It started innocently enough.  My daughter and I were in the car chit chatting about various things and I asked her what her friends were picking for social media.  My daughter is in middle school and at that age where it starts to get crazy with all the things her friends are doing.  I’d read articles how Facebook might not be “cool” so I was curious.  She mentioned Instagram was big in her group.  Instagram?  That photo thing?  I knew about it of course but not in a social media context.  Clearly I had to do some research.

The cool thing about my kids is they never do the “but everyone else is doing it!” whine so we do try to do things for them when it is age appropriate.  And they know the rules.  If they are on the internet guess who they get to be friends with?  Me!  Or at least one of the parents.  🙂  So I thought hey, I’ll check it out, join, then have my husband set up the laptop in the den for her to use.  She doesn’t have a smartphone or an iPod Touch.  I mean those things are $200!  Which boggles my mind when I see how many kids out there have them.

First roadblock.  You need a smartphone.  Nuts.  There had to be a way.  I thought well maybe I could put her pics on my iPhone and she could use that.  Oh no, pics only go one way.  So after much digging and looking about I figured out we could use my android tablet.  Woot!

Second roadblock.  Apparently contrary to the belief you can load pics from your computer directly to the tablet via the usb, you can’t.  You have to use the mini SD card.  And a SD card adapter because my computer doesn’t take the mini size.

Third roadblock.  I have no idea how old her phone is as her mother gave it to her used.  (I’m the bonus mum, lucky me!) But like all cameras I’ve hooked up to my computer we could get the pics off of it.  Except hers.  Facepalm.  The computer didn’t have the drivers for it.  So it got passed to my husband who works with computers for a living. (thank goodness)  He figured out she had a mini SD card in her phone.  So to make this work she has to remove the SD card and put it in the tablet.  Then for the tablet to read it you have turn off the tablet and turn it back on.

And we were finally in business!  And through all this I really got hooked onto Instagram.  I love taking photos and am having a blast with the filters.  It is a really quick way for me to get a creative fix during the day.  I thought I’d share some of what I’ve taken so far.

I love taking pictures of flowers but this one of the bleeding heart is my favourite.

This weekend they had a festival at the Wyman Tavern to showcase the 1700’s and there some really interesting things to take pictures of.  Including the fruit and veg they used as dyes.

I did find an interesting bit about Instagram.  When you use filters it saves a copy for you as a square.  But if you just upload without filters it doesn’t save a square copy so this one I uploaded didn’t change parameters.

I am curious if any of you do Instagram and what you’ve found.  A big question I have is does it drain your phone battery?  My battery life is terrible all of a sudden and wonder if it is because of the app.  I did keep my username as ourgrowingpaynes if any of you would like to see what else I’ve posted.  And let me know yours as I’d prefer to follow those that I’m familiar with and we have similar interests!  🙂