Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

Since Thanksgiving, I've been trying to brainstorm a really awesome anniversary gift for mom and dad. It's pretty cool that they're inviting us along for their celebration, so I wanted the gift to be really special! Here are my ideas:

1. A picture calendar--one of my coworkers just had calendars made for her family using old family photos that she scanned. You can then input important dates like birthdays and anniversaries and arrange the photos as you like--even repair them if needed! You can make it an 18 month calendar, so we could do August 08 through till the following December 09.

2. Depending on how I do collecting old photos (which I will do this coming Christmas, somehow!), I might try to put together a powerpoint slideshow. This was my original idea, but I admit I was a little worried about how long it might take me (you know how the bigger a project you take on, the less likely you are to finish it?) I really wanted to add in sound clips by recording a little snippet from everyone, including the grandkids. I might still try to do this--I figure all I need to get is a mic right? And then hook it up to one of the 5 or 6 laptops we have at the house over the holidays? I thought we could record a favorite memory, story, joke, something learned...whatever.

I thought that I could try to make arrangements to show the slideshow somewhere....maybe a lobby somewhere...I'd have to worry about a projector and screen, but I bet knowing Disney they might be able to help out. I figure I could start with the calendar and see how ambitious I feel after that.

Marc said 21 minutes later

Both ideas sound good to me. In terms of the calendar, there's a program for the Mac called iPhoto, which lets you build calendars. I dunno if you've seen the one I made for Laura, but it came out really well. You can do the same thing in terms of birthdays, anniversaries, and set length of the calendar.
Geoff said about 1 hour later

Forget the sound clips, I can bring my video camera and we can literally tape each of us. Also, I can help putting the video together. We can combine photographs, video, and add some music in there and make it real slick. If you can handle scanning old photographs and getting them to me, I can do the rest pretty much. Way better than PowerPoint I can assure you. Not only that, but we can put it on DVD too!
Kristen said about 3 hours later

Sweet, Geoff! I have some ideas for music (wedding song, etc.) I envisioned something that went chronologically..like starting with their marriage (maybe see if Grandpa has any old photos...I've never seen any of mom and dad dating...) and going through each child's birth and major life events...

It's awesome that we can do all this stuff digitally so we can work on it together in different states! We'll knock heads during christmas about this.
GJ said about 4 hours later

Oh, we'll knock heads all right. I gotta rap Steve, Marc and Geoff a whole lot in their respective noggins for the prior post. Other than that, the idea seems good on HTML. (warning, bad techie joke).