My "fresh" Picture

At the beginning of January, I decided to take on the challenge of taking a photo every day during 2012. Along with the every day challenge, Develop has a couple other photo challenges that I've taken part of. There is a 10 on 10 challenge where you take 10 photos on the 10th day of each month (one each hour)....that was a hard one but fun to see what I was doing on a regular work day....the mundane stuff that you normally wouldn't take notice of.

The other challenge is that each month, a word is offered. The challenge is to take a picture that depicts that word...your own interpretation of it. In January, the word was "fresh." I submitted three pictures. This weekend, I was cruising the internet, checking stalking Facebook, blogs, etc. To my surprise, I saw one of my pictures featured on the Develop blog. How exciting that someone took notice of my little picture and featured it for all to see :-) It's the small things in this girl's life! Check out the post HERE!

Here are the other two photos that I submitted for the word "fresh" in January.

February's word is "cherish." I'm constantly on the look out for something that depicts that word for me. Time to get my creative juices flowing! Feel free to check out my photo a day Flickr photostream. It's never too late if you want to jump in at any time. It's a lot of fun and it has made me really look at my day in a wonderful new way!

Goodbye Precious Pictures

Once upon a time, there was a girl who LOVED to scrapbook, make handmade cards, stamp, just do crafty stuff around the house. One day, this girl found the love of her life and started spending every waking moment with her Prince Charming. The boy and girl eventually got married, built a new house together, took wonderful vacations together and eventually had two adorable sons. All during this time, the girl worked full time while raising her family. Her love of scrapbooking has always remained, but time dwindled more and more every day. She wanted to devote her "creative" time to her boys and husband. Family became the new priority over all the fun stuff she used to do.

This is a basic summary of my life over the past seven years or so. Several months ago, I went to My Little Yellow Room and saw all the neglected pictures, stickers, stamps, beautiful paper, etc. that I knew in my heart that I wouldn't be able to catch up on. It was all too far gone. I made a decision that day that it is okay that I won't be able to do a physical scrapbook for all these special events in my life as I did in my "previous life." I love to do photo books online and they have become so user friendly that I can do my own layouts and not use the typical templates. It is easier to sit down at my computer and upload the thousands of digital pictures and slam a book together in a day or two verses sitting in my little yellow room and go through thousands of pictures, run out of glue, have to make a trip to Michaels, get busy and not get back to my scrapbook until the next day (if I'm lucky).

I decided then and there that I would make photo books for all the special events that have made an impact on who I am today. I sat down and looked at all the photos on my computer and then made a list of the different books that I want to make. You can ask my husband, I LOVE to make lists. I get a rush out of actually crossing something off. I have a real sense of accomplishment. It's the small things! I try to make a book and then wait for an email offer for 40% off or a Groupon offer for a good price on a photo book. I've been able to save a lot of money that way.

My little list of books I want to make vs. those I want to make.

An example of some of the scrapbooks I've made. They are a
bit scattered around here.

A few of the books that I've made. They take up
MUCH LESS room than the scrapbooks I've made.

Here are some of the websites that I have used before for photo books:

Shutterfly

My Publisher

Picaboo

Mixbook

Blurb (I've used this website to convert my other blog into books)

Are there other websites that you like to use for photo books?

I can't bring myself to actually throw away any of my old pictures that I have stored away. I'm in the process of sorting through those now and putting them in some kind of chronological order. These are the pictures that were taken well before the invention of digital cameras (or before I ever dreamed of owning one). I have tons of pictures from a once in a lifetime trip to Japan with my best friend. Maybe one day I'll succumb and go back on my previous statement and do a scrapbook. We'll see what the future brings in that department.

First step in trying to organize my photos. I've got tons of
them. I'm afraid to keep looking around my room for fear of how
many more I will end up finding. Categorizing and trying to REMEMBER
when/where the pictures were taken has proven to be a challenge already!

My box of random travel stuff. I'm definitely fearful of getting rid of this great material.
With two boys heading to school in the coming years, I've already anticipated social studies
projects where this stuff will be cool to have a hold of and use in one way or another.
I'll be figuring out something to do with this stuff somewhere in the future.
Till then, the box is a perfect place for everything to rest.

What do do with all that scrapbooking "stuff?" Well, I've got a plan for that too. You will see that I LOVE to hang on to "stuff" that I can use around here for one day. It drives my husband a little crazy, but I try to keep it stowed away in My Little Yellow Room so he never has a second thought about it.