by Francesca Grace

Created on: November 20, 2010   Last Updated: November 21, 2010

When you find yourself trying to come up with the perfect gift for your best friend, think ahead. Think way ahead, as in, will this gift be something that will still be appreciated years from now? In ten or twenty years, that electronic gadget  you gave your best friend last year, will be long forgotten and hopefully recycled or harmlessly decomposing item somewhere in a garbage dump. Fads come and go and that includes clothing items that may seem like a fabulous gift in the moment. Why not take some time to create a very personal, custom gift for that friend of yours this year?

With the advent of digital cameras, camera phones, Facebook and every other site where pictures are gathered and displayed, you have a veritable smorgasbord of pictures to select that could be the best gift your friend has ever received. Show them how you see them by pulling together a collection of images that represent your friendship.

Start collecting copies of pictures of your friend, you and others that most authentically represent their life right now. Grab those fun party shots, the candid photos, even the school yearbook official portraits and save them all to create a Power Point your friend will enjoy watching and sharing with others for years to come.

The important thing is to gather as many images as you can first; organizing them into a sensible presentation comes later. If you've known this friend for a long time, you may have access to childhood photos to add to your project. Create a Life Story that includes moments you remember in pictures, created slides with your own words, scanned tickets from events you attended together or maybe notes passed in class that you still have in an old treasure box.

Choose several pieces of music that best represent the years you have known each other. There is always a song that we sang until we were sick of it, or one that made us want to dance. Add those MP3 files to your project  and when you're editing, the soundtrack will help you select images that best fit the music.

If there is an activity that you and your friend participated in often enough to have pictures, rather than a life story, you could make a Summer of 2010 project or whatever is relevant to your shared experience. One young woman who has a large group of Kiteboarding friends that camp near beaches throughout each summer has collected a large amount of images and video footage from all their camping and Kiteboarding trips for the past

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