A Free Thoughtful Fun Gift in an Hour or Less

Do you have family spread all of the world and want to make someone you love feel like everyone is united in celebrating a special occasion?  Well, this was my predicament a few weeks ago when my father-in-law was in the hospital on his birthday and all of his children were in different cities or states so there was no possible way we could all be there to celebrate with him (not to mention he needed to rest and recover from surgery).  I thought for days to figure out a way to make him smile through his pain and feel overwhelmingly loved even if it was only for a few moments on the day of his birthday.  I had a eureka moment when the light bulb flickered on and I decided to make a short montage video with up beat music of the entire family doing silly things to make him smile. 

Here is a FREE way to give a very awesome loving and thoughtful gift. It will look like it took hours to create when in reality it will take you less than an hour. Simply have all of your family record short low quality videos and/or have everyone take cute pictures with a message or holding a balloon or something else and then save them all in a folder together for easy access.



Once I had everyone email me pictures I realized I did not have any type of video editing software on my computer and I did not have any money or time to get a video program.  If you don't have a program to create a video of wonderful news for you! I downloaded a completely free version of Pinnacle Video Spin for my PC.  I chose this software because the reviews stated that it was user friendly (for those of us who aren't that computer savvy like me) and it allowed you to upload up to 2G of media.  I am very happy with my choice too! It also allows you to combine pictures, videos and music with nothing more than a click of a few buttons! My favorite part was how easy it was to turn the sound on my videos when I wanted it to play without hearing the voices in the video rather than the song that was playing.  I changed the order of the pictures and videos by simply dragging them on a timeline to the spot I preferred them.  It literally took me an hour to research, download the software, upload the pictures, videos and music, and put the video on You Tube so my father-in-law could enjoy the video.  I hope you enjoy making others smile by sending them personalized sweet videos like the one I created.

Click below to see an example of a video I made using Pinnacle (but really you could use any video editing program).

 Birthday Video