Pictures Made Easy!

A few weeks ago I received a wonderful email. No, it wasn't from a mom who wanted to tell me how God is giving her hope in the midst of her mothering struggles. (Though I absolutely love, love, love those emails!) It was from someone who wanted to give me something so I could share about it here on my blog.
A gift? For me? Oh, yes!
And what a perfect gift it was.
Ben, from ImageKind wrote to tell me about a product his company offers. He said, "I work for an art/framing site online, that mostly is about independent artists selling their work, but we also have a collage frame that I thought would be a big relief for a lot of mothers out there. A mother comes to our site, uploads her favorite pictures of her kids, and then her frame type, and we send out the finished product. It can be a relief to get something together that seems like a gift that has taken thought, but it's real simple."

When I told Ben I would love to receive this collage frame with my kids' pictures in it, he graciously offered to have me call him and said he would walk me through the process in a matter of minutes. But I told him I wanted to see if I could do it myself. I said most of the moms who read my blog are at least slightly familiar with my fear of all things technical technical challenges, and if I could manage putting together and ordering this frame all by myself, you would all probably believe you could manage it, too.
Well, I did it! And it was simple.

I logged on to ImageKind's website, chose the layout I wanted, uploaded three pictures of my kids, selected the frame I wanted (That part was really cool. You can click on the frames to see what they look like up close and I was able to choose one that looks great with our furniture.), chose my matting, and that was it. Seriously. It was that easy.
Then I just sat back and waited a few days for it to be delivered. And this is what came to my doorstep yesterday:It came ready to hang, with the hook on the back, and even has little pads on the bottom corners so it won't scratch the walls. (Don't know if that's standard practice, or if they put them on because they saw the kids in the pictures and figured the frame might get bumped around by some boys who never throw anything in the house...)
I love it because I have nicely framed pictures of my kids which perfectly capture their personalities. The picture of Joshua with the praying mantis on his cheek is one I have had in the camera for a couple months now, but the pictures of Elizabeth and Matthew are ones I snapped on the spur of the moment just to upload for this frame. Elizabeth almost always has her nose in a book, so that was easy to capture. And Matthew will do anything with SpiderMan, including standing still for five seconds for a photo shoot. I am waaaaaay behind on my scrapbooks, but now I have a great picture of my kids to hang up - which everyone who comes into my house will see.

Ben said frames like this one typically range from $40-60 and if you order by mid-December you can probably have it in time for Christmas. If you have some digital pictures ready to go, you can click here and get started at ImageKind.
Please let me know if you get one of these frames, as a gift, or for yourself. I'd love to know what you think about it!