Looking back...

DD2 'booked' half a day with me today so that she could look through old family photos with me. You see, she is 30 later this year and is already planning her party, but more importantly, she is planning her invitations! She has found a US site which uses interesting templates to produce invitations with a bit of a 'wow factor'. The one DD2 particularly likes is a collage of photos in the shape of '30'. 

So we spent a lovely couple of hours looking through albums and boxes and folders of photos. It became obvious that DD2 was not interested in photos of her teen years...'I have this well-groomed image, mum', she opined! 

So what was wrong with the photos from her 'op shopping clothes phase'?...or the red or pink hair-dye phases?  Or the chunky Doc Martens phase? Or the wonky self cut fringe phase? She only wanted photos from the era when her mum made her clothes and did her hair! lol. 

So together we scanned chosen photos and also scanned some slides. Then it was time to go online and start completing the collage for the invitations. It took her a little while to put photos in place...because they have to be shrunk a fair bit, some of the photos had to be discarded as they just didn't work in a smaller format.  But eventually she was happy with how it all looked. 

The fancy US site she was using was having a few problems and DD2 actually lost all the work she had done inserting photos into this 30 outline template...so I lent her a USB stick to save all the photos, as she had to head off. 

That left me with a folder with a lot of delightful photos on my PC. I decided to Google 'free collage programs' unlike the one that DD2 was using, which involved some cost. I found 'Picmonkey'...so off I went to have a bit of a play with the collage feature...

This is the result...No fancy shape mind you, but I like it! And it was easy and fun to do!

A few weeks ago DD2 asked me to be in charge of the 'Picture Board' for her 30th...'Like the one you did for my 18th and 21st,' she said. Hmmm I thought that might be a bit old fashioned these days, I mean with all this digital technology around...might have to ponder about this task. :-)