Photo calendars that I have ordered online were delivered this week. They are holidays gifts for friends and family. And they'll be great gifts: unique, wow factor and good value for the money. One is for my friend Simi, with only pictures of her - good as a calendar for her office. One for a friend who loves sailing. I did not have enough pictures of him sailing, but enough pictures of generic "life in a sailing boat" that he should like. Two for a friend couple with pictures from Vietnam where we have traveled together. One for my mum with pictures of Sardinia's beaches, which she loves. This one has taken more time because I did not have enough good digital shots so I've had to scan some old pictures and browse the Internet to find a few more. Easiest one? Calendar with pictures of my 1 y.o. god-child for the parents.

Not enough inspiration for you? OK, with a little bit of imagination . . .

- one for your fiance' with pictures of you - bet your relationship will last another year

- for somebody fixated with dogs, cats, motorbikes, planes, horses . . . that's an easy one for a 'themed' calendar

- piece of cake: a calendar for grandparents with photos of their children and grandchildren

Any suggestions for other calendar ideas that you would like to share with others? Post it in the comments! Still a few weeks to go to the end of 2006.....

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Do you love shoes? If the answer is no, skip this post. If you've answered yes and you struggle in the morning to find exactly THOSE shoes, keep on reading.

Guilia: I do keep my shoes in their boxes, but I find it difficult to know which pair is within which box. So I usually have to open 2 or 3 boxes before finding what I was looking for.

Jenny: I have an embarrassing number of shoes. Some friends have helped me move and know the number of boxes they had to carry from the moving van to my bedroom. They are sworn to secrecy. It is hard to keep track of that many shoes.

Here is the solution: put a picture of the shoes on the box so you'll see immediately where the sneakers or the yellow high heel sandals are.

They will look like this:

Guilia: What I like to do, first of all, is take a picture of all my shoes. Place them on a neutral background and center them well.

Then print your pictures out for on your shoe boxes. If you have a Kodak Printer Dock, try the Wallet option, cut the single images and stick them on the boxes. Otherwise get self-adhesive A4 paper and print them on your inkjet printer. Or the Kodak Picture Kiosk can do the work for you.

And I do have a reading suggestion, too: Why Men Don't Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes: The Ultimate Guide to the Opposite Sex. Have fun!

Jenny: When I first saw Guilia's shoe pictures I was struck by the similarities... even though we live an ocean apart. We both opted for a nice woodgrain background. We both had shiny metallic flats and we both had beat up Chuck Taylors. However, while Guilia used an dramatic angle for her shoe pictures I went for a straight-on shot. But then again, her artistic shots shouldn't surprise me. Guilia IS in Milan... the shoe fashion capital of the world!

Not only does putting pictures of my shoes on my shoe boxes make it infinitely easier to locate the correct pair, but it is nice to have a visual record of my shoe collection. And well... after seeing Guilia's shoes... it's kinda fun to see what shoes other people have.

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In August I enjoyed a great holiday trip to Vietnam with four people, two with digital cameras and two shooting analog (film). Vietnam is a great place for taking pictures. There are rivers everywhere, rice fields of incredible brilliant green, Mekong Delta, Sapa Mountains, Halong Bay (Unesco World Heritage), great portraits of people working, smiling, on boats, at the market, driving scooters (there are millions of scooters!), exercising alongside the lake in the center of Hanoi. But it was surprisingly a great place to enjoy photography.

At the "War Remnants Museum" in Ho Chi Minh City, there is an exhibit called "Requiem" that contains a collection of pictures taken by 134 war reporters killed or listed as missing between 1950 and 1975 in Vietnam and Indochina. It is really moving. They are from all nationalities. One picture shows three journalists just before boarding a helicopter that would be shot down soon after. Robert Capa died here as did Larry Burrows famous for many Life Magazine covers. And what about this picture?

This shrapnel pierced camera was that of a Japanese reporter, Taizo Ichinose. Unfortunately, all these great pictures are not available online. I think that they should publish them. At the entrance of the room, there is this epitaph: "Each came for a reason and died taking a chance. All lived for the next picture; it could be the best one of all. It is for their photographs, not their dying that the world remembers them."

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