Organize your Stuff (round 5): One Little Word Hop

Well, it is the first of the month again! We cannot believe that the summer months have flown by us, and August 1012 is officially retired! As it is September 1st, it is time for our One Little Word Blog Hop where we Share our Word for the Year (ours is Journey) and the homework from the past month given to us by Ali Edwards at Big Picture Classes. As always, Thank You Margie at Nihao, Cupcake! for hostessing!

August’s prompt for the month was a picture of ourselves…here is ours:

The POW and Creative Me concur that this pretty much sums up our August. Our Journey these days is back and forth around town in our little Ford Focus. It is funny, we are putting 300+ miles a week on the car, and yet we never seem to get out of town.

We told someone that we never have time to sit down, but the reality of it is that we kind of always are…the seat just keeps Moving!

The POW has been in charge of the house as OCD Me has been drafted to help keep schedules strait, coordinated, and also keeps track of our friends, favors we have left, and ones that we need to burn in order to make sure that everyone gets where they need to go, and nobody is left behind. It is staggering the mental gymnastics that occur.

This was a sample of our afternoons from last week:

Monday

12PM Oldest Child Physical Therapy (broke ankle back in football camp in July), 1PM Lunch, 2:30 Drop off at Freshman Football, Grocery shop, 4PM start Dinner, 4:30 Dinner, Wonder where Illusive Middle Child is (went camping out of state for 4 days, but is supposed to be home for football practice), realize Illusive Middle Child will not make it, 5:15 go with Girl Friday and Dinner in Tupperware and Trombone to give to Oldest Child back to high school, 5:45 Oldest Child finally done, takes food and instrument to change and get ready for 6:30-8:30 mandatory high school band practice, 6:10 arrive at 6-8pm Cheer Practice and drop off Girl Friday, 6:35 return to High School for Mandatory please join the Band Boosters meeting and band highlights for upcoming year, 7:15 get phone call that Illusive Middle Child has returned…and ask family to hold on to him until 9ish as we are in a meeting, 7:30 excuse ourselves from parent meeting, 7:45 back to Football/ Cheer practice… where they are assigning uniform numbers and Illusive Middle Child is missing (Thank you Team Mom for getting him a number close to the one he wanted as there was no 77 jersey this year), ask Team Mom to take Illusive Child to practice tomorrow, go to Cheer field and retrieve Girl Friday, 8:15 pull out of the parking lot to arrive at 8:30 at Band Practice for Oldest Child. 8:40 Drop Oldest Child and Girl Friday home for showers and leave to retrieve Illusive Middle Child (and camping gear) from friend’s house… and this was the EASIEST day of the week!

PS-at this point, school had not started yet. That did not get added to the agenda until Thursday.

This month has been a Journey in the truest most literal sense of the word. It only takes me 20 minutes from home, but it is definitely not dull or slow paced by any means!

Here is the rest of the OLW Hop Group…you can see their photos and their words as well…
Enjoy your Journey!

You are at the last stop... http://scrappnbee.blogspot.com from here out, you return to Margie to start over!

Margie http://xnomads.typepad.com
Brighton www.simplebrighton.com
Kimberlee http://scrapsandsass.blogspot.com
Monica http://scrapinspired.com/category/one-little-word/
Cheri http://cheriandrews.blogspot.com
Lisa http://backtoallen.com/category/challenges/one-little-word/
Kara http://iwannabemewhenigrowup.blogspot.com
Ruth http://suburbansahm.blogspot.com
Jessica B http://jlfbarnes.blogspot.com/
Veronica www.veronicanorris.typepad.com
Naomi http://poeticaperture.com/
Carolina www.micinnamons.blogspot.com
Kelly http://mindingmynest.com
Cindy http://seriousplay.typepad.com
Amanda http://scrappnbee.blogspot.com

Organize your Stuff: Week 6 (round 5): Photos

As far as an organizational week, this one is kind of a boring one. The POW got us onboard with digital photos back in 2004. During round 2 (here) OCD Me got what few film pictures we had (about 4 grocery bags worth) and sorted them into photo boxes.

Some people struggle with how to find their digital photos. After all, if you are looking for Baby’s 1st Birthday… is that IMG23456 or IMG32457? Do you have to go through them all? And then how do you find the stragglers from your cell phone or that were e-mailed to you and are out of sequence?

OCD set up our digital photo system (backed up on a terabyte external hard drive). It is a series of folders. The master folders are by year. Then, as the POW offloads pictures from memory chips, she automatically creates a folder by date (automatically saved with the photo if you set it up on the camera). Example: 01-01-2012 New Year’s breakfast. Adding the zero for months 1-9 is important. Otherwise, October (10) pictures will immediately follow January (1).

This seems to work for us, anyway. Here is a layout from this summer…PA Me has been dragging her feet, but we are mostly done with our Big Picture Classes Big Idea Festival layouts from August. Yes, we are behind. However… We just had to go to the 2011 folder, scroll down to the end of June, and find 06-23-2011 GF lost 1st tooth. *Ta Da* Girl Friday’s lost tooth!

As for this weekend, we are still recovering from Black Friday shopping. The executives who decided that shopping from midnight to 6 AM is safe, must own stock in Starbucks and Red Bull. If the Inner Hoarder did not have an eighth degree black belt in Black Friday shopping, we would have just skipped all together. Riiiiigghhhht.

We came, we saw, we shopped and shopped. We came home, crashed, and then went back out with Fabulous Spouse to Ikea (15% back on gift card! Score!) Now that Awesome Auntie has returned to her house, we were re-furnishing the play room… couch hunting! (Cell phone picture).

Furiture assembled, and replacement Xbox with Kinect (Black Friday purchase) in place. (Digital camera picture).  Fun family time playing Fruit Ninja...Priceless.

Still jet lagged and riding the rest of our shopping high, we had a 6AM start the next day, so that we could give blood at our church before heading off to wrestling for the day. Illusive Middle Child gave it his all, and finally scored his first win and first pin in the last round of the day! Woo Hoo! (Another cell phone picture).

Organize your Stuff: Week 6 (round 4): Photos part 2

It has taken a while…and a completely new photo printer at Costco after several failed fix attempts, but the photos are here!... and therefore a layout!

This is Oldest Child’s wrestling season. This layout was selected from about 150 photos taken. Do you have the same problem that we do trying to capture our children’s sports in photos? For Football season OCD Me probably took a minimum of 200 digital pictures a game over eight games (that is 1600+ pictures). Then, it is left to the POW and Creative Me to figure out what pictures to use… and when the Inner Hoarder is involved, the choices are even harder to make and cull down to The One (or ones) for a layout.

As for new photos, here is a picture of our Mother’s Day camping in the rain. The POW was boycotting the holiday as the Reserves will shift everyone’s drill for Super Bowl Sunday, but not Mother’s Day. We are pretty sure that Somebody up the food chain must have Mommy issues. So, my tribe went camping, Awesome Auntie and hers went to the zoo (and stayed dry), and a fun time was had by all!

Also, here is the Illusive Middle Child as center of the universe…if only for a moment at his First Communion. Talk about hundreds of photos from which to pick! We have at least four camera’s worth of pictures to sift through to find The Ones. Well, tomorrow we will talk ideas, and have a card or two!

Organize your Stuff: Week 6 (round 4): Photos part 1

It is ironic that it is photos week this week, as we sent about ten layouts worth of photos to Costco on Saturday, and the photo printer has been broken since.  The POW is not happy. Last we heard, they might have the parts tomorrow night…. Hmmm…

Go figure, Creative Me finally has a little free time with the WMD asleep, and Awesome Auntie and the Toddler at swim lessons, and no photos… during photo week!

However, Creative Me and the POW did complete the tutorial as promised for Tuesday Trio and their pink and black challenge for Sketch 65. (sketch is flipped upside down).This is a pretty easy technique that we have seen floating around the net, most recently at Operation Write Home a few months back.

Paper pieced embossed papers

Step 1: Hand cut, die cut, or punch paper shapes.

Step 2: Glue shapes to desired area of paper.

Step 3: Place paper in an embossing folder and run through die cut or embossing machine (I have a Cuttlebug).

Step 4: Remove custom papers from embossing folder.

Step 5: Embellish!

Hopefully, the planets, the pets, and the people will cooperate!

Organize your Stuff: Week 6 (round 3): Photos Part 2

Question of the Week: One photo per layout or lots? 4x6 or all different sizes? What's your scrapbooking photo style? As you can see from the layout further down, I use lots of photos and lots of sizes. I blame the invention of the digital camera, allowing us to take a million and three photos of a twenty minute event… more if it is longer or your kids get a hold of the camera. To further enable us photo junkies, Costco (my enabler of choice), Snapfish, Wal Mart, Target… just about any place that you go (even your corner chain pharmacy)… will convert these moments to print for as little as $.13 a photo usually in an hour or less (except when the machine breaks, and that only happens when you actually need the photos and cannot wait until the next day or next hour), and they can do enlargements and wallets too for just a small upcharge!

Let’s get to the Layout for this week first (as PA Me finds digital storage a very dry topic).

and here is my mini challenge card

This was my response to the Dixie Pieces Glee Club Challenge for Week 4: Southern Gospel (country version not AME version). I came to the decision that no matter what, I was never going to be a country music Southern Gospel Gal. I blame my Northern upbringing, and that my ears were conditioned to place twangy, traditional country music in the same category as waterboarding and Geneva Convention infractions against the humane treatment of prisoners. “Whip me, beat me, take away my charge card!--to paraphrase a favorite movie from my youth, “Space Camp” (it has a young Joaquin Phoenix, you should Netflix it!)—just don’t put on the country music!

Ok, I feel better now. Actually, it was not that bad.  We played BINGO in the forum. I focused more on the religious aspect of the genre. Like I said earlier, instead of losing the truck, girl, and the dog, in these songs you get saved. Since I fizzled out of the Organization Challenge in early May last round, I never got to my Easter vacation. This one layout is from the most important part of our trip, “witnessing” my Fabulous SIL receive her First Communion and Confirmation. (*sniff*-off to grab a hankey!)

As for my photo storage, this week I tackled some of my digital storage. For those of us who have made that great leap of technology from celluloid and Kodachrome (which is discontinued now BTW) to digital, backup and labeling is key. On my first digital vacation, I realized that I was left with IMG00001 through IMG99999 and was crushed by the fact that I just wanted that one picture from when we went to eat at that place on day 3…and it meant that I had to flip through thousands of frames… This was NOT acceptable to OCD Me. Now, I have a terabyte external drive (yes a terabyte), and OCD ME tries to upload to the internet (for me Costco) once a month, and she has individual folders on the computer. My desktop has folders that say Photos 2010, Photos 2009 etc. Inside that year folder, every day and event is separated into its own folder. I can have 01-04-2010 Girl Friday makes snow angels (the 01 is important, so the computer doesn’t try and reorganize and put October, November and December between January and February). If there is more than one event in a day, like on a vacation, OCD Me tackled this too. Now it is 07-04-2010a Fourth of July Parade, 07-04-2010b Neigborhood BBQ and 07-04-2010c Sparklers & Fireworks. This way I can always find what I want pretty quickly.

Eventually, I will get to tagging my photos, OCD ME thinks that’s great. However, I have heard that as you change systems, the tags can drop. Since I am still using a Microsoft operating system, and they seem to change every 2 years or so, and PA Me is not ready to invest the time to tag, when it is not going to stick.  So this is it for now, until OCD Me gets bored or Bill Gates promises not to change anything on my computer or Fabulous Spouse can be tricked into buying me an iPad...I know, I know...when donkeys fly (check out the opening sequence to the original Shrek).  Next week: Ideas!

Organize your Stuff: Week 6 (round 3): Photos Part 1

Photos! Without these, there would be nothing to scrapbook. Depending on when you started taking photographs, and when…or if…you switched to a digital media… there could potentially be a lot of work in your future.

We tackled our “cold storage” last round (round 2 blog here). This was everything pre digital, and it was enough! Now, on my scrapbook wish list is saving to convert the negatives from these pictures to digital, a not minor financial undertaking, as much of these photographs were taken with Advantix film, a much smaller negative than 35mm.

This round, ODC Me is off to update our digital storage, while PA me is left with cleaning the rest of the pantry with which the POW tasked her last week as punishment for not wanting to deal with scraps. We got the bottom three shelves organized. Four more to go.

My Creative Me went overboard this weekend. She knocked out three pages for a chipboard mini-album that she started in April, and created this fabulous… yet disturbing… over the hill birthday card for the Tuesday Trio weekly challenge Sketch#37-with a desert motif as the site inspiration piece.  The desert scene is hand painted- I told you she was disturbed.  The palm trees cut out of patterned paper that needed to be purged a long time ago. I think that we are excited about Halloween at the end of the month, since the neighbors are already decorating in skeletons and spider webs and such!

As for my Glee Club layout for Friday, Dixie Pieces has asked for a Southern Gospel theme. I have lived in Charleston, SC twice (for 2.5 yrs total), so I thought that I might have a fighting chance. However, the POW is completely stumped. The Moderator’s vision of Southern Gospel music is much different than mine (granted, I am by no means a Southerner, originally from the Northeast, and now it the Pacific Northwest). I may be showing my ignorance, my naïveté, whatever…but my vision was more AME, “Sister Act”, matching robes, a couple of spontaneous “Hallelujahs”, an organ/ piano and a tambourine or two. This version is country music, except that instead of losing the girl, the truck and the dog, you get saved. It is OLD SCHOOL twangy country music and the Artist is Jeff and Sheri Easter…Google them. The moderator had not even heard of “Sister Act”, and thought that it was a singing group. If Southern Gospel as I knew it was outside of my purview, country music Gospel puts me way outside the box! Wish me luck this week!

Organize your Stuff Challenge: Week 6 Photos

Wow! What a week! This week was photos week (as the title implies). I am feeling just slightly bi-polar this week, and I guess that is a good way to describe my photo storage. I am beginning to feel like Zen Master Wookiemouse's Challenge weeks are like Star Trek movies...where every other one leaves you just a little disgruntled, but you keep coming back for more (sorry non Trekkies). Here is my layout. It took me a while...and yes, I confess, I went to my local scrapbook store and bought new paper for it (but come on...it has Legos!!!). Ok, I know, My name is Scrappnbee, and I have a problem...

Paper was ROUGH. Scraps was easy. Photos made me want to find Inner Hoarder's corner and rock. Now, you may be a one camera family, but I have been blessed... or cursed... with a gadget guy for a dad (Love you, Daddy!). So, back in the pre-digital day, I had:

1. ...a fabulous 35mm Cannon, which had been an eighth grade graduation gift... but was too expensive to go to college...

2. ...the college, one step up from disposable, camera...

3. ...Fabulous Spouse's college camera

4. ...Advantix Camera, wedding present by gadget guy Dad ...since you could now take 3x5, 4x6, and panorama in same shot...

The problem with this, I have one roll of film that has both honeymoon pics and my first child's delivery room pics. OCD me refuses to separate these photos until they can be converted to digital, and practical POW me really cannot argue...after all, the Advantix rolls are .59-.79 a frame to convert to digital. With over 30 rolls of Advantix film alone... you can see where I began to shut down. Even Fabulous Spouse, looking over photos with me on Friday, was willing to give me a bye... (I think that he is in denial about football season being over).

This morning, I was still in the same place I was on Friday night, but it was Monday, I had a blog to do, and a layout to complete (yes, PA Me was doing a bizarre happy dance and using the mountains of photos in lieu of shiny objects). So, thank you dear readers, as I have hopefully inspired you, you arm twisted PA Me, and we got to work. I realize, just as Zen Master Wookiemouse said, that this was a multi week program, which allowed OCD to breathe a little easier (she really, really wants organization...and this quandary was not helping her). My husband treated me to lunch at our local Brewery (they have the best Beer and Cheddar soup), to give me a little liquid courage... and off I went to do the best that I could with what I had.

Did you know that the photo boxes that Michaels and JoAnn's sell are strictly for 4x6? I don't know why that did not cross my mind... or that my father would print all of my wedding photos in 5x7? (I love you Daddy!...again) I bought 12 of these in January! I can do this.

OK, OCD Me, where to start? I decided that starting with our wedding year (I just laid those flat in the photo box), I would color code each year with a 4.25 x 7 card (yes, the photo box will hold 4.25 x 7...just not 5 x 7). Then I went to town on any photos that were not Advantix or larger than 4 x 6.

Surprisingly, once I got started, it went along pretty well...and golly, I took a lot of pictures of my first born child! (Sorry Middle Child and Girl Friday). By the time my kids got home from school, I was almost done, and by dinner time, I had 3 boxes sorted, 4 boxes of need to scan then sort, a Cropper Hopper file for my big pictures (you know, school, soccer, T-ball, etc...). and a box with those danged panoramas I thought was so cool when my Advantix was new. Ta-da! My inner procrastinator was pouting...a little. She and OCD me were deep in thought...and the POW was trying to work out a budget with the Inner Hoarder who was not sure she wanted to let the negatives out of the house. Maybe that is why negatives week is so far away... Here is my After...or as after as it is going to get for now. Not to bad, eh?

Ok. Easy part- digital. (It is like good Ash, bad Ash...or digital is the up to my hard copy photo down... -I told you I was feeling bi-polar!). I have a 1TB (yes, a Tera-byte...I am my father's daughter, after all) external back-up drive thanks to Black Friday 2008. Once a month, I upload pics to an online photosite (more frequently during special events so that I can photoshare), and I keep a copy on my desktop computer, filed by year. Inside the year file, I keep the photos stored by datestamp and an identifier (like I said before...mommy braincell atrophy...should have had more fun in college)...example-02-14-10a Kids dressed for Valentines, 02-14-10b Valentine dinner at Local Bistro ...because 2 years from now, I won't remember where we went, only that the tapanade was fabulous but the service ho-hum.

I still have my 35 mm, and I do give my kids the throw away cameras, but I have learned my lesson from the Zen Master, develop both of these with a digital copy, and then upload it with the rest to the computer, so that I never have to worry about this again ...and can print it out when I am ready to scrap.