This morning I discovered a new FUN hobby.  I laughed out loud when I watched my productions.  I am so glad I didn’t have time to send my grandson a traditional birthday card!

That’s right.  My grandson’s birthday is today.  I sent him gifts via Amazon Prime, but didn’t send a card.  My wife suggested I send him an e-card.  I am so glad JibJab Sendables caught my eye.

The first card I made featured five dancing characters singing the Pharrell William’s song and video hit, “Happy.”   The five characters appear with blanks for faces.  To personalize the faces, you need to:

• Locate a photo from your computer
• Take a screenshot of the face, and give it a name
• Click on “Add New” and upload a face
• Scale and rotate the face so that the eyes line up with the eye line
• Drag the points on the mouth and jaw to match the sample face
• Drag the faces you designed on to the blank faces in the video
 You are done. Just watch the video and get ready to laugh!

There are zillions of topics and videos to choose from.  I liked the “Happy” video so much I have made it for three people this morning.  For a birthday card for one single friend of ours, since there were five blank faces, I added my wife and myself, our friend, and Obama and a TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle).  How fun it was to see them dance and sing on the magic computer screen.

I like being able to make cards in advance and tell the JibJab program just when to email the cards.  I love it – a fun hobby combined with my routine of sending emails for birthdays and other occasions.

I am now making a JibJab video for my editor.  I will search for photos of him and his wife, and insert the photos I made earlier of my wife and me.  The “Happy” song needed five characters, so I threw in a face of Culver City’s mayor from Google Images.

Yahoo!  That was FUN!

Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com