Well, the holidays are over, the tinsel, decorations and trees are coming down, the wrapping paper saved or disposed of....but you have memories: The children, grandchildren, loved ones, friends, festive meals, dancing, great parties, etc.

After you've processed and fixed up your images, you can burn a disk, put them on Skydrive, file them away...

OR

You can make your own .themepack  and you can make a desktop theme with rotating wallpapers, special sounds, fave cursor and share it in social networks or rss feeds....

Here's how:     

Ladies and gentlemen, pop the hoods!

Windows 7 supports new features including easy Theming & Desktop Background Slideshow.  You no longer need to patch system files or use 3rd party software to create and install themes in Windows 7.

A new file format, .themepack, has also been introduced with Windows 7 to help users share themes.  A .theme file is basically a .cab (for cabinet) file. It enables you to change the appearance of certain desktop elements. You can create or modify a .theme file in two ways:

- Modify personalization or display settings in Control Panel and save the settings as a .theme file. See your Windows Help for instructions on that method.

- Create a .theme file manually for a greater level of control over the details of your theme.

To make your theme available to users of your application, you must supply your .theme file, as well as the background picture, screen saver, and icons files. You can do this with a theme pack.

A theme pack contains following things:

1. Wallpaper with or without Slideshows
2. Window color
3. Sounds
4. Screen Saver

Do note that from the LHS pane, you can also change the Desktop Icons & Mouse Pointers.

To create a theme pack:

Right click on your Desktop > Personalize.

Apply the default theme. Click on Desktop wallpapers. Select the wallpapers or browse to the folder which includes your desired wallpapers.

Set the Picture position – usually Fill or Stretch. Confirm the time interval for the Slide show and if you want it to shuffle. Save your changes.

Next, choose the Windows Color, Sounds and Screen Saver if any.

You will see it as a Unsaved Theme on the top left. Click on Save Theme and give it a name. Next right click on this theme and select Save theme for sharing. Give it a name and save it as a  .themepack  file.

To install the theme simply double click on the theme pack.

Well?

What are you waiting for?

Additional reading:

Advanced read :

1)  MSDN. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb773190.aspx

2)  E7 Blog