Father's Day Gifts {via Pinterest!}

A few months ago, after I had such great success with Teacher Appreciation Week gifts via Pinterest, I created a board on my Pinterest account for Father's Day.  There was one idea that really stood out, and after looking through many of my friends recent photos, it appears it stood out to EVERYONE!  I have seen tons of photos based on this!  The idea was simple...take pictures of the kids holding different letters that spell out daddy and put them in a picture frame...simple?  Yeah right!

1.  I went to Michaels Craft Store and it turned out they were having a large frame sale, so I revamped my plan.  I decided to make frames for my husband, my father and my father-in-law.  I bought large frames that had 6 vertical openings, and each of them ended up costing $25.00 each!  yay!

2.  Many of the photos I saw were of folks creating large individual letters from poster board.  At first that's what I was going to attempt, but after shopping at Michael's I wussed out and decided to purchase the premade wooden letters (and thank God I did!).

3.  Came home and created a cheat sheet with the letters and who would hold what.  I wanted the letters to be held by the kids in birth order...and when you have 5 children, there's a lot of logistics involved with such a "simple" idea.

4.  Primped the kids and headed outside with 5 kiddos, camera in hand, cheat sheet and letters.

***In hindsight, I wish I had the following 3 hours recorded to show just how much effort I put into these gifts!***

The following 3 hours went something like this...

Hieu, please stand over in front of the hedge.
"Mooooom, I think there's a SNAKE in there!!!" 
tears.
moved to a different location.

Hieu, please stand here and hold letter A.
"But I don't want letter A!  That's not MY letter, mom!  MY name doesn't start with A!"
tears.  redirect.  calmed down.  baby begins to cry.

Tao, please stand here, smile...no, your happy smile.  great job!
"uuuuuugh!  MOM!  It's getting too HOT!  I am sweating.  I need a drink."
3 out of 5 kids march off to get water.  baby is screaming at this point.  after 30 minutes I think I got 2 decent photos.  sigh.

this went on, and on, and on.  we took a break for snack, reprimped, and attempted again.

Hieu, please stand here and hold the letter and smile.  she smiles.  then the wind begins to blow and the sky darkens.
"MOOOOOM!!!!  Look at the sky!  There's a hurricane coming!!!  We need to get inside NOW!"
tears.  2 year old begins to cry.  8 year old begins to meltdown.  mom begins to meltdown.


5.  Finish taking photos and get a much needed glass of wine while photos upload.

6.  Print photos in black and white at CVS.

7.  The next day..load kids, pick up photos, realize they made a mistake on dads photos...his gift then becomes a week late :/

8.  Finish my father and my father-in-laws gifts and stand there with a victorious smile on my face.  Viola!  I DID IT!!!

My father-in-laws frame.  It reads "OngNoi"  (grandpa in Vietnamese).

This is my fathers frame.  It reads "Pupaw" with a 6th photo of all 5 kids laying down (yeah, that was a fun one to shoot.)

They came out great!!!  I was SOOOOO excited.  and exhausted.  and bit insane.  ;)

My father-in-law loved it!  Success!

Finally was able to get the correct photos for my husbands frame.  It came out equally as awesome!

Whew!  What effort yet such success!  Have you made anything via pinterest??