so pronounced. I simply emailed them to myself, and saved them. (A word of caution here: I was at home using the wifi. I suppose if I hadn't have been, I might have had a data overage on our phone plan, as it's not unlimited, and the files were fairly large. Just something to think about.)

I could have recorded books I liked, but instead, I recorded their favorites, the ones for which there are no available audio books. (Pokemon, and Dr Seuss, so far, in case you're wondering.) 

I'm really looking forward to giving the recordings to the kids, and am going to try to recruit some family members to add their voices as well.