It’s been almost a month since Christmas and my kids just sent out their Thank you notes, well sort of.
I don’t know about you, but sitting my 2 boyz down with lovely stationary, clean hands, and a good pen and asking them to nicely write out their notes of extreme gratitude is like having to watch a Tori Spelling reality show marathon while sick with the flu.
Brutal with a capital B.
So this year, my husband and I decided to try “going rogue” (the only thing Sarah Palin has said that I actually kinda like). We decided to hand-over one of our Flip video cameras and let the boys produce their own thank you “shorties.” That’s slang for “short films” in artsy I-make-my-career- in-film lingo.
My husband helped produce the thank you “shorts” but he really let the talent run the show. The boys made a list of who they needed to thank, gathered some of their gifts as props, made sure the camera was charged and off they went. I have to say for the first time ever the boys were happier than Tiger Woods in Vegas as they created their video “notes” letting all of the relatives know individually how much they loved their gifts.
We used our Mac to create a family website a while ago, so we selected one of the templates they had available in iMovie to make a page where all of the thank you videos could be viewed by everyone. All we had to do was send everyone the link.
Producing all of the thank you messages only took a few hours from start to finish. If you don’t have a program to help you create a family site, you can easily send individual videos right from your phone or computer.
The Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles seemed to love this form of thank you just as much as the hand-written variety. So, if you have access to a camera or a phone with video capability, and a computer, go ahead and cheat a little.
I say let your screen loving offspring use their affinity for social media to promote good manners and proper etiquette for a change. It’s a win/win for everyone involved.
PS: I’m in negotiations to get my boys to agree to post one of their videos here for all to see.
