Message from Maggie:  My best friend Lindsey’s mom turns 60 this weekend.  This is a woman who has been beyond generous to me since I met her a decade ago.  In fact, she threw my bridal luncheon.  Since I had family in town and wasn’t able to travel to her party, I wanted to do something really special for her.  I reached out to her family and friends that also couldn’t be with her to celebrate and asked them to send me video messages.  Using those I created a video that Lindsey played at her surprise party.

What you need:

• iMovie (or any other video compiler software)

Instructions:

1. Send an email to family and friends with the following instructions: I hope everyone is having a great summer so far. I think I know most of you but my name is Maggie Gentile and I am lucky enough to be Lindsey Lewis’ best pal + feel like an honorary Lewis.Like you, I am sad to miss out on Susie’s big 60th birthday surprise party. I thought it’d be nice to send along a compilation of video messages from her loved ones who can’t be there to celebrate. If you’d like to participate please follow the instructions below:How? Turn your iPhone HORIZONTAL and record a video of yourself using the video setting on the camera.

   What? Record up to a 30 second message wishing Sue a happy birthday and saying any other lovely things that you’d like her to receive.

   Then what? Text the video to me at [insert phone number] by [insert date]

   What about after that? I’ll text back to confirm with you that I received your message and once the entire video is compiled I’ll send it out to this email chain.

   Thanks in advance for your participation!

2. In the meantime, create a title slide on Canva by going to Canva.com.
   1. Create a card.
   2. Pick a theme and write a message relevant to the occasion.  In my case, I wrote: Happy sixtieth birthday, Sue!.
   3. Add an additional card using the same theme that has a message for the backend of the video.  In my case, I wrote Love your Friends and Family.
   4. Add a third card to write the date and indicate who made it.  In my case, I added 06.25.16 + A Magpie Production.
   5. Download the cards and add them to iPhoto.
3. Once you have the videos, save them in iPhoto.
4. Then open iMovie and start a new project.
5. From your My Media folder add the first Canva image to the beginning of the project.
6. From your My Media folder drop all of the videos into the new project.
7. From your My media folder add the second two Canva images to the back end of the project.
8. Add a transition between each image and video.
9. Download relevant music to the beginning and end of the video.  In this case, I used the song Susie Q by CCR.

Cost:

• This project was free using my MacBook Pro.

Video:

Check out the video on YouTube here.