Free Windows Live Messenger Emoticons: The French do it best

This week, I’m on vacation, spending time resting and relaxing and whiling the time away with a few silly pursuits.  One of these silly, amusing pursuits is seeking out emoticons for Windows Live Messenger (WLM), my instant messaging client of choice.  Call me childish or overly emotive, but with the exception of the great functionality and features of WLM, the wide variety of available emoticons is my favorite part.  If you are gonna communicate you might as well be creative and have fun at it right?  

Ready or not, here they come.  My choices* of best websites that offer Windows Live Messenger emoticons, display pictures, and backgrounds, from first to last in the order of my preference:

 Drum roll please . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1. The French do WLM emoticons best.  Visit this French MSN site http://www.ilovemessenger.fr/toppacks.aspx  to see and download my favorite of favorites.  You’ll notice a bit of a language challenge if you don’t speak French, but if you’ve downloaded much from the Internet, you’ll be able to muddle your way through the process.  I especially like the Emoticones 3D and the Emoticones Love 3D, but there are at least 16 cute packs to choose from: aliens, animals, baby animals, super heroes, etc.   No signup or sign in required.
2. Another foreign language site (Dutch?) with fun Christmas Emoticons, background and display picture:  http://www.emoticons-livemessenger.com/pages/msnnlkerst/ No signup or sign in required.
3. Kiwee – Windows Live Messenger Emoticons.  You can get to Kiwee through my link or directly from WLM by choosing “more”.  Kiwee’s emoticons, winks, display pictures, and backgrounds download directly into WLM ready to use, and they have material to celebrate just about every holiday, event and emotion you can think of.  This site does require registration and sign in for downloads but I have yet to receive any spam as a result of my registration and you can choose your preferences.
4. MSN Ifadeleri:  No signup or sign in required.  Oodles of adorable emoticons.  The only drawback to the emoticons on this site is that, since they are able to be used for multiple applications, you must save each one individually to your computer and then use WLM’s “create emoticon” feature (Tools> Emoticons> Create) rather than download directly into WLM.
5. Blog Catalog MSN Emoticons:  A wide selection of regular, 3D, and animated emoticons in all shapes and sizes.  No signup or sign in required but these also must be saved and created as emoticons individually.  Blog Catalog site provides instructions when you click on the emoticon you wish to have.
6. Windows Live Freebies:  Emoticons, winks, backgrounds and music for WLM.  Some cute, some not so cute (in my opinion). 

There are, of course, many sites on the Internet that offer emoticons.  Just make sure you have firewall and anti-virus programs installed and that you check out the websites and the download content carefully.  I tend to stay away from sites that bring up lots of popup windows and try to get you to install various toolbars and/or change your home page.  Have fun!

*with credit given to my pod mate who helped me locate these sites