A picture is worth a thousand words, but video is the next best thing to being there.  Believe it or not, my soon-to-be 4 year old son came up with the idea of making a video birthday invitation!  I was planning on sending out a conventional “e-vite” for my son’s 4th birthday party- a rocket themed party where we planned to invite preschool-aged kids to try out our homemade zip line.  The birthday boy was excited to show off his dad’s super-cool homemade zip line, but he was worried that most of his young friends would not know what a zip line is.  He said, “why don’t we make a video to show them how zip lining works!”. I instantly knew this was a brilliant idea.  The video invitation did its job perfectly.  Not only did it get rave reviews, but more importantly every child (who was not out of town) came to the party excited to zip line and we even had a few other friends who came along!  For me personally, it’s the kind of project that quenches my creative thirst.  And, nothing is more fun than watching your kids laugh, smile and be giddy over and over and over! (which is what you do when you are editing video)

Do you want to make a video invitation?  Here’s what I did…
1) I took video of my kids zip lining on my iPad.  (You can use any kind of video camera as long as you can download to your computer.)
2) I came up with an idea that went with our party theme- rockets & zip lining.
3) I found video of the space shuttle launch online and uploaded that and my zip lining video onto iMovie. (If you don’t have iMovie or another video editing program, YouTube has a basic video editing program you can use for free.
4) I uploaded a fun song that went with the mood of the video.
5) I edited it all to the music including a title page and the party information at the end.

Since I had never used that particular iMovie program before and I had to figure out how to change the format of the space shuttle video, it took me longer than I would have expected (about 10 hours)… But if you do a basic video invitation using your own video, it really should only take you a few hours.

Another bonus with this kind of invitation is that it is a moving memory that your child can look back at over and over and show it to their own children one day.

Living In The Digital Age,
Your Sensible Girlfriend