Scrapbook Time and Picture Organization!

I did it!!! I scrapbooked my first page in 2009.....and boy does it feel good. I know that sounds so funny to some of you, but I've been longing to get in gear and get my scrapbooking finished and I've got a good start. I did a 12x12 2 page layout today and have started on another. I have my pictures all organized and am getting ready to print out the remaining pictures from 2008. I am such a planner and organizer that it's really hard for me to focus on scrapbooking right now with everything we have going on with our son, but I've realized that life will probably never be the calm that I want so I'm taking 2009 with a different stride and trying to just go with the flow and maybe do a few things out of the norm. Here's my page for today. I like to scrapbook in order, but sometimes I do break my rules and just "have" to do a page that I like, but today I kept things in order and started with the next page in Ava's scrapbook. In case you are interested in how I organize my stuff.....here it goes, if you aren't interested, you might want to just skip down to the pictures!

I take a "lot" of pictures, I mean I have well over 100 G of pictures on my harddrive. It's okay because it is my computer (well I guess I share it with my husband and kids too), but noone tells me I can't take that many pictures, so I do! I organize my photos in a folder I create on my harddrive called PICTURES. Then I have folders for the years, 2008, 2009, etc. I then subcategorize these by 1_January_2009. Under each month's folder I have the pictures in a folder by date, for example: 1-3-2009_EthanBarn. This way I can find a picture I am looking for with the heading and the date. Then once I have the pictures in their respective folders, I open them in Microsoft Picture Manager and crop, color balance, red eye, whatever they need and then I save them under a different name. This way when I go to print my pictures, I only print the ones I have named. This is my little system and it may seem a little anal, but that is the engineering side of me! That's pretty much it on my computer system. I use Wal-Mart online to order my prints and once I get them home, I put little sticky tabs on them with the date and then I place them in my 12x12 scarpbooks on the pages that I want to scrapbook them on. I'm so behind with that part.....once Ethan got sick, this went to the back burner.

Why am I telling all of you this....I don't know, just thought some of you out there like to hear of other people's picture filing systems. I always like to hear other people's ideas. The other reason is that this year I am determined to get caught up with my scrapbooks. I "LOVE" to scrapbook and I started doing this back in 1999 while I was on a coop in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I started out with a co-worker and I was instantly hooked. I didn't add stamping into my work until I began with Stampin' Up! in 2002. That's the history behind it all. More info than you probably cared to know, but there you have it. So in 2009, you'll be seeing a lot more scrapbooking pages on my blog, but

On to my pages: I got this sketch from my new magazine "Scrapbooks Etc. Page Planner 2009" This magazine is $12.95, but in my opinion it is worth every penny. I have gotten so many ideas from it. I just picked mine up at Wal-Mart, but I've seen this at my local grocery store too. I love the magazine Creating Keepsakes too. I have a subscription to that one. Scrapbooks Etc. has a regular magazine as well. Those two are probably my favorites. I think I'm turning into my Mom buying all these magazines.

If you made it this far in my post....you are definitely a true "fan" of my blog. I'll be back tomorrow with another scrapbook page and a new card from my new favorite stamp set "Heart Prints" from PTI. I Love this set and can't wait to use it more! Until tomorrow! Have a great weekend!