The other day, I saw a website that did a ‘Mailbox Monday’ post.  I thought that was a clever catchy title.  I wanted to share that little phrase with you, my Dear Reader.  Maybe you haven’t heard of it before, like I hadn’t.

You can dub your Mondays as Mailbox Monday and make a special effort to send e-mail to your grandchildren that day.

Do you worry that you’ll run out of things to say if you e-mail them every Monday?  Why not send them a joke, a recipe, a photo you took, or a motivating quote?

Share the story about the day your grandchild was born and how you felt — especially when you were first able to hold your newborn bundle of joy.

Send a story about something their parent (your child) did when s/he was your grandchild’s age.

Share an interesting news story that they might not be aware of.

Most importantly, tell them how special they are and that you love them.

Teen-aged grandchildren disdain e-mail.  It’s oh so old-fashioned.  They’re into texting.  So, have a Texting Tuesday for them.  (Ha!  I made that phrase up . . . or at least I’ve never seen or heard anybody using that before . . .)  Do a Texting Tuesday — assuming you have a cell phone AND that you know how to text. 

I’m hoping that you, Dear Reader, have basic technology skills.  You know, simple stuff like clicking on links, typing, clicking on buttons that say ‘generate.’  Got those skills?  Whew.  I’m glad.  Otherwise, you’d be up a creek without a paddle.

The writer in me loves this Newspaper Generator.  (BTW, in pre-historic days, I wrote a column for a loco local newspaper.)  Simply type in what you want your clipping to say and click generate to get your clipping.  Beneath your clipping will be the option to download it.

You can write a newsflash of when your grandson made his first basket when playing basketball with grandpa, or a write-up of the Valentine’s Day party held at your house, or a wild, far-fetched, make believe tale of daring-do featuring your grandchild.  Isn’t this fun?

If you have a grandchild that is enamored with film making, create a clapboard instead.  Create goofy movie titles of times when they have stayed with you or have done something special like won first place in a debate meet.

Make a street sign with your grandchild’s name at Easystreet.  (Maybe make a sign with the name of your grandchild’s pet or favorite cartoon character or her best friend.)

How about making a scrolling text LED light sign?  Signbot helps you out.  (Maybe create one to wish your grandchild happy birthday, happy St. Patrick’s Day, or happy 4th of July.  Whatever.)

You have several options with these sites.  You can make something yourself to share with your grandchild.  Send it to them in an e-mail.  Post it on your blog.  Make it for your grandchild’s blog.  Print up to hang on your fridge when your grandchild comes.  Or, you can print up your creation and send it to those grandchildren who live far, far away.

Or, you can send them the links and let them generate something themselves.  Or, when they come to visit, you can spend one-on-one time on the computer, checking out these sites, and creating something together.

You are so creative, I’m sure you’ll come up with some spectacular way to use these sites with and for your grandchildren.

By the way, you might also be interested in the AutoMotivator site where you can make your own  motivational poster (or de-motivational one) and the TinyTag site where you can make an itsy bitsy tag like those you see on  items for sale in a store.

Yesterday on my post about Picnik, Lisa commented that she uses Picasa.  Good for her!  That’s another great technology to use.

Her comment made me think that maybe, just maybe, there are some of you grandmothers out there who don’t know about Picasa.  So, I am taking it upon myself to fill in all of you unenlightened souls and tell you about Picasa in comparison to Picnik.  Aren’t I nice?  After all, isn’t that what a digital grandmother would do?  Sure ’nuff.

As I mentioned yesterday, Picnik is a photo editing, scrapbook making online program that you use through your browser.  So if you want to edit a photo and add those scrapbooking type of elements, then use Picnik.

Picasa is more of a photo management system. If you have lots of photos on your computer, Picasa is a great way to organize and view them.  It does provide you with basic editing options such as cropping, eliminating red eyes, adding a soft focus or sepia tone, retouching blemishes, or adding text — to mention just a few.  But nothing cutesy.

Picasa reminds me a lot of iPhoto in that you can add geotags or name tags or other personally determined tags to photos. You can also put photos in web albums.  An, you can create collaborative albums where you can directly upload pictures to a friend’s album.

You can also create a Quicktime movie from selected photos.  You can’t fine tune your movie like you can in iMovie on a Mac.  Rats!  However, I think that I like Picasa for creating movies better than MovieMaker on Windows.

Here’s a little movie that I created in Picasa to show you what the end product would look like.  It’s 4MB and might take a moment to show up down below.  (Please disregard that there are two of the same picture.  A little technology gremlin sneaked the extra one in when I wasn’t looking.)

Since Picasa and Picnik have different purposes and both are free, I highly recommend that you take a look at both of them.  They can sure make your digital photo life easier — and more fun1

I thought that I would share a fun site with all of you grandmothers out there who have set a New Year’s resolution to increase your technological skills. (You HAVE set a goal to improve your tech skills, now haven’t you?)  This site is a great one for grandmas — it will help us as we brag about our darling grandchildren.  The site is Picnik.com.

Picnik is an online photo editing program that you use in your browser.  You can fix red eyes, crop, rotate, sharpen,  and fix exposure and colors.  It’s like Photoshop — only cheaper.  As in free (with a catch that I’ll mention in a moment).  There are fun fonts, shapes, frames, effects, and stickers that you can add to your photos.

You can create scrapbook pages that you can print on your own printer or with their printing services.  You can have your creation printed on a mug, postcards, regular cards, calendars, a poster, and even wrapping paper.  Yes, wrapping paper!  I can see it now — a grandchild’s picture on the wrapping paper used to wrap his birthday present.  How fun is that?  You can even send it to Flickr or Facebook (which works slick as a whistle).

Here are a couple of pages I created.  (Be sure to click on them so you can see them in their full sized glory.)

Aren’t they the cutest kiddos ever?

Print up pictures for your wallet, your office, your fridge, to hang on your walls, to pass out to the random man on the street (who, I’m sure, would be absolutely thrilled to get a picture of your grandchildren).

Wouldn’t it be fun to print some of your pictures as postcards then send them to your grandchildren?  I think they would enjoy getting a postcard from grandma with their picture on it — especially if grandma lived far away or was traveling to tropical climes (like I will hopefully be in a few weeks) and sent a postcard during her travels.

So what are you waiting for?  Skedaddle on over there this very minute and have yourself a look see.

Oh, whoops.  Come on back here.  I forgot to talk about this free business.  Ever heard of the saying ‘Nothing in life is free’?  Well, that is only partially true.  Picnik is free.  But, if you fall head over heels in love with it and you want more options, you gotta pay.  Which, I guess, is only fair.  You can pay $4.95 a month, $19.95 for six months or $24.95 for a year.   (You can see that paying for a year is much, much cheaper than by the month.  And I’m all about being cheap.  Just ask my kids . . .)

So there you go.   NOW, you can head over to Picnik.com.  With my blessing.