photo gallery party

D's birthday party this year was pretty simple, but required a bit of advance planning. The idea came from another party that we'd been to a few years ago that was held at an art gallery; we thought it was really fun to have photos to look at while eating and chatting. Since D and I were not about to go and buy a lot of expensive prints, and we have a lot of friends who are talented photographers, we thought we'd hold a contest instead.

I asked each of our guests to send one photo, cropped to 8x10. I then printed, matted, and hung each photo somewhere in our house. I ordered the mats from Golden State Art for a little over a dollar apiece, and hung the photos using 3M Poster Strips, so they could easily be removed later.


Each photo was assigned a number, and guests were given fake $100, $50, and $20 bills that they could use to vote for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners.


The nice thing was that other than putting up the photos, I really didn't have to do much else, and people seemed to have a good time. Well, there were some snacks, of course.



Anyway, without further ado, here are the top three photos...

#3 - taken in Jeju Island, Korea (by me!):


#2 - taken in Tokyo, Japan:


#1 - taken in Costa Rica: