Last fall we were fortunate to host my father-in-law’s (FIL) 75th birthday party.  When my mother-in-law came by a few weeks before the event with a Ziploc bag full of old photos and a bit of uncertainty about how to proceed I happily took over from there! The party was quickly approaching so I took these 5 steps to create a tribute table for the guest of honor…

1 | Gather and scan photos. First, I used my awesome Fujitsu iX500 ScanSnap Scanner to scan the hard copy photos. Next, I turned to my digital images in Lightroom and searched for my FIL’s keyword, making a “best of” collection with images from the past 15 years.  Finally, I merged these two digital sources into one folder on my desktop. In addition to printing out my favorites, we also showed these 250 images as a background Apple TV slideshow during the party using the iTunes>Home Sharing functionality.

2 | Select favorite images. I didn’t have the luxury of time to overthink this one. My goal was to find a small group of images that represented two important aspects of the guest of honor: his personal interests and his relationships over time (childhood –> early marriage and friendships –> grandkids). I printed the favorites out as samples and headed to the store.

3 | Purchase frames in different sizes.  I’m lucky to live near an Ikea so this was the perfect spot to head for this project. But first, I took a screenshot of the print size options offered by my printer (Costco, time was short!) so I knew my target frame sizes.  There were two key photos I wanted to highlight on the tribute table. I selected the two largest frame sizes for these focal point images and worked my way down in size from there.  I laid out all of the frames in a corner of the store and played around with image placement to make sure I had enough frames to get the job done.

4| Create mock-up photo gallery. Back at home, I set up the frames and taped images to them. I then took a quick photo with my phone and used the SnapPen app to write the frame size for each image. I use this app all.the.time for practical purposes such as this, highly recommend.

5| Order prints and insert into frames. Sitting down at my computer I used this reference guide on my phone to quickly order up my enlargements.  The next day I picked up the prints and all that was left was to insert the images into the frames and enjoy the party!

The photo table was a sweet gathering spot throughout the night. Although I forgot to take a photo of the final table styling, sigh, you get the idea. Memories and stories were shared and we also asked guests to write down a favorite memory or kind word about my FIL that he could take home with him that night. Celebrating important life milestones is becoming increasingly important to me and this special night was a fun way to honor a great guy. And you probably won’t be surprised to know I also cooked up a little something else after the big event…stay tuned for more on that!