Artsy or too lazy to cut and paste?

In getting ready for my upcoming birthday party, I decided it was necessary to finish decorating the walls to my house. Luckily one of the craft stores was having a big sale on frames, so I bought some big frames to get the various posters and prints I had already purchased finally up on the walls. While I was out and about, I went to one of my favorite discount stores (no, much more discount than Wal-Mart). and bought a number of picture frames. I cleaned the store out of silver frames and came home and started printing pictures.

I am not one of your really big crafty persons, but I did learn how to use the editing feature on my photo editor to make some of my landscape pictures black and white. I guess a bit of Ansel Adams (http://www.anseladams.com) haunts me when it comes to landscapes and I have always preferred black and white to color. I have a collection of snow photos I took a few years ago and since they are essentially devoid of color, I decided they have alway been best that way.

After hours of selecting, editing, printing and framing pictures, I found I had one frame left and decided it would be best with a collage of snow photos. I found some of my pictures of flowers in the snow - flowers are normal in south Texas in the winter, snow is not, so I found many examples of tropical flowers - hibiscus, azalea, and lantana blooming while covered with snow. My photo editing program would not let me make a collage of them, but I decided it had to be done on the computer - scissors, tape and glue were way too 1990's - and if you remember, I don't even have one of those cute birthday calendars on paper - it had to be on a spreadsheet.

Finally after a bit of searching, I found a freeware program (courtesy of the ubiquitous search engine that with a certain software company will together rule the world) that would do collages. With a bit of manipulation, I managed to create the collage above. It looks better on here than printed, but...I'll go with it for the time being.

And though I was too lazy to print the pictures and cut them out - now I'm going to have to cut out the picture to make it fit the frame. I guess scissors, tape, and glue are still part of the collage world.