Thursday, May 6, 2010

Mother's Day Gifts

If your name is Mischell or Machiel (ironically, both pronounced like Michelle) and you're my mom or mother-in-law, look away!! Otherwise, keep reading.



No, really. Look away.





For Mother's Day this year (unlike previous years) I decided to actually DO something. And I saw this fantastic idea over at The Inadvertent Farmer:



Isn't it fantastic? She did it for Valentine's Day, but I thought it would be fun for Mother's Day. Now my mom is Nana to her grandkids (2 with another on the way! not me...), which works really well for the 4-picture frames, but we call my Mother-in-Law (MIL - look! you learned some techno-shorthand!) Gramma, so I wasn't sure how that one was going to work. Luckily, my husband had the great idea to do some pictures with two letters in them.

But I digress, we'll talk about the Nana pics first. It was pretty straightforward. I got my SIL (sister-in-law, get it?) to take some pictures of my 3-year-old nephew holding an N and an A. (I just formatted them for an 8.5"x11" printer paper; no fancy stuff when you're trying to pull it together with someone 2,000 miles away and send it another 1,000 miles to the Nana.) A 3-year-old can understand holding a paper and getting his picture taken, so those worked out great. The two with MY son are the comedy-of-errors pictures. He's just basically doing whatever he wants, and my husband's holding the paper while trying to stay out of the picture. I like them, though. Then I used a BW action from one of my photographer friends in town and also added a sepia tint to complement the frame. And I love how it all came together. But after all that rambling, you'll have to wait for a picture! I completely forgot to take one before I sent it. I'll upload at least the pics later tonight so you have an idea and then get my mom to take a picture when she gets it. :)

My MIL's was a little easier because all her grandkids are here in town. We decided we'd try one pic with the G and the R and the three oldest grandkids (4, 2, and 1 - we didn't want to risk the brand-new baby in all that fuss). My nephew and niece on that side ALSO understand the concept of holding still for a picture, so we have a few where Lincoln (my 1-year-old) is kind of thrown in and we tried to get a pic before he crawled away. I happen to think those are pretty dang cute. Then we tried to get one with my niece holding an A in front of her belly. That one she didn't get it. It was either in front of her face or over her head. (In fact, the R is over her head in the first pic, too.) Also very cute. Then my nephew held the two M's like a champ! Definitely the most straight-forward pic. And we used the same A for my MIL's as for my mom's. Handy, that. I stuck with the BW action since my MIL's frame is black, dodged in a few places to lighten some shadows, but did very little editing all-in-all, and here's my finished product!


(Click on the pic to see it larger. Also, the picture quality is kind of bad;
it's rough to take a picture with the glass in the frame!)


I LOVE how it turned out. No surprise I used varied fonts for a more whimsical look. ;)

I'll be linking to the parties on the left.

14 comments:

  1. Super Cute! I think you did a great job Kelli!

    I'll have to try my hand at this when there is more than one grandchild. OR I could just do it with Ivan's name. How cool would that be? :)

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  2. Natalie, that would be SO cute! And you could probably get yours to hold still better than mine! Definitely let me know how it turns out if you try it. :)

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  3. Such a great idea! I love it! It would work with my mom, she's called Grammy, and there are three grandkids. Except it would have to get updated at some future point, since I'm the only one that's done having kids. And with my MIL, it wouldn't quite work, since there are 9 grandkids (almost) and seven letters. But, combining kids always works. Hmmmmm, something to think about for next year.

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  4. This is so adorable. I love how your pictures turned out-so fun. I am sure they will love them. Also thanks for linking up to my challenge.
    -Crystal

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  5. And I am following you right back. I LOVE the idea for Mother's day... and will probably steal it... Super cute. PS. Walgreens is having a photo promo of 8x10 collage pictures until Saturday, which is perfect for this idea!

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  6. Yours turned out awesome...how sweet! Kim

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  7. This is too cute! Please link this up to the Mother's DAy Show at my site today!!!

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  8. Oh my, that is a SUPER wonderful cute idea that is easy and I could do....I love it...wonderful! How brave are you to post about it before mom's day! =) Following from New Friend Friday!!

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  9. Awe - these are so sweet!!! I know my mom and MIL would love them! Thanks so much for planting your creative seeds at Plant a Punkin Seed Party! Don't you just love the Inadvertant Farmer? =0)

    Kristi
    Punkin Seed Productions

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  10. They turned out really cute!

    Following you over from New Friend Friday!

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  11. that is so cute. what a great idea to capture a group surprise in pictures. the black and white pictures were a smart choice for the black frame. The babies in our families don't care for having their pictures taken either but they are tooo cute.

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  12. I love this idea!!! Sooo Cute!

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  13. I love this idea and really want to use this one some day. Great idea with "Gramma."

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