Planning my website

First I must say that just typing the words "my website" in the title gives me a feeling of accomplishment. This is because I never ever would have pictured myself being able to even think about creating a website. I realize I havent done so yet but it gives me the courage to perservere and actually picture the finished product even if it doesnt turn out exactly the way I expect in the end. This past April (April 2009) my husband and I took my daughters Katelyn and Kelsey to Cancun Mexico. This was their first "real" vacation with white sand, blue water and beautiful palm trees. It was important for me as a mom to be able to share in that experience with them. The looks on their faces throughout the week was something that I will cherish until the day I die. It makes me very sentimental to think about that week because it was the best vacation I ever had. I have been to several places but nothing compares to sharing in their fun as I watched them laugh and experience the beauty of life. They were treated to many special experiences that week from cultural food, to shopping with the locals, to going on an excursion, and massages on the beach overlooking the ocean. My daughters are still talking about their vacation and I know they will remember it for all their life as special. When I returned from our vacation I created a picture filled scrapbook for each of them with captions to capture the special moments and funny experiences. Katie took hers to college and I was thrilled when she unpacked it and placed it lovingly on her dorm room desk. Kelsey refers to it often and looks through the pictures and laughs and reminisces. Therefore I decided that my website would be dedicated to our Cancun Mexico family vacation. I plan on titling it "HOLA Cancun." The girls had their own adjoining room and so they felt grown up because of this. However, every morning I would burst into their room repeating the word HOLA (hello in spanish) about a dozen times to wake them up. They would get so annoyed with me and pull the covers over their head. I would continue with the HOLA's until they were fully awake. Now they laugh about it and I hear them telling each other things like remember when mom would come in and dance around and say Hola Hola to wake us up. Now when my daughter calls me from college or when I call her she picks up the phone and says "Hola!" Before our vacation they didnt even know what the word Hola meant.
The images for my website are taken from my personal picture library of all the candid shots I took on our vacation. I will be using the photoshop extended software that I downloaded as a thirty day trial period in order to resize and enhance the photos. I do not have an html editor at home as of now so I plan on using frontpage. For the 2.0 application I will download from the list of choices we received in class during our week four class. Today I will continue to work on my storyboarding. I have it all layed out in my mind how I want everything to look but I'm sure that may change as I begin to put it to paper today. I plan on editing and resizing a scenic photo for the home page where the title will be located. Next I will create my buttons in photoshop and lay out my pages. Since this website is mainly intended for the enjoyment of my daughters and family I plan on making the pages that link from the homepage more humorous to match the fun times we had while living our vacation. Initially it will look like a travel website would for Cancun having a button for things like lodging,things to do and travel tips. However when you link to those pages it will be only the lodging of where we stayed with the link to that hotel. Things to do will take to to the page that has pictures and explanations of only the things that we did on our personal vacation. There will be a link to Wet and Wild where the girls swam with the dolphins and experienced the water park for the day. I may also add a link to isla mujeres the island of women where we took an excursion for the day. The girls also loved the entertaiment and eating at Margaritaville so I am hoping to link that website on the things to do page as well. The travel tips page will be information and tips related to the trip such as making certain to ask the bus driver to take us to cancun center and not center cancun! The tips will relate to other funny and memorable experiences like the picture I took of Katie with balloons on her head with a caption related to saying that this must be what swine flu looks like. There is a whole story related to this from vacation that they laugh about. I will then attach a real link to actual travel tips for Mexico.
I want the color scheme to match the primary colors you see in typical mexican decor which is red, yellow, green and blue. This will be the repetitive color theme throughout. I would like to try use chili pepper icons as a bullet to accent my information. I am really excited and cant wait to show the girls the finished product. Judging from how much they loved the scrap book this is going to be very special for them. Katie is majoring in psychology in college right now. The other day the professor asked them to do an activity where they close their eyes and think of their most relaxing thought ever. Katie told me she thought back to Mexico to the massages they had on the beach. I plan on having that picture in the things to do page. I hope the finished website will light up their faces the same way it did when they were given their scrapbooks. I think it will serve as another way to remember a great time in their life.